Easter at the Urgent Care

None of us really wanted to spend Easter morning at the Urgent Care.  But today our 11 year, 7 month, 9 day no-stitches-streak came to an end with Brigham lying on the examining table getting three stitches in a deep puncture wound in his forehead.
The injury was a result of some fairly normal sibling squabbling that ended badly.  The instigator was nearly as traumatized as the victim-- when the multi-tool was thrown, it was thrown out of frustration, and not with the intent to inflict grave bodily harm on his brother.
But, all's well that ends well.  Brigham was a rock-star at the doctors office, and didn't make a peep during the whole thing.
The rest of our Easter was wonderful, with lots of food, an Easter egg hunt, and a nice devotional with with friends.
I took some video of the Easter festivities, but the only pictures I took today were of my poor boy at the Urgent Care.  He was so brave.
Here's hoping we don't see the inside of another Urgent Care center for a long, long time!

Joseph and his dog

Joseph and Sandy from a couple of weeks ago up in the forest.  Joseph loves this dog, and I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual.  :-)

03/28/2013

The boys dyed Easter eggs for our art group activity today.  It's interesting to see the different styles of each of my boys.  Joseph dived right in and made dragon eggs-- a red/orange fire egg, a blue ice egg, and a purple lightning egg.  Brigham opted out of the dying altogether and got out some paints and made a china egg, with intricately painted blue dragons (to go along with Joseph's dragon eggs?).  Mosey couldn't decide for a long time-- he wanted to paint one like Brigham, but got frustrated with his efforts and painted over all his work.  He ended up making some pretty multi-colored eggs using the dye.  He is my least artistically confident boy, although he has no reason to be.  I need to do some art lessons with him individually.

Mosey has adopted the "inside out and backward" look first pioneered by Joseph. :-)

Later in the afternoon, Mosey rode down the street on his bike.  He witnessed some sort of collision between a hawk and a mourning dove in which the hawk dropped a baby squirrel it has been about to devour, and Mosey quickly got off his bike and picked up the stunned creature.  One of our neighbors happened to be watching out her window and hurried out.  It turns out she has hand-raised two other squirrels, and knew exactly what to do.  Mosey gave her the squirrel and she came up to our house to find out if we wanted to keep it-- I guess Mosey had dibs, finding it first.  :-)  But a household of a very energetic dog and 2 cats would not be an ideal place for a squirrel, so we were happy to let our neighbor take it.  I wish I had thought to take a picture of it before she left-- it is really the cutest little thing.  The boys can go and see it any time, which I'm sure they will.  I was happy to meet this neighbor who also homeschools her kids, although her older kids are in high school, and her younger two are babies.  I'm slowly getting to know our neighbors-- I think we really lucked out moving to this little street.

03/25/2013

1.  In like a lamb, out like a lion.  That's what March seems to be like this year!  It's supposed to get down to freezing tonight, which is just ridiculous.  How can my boys be swimming in the pool on Saturday, and 2 days later it be freezing again?!  Mosey has some beans sprouting in containers in the front courtyard for some science experiments, and I just sent Ben out to bring them in so they don't freeze.  I don't remember it ever freezing here after the first day of Spring!

2.  Today was pretty OK for schoolwork.  The boys got their stuff done pretty fast.  I worked on putting together some extra credit assignments.  The boys had the idea of earning various ranks as they get extra credits in different areas, moving up through 21 different levels from recruit to general.  Joseph got it all mapped out, and Mosey assigned credits for each one.  It's a good idea and I hope it works!  I've got assignments in math, social science, history, science, literature, writing, memorization, geography, computer science, religion, music, P.E., Latin, journaling, citizenship, home economics, and art.  Perhaps a bit ambitious, but I want them to get excited about learning for the sake of learning, and not necessarily as graded schoolwork.

