08/31/2012

1.  Happy Birthday to me!

36 years ago today my beautiful mother (seriously, she has no right to look that good minutes after giving birth to me without an epidural!  I look absolutely horrid in my post-delivery pictures after having my boys...) gave birth to me in the local hospital of my dad's hometown.  My parents had no medical insurance (my dad had just barely graduated from law school and was about to start his first job in Los Angeles after taking the bar).  They decided to drive up to my grandparents house in Centerfield, Utah, so I could be born in Gunnison Valley hospital where the cost of an unmedicated delivery (and a much less than 24-hour hospital stay) was a lot less than it would have been in L.A.  So, this born-and-raised California girl is actually a Utahn by birth!  My poor mom had been hanging out at her in-laws' for two weeks already (maybe more?), but I refused to be born.  And then, when I finally decided to make my appearance, the doctor took his sweet time in getting to the delivery room, making my poor mom wait some more for me to finally be born.  I was born at 12:05 AM on August 31, 1976, but my mom likes to say that I should have been born on the 30th-- if it hadn't been for that inconsiderate doctor!  :-)  That's OK, I think the 31st is a cool birthday, and growing up I thought being born in the early morning was way better than being born late at night.  That way, as soon as I woke up on my birthday morning, I'd already technically be that next year older!  Of course, now that I'm getting older, I wouldn't mind holding on to those last few hours of my earlier age just a little bit longer.  :-)

2.  I got some pretty great things for my birthday this year.  Yesterday afternoon we closed on our new house.  Yep, I got a new house for my birthday.  :-)  It was a bit anticlimactic because we didn't actually get the keys or anything since the (former) owners are going to stay for another week or two until they close on their new house, but still-- we get to start paying another mortgage!  Woo hoo!  :-)
I told the boys that all I wanted for my birthday was one day of no fighting or arguing.  Well, with three boys so close in age, I understand that going a WHOLE 24 hours with NO fighting or arguing with each other (or with me!) is pretty much an impossibility.  But, they gave it a good effort and it was a very peaceful day.  Only one incident of boy one knocking the wind out of boy two, and boy two going after the boy one, ending with that boy one wailing copiously and crying, "He broke my neck!  Why did he break my neck?!"* Ahh.  The joys of motherhood.  :-)
As for myself, I gave myself the day off of school lessons.  The boys thought that was pretty cool.  I've been burning the midnight oil recently (as the time stamps of these blog posts will attest), up till after 2 AM nearly every night, and I was pretty wrecked and needed to sleep in, do some chores, get my haircut, and relax a little.  It was a great day.

3.  Tonight we went to cheesecake factory.  Man, that place is good, but expensive now that I've got two boys that want to order adult entrees.  But, once a year is OK.  :-)  I got the veggie burger and lemoncello cream torte and it was wonderful.  During dinner Ben entertained the boys with his make-a-knife-disappear-under-a-napkin trick, which he has been doing with them for years, and they STILL haven't figured out how he does it.  Maybe they never will.  I'll never spill the secret.  And then all of them had to try their hand at all sorts of disappearing tricks involving forks and spoons and knives and hands, and it was hilarity for everyone.  Good thing we had a booth tucked into the corner mostly away from other diners.

4.  Then, home again, off to bed for the boys, and into the garage for me where I spent more than an hour trying to remember how to use the router, and searching for the little bits of loose hardware that comes with template we bought to install hinges and door plates into the new doors we are hoping to use to replace the old ones upstairs.  This door project has been way longer than I ever anticipated.  Seemed like a simple thing to buy a few doors (really, only 5), paint them, attach the hardware, and hang.  It would have been around $100 (I think) per door to have them installed by Lowes, and I thought, "Pshh!  I can do that myself!"  And I *can*, it's just taken me weeks and weeks and hours and hours and hours in a hot garage.  But, there's still that stubborn Hansen part of me that is appalled to pay good money to someone for something I can do perfectly well myself!  Oh well.  The worst of it, now that I'm approaching the end of the project, is that I really ought to have at least made it a learning experience for the boys, and had them help me.  But the garage is a furnace in the middle of the day (still way too hot for me at night, even with the door halfway up and a fan blowing on me), and I'm not keeping the boys up until 2:00 AM, no matter how awesome the life skills are that they could be learning.  What is the lesson?  Don't do big projects that require work in the garage in the middle of the Texas summer.

