Donovan's Birthday Party

Happy Birthday Donovan!

We had the opportunity to celebrate Donovan's birthday on Saturday. Michelle had been asking Donovan for the past 3 weeks what kind of cake he wanted. Every single day she would ask and every single day Donovan would tell her something different! Finally Michelle decided that since the boys like trains and Donovan has seemed especially interested in building train track configurations that she would do a train theme.

So she did the research, planned and prepared for a train party including the snacks in the cafeteria car, train invitations, train-train-caboose (game) and a train cake. Then just as she was preparing to pour the batter for the cake Donovan decides that he would like to have a flower cake instead! Yeah, pretty much didn't see that one coming. He had asked for a princess cake at one point but this was the first mention of a flower cake. We had joked about making the princess cake for him but had decided to do the trains instead. Fortunately Michelle is amazingly talented and was able to whip out a flower cake instead. Obviously on short notice, she creates a flower cake as the kids are arriving for the party.

I think it turned out rather nicely. Donovan was very pleased with his flower cake. A few moms were a little surprised at seeing a flower instead of a train. But it didn't seem to affect the party one bit.

We were able to fit 10 of the kids around our humble table. It was loud and rambunctious but all sorts of fun.

Donovan received several fun toys and he enjoyed opening his presents. The kids at the party were almost more excited than he was as the circle closed in to see what he would get next!

We are grateful for everyone who came and participated in the party. As the kids arrived we had a rousing game of shoot Brother Jones. The boys found every toy gun we have in the house and decided that I was on the other team. Then we tried shooting each other but in the end I was killed twice (but I held out for a long time)! Those not shooting me had a chance to color some fun train pictures. Next we sat in a circle and played train-train-caboose. For some reason everyone thought it was great fun to pick on me, probably because I was the slowest one there and they could easily make it to my spot without getting tagged.

Of course the cake a present opening were big hits. The party only last 1 hour and seemed to be just about the right amount of time. As each participant left they got to take a grab bag of goodies with them and they were excitedly talking about the next party. We'll have to see if I get any invitations. ;-)

The Bunkers shared a wonderful present for Donovan. This present was special because the Bunker didn't think the present itself would be exciting enough and so they added some more fun!

Now that we know what FUN is we'll be sure to return the favor!!!

Jones Train

Saturday is a special day, it's that day we get ready for Sunday. And that means going shopping, at least that is what it meant this week. Going shopping has turned into quite a production for our little family.

I think that is where the problem is...we don't have a little family anymore. While we don't have a large "pioneer" family, we are certainly running into fewer and fewer families with a similar number of children. But we love each and every one of our boys and wouldn't give any of them up.

So we have to teach our boys some basic shopping etiquette so that we can have an enjoyable family outing to the store. First, we don't run into people or things. Second, we stay to one side of the isle or the other but not the middle. Third, only one cart wide in the isle at any given time. Fourth, we walk through the store. And fifth, we use inside voices when talking to each other. If we keep these rules our shopping seems to go much better.

This week we kept Michael and Aleky in the "car" to keep them from running around the store and playing with all of the shelved products. They seemed to have a good time.

David was in charge of the family cart. He was pushing Michael, Aleky and Quinten (who was sleeping in his car seat, in the basket). David did an excellent job of steering this big rig through the stores without any accidents.

Donovan insisted on pushing the food cart. Since we are at the front end of the month it was time to stock up on some basic food storage supplies. 50 pounds of wheat, a case of OJ and a basket full of food added up to a lot of weight but Donovan was mostly able to steer the cart through the store. The 50 pounds of wheat at the end was just a little much for him but he still did a pretty good job.

I'm just impressed with what my boys are really able to do. Sometimes it can be scary to let them try things on their own. But as we show confidence in them they seem to rise to the challenge. And it just warms my heart on each success and each challenge they master.

Basic Chores

My boys are getting so good at doing some basic chores. This morning Michelle asked the boys to put their laundry away. Michelle had already washed and dried the clothes. She even had the clothes folded and separated into the boys respective baskets (each boy has their own laundry basket for clean clothes). Each boy went downstairs and got their baskets. Then they lined up for their turn to put their laundry away. The bigger boys even helped Aleky get his clothes in the right spot.