3.  Sola got out of the house 3 times today.  We're trying to keep the cats inside until they are at least 6 months old (they are 5 months now), but Sola really, really wants to get out.  I'm afraid if they go outside they'll become less social, not to mention they might become dinner for a hawk or one of the owls that lives up in the forest...  This afternoon the boys got three big boxes and are making a cat fort out of them.  It's pretty impressive.  Maybe we can keep the cats entertained sufficiently inside the house and they won't want to go outside.  Maybe.  :-)

I know all my pictures recently are of the cats.  It's a little pathetic.  But here's one of me and Luna, anyway. I'm pretty sure I didn't even comb my hair that day, let alone put on makeup.  Good thing my cell phone takes fuzzy pictures.  :-)  Luna still loves to hang out on our shoulders, except now she's about twice as big as she was a few months ago!  Joseph (and the other boys, a lot of the time) calls the cats "Parry-wats," since they think they are half parrot, half cat.  Clever.  :-)

03/24/2013

1.  We had a good weekend.  Lots of yardwork yesterday, plus I finally got through papers and bills that had been piling up for way too long.  I want to hand that part of our household affairs over to Ben.  We went to see the new Oz movie, which we all enjoyed.  The computer graphics were wonderful, and it was a fun story.

2.  Kandis has seminary this week, so I enjoyed a low-key Sunday afternoon.  Ben and the boys made dinner while I worked on Rosetta Stone German.  I'm hopelessly behind and about ready to throw in the towel now that I've seen how absurdly complex the German system of gendered nouns is.  Mosey and Joseph think it's really funny to say things to me in German and then laugh at me when I don't understand.  Mosey is picking it up really fast.  I guess it's true that the younger you are, the faster your mind grasps languages.

3.  I fell at church today.  I haven't done that in a long time.  I just lost my balance and couldn't get my crutches out in time to stop my fall.  It's like slow-motion, really, and so frustrating that I can't move the way my brain is telling my body to.  A few people saw and ran down the hall to help me up.  Wonderful.  I was OK, I have enough experience falling that I know how to do it safely, so pretty much only my pride was bruised.  Pretty embarrassing.

4.  Last week the boys had a couple of really great days when they finished their work up really fast.  It was great, but also a little distressing to see exactly how fast they can work when they really want to, and made me think that perhaps they don't have enough to do.  I don't know how half the time I can be anxious about expecting too much of them, and not letting them have enough free time to explore and be boys, and the other half I can be anxious that they don't have enough school work...  Anyway, I think I'm going to try to come up with a bunch of extra credit assignments that they can do to earn points toward buying a computer or something like that.  I'm trying to come up with a list of assignments they can do in a few different areas-- science, math, current events, writing, computer science.  I think it can be good if I can find the time and organizational skills to come up with something worthwhile.

Here are some pictures of Mosey attempting to practice the piano while Luna thinks he's a jungle gym.  You can tell that piano practicing is super-effective with a 5-month-old kitten in the mix.  :-)

A tiny bit of catch-up

I can't remember enough of the past month to attempt much of a catch-up, but I do have a few pictures I haven't posted yet.  I've barely even taken out my camera, that's how busy I've been.

 The boys have enjoyed the new playroom.  It gets a lot of use.   I still usually can't get to most of the room, do to toys and blocks on the floor, but that's OK.  It means they are playing!

Brigham will never be too old for Kapla blocks.  :-)

A couple of weeks ago Brigham's orchestra played at the Long Center before an Austin Symphony concert. They played on the Mezzanine Balcony on a beautiful Friday evening after a morning of rain.  We got free and discounted tickets to the concert afterward, and it was a really nice family outing.  It was Brigham's first concert as concert master, and he did a great job!  In these pictures he is looking at his music, but he had his eyes on the conductor about half the time, which is exactly right.  Afterward, his conductor gave him some very nice compliments on his playing and leading the orchestra.  This has been a great thing for Brigham.

 A little more of the orchestra.  There were people sitting in front of me, blocking my view of the whole orchestra.  They played for about 30 minutes, which I thought was pretty amazing for only about 6 weeks of rehearsals.

 In May AYO holds advancement auditions, and Brigham is hoping he'll move up to the next level.  He and I went to the pops concert for the upper level orchestras about 3 weeks ago, and they were really fantastic.  I love that Austin has so many kids involved in classical music that it can support 6 youth orchestras!  This is a great place for musically-inclined kids.

Mosey also got his Wolf and has moved up to be a Bear in Cub Scouts.  This was the only picture I managed to get of him the whole Blue and Gold Banquet.  :-)  It had an Angry Birds theme and was very fun.  Each family brought a cake which they decorated while there in some sort of Angry Birds fashion.  Ben and I have never even played Angry Birds, so this was new to us.

Other notable events of the past few weeks?

We celebrated Pi day last week with blueberry cream pie that we made in our art group.  The kids did most of it themselves, including homemade pie crust.  We made enough for them to roll out pie crust cookies, too.