5.  Also, today is a blue moon!  That must mean 36 is going to be a lucky year for me.  :-)

*I'm not naming names, but in this scenario, Joseph was boy 3.  :-)

08/29/2012

1.  Two and a half days with the new bikes and we took our first trip to the bike shop for a repair this morning.  :-)  It was my fault, and ended up being no big deal, but Joseph was very upset.  I tried to mount a bracket to hold his bike lock, but installed it too low on the frame.  It jammed the gear-shift mechanism when Joseph tried to shift gears.  Poor Joseph was fit to be tied, worrying that his bike was ruined and it would be really expensive to fix.  I know that totally sick feeling you get when something you really love gets lost or broken, and he was really upset.  So it was a big relief when it turned out to be an easy fix.

2.  The boys have been having fun on photoshop recently.  Here are some recent creations.

Here is an abstract piece by Mosey.


And here, we have some surrealism by Brigham and Joseph.  They love the liquify tool, and after lunch all three of the boys were gathered around the computer in absolute fits of hysterical laughter for about 20 minutes or more as they took turns messing around with pictures of themselves and Sandy (Sandy's photoshopped portrait didn't get saved, unfortunately). Such talent!  :-)

Brigham the extra-terrestrial

 Joseph the... I don't have a clue-- maybe the Joker?

3.  Tonight was our pack meeting and pool party, and the kick-off to the new scout year.  We had a ton of awards to give out.  I'd spent several hours figuring out what each boy was supposed to get, sorting the pins and belt loops and patches, figuring out which ones we were missing (after we supposedly were given all of them...), sorting through the missing awards my friend Andrea went back to purchase this morning, and then dividing them all into separate bags for each boy.
But it was worth it to see the smiles on the boys' faces, especially Mosey.
Mosey was the first one called up to receive his awards.  He earned lots and lots of things over the summer (something like 15 or 16 belt loops and pins and patches), because of cub scout camp and a number of other activities.  He was very excited, as you can see. You can also see Ember, his newest familiar.  He spends half his time carrying Ember around everywhere he goes, and the other half looking for him.  :-)

Joseph and Brigham also received their arrow of light, and crossed over into Boy Scouts.  I'm so proud of them!

Here are the three newest boy scouts-- Joseph and Brigham and their friend Adam-- all three summer birthdays.

Joseph was the first to cross over-- we had to go up to the church this afternoon to pick up the bridge, since the cub master had forgotten it.  I almost said forget it, but Joseph had been looking forward to crossing over the bridge, and I like the more solemn symbolism it represents anyway.  I'm really glad Joseph takes scouting seriously, and I want that to continue. He's done a lot of independent work on scouting this past year.

Then it was Brigham's turn.  He was really funny-- he took his sweet time crossing the bridge, and then at the very end he stood on one foot, extending his other foot over the edge of the bridge-- savoring that last second of cub-scout-hood, before hopping off.  He got a laugh from everyone watching.  

So cub scouts will be starting up again next week!

08/28/2012

1.  I have to take a picture of the playroom before I force the kids to pick it up tomorrow.  It's seriously amazing.  In a very awful sort of way.  I am so looking forward to having a play room with a DOOR I can CLOSE.  :-)

2.  The bikes are a hit.  Joseph was up by 7:00 this morning (first one up), riding his bike in the backyard.  Later he told me that he had dreams about his bike all night and when he woke up, he didn't think he really had it, because it was too good to be true.  So he came downstairs, and he DID have it!  I love it.
Brigham got his bike this afternoon and while he's not quite as over-the-moon about it as Joseph, I think he's very happy.  He kept asking me all day if the bike shop had called yet to tell us it was ready to go.

3.  I came home from the grocery store tonight to find my boys camped out on the couch, watching the Republican National Convention on our projector.  I loved hearing the comments my boys made as they listened to the speeches (especially Mosey's very indignant remarks whenever anyone brought up something particularly galling about "the other guy"), and Brigham's very enthusiastic "WOO HOO's!" when someone said something he particularly liked.  Afterward Mosey said to me, "I'm glad Dad turned that on.  I probably wouldn't have wanted to watch it, but I watched it since it was on and it was really good!"  Well, I would expect nothing less from a child of mine and Ben's!  :-)

4.  I painted the kitchen while listening to the RNC speakers.  It looks good.  Now if we can just find a renter.

5.  And here are two pictures just for fun.

Oh, I just love Jacob's little pout!  And almost perfectly round little face!

Rosalia's expression in this photo totally cracks me up.  Someone who is cleverer than I am needs to come up with a good caption.  Saying she looks a bit shell-shocked would be the understatement of the year!