I have the best family EVER!

Baby Quinten Joins The Family

Quinten Khayyam Jones

8 lbs 8 oz

20 inches

We are excited to announce the arrival of the newest Jones. Little Quinten (who isn't so little) had a speedy delivery and was, quite possibly, the largest baby in the nursery that day. We had the best set of nurses who were there to assist Michelle through the whole labor and delivery process. In fact, we've been very impressed with the entire process at Orem Community Hospital.

This is Quinten just minutes after he was born.Dodie was Michelle's nurse. We got this picture just before she went off shift.

Quinten is finally resting after getting all cleaned up.

The next day the boys came to visit and meet their newest brother. Each boy wanted a turn to hold Quinten. Aleky gets his turn with a little daddy supervision.

Here Michael takes his turn.

Donovan Takes his turn holding Quinten.

David takes a few turns holding Quinten.

And here we are, one big happy family!

This is Quinten, all bundled up and ready to leave the hospital for his ride home. We are very excited to welcome little Quinten to our family and to our home.

And now our boys are keeping a constant vigil, making sure that nothing bad happens, the pacifier is always avaiable and wondering, "when is he going to get bigger?"(Even Daddy gets his turn to hold little Quinten.)

Grand Central Station

While the boys were distracted downstairs I had to take advantage of the free space in the living room. So I whipped out the Geo Trax and started putting the tracks together. Before I knew it, the boys had lost interest in whatever it was that was distracting them and before I knew it I had been over run. The boys pulled out their trains and decided that it was time to take control of Grand Central Station.

The boys destroyed the track when it was time for bed; just being good boys and putting it away for the night, but I was hoping it would survive for at least one more day. But David put is all back together the next day, exactly as it was with no help from anyone. I was very impressed. The boys played on this track for hours, especially considering the 3 days that this track configuration was put together.

Colorful Drinks

So we were shopping today and I wanted to get a couple bottles of Gatorade to keep on the shelf. I don't drink it as much lately, mostly because I haven't been exercising like I should. Anyway, I grabbed a couple of different flavors of the G2 Gatorade. As it turned out, I "happened" to pick our boys "colors". Once they saw the colorful drinks they immediately laid claim to my Gatorade. Why fight it. We took a picture and enjoyed them for dinner.

Wishing You A Happy Holiday

We had a fun family activity this afternoon. We decided to wish a few of our neighbors a happy holiday season. We didn't have the chance to beat Christmas so we decided to just go for the whole holiday season instead.

I'm not sure where Michelle came up with this clever little saying but we took it and ran with it. We printed several copies of this little poem and taped them to boxes of Cracker Jacks.

We drove around the neighborhood and let the boys take turns running these boxes to the various homes and delivering them. Not everyone was home so we managed to have just enough boxes. The boys loved being the delivery person, running to the home and presenting the boxes. David, Donovan and Michael did the leg-work. Aleky will get to join in on the next set of holiday greetings.

(posted 7/24/10)

Sliding into 2010

David, Donovan and Michael decided that they wanted to go sledding. Right now mom is in no condition to take some very active boys sledding so the responsibility fall upon me to bundle up and go. So the boys follow me around all day, while I'm trying to complete a portion of my "honey-do" list. Finally their persistence pays off and I set the time to go sledding.

We have my old purple sled from years ago but we were hoping to add a snow tube to the collection but to no avail. We did stop by the store and make a couple quick calls but in the end it was my old purple sled that would bear the load.

We arrived at Rock Canyon Park only to find that nearly every parking space had been filled, the entire "bowl" was teaming with happy sledders and it was going to be tough to find our own little piece of the hill. We scrambled up the hill to get a survey of the land. David couldn't contain himself now the he had a sled and a hill and he plopped himself in the sled. Donovan couldn't contain his enthusiasm either and was all to ready to help David to start their frolicking in the snow. Unfortunately didn't take into consideration the little building at the bottom of the hill (bathrooms) and Donovan pushed David down the hill and straight for the bathroom.