Joseph fell while playing tag with his brothers after the Blue and Gold banquet, jamming his 4th and 5th fingers of his left hand pretty badly.  It got him out of piano practicing for a week.  :-)  I was worried he had a broken finger, but the black and blue swelling went down after a few days, and it is right as rain now.  Good thing, since his spring piano recital is coming up.  I know he was losing sleep about that.  :-)

Ben got a new couch for his office.  He taught seminary on Wednesday morning while I went to an inservice meeting at the Stake Center.  Afterwards, he had 3 of the boys help him move one of the pieces into the office.  When I got home (I had the other piece in my van), he and Brigham and Joseph attempted to move it into the office.  It had the exact dimensions as the other piece, but I thought there was not a chance in the world that they could make it through the door.  I think Ben had his doubts, as well, because it took about 40 minutes of brute force and complicated engineering to get it into the room.  We couldn't figure out how they got the first piece in so easily!  It's a nice couch, though, which is a good thing because that thing is NEVER coming out of the room.  :-)

I got a cell phone for the boys.  We have no house phone, and I have always been a little nervous leaving them home with no way to contact me, nor me them.  Sometimes they go on long hikes and bike rides, and now I will feel much better knowing they have a way to stay in contact.  It is a no-frills phone with no internet access or games or anything, but it has still been a source of thrilling discovery for my boys, especially my tech-loving Mosey.  He learned how to text right off and sent me a series of cute little texts and picture texts until I broke the news to him that each text costs twenty cents...

The weather has been so amazingly gorgeous here the past few weeks.  March is my most favorite month here in Austin.  All the leaves are coming out on the trees, the lawns are waking up, the days are warm, cool nights, no mosquitoes, lots of sunshine, the spring rain showers are just beginning.  I love it.  So we've been outside doing lots of yard work!  I love this house and yard so much, especially the fact that I can get around in the yard so well.  A friend of mine is a great gardener and she came over to help me identify a lot of the trees and shrubs and other plants in our yard so I could figure out how to cut them back, prune them, etc.  Ben has great plans to make our yard produce for us-- he has planted banana trees, fig trees, pomegranate trees, cumquat trees, loquat trees, and peach trees!  They are all Central-Texas-friendly varieties, so in a few years we should have some bountiful harvests.  Last Saturday was awesome.  All the boys spent several hours out in the yard weeding and raking and planting.  It was one of those idyllic days that I have dreamed about with my children all working together, everyone happy and getting along (well, mostly...). :-)

As part of our yard clean-up efforts, Ben dragged our old Christmas tree, which we failed to drag out to the curb in time for pickup, into the backyard, and then chopped it in pieces and burned it in our backyard fire pit.  Well, that bone-dry Christmas tree made the most enormous flames you have ever seen!  Ben looked up the fire laws in our city before we did this, and we thought we were in compliance (and he still believes he technically was), but just as we were finishing up the last of the pine boughs, we heard a fire siren coming nearer and nearer, until it turned onto the street just adjacent to ours.  It drove around and around, finally winding around and coming from Anderson Mill into the church complex out beyond our back fence.  We figured they were looking for us...  But by then the fire was mostly out, so they couldn't see the smoke.  Well, eventually they did figure out where we were, and a couple of them came with flashlights out to our back fence.  They were super-nice and told Ben what the fire guidelines are, but it was really embarrassing.  After that, they made their way back to our street (our street really is sort of tucked away and hard to find), and parked in front of our house while the firemen got out and walked through the forest next to our house, I guess just to make sure no stray spark had started anything.  There was no way it had, since the fire wasn't THAT big!!  But apparently that forest area is one place the firemen are especially watchful of in our area because it is so full of trees and dense brush.  And of course all the neighbors came out to see what the firetruck was doing, so it really was very embarrassing.  We hate being "those" neighbors...  Anyway, all's well that ends well, I guess.  We got rid of our Christmas tree, and we didn't get in trouble!  (Why are firemen so much nicer than police men?)  :-)  I don't love the male fixation on fire, and Ben and I have had disagreements on what constitutes appropriate use of fire.  He frequently wants to burn lots of things and I frequently don't.  :-)  But this time I made a conscious decision not to make a fuss about it, and I really did think it would be all right.  So the silver lining is definitely that now I won't have to argue with Ben about burning things anymore!  The firemen did the job for me, and I didn't have to be the bad guy.  :-)  I wish I would have gotten a picture of those flames, though!