08/27/2012

1.  We had a pleasant morning as we drove Pavel to the airport for the final leg of his journey back home.  Well, as pleasant as a conversation griping about TSA can be.  :-)  On the way home I treated the boys to McDonald's breakfast-- their favorite.

2.  Back at home we attempted a normal day of lessons and practicing.  I went through a humongous pile of mail (mostly junk mail) that had accumulated over the past few weeks.  I am so bad about keeping up with snail mail.  We discovered some library fines.  Ugh.  Joseph was particularly upset, since most of them were on his card.  He went through the notices, indignantly commenting on each late fee:
"I turned that book in!  What are they talking about?"
"Wait, I never checked out that book!"
"How can they say I damaged that book-- it only got a little water on it-- you could still read it and turn the pages just fine!"
Well, I guess that is the danger of having everyone check out their books all one one card.  It's also why I kind of hate libraries.  I always end up with late fees.  Seems like it would be cheaper just to buy the books. Oh well.

3.  Joseph got his long-awaited phone call about his bike this afternoon, so as soon as everyone was done with practicing, we made our way down to Buck's Bikes.  Joseph rode it around the parking lot, smiling the whole time.  Brigham took a turn and decided he wanted a bike, too.  So we paid for two of them, took one of them home, and will pick up the second tomorrow after it's assembled.  I hope they'll love their bikes as much as I loved mine when I was growing up.  I put lots of miles in on that bike going to and from sports practices, summer school, the library, down around the Rose Bowl and back.

08/26/2012

1.  Church day.  I was so tired this morning.  I'm looking forward to 11:00 church next year, when I won't be punished quite so much for my late-night habits.  :-)  I need at least one day a week to sleep in past 8:00 (to all my family reading this who have small children, yes I know I am a soft, soft, softie :-)).  But church was good, as usual.  It was Seminary Sunday, since seminary starts this next week.  I think someday it would be fun to teach seminary-- but not until my boys are high school age!!

2.  This afternoon after a nap (yes, to all my family with small children, Sunday afternoon naps do someday again become a reality!), our home teacher came with birthday cards for Brigham and Joseph and a nice lesson on how "to protect and serve" in the Gospel.  Then I packed up our game/puzzle shelf.  We have a nice collection of games and puzzles, but don't use them all that often.  I really like the idea of being a game-playing family, but we don't play games that much.  I need to change that!  I had visions of long afternoons of board-games with my children this summer, which never materialized.  Maybe we need to designate one night a week as "game night."  I have good memories of board games with my siblings.

3.  Pavel is leaving to go back home tomorrow morning.  We have loved having him at our house-- such an interesting person, and it's so fun to talk with someone with whom you agree on almost everything!  :-)  As a child, he and his family escaped Communist Czechoslovakia (Hey!  I spelled that right on the first try!!), leaving him with some pretty deeply felt political and philosophical ideas.  It's hard to watch this country move (in some ways) incrementally toward some of the political tendencies under which people in Eastern Europe suffered so much.  I was happy my children were able to talk with him and listen in on our conversations.

4.  I caught Joseph and Sandy relaxing on the couch yesterday and couldn't resist this picture.

08/25/2012

1.  Finished packing up the books downstairs (except the ones we're using for school).  23 boxes!!  Now to attack the ones upstairs...

2.  We went to the mall food court for dinner tonight.  Got the boys' solemn promise never ever to become one of the pierced, tattooed, idiotic teenage mall rats that hang out there every weekend.

3.  Once again stayed up way too late.  But the kitchen is clean, the floors are swept, and all the book boxes are stacked neatly in the hallway, so I guess it's worth a few hours of missed sleep.

08/24/2012

1.  Easy day of lessons today.  It's Friday and my energy is ebbing.  I started packing some boxes of books.  We have lots of books.  :-)  And I'm not prepared to get rid of many of them just yet.  I love raiding my parents' bookshelves for books my kids will like to read-- I figure my boys will do the same for their kids!  :-)

2.  The boys made a giant war scene in the playroom with block buildings and hundreds of plastic toy soldiers today while I was reading our history assignment to them.  I wish I would have taken a picture of it-- it was pretty awesome.  Alas, when our art group friends came over, all the big kids went out back to go swimming, leaving the moms and two 9-month-old babies in the house.  The babies made short business of routing the enemy soldiers in the playroom (and they were all enemy soldiers).  :-)  Later when the boys came inside and discovered the scene of destruction and asked, "What happened in here??!", I just smiled and said "Babies happened."  It's good for my boys to have a chance to practice flexibility, right?

