Reading Time

What is the secret to getting your children to read? I don't know but today we got lucky. After breakfast these three boys went to the hall closet and selected a book, sat down on the couch and started reading! I'll admit it, it warms my heart to see them do things like this all on their own.

After reading their books it was time to head off to stake aerobics and computer class. Well, the stake aerobics is for Michelle and the boys just run around the gym for an hour with the kids from the other mothers. But they still have their computer class after they get some of their wiggles out.

Veggies For Dinner

Michelle has always felt that we needed to have more veggies in our diet. I certainly try to be supportive of health and nutrition and we feel that it is important to set a good example for our children by eating all our dinners.

After being introduced