OK, that catches me up about as much as I've got patience fore right now.

final New Testament mnemonics

These are why I've been so silent on my blog recently.  I've been spending all my free time working on them.  :-)
It's been fun to have a reason to draw again.
Each little story is a mnemonic device to help my seminary students memorize the scripture references to the 25 "Scripture Mastery" verses in the New Testament.  Each of them has a key quote from the scripture, and the chapter and verse numbers embedded in the story.
It was a huge amount of work, but mostly fun.  I made line drawings first, then scanned them and colored them in using Photoshop.

Most of the stories are pretty silly, but honestly, the sillier ones are the easier ones to remember!

Here are PDF versions of the cards and the full-size versions:

Card sheet 1

Card sheet 2

Card sheet 3

Card sheet 4

Card sheet 5

Acts 7:55-56

1 Corinthians 10:13

1 Corinthians 15: 20-22

1 Corinthians 15: 29

1 Corinthians 15: 40-42

Ephesians 4:11-14

Hebrews 5:4

James 1: 5-6

James 2:17-18

John 3:5

John 7:17

John 10:16

John 14:15

John 17:3

Luke 24:36-39

Matthew 5:14-16

Matthew 6:24

Matthew 16:15-19

Matthew 25:40

Revelations 14:6-7

Revelations 20:12-13

Romans 1:16

2 Thessalonians 2:1-3

2 Timothy 3:1-5

2 Timothy 3:16-17

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

this week

Some interesting things about this week:

1.  We have a swing in our backyard-- a disk swing on a long rope hung from one of the big live oak trees in our back yard.  We have a step ladder set up next to it, and the boys climb up to the top of the ladder, get on the swing, and then launch themselves off the ladder to swing into the air.  It is really fun!  And Ben had it set up so that it seemed to be very safe.  But on Thursday evening, about 5 minutes before we were supposed to be leaving for music lessons, I heard loud cries from the backyard.  "HELP, HELP!!  I'M NOT KIDDING, HELP ME!"  These are the moments that make a mother's blood run cold.  I wheeled myself as fast as I could to the back door and I saw Mosey making his way toward the house, holding his arm, and tears streaming down his face.  Somehow the knot on the rope untied, and when Mosey jumped off the top of the ladder, he essentially fell straight down and crashed on his left arm and side on the hard gravel below.  He got a pretty bad abrasion on his left elbow that is going to be a pain in the neck because it is right on the joint.  I tried to ask him about what happened, but I think the wind was knocked out of him, and he could hardly catch his breath, finally saying, "Can you ask me about it later?"  We washed it off, and I put a bandage on it, and then I raced Brigham to music lessons with instructions to tell Mosey's teacher that he couldn't come.  Poor Mosey!  But really, it was lucky because he wasn't seriously hurt, and just a few minutes before he fell, all of our art group friends were over, and if it had been one of them that had fallen from the swing, I would have felt so much worse.  I'm not sure Mosey saw it that way at the moment!

2.  Mosey's camera that he got for his birthday has a fun little function-- it can play videos frame by frame forward or backward.  So the last couple of days, the boys have been building great big towers in the playroom, and ten destroying them in fantastic ways while Mosey videotapes.  The resulting movies, forward or backward, are pretty cool.  And I especially love the way the boys have been playing with each other while working on these.  This afternoon, none of the boys were 100% done with school or practicing, but they were having such fun playing together in the playroom, that I could not bear to tear the away from it and so I let them blow off the rest of the day of school (only an hour or so) and I lay down for a nap.  This is the life!

3.  I introduced the boys to "Chin-man," and it has been a huge hit!  Chin-man comes to visit when you draw an eyes and nose upside down on your chin, and then lay down so that other people can see you upside down.  When you start talking, and your brain sees the drawn-on face on the chin, with this huge mouth beneath, it is so, so, SO funny.  I remember a friend of mine doing that in college, and I laughed harder than I think I have ever laughed in my whole life.  So we've spent more than a few minutes drawing faces on each other's chins and taking turns dying of laughter.  :-)  Mosey took some pictures, so I'll have to have him upload them tomorrow.

seminary

Phew!  Another week done with seminary.  I got fractionally more sleep this week than I have the other weeks I have taught, so maybe I'm getting better?  The trouble is that I seem only to be inspired with good ideas after midnight...  I can do all the reading, and all the preparation I can do early in the day, but it isn't until it is late at night that I seem to finally crystallize upon what exactly I am going to teach.
This week was OK.  My lessons never go as well as I envision, but I guess that's life.