3.  We have a house guest for the next three nights-- a father who just finished a 2,000+ mile bicycle trek with his 12-year-old daughter, from North Carolina to Texas via a route that took them through many different states.  I can't believe a 12-year-old girl could do that!  They've been on the road for two months.  I want my boys to meet this girl.  She's got grit all right.  Anyway, they've been camping along the way, spending only 4 nights total in motels in two months.  She made it home to Buda and he's flying home to NC on Monday morning and so we're his final pit-stop.
It's fun to have house guests, and this guy is really cool.

08/23/2012

In the throes of my boys' birthday celebration yesterday, I completely neglected to mark my little brother's birthday!  My younger brother Brigham was also born on August 22.  What are the odds that the nephew named after him would also be born on his very birthday?!
Brigham is really a remarkable guy.  He is four years younger than me, and my very earliest memories involving babies were of him.

It was so fun to have a little brother in the house, after the three of us girls.  He shook things up, that's for sure.  He was boy, boy, boy.  I remember him always with a ball or a car (well, usually a doll he was using as a car-- he did have 3 older sisters after all), sporting a dirty face, running from one thing to another.

He did soccer and t-ball and baseball and I think my dad was in heaven.  I was very protective of my younger brother-- he had a late August birthday (obviously) and so was always the youngest and smallest kid in his class.  Although I'm not sure he ever realized that.  :-)

He grew up to be handsome and smart and confident and the best example of a big brother for all his younger brothers coming up after him.

He was the first of my brothers to score a perfect 36 on the ACT (did you also get a perfect SAT score Brigham?), and went to BYU on a full scholarship.   He went on a mission, graduated from college and married a wonderful girl (I love you, Christine!).

He now has 4 kids of his own and is about to start his first year as a professor of economics at BYU, and if I were an undergraduate, I would seriously consider economics for a major, just to take his classes.  :-)

I hope you had a wonderful birthday, Brigham, I love you!

08/22/2012: Happy Birthday to my boys!!

Happy Birthday Brigham and Joseph!  I love you both so much and I am thankful every single day to be your mom.

1.  The morning began by taking their pictures at their exact time of birth (adjusted to take into account the different time zone, of course-- gotta be accurate!

8:23 AM

8:28 AM

Look who are happy to be eleven years old?!!

2.  Then it was time for birthday breakfast.  HEB didn't have their favorite-- Pocketini-- this year, so we made do with two pretty close cereals.  The HEB brand is actually pretty darn close.  And, the entire box got eaten before dinner tonight.  :-)

3.  For their first present, I gave them the day off of school AND chores.  They lounged around in their PJ's all morning reading and playing on the computer, playing outside, and re-listening to "The Amulet of Samarkand."  I made Brigham's cake and then swept and mopped the downstairs, which took forever, but it's now CLEAN!  There were some other nice things that happened during the day-- birthday cards and gift cards in the mail from grandma and birthday singing messages from the other grandma.  These boys are well-loved.

4.  In the afternoon, Mosey and I went to Walmart for him to choose some presents for his brother.  And one for himself (a silver pocket watch, similar to the one Brigham bought for himself a few weeks ago).  It was sweet to see him deciding on presents.

5.  Brigham did have violin lessons, but after he got home, he and Joseph decided on dinner-- Papa John's delivery pizza, and I frosted his cake.  Then when Ben came home, it was time to really celebrate!

6.  Joseph was chomping on the bit to open presents, but we made him wait a tortuously long time.  I videoed an eleven-year-old interview with both of them, which was fun.  Except that poor Mosey was feeling seriously left out and did his best to make his presence known on camera.  :-)  Then it was dinner time.  THEN we had to do cake and candles and singing.  Mosey accompanied us on his cello when we sang "Happy Birthday to You."  And THEN we had some snafus with the whole blowing-out-candles thing.  How many times have my boys done this now?  At least 10?  Anyway, first of all, Brigham blew out his candles at the beginning of "Happy Birthday!"

So we did a take-2 and re-lit the candles.  This time, we sang all the way to the end of the song, and Joseph dutifully blew out his candles, while Brigham kept sitting their smiling nicely.

So much for my both-boys-blowing-out-candles photo op!  :-)
But, here's a darling one of the two of them looking angelic with their cakes:

Actually, the whole candle-blowing thing was pretty funny.  Joseph ended up trying to blow his out three separate times, but every time, that stubborn 11th candle refused to extinguish!  I guess they don't really want him turning eleven years old any more than I do.  :-)
By the way, Joseph chose his now-traditional raspberry white chocolate cheesecake, while Brigham chose "Too Much Chocolate Chocolate Cake."  It does have lots of chocolate.  And it is very good.  :-)

FINALLY, it was time for presents.