There was a moment were I thought he might just miss the building but he didn't. David just sat in the sled all the way down in spite of the inevitable and slammed into the corner of the building. There was a nice lady at the bottom of the hill that raced to his side to see if he was okay. I hurried down the hill to see the poor crash survivor. Through the tears we were able to determine that the point of impact was just under his right bum cheek. After some consoling we heading up the hill and decided we wanted to find a better spot that didn't had trees or buildings in the way. We located a vacant spot of hill about 100 yards around the "bowl" and camped out there for the next 90 minutes.

David managed to stay on injured reserve for about 3 minutes before he couldn't handle it anymore and he was sledding down the hill in full style. Michael was very cautious on the slopes and I was only able to get him on the sled twice in the entire trip. Donovan discovered that he could slide down the hill without a sled and spent most of his time on his bum skid. However, he did take his fair share of turns in the sled to speed down the hill even faster. David, on the other hand, quickly got back into the swing of things and dominated the sled time and was working on setting a new land speed record for sledding down the hill.

The snow around the entire "bowl" had been packed down previously so we were able to just jump in and slide. My boys thought it was the greatest thing on earth and want to go back tomorrow. We'll have to see how fast I can get my chores done!

Christmas with the Family

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. This year we had the opportunity to visit with the Jones side of the family. Most of my boys have an innate understanding of their special toys, especially of their firearms. (Not sure what happened here!)

Regardless, the boys love their noise-makers. Each boy has his own noise-maker and wasted no time sounding them off.

Michael was very excited about his Mater puzzle. Puzzles are one of Michael's newly discovered passions and Mater is his favorite Cars character.

The boys got some Legos this Christmas. Included in the box was a picture of various things that could be built with the legos. David took the time to recreate several of the characters on the paper. This one was the one he was most proud of.

After playing with the toys we headed over the Grandma and Grandpa Jones' house. We were fortunate this year to have most of the family in town. This is exciting because we don't know when we'll have this many Joneses around for Christmas. (Theoretically we'll be here in 2 years but everyone's lifestyles are getting more crazy!)

The cousins had a great time playing together. Not so surprisingly, the girls played with the girls and the boys played with the boys. David and Tyler played a lot together being the 2 oldest cousins. There was also significant movie watching with the new DVDs this Christmas.

The older kids also played games. You never know what to expect when this many older kids get together but we always have fun.

(Posted 7/24/10)

The Finger

I had to work this Christmas eve. Work was obviously slow but I had a client in at 2:30 pm to look at mortgage options. Because of the time and his limited options our appointment didn't last very long. When I finished with my appointment I checked my messages and discovered a message from Michelle indicating that she had taken Donovan to get stitches and that I needed to get home a quickly as possible to care for our kids!

The boys were being watched by our good neighbor Alin Schoenrock but she had previous obligations which required her attendance at 3:30 pm...about when I discovered the message revealing the dilemma. With no boss at work (already on vacation) I just approved my own leave and raced home.

I discovered what had happened to my Donovan. Apparently he had decided that it would be a good idea to make paper snowflakes. He retrieved the scissors, procured the appropriate snowflake paper and began to create the folds that would develop into magnificent snowflakes. In the meantime, Micheal happened upon the project and thought it would be fun to play with the scissors. While Michael was playing with the scissors Donovan became incensed at the loss of important project equipment and tried to grabbed the scissors and wrest them from the grasp of Michael. However, the reach was ill timed and ill place, almost eliminate his finger tip.

Donovan was a brave little trooper. Michelle was just as brave in handling the situation, getting baby sitting, transporting the injured child and contacting me. Obviously she is the mother of some very active boys.

On side of Donovan's finger wouldn't numb, even after repeated attempts using local anesthetic. So Donovan received 7 stitches and the nurse gave up on the last 2 stitches and just glued it closed. He then received some protective bandaging to prevent this very active boy from bending his finger and breaking open the stitches.

Here is a picture of the finger after it has had a few days to heal. If you look closely you can see the blue surgical threads of the stitches.

Needless to say, that put a cramp in our style for Christmas eve. We were hoping to deliver some neighborly holiday greetings, have some devotional time (reading Luke 2), and be together as a family. Instead, Michelle and Donovan hung out in the after-hours clinic and I was with the other boys at home. We are fortunate, however, that Donovan still has the finger.