I can say that I get really frustrated with the King James Version of the bible that we use in our church.  I really love many things about it, but the language is just so inaccessible to modern ears!  My students are smart kids, and they can figure out what is being said, but, and this is definitely true for me as well, so much mental energy is being spent on deciphering the wording, that there is little mental energy left for really absorbing what is being said, or for eliciting much of an emotional response.  It's too bad!  I spend too much time translating what is being said in a particular passage, that there isn't enough time left for really discussing doctrinal issues which really is the point of the scriptures anyway, isn't it?  But how can you understand the doctrinal issues and how the Bible helps us to understand the Gospel, if these kids don't actually read from and really understand the text?

I have a well-worn copy of the NIV study bible, and I really, really love it.  I use it in our personal family scripture study and for the purposes of making the bible accessible, understandable, and interesting to my kids, it is about 1,000% better than the KJV.  The KJV is dry, difficult language.  Some books are much better than others, but too much of it is (in my opinion) frankly boring to read.  Or just plain opaque.  It is not easy to really feel the spirit and connect emotionally to the characters in the bible when you are struggling to stay awake reading it, or else are so bogged down in the language that you are merely reading words and not absorbing any of the content.

I have whined to Ben about this ad nauseum over the past few weeks as I've tried to help these kids connect with the KJV, and really feel the power in the stories.  If only I could use my NIV bible!!  My students would get SO much more out of it, and I bet their enthusiasm for reading the scriptures (and the spiritual benefits therefrom) would increase tremendously.

If I had the ear of one of the general authorities, this would be my #1 issue I'd love to discuss with him, no doubt.  But, I'll keep try, try, and trying again.

phone pictures

I don't take many pictures with my phone, because I think the camera function kind of sucks, but here are a few that I uploaded recently.  No edits on these, just a look into our daily lives, and some of the pictures my kids feel are worth taking (most of them are taken by the boys).

Mosey bunny-ears me while I'm checking his math. 

 Industrious Mosey working on science.

 I don't know what was going on here!

Cute kitty in the closet. 

 Two cute kitties.

 Joseph will probably make me take these down.  This was a couple of days before his last haircut-- it was desperately needed as you can see.  I somehow managed to convince him to let me put it into a pigtail.  He kept it in for about as long as it took me to take these pictures!

 Cat lady.  These two cats are the snuggliest, most affectionate cats ever.  They like to hang out like this all the time.  A couple minutes after this was taken, Luna (on my lap), climbed up to put her front paws around my neck, and I had two cats hugging me for the rest of Joseph's piano practicing.

 If you look carefully, that is Brigham way up in the crook of the tree about 30 feet in the air!
He climbs up barefoot, pulling himself up by small branches until he gets to the larger limbs.

02/18/2013

Mosey was up at 5:50 AM doing schoolwork and practicing.  However, by 11:30, he was GRUMPY.  Seriously grumpy.  Didn't want to get ready for tae kwon do, and I ended up banning him from computer games and airsoft for the rest of the week as he continued to ignore me, and then finally wouldn't go into TKD at all.  We were late, because he wouldn't get ready, and when we got there, he walked up to the door, then ran back to the car and said, "I can't go in!  They'll kill me because I'm late!"  So, we went home, and the consequence for not going to TKD (no airsoft and computer games for the rest of the week) kicked in.  He was very, very sad.  And yet, I gave him a lot of chances, and he knew what the consequences would be...
The one thing my kids do that probably drives me the most crazy, is ignoring me when I talk to them.  This is worst when I don't know where they are, because then I have to go searching, which isn't so easy especially when they are outside.  I'd rather them come and tell me why they are not going to do what I asked them, than have them ignore me...  So I get kind of crazy kind of fast when they are ignoring me.
But, now I'm feeling like my consequences are pretty draconian.  He's been asking what he can do to earn airsoft rights back by this weekend.  Should I let him earn it back?  I probably will, I guess, but it's not going to be easy.
Anyway, he fell asleep on my bed again this afternoon by 3:00.  He didn't have a fever, so maybe he's just tired from getting up too early, or maybe he is still fighting some residual whatever from last week.  I don't know.  Is it fair for me to hold him to consequences he earned when he may have been sick?