Mosey got Brigham a snorkel, and Joseph the first of the "Survivors" series by Erin Hunt (her "Warriors" series is a great favorite of my boys).  Ben and I gave them each bike helmets and a bike lock, and a promise to pay for 1/2 of a bike of their choice.  Joseph has been saving for and wanting a bike for a long time, but nice bikes that don't fall apart are expensive.  I don't know that Brigham really wants a bike as much, so I told him if he decided not to get one, he could use the money for something else.  Joseph was very excited.  This will come pretty close to cleaning him out, but I think he will really appreciate the bike and take good care of it.  We also gave them each a funny card that plays music when opened.  Mosey may have liked those even more than the twins did.  :-)

7.  After cheesecake and chocolate cake, and an episode of 24, it was time for bed.  Day one of eleven years old is done!

8.  On my sister's photo blog, she posted a couple of pictures of me at eleven years old, so I thought I'd re-post some here.
Gotta love the obligatory first-day-of-school shot.  Foam curlers still in my hair.  The only day of the year I'd ever actually curl my hair for school!  I remember that particular outfit very fondly.  My grandma Hansen took me clothes shopping and helped me pick it out.  And that year, it was all about the shoulder bag.  No backpacks!  I think I stuck with it all year, too, and then saw reason the next year and went back to backpacks.  And look at Rachel's eye!  That must have been right after she fell (while spinning in circles) into a side table of ours that had been carved to look like a thorny vine.  She fell face first right onto one of those thorns, and came so close to losing her eye.  Ouch!  She still has a scar.  Ahh, memory lane.
Anyway, this is me at eleven.  Hard to believe my boys are this SAME AGE!!!

08/21/2012

1.  The last day of my big boys being ten.  Oh, these days are so bittersweet for me!  I remember their birth so vividly-- how can those tiny babies now be these big boys?  And yet, they are such wonderful big boys, I can hardly wish them away to return to their baby days.  It just goes by so fast.

2.  After piano lessons this morning, I gave the boys the good news and the bad news.  The good news was that we were not going to do lessons today.  The bad news was that we were going to organize the garage and pack up a bunch of stuff in Brigham's room instead.  :-)  And we accomplished both of those tasks!  Brigham really wanted to do the whole garage by himself, but I insisted we all help.  My plan was to organize things so there would be a good place for packed boxes to be stashed, and a good place for empty boxes to be stored.  Ben had sort of willy-nilly put a bunch of stuff in the garage while we were gone, as he tried to move things out to declutter our front room and kitchen.  So we spent some time organizing and packing up that stuff before moving up to Brigham's room.  We sorted through all the blankets and make a big Goodwill pile, a medium throw-away pile, and put all the "keep" blankets into a big box.  We had way too many blankets, many of which were falling apart.  I also made myself be brutal and put a bunch of the boys' baby blankets in the Goodwill pile.  I kept all the ones that I made, or that were handmade by someone else, but all the store-bought blankets will go to another baby now.  I didn't enjoy that part.  When will I come to an acceptance that I'm not going to have another baby?...

3.  After our organizing, Brigham and Mosey went with me to the grocery store.  The twins needed to choose their special birthday cereal, and I needed ingredients for their cakes.  Joseph stayed home, after instructing me in what he wanted (he had to take advantage of the time with no brothers to compete with for the computer!). So then tonight after dinner I started the traditional white chocolate raspberry cheesecake for Joseph, since it needs to chill for 12 hours.  Most of the way through I realized I bought the wrong kind of jam for the raspberry filling, and I had to make an 11:00 run to Walmart.  But Joseph has to have his cheesecake!  Brigham wants Triple Chocolate Devils Food cake, which I will make tomorrow morning.  And now I have stayed up way, way, way, way too late decorating and wrapping presents and making cakes and I will pay for it tomorrow.  But my boys only turn 11 once and they are worth it.

08/20/2012

1.  Ah, Mondays.  How I love them.  This one started out not so great as someone came to the door about 5 minutes after I got up.  I was brushing my teeth when Brigham came to my room saying, "Someone from the ward is here to see you."  Oh gosh, this means I forgot something...  But, it quickly came back to me-- visiting teaching!  So I got dressed super fast, put on a hat (no one wants to see my bed head), and yelled for the boys to wake up and come downstairs.  The boys watched my companion's two little boys and we went and visited a couple of ladies, so it all ended up fine.  But I really hate that feeling of "Oh shoot, I've forgotten something important!"