OK, off to bed now, seminary bright and early (well, early anyway).

02/17/2013

1.  Mosey was sick on Friday.  That kid is the king of 12-hour illnesses.  This one was more like 8 hours.  He woke up just fine, bright and early, got some schoolwork done, ate breakfast, but around 10:00 AM he sprawled out on my bed and fell dead asleep.  He never ever does this unless he is sick.  Sure enough he had a fever and slept about 4 hours before waking up, taking some tylenol, and spending the rest of the afternoon on the couch watching Mythbuster episodes.  But by evening, he was totally fine, and has been ever since.  Weird!

2.  I totally failed Valentine's day this year.  I didn't do a SINGLE FUN THING for my boys the entire day. I didn't even buy any Valentine's candy.  I stink.  Ben came home a little early and we went to eat at How Do You Roll while the boys stayed home and ate leftovers and watched 24.

3.  Here are some of the mnemonics I've come up with for scripture mastery verses.  They are pretty awesome, but it has taken me hours and hours and hours.

02/13/2013

1.  I'm working on a big project for seminary-- coming up with mnemonics and pictures for all the scripture mastery verses.  I think they'll be pretty great when I'm done, but it is taking me a long time.  I was up till 3 AM working on them Monday night/Tuesday morning, and have been paying for it since.

2.  School's going OK for the boys.  Mosey's been good about getting up early and blowing through his lessons!  Yay for him!  (Except for Monday when I woke him up 1/2 an hour late and he was MAD.  I went into his room an hour later, and he was laying on his bed, not having done anything, extremely indignant that I had messed up his entire schedule by waking him up late.  It was a tough morning, but at least we got to talk about cutting your losses, and not making a bad situation worse, and taking responsibility for your own actions and a lot of other things that nine year olds really like to hear lectures about from their moms...) Brigham and Joseph are working on a research report and it is causing much struggle and strife.  Who knew that writing notecards could cause such existential angst in preteen boys?  They've both struggled in different ways.  Joseph hates being constrained in these sorts of assignments, having to write on a certain topic, having to organize things and write notes and outlines an rough drafts in particular ways.  I try to give him a lot of flexibility, but there are some things that really just need to be done a certain way.  They're writing a compare/contrast essay on three different aspects of two different cultures we've studied so far this year (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Russia, and India).  So there is a fair bit of choice!!  They can choose any three topics, and any two countries.  But Joseph doesn't want to do that.  He wants to compare and contrast animals or military machinery, or really anything but the topic assigned.  And he hates writing note cards.  I know it's a pain, and this is a short essay, and he could easily write his notes on a sheet of paper and it would be easy enough to organize, but I keep telling him that's not what this assignment is even about!  It's not really about comparing and contrasting two cultures, but it's mostly about learning these writing/organizational skills that will be necessary for much longer, more involved papers later on...  And Brigham just wants to get it done fast.  Which is great, but it means he doesn't pay close attention to instructions, and so when he writes his notecards, they are not done right and I make him do them over again and honestly, I may as well be pulling out his toenails one at a time.  Oh well, we will get through this, right?

3.  On the other hand, my boys are pretty delightful, too.  They learned how to make hexaflexagons last week (do a google search-- they are fun!), and have been making them and coming up with games using them.  They all three work together coming up with rules for the games, making the hexaflexagons, and decorating them, and it's wonderful.  Why can't they get along like that all the time?  :-)

4.  Here is a flag that Brigham designed.  It is the flag the boys are going to use for the "forest" next to our house.  He's getting good at Photoshop!  I should look into graphic design classes for kids.

Why are cats SO CUTE??

(It's hard to tell here, but Sandy is licking the cats.  They really like each other.) 

02/10/2013 Family letter

Hi Family,
Another week of seminary done!
I'm feeling slightly more confident, but still haven't managed to get anywhere near enough sleep during seminary weeks.  
We had a good week.  The weather has been beautiful-- 70's every day, and a little bit of rain over the past couple of days.  Can I say again for the 400th time, I love winter in Austin?  Mosey turned over a new leaf after having a very rough day on Monday in which he did not finish his schoolwork until well after 8:00 at night.  He made himself a schedule, got up at 5:50 every day, and finished his schoolwork by lunchtime most of the rest of the week!  He wants me to wake him up at 5:50 for this week as well, which is going to be a little more painful since it is my off-week for seminary.
Let's see, what else of note this week?