2.  Since I was gone visiting teaching until almost noon, we had a late start on lessons.  But, the boys were pretty cooperative, so it was OK.  Still, a late start on lessons means that lessons and practicing drags on into the evening, and no one likes that.  So it was pancakes and omelets for dinner since I was doing piano with the boys until 7:00.

3.  I think I mentioned that Ben is teaching Mosey and Brigham some C++ computer programming.  Joseph isn't that interested-- he was upset on Saturday (or Sunday?) when Brigham and Mosey were apparently understanding and being able to do something with a bunch of code that Ben had printed out for them.  Joseph didn't understand it, and I was not able to help him either!!  I hated my computer programming classes in college.
Anyway, right now they are just programming funny little programs that ask a question like "What is your name?"  And then when you type in your answer, it gives a response.  You can have quite the conversation with a computer that has been programmed by a ten year old!  :-)  Just before bed, Brigham wanted me to check out one more program he wrote.  So I went over and when it asked me, "What is your name?"  I answered, "Gabrielle."  And then it replied, "Gabriell, you're sure looking beautiful today!"  And I about swooned.  Is that not the sweetest thing in the entire world?  Brigham is such a sweetheart.

08/19/2012

1.  I woke up feeling really sick this morning, so I stayed home from church while Ben took the boys.  I don't like missing church.  I started feeling better by the early afternoon, and by the evening I dared eat again, so I hope this was just a short-lasting bug.

2.  After church, Joseph and Brigham and I went over their scout books to make sure they have finished everything for their Arrow of Light award.  They are turning 11 on Wednesday!!  We finished a few requirements to complete their forester and naturalist badges.  I had a bit of a hard time making them take some of the discussion points seriously.  It bothers me that so many environmental issues have been completely politicized.  We talked about having a conservation attitude, and how that is the good, responsible way to live.  You can be a conservationist without going crazy about fluorescent light bulbs and carbon footprints. Anyway, they have 2 more short things to finish, and then they will be all set.

3.  I made stir-fry for dinner.  Chicken and vegetable teriyaki stir fry and then a wonderful (I though) vegetable curry stir fry.  Ben came in while I was finishing up the curry, gave it a very dubious look and asked if that was what we were having for dinner.  I reassured him that I made TWO kinds of stir-fry.  It's too bad that some of my favorite food is some of Ben's least favorite.  Oh well, at least there are lots of leftovers for me.  :-)

4.  Here are some pictures from our trip of my darling nieces and nephews.   I have lots more pictures, here are just a few I looked over tonight.

Brigham and Christine's sweet baby Jane.  I want to eat her up.  I want to steal her away and never give her back, ever.  :-)

Baby Jane's bigger brother Lincoln.  This kid is a fire cracker!!

 Rosalynde's youngest, Miles, wearing his PJ's and his mama's hat at the park.  I adore 3-year-olds.

Another one of Miles, busy with his cars.  He takes his playing very seriously.

Naomi's oldest girl, Polly.  This was the morning before she got into some poison oak.  I'm so glad I got some pictures of her before her poor eyes got all swollen.  Polly is also a fire cracker, and I have no idea how Naomi has the energy to keep up with her.  Man, is she ever cute.

Rachel's little girl Rosalia.  Rosalia is absolutely, breath-takingly beautiful.  Of course she is, being Rachel's child.  :-)  It's probably good I never had a daughter-- they'd be riddled with insecurity around their beautiful cousins!

The stripey cousins, Lincoln and Miles.  Lincoln, Miles, and Polly were all born within 2 months of each other, and they are sure fun to watch together.

08/18/2012

1.  It was a so-so productive day.  I did finish the laundry.  Got a few things organized, got the boys to do a few chores.  Went grocery shopping and picked up a bunch of boxes a guy was giving away on Craigslist.  I'm thinking the boys can start packing up their rooms, and we can start packing a few things away that we don't need, like books, etc.

2.  Joseph had archery this morning, the first time he's gone in almost a month.  He got blisters on his fingers--I guess the callouses get thin after a few weeks off!  His coach had him shooting at 20 yards, which was cool for him.  After archery (Ben dropped him off, and I went and picked him up with Mosey), we went to Blackerbys to switch Mosey's 1/4 size cello for a 1/2 size.  He's growing up!  Brigham's probably about ready for a 3/4 size violin.  I'll have to ask his teacher about that.