1.  Mosey shocked his piano teacher this week when he came inside in the middle of Joseph's lesson holding a big fat lizard by the tail and asking her if she had a tupperware he could put it in.  I was off picking Brigham up from violin lessons and missed the whole thing.  Marti Dudgeon has 30 years of teaching experience, but no children of her own, and so this was a first for her.  :-)  She is so sweet, though, and managed to keep her cool and fetch him a tupperware to use as a temporary critter-catcher.

2.  Along reptile-lines, Joseph also caught a big garter snake in the backyard on Monday or Tuesday, and kept it in a tall kitchen garbage can for a couple of days.  This snake was not happy about being caught, and tried to strike at anyone who got too close, so we didn't keep it for long.

3.  On Thursday I had my final Cub Scout-related meeting as the new leaders and the old leaders got together to pass the baton.  I have really mixed feelings about it.  Teaching seminary is definitely ENOUGH for me right now!  But I do love those boys so much, and I had such a good time observing my boy interacting with the others (for better or for worse).  I've questioned the church's involvement in scouts before (ironically my biggest complaint has been the fact that in the Church, people don't volunteer for the scouting positions, but instead are called-- theoretically this shouldn't make a difference in the attitude and effort that people put into the calling-- if they volunteered or were called, but the reality is that it does matter, and I think outside the Church some scouting programs are probably a lot better because there is more enthusiasm and energy on the part of the leaders and the boys), but even if the church wasn't involved in scouts, there would be another little-boys' program they would be doing, like Activity Days for girls, so it may as well be scouting.  I'd hate to have to decide between a church program for boys and Scouting.  Some of the requirements are a little silly, but the boys have fun, and I had fun with them, and I felt like there were lots of opportunities for really teaching these little boys.  I have really enjoyed this calling!  It hasn't been particularly time-intensive, and it's a calling with a lot of freedom to really make it your own.  Mostly, I've just loved the boys.  So here is where my insecurity kicks in big time.  I have loved this calling, and I thought I was doing a pretty good job.  I thought the boys liked me and generally liked coming to scouts.  And yet, it has taken literally months for the ward to find two people to accept the calling of Den Leader.  I was so sad to be made aware of the negativity toward Cub Scouts in our ward.  I know it's perfectly ridiculous to take this sort of thing personally, but I can't help but wonder, did I do something wrong?  Has everything I've done over this past year really been so meaningless that other people see no value in taking the reigns?  I know it's silly to think this way.  It probably has nothing at all to do with me.  But I can't help but tell myself that if I had been a better Den Leader, other people would be able to see the good in it, too.  It has been a little stab in the heart every time Ben told me another person turned down the calling (he never told me who they were, and I wouldn't want to know), or I heard another person say how much they did not want to be called into scouting... :-(  Anyway, the meeting on Thursday was sort of a low point for me as I processed all of this.  I felt like crying.  I guess all I can do at this point is move on, try not to feel too bad, and pray for the new leaders and pray for the boys, so that is what I am doing!

4.  Brigham is getting really good at math.  His problems are getting challenging even to me sometimes!  He worked on one problem on Wednesday that took more than 45 minutes, and resulted in my great big white board easel just covered in calculations.  I had to leave that up for a couple of days just so he could admire his handiwork.  