3.  It rained this afternoon, one of those wonderful summer thunderstorms.  My favorite weather.  Kept things a little cooler, although very muggy.  Afterward, Joseph and Brigham wanted to go down to the boulder park to see if the rain had started the waterfall back up.  Not yet, although we're supposed to get a little more rain over this next week, so maybe then.  I tried to talk Mosey into going with Joseph and Brigham, but he didn't want to.  I need to get that kid out of the house!  He wanted to work on his stick-figure animation, but his computer time was up.  So he stayed home with Ben whom I instructed not to let Mosey on the computer.  A while later Mosey called me up on Ben's phone and asked if Ben could teach him some computer programming.  Tricky boy!  Still, it is screen time, so I told Ben no more than 10 minutes.  I know there are some good websites out there for teaching kids basic programming-- I need to check those out.
Here is Mosey trying to draw his cousins over to the dark side of phone games over our family reunion.  Like moths to a flame...

08/17/2012

1.  It's my mom's birthday!  I love her so much.  She is the best mother I could ever have.  My mom is everything-- intelligent, kind, capable, energetic, accomplished, compassionate, selfless, and beautiful.  She is the best grandmother I know-- she would do anything for my boys.  I know that in my bones.  She loves them like she loves her own children. 
My mom is so amazing.  I know I talk about our family slides a lot, but I love looking at them-- especially looking at my mother with all of her children, remembering all the activities we were involved in, all of the activities she was involved in with us!  Looking at those pictures, remembering the challenges she faced at a younger age than I am now, I am truly humbled.  It is a different experience looking at those pictures of her with the eyes of a peer, instead of a daughter (well, a daughter, too).  I'm glad I wasn't her peer, though, because she would have made me feel all kinds of inadequate.  :-)  As it is, I can just be grateful that I was the lucky daughter of such a wonderful person, and that my children are her lucky grandchildren.

Mama with baby Jane, Brigham and Christine's youngest, just the cutest, most darling thing ever.

2.  My boys have been busy playing with this stick figure animation program.  Mosey especially loves it.  He hasn't figured out how to save his animations, so after he makes one, he has me video it off the computer monitor.  I really need to get him involved in learning more sophisticated programing.


3.  Ben took the boys to do some errands tonight-- off to Lowes, and then to Taco Bell, I think.  So I had a couple of quiet hours to myself, which I used very industriously doing laundry.  I'm trying to kick off a very productive weekend.  Wish me luck!

08/16/2012

1.  I woke up a little later than I wanted this morning (due to being up a little too late last night-- oops, same problem tonight), and so we were finishing up breakfast and getting started on lessons when I looked at my watch, saw that it was 10:00, and realized with a start that our Cub Scout summer swim party was starting RIGHT THEN.  Aargh!!  I HATE forgetting things!  The kids ran around like crazy men looking for swimming suits, and I yelled like a crazy woman when they started fighting and bickering over who hid whose swimming suits (no one hid anyone's swimming suit, it's just that when my kids can't find something, it's obviously because one of their brothers hid it, right?), and then drove like a crazy person out to Steiner Ranch where I had to convince poor Brigham to get out of the car-- he doesn't like being yelled at...  Bad mommy. 
But once I convinced them all to get in the pool, they had a good time.  A kid from our ward who is a swimmer on the high school team came and gave them instruction on safety and water rescue and a few strokes, and all the boys earned their swimming belt loop and sports pin.  Yay!
Joseph found a giant toad and practiced being the pied piper for a while until he decided he wanted to swim again, at which point I became the keeper of the toad.  So fun!  :-)  I was able to successfully persuade Joseph to let the toad stay at the park instead of taking it back to our house. 
After swimming, Brigham found a tree and climbed up really, really high.  He promises me he is totally safe.  If he falls and breaks his arm, he's paying the medical bills.  :-)

2.  We didn't get home until after 1:00 PM, so our lessons were fairly abbreviated, and no one finished all their practicing.  I don't think Joseph did any of his practicing.  I think he came the closest to finishing his schoolwork, though, so I guess it all evens out.

3.  Joseph and Brigham (I'm thinking mostly Brigham?) helped Ben this evening by spraying the stone around the base of our house with a chlorine solution to try and get rid of some of the water stains.  Worked pretty well, too.  It's interesting for me to see the differences in what Ben and I notice in preparation for readying our house for a potential renter.  Me?  I don't care too much about discolored stone around the base of the house.  The holes in the walls upstairs, the peeling paint on the kitchen wall, the state of the carpet on the stairs are a lot more problematic.  Or maybe Ben just realizes that the boys aren't going to be particularly helpful in remedying those problems...  :-)

4.  And here is a picture of my handsome Brigham. 

08/15/2012

1.  Today was all about trying to get some decent pictures of our house for our rental listing.  Gosh, it's really better to take pictures AFTER all your stuff is moved out.  As it was, the boys helped me to move stuff out of one room to take pictures, then out of another for another set of pictures, etc.  When Ben came home in the evening, he and the boys moved a bunch of stuff off the back patio so I could get some shots of the back of the house.  I still didn't get pictures of Brigham's room or the master bedroom.  I have some old pictures of the master bedroom before it got crowded with things like Ben's desk and the organ.  It's really quite ridiculous.  Anyway, they will have to do.