5.  On Friday my boys invited a bunch of other boys over for an airsoft war.  Mosey got a new gun this week, one he bought with his own money and was quite expensive.  It is fully-automatic and higher-powered than the other guns we have.  He was so excited to use it in the airsoft war.  It ended somewhat disastrously, though, when he lost his temper and kept shooting Joseph and another boy at point-blank range when they were trying to surrender.  Mosey's gun has been confiscated, he spent most of the rest of the evening in his room, and had to endure a *lot* of lecturing by his mom.  I think he is embarrassed by it now.  I hope he is.  Joseph is worried no one will want to come and play again.  I don't think that will be an issue, but it was a bad situation and I was very embarrassed.  Mosey is only just 9 years old.  It's easy to forget he isn't the same age as his brothers.  I probably shouldn't have let him get that gun in the first place.  
After I sent him to his room, I heard him crying and carrying on, "Why did I get that gun??  Why, why?  That gun is cursed!  I've only gotten in trouble since I got the gun!  Why did I get it?"  So I went in and talked to him about personal responsibility and self control and all that good stuff.
The trouble is that Brigham and Joseph, being older, are better at airsoft than he is.  He gets frustrated and loses his temper, and gets in trouble.  He wanted a better gun in part so he could be more competitive against Brigham and Joseph.  So when he still found himself at a disadvantage, even with his better gun, it was more than he could stand and he lost it.  
When he gets upset, though, a lot of other stuff tends to come to light.  As he was crying and carrying on, he said, "Why do Brigham and Joseph get to be twins?  It's not fair!  Why don't I get to be a twin?!"  That made me feel sad.  I hadn't realized he feels left out, especially since Brigham and Joseph hardly ever band against him-- Mosey and Joseph sometimes seem to have more in common that Brigham and Joseph.  But those feelings are there, nonetheless.  Poor boy.

6.  Oh yeah, one more thing!  The CEO at Ben's company retired this week!  Ben did NOT see that coming and called me in shock on Tuesday or Wednesday (whenever it was) when he found out.  I'm really optimistic about what this means for the company (and for Ben).    

I think that's it for tonight.  I hope everyone has a great week coming up!

Love,

Gabrielle

02/02/2013

1.  Happy Birthday Abraham!

2.  Fairly productive day today.  Did some seminary lesson prep, went with Ben to pick up a Craigslist patio table and chairs.  Helped set up table and chairs and supervised backyard cleanup.  Made lunch.  Updated the boys' bank balances.  Did a massive Walmart run with Brigham.  He is a good sport and a good helper.  Put away all the Walmart stuff (including about 20 boxes of incandescent light bulbs-- I cannot stand what my boys call Obama bulbs :-) and I'm trying to stockpile incandescents while I can).  Made dinner while watching "Lost."  Cleaned up from dinner and did the dishes.  Straightened up house and checked email.  And now it is 11:56 and time for bed!

3.  Joseph got out his flute this afternoon after Mosey asked him if he could look at it.  He hasn't been taking lessons for the past six months and I'm not even sure he has taken it out of its case since we moved into this house.  But he got it out and started playing, and surprised himself by being able to play some notes better than he could 6 months ago!  He wants to start up lessons again.  This makes me so happy, although I'm not sure about fitting in another lesson in our busy schedule.  I'm going to try to find someone who can come to our house.

02/01/2013

1.  This afternoon Ben pushed me out into the "forest" next to our house.  It's really only several acres of undeveloped land, but it is also little-boy-paradise.  Joseph has been wanting to show me all the places he has discovered, and it was nice of Ben to help me get out there.  It really is very cool!  Some of it is covered in pretty dense cedar, but there are deer trails that wind in and around most of it.  There are also several open clearings and some old shed/outbuildings where the boys have found all kinds of things including a box full of old letters from the 1940s.  So interesting!  

2.  I made the boys pick up the house this evening.  Just what they were hoping to do on a Friday night.  :-)  But it sure feels good to start the weekend with things in good order!

3.  We are in the middle of a unit on India in our Sonlight curriculum this year, and have been watching a series of videos about life in rural India.  It has been eye-opening for me, and even more so for the boys.  Mosey I think in particular has been struck by the vast disparity in the human experience, even in the 21st century.  It is hard to know what to make of our extreme good fortune in the face of such hardship for billions of other people on the earth.  These things are almost impossible for me to understand, let alone explain to my children.

4.  I will leave with some pictures from today.

Ben with the twins, trying to set up Joseph's animal trap.  He's had it out in the forest a couple of times, but hasn't caught anything yet.

Brigham is the Kapla block master.  Those are some serious engineering skills!

 Joseph in the forest with Sandy.

 At the top of the road that goes up into the forest-- it dead-ends at a driveway to a large house.  I think their main driveway is actually on the other side of their property, though, since no one drives up the road and they keep the gate padlocked.  Mosey likes to call it the "mansion."

Mosey agreed to pose for a few pictures:

 The kitties are sure growing!
 It is especially fun to see them with Sandy.  Sandy and Sola love to play.
Here, Sandy senses something fishy in the box, and comes over to investigate.

Sure enough, there's something in there!

I'm not sure who "got" whom, but it was a fun game for both of them, and they played Jack-in-the-box for several minutes while we watched.