Here are a few of the ones I took today:

front

back

back

back

kitchen

kitchen

 See how the doors to the dining room/playroom are closed?  That's because the boys helped move all the stuff on the kitchen counters back into the playroom, where, incidentally, they still are.  I'm just hoping Chrissy doesn't figure out that Mr. Goldfish is swimming in his bowl ON THE FLOOR in the playroom.  :-)

kitchen

Living room

living room

master bathroom

I don't think I ever posted a picture of the master bathroom.  Oh, so much better than the brown floral wallpaper and the sea-shell molded sinks!

Joseph's room

 Joseph spent quite a while on his room.  I was really proud of him.

Mosey spent a lot of time on his room, too, but he just has too much stuff in there.  Half the playroom is sitting on top of his desk or dresser or top bunk.  But I love how meticulously he made his beds.

Mosey's room

 And I don't think I ever posted a picture of the re-done upstairs bathroom, either.  Believe me, it's a big improvement from the 1980's wallpaper that was there before.

boys' bathroom

Brigham is very conscientious about his room, and he keeps his stuff picked up nicely.  However, through no fault of his own, his room upstairs (which is huge-- lots bigger than the master bedroom) is currently the repository of all the books/furniture/sports equipment/flotsam/jetsam that no one can figure out what to do with, so it wasn't photo-worthy this afternoon.

Anyway, the wide angle lens is lots of fun.  I want one!  I'm not sure I want one for $700, though.  I got some funny pictures of the boys.

 Like Joseph's long alien fingers here?  :-)

Brigham evaded my camera again.  I'll get him tomorrow before I have to take the lens back.

So I updated our zillow listing with the pictures, and I hope we'll get some bites soon.  We had one renter ready to sign a contract, but when he went to his apartment managers to tell them he was leaving, they gave him a super good deal he couldn't turn down.  And then another family was very interested-- they're moving here from out of state, but a family emergency has changed their plans.  That's how it goes I guess.  Still, two good leads without even any pictures on the listing?  Not too terrible.

2.  As I was going from room to room taking pictures, it did occur to me that Ben may find this moving business a little more complicated than he anticipates.  We shall see!  Our deal is that I let him handle all the moving-out stuff (fine with me!!), and then I can direct the moving-in stuff.  Meanwhile I get to remain calm, cool, and collected while Ben handles all the hard stuff.  That's a deal I can get behind!  Ben's pretty sure the move is not going to pose any trouble at all for him (he does have lots of experience being the Elders Quorum Moving Company President, after all), and I hope he's right!  But gosh, we have a lot of stuff.  And a lot of stuff that needs to be sorted and thrown away or given to Goodwill.

3.  School went pretty well today.  Chores got done fairly willingly.  Although at one point when one of my boys was sort of standing around randomly moving the vacuum around on the ground, I told him, "Be systematic!  If you're not going to vacuum, turn it off so you don't run down the battery."  Well, he did NOT appreciate my comments, turned the vacuum off, and stomped off to my room saying, "If you're going to say stuff like that, I'm not going to vacuum!!"  Oh, excuse me!  I admit I got a little cross with that.  It's one of those things that I can't imagine myself saying to my mom when I was a kid, and I don't think it's OK for him to talk to me like that.  But what do I do?  Spank him?  Send him to his room?  I think he'd like that-- he'd get out of vacuuming!  As it was, I got mad and yelled a little and he did get back out and did a good job with the rest of the vacuuming.  Oh, it's hard to know.  Is he just blowing off steam?  Or is it a manifestation of a deep-seated lack of respect for authority that's going to end with him in jail before he's 18?  OK, probably not that, but that's what I worry about.  I don't mind the blowing off of steam, I understand that.  But I DO mind the attitude of "I'll say anything I want any time I want and no one can stop me because I'm the center of the universe!"  But, I let it go, after doing my own bit of tantruming, and he did the rest of his chore without anymore trouble.  And he and the rest of the boys were very good about the rest of their lessons, and were very good about helping out with moving stuff around the house and yard, etc., so maybe I should just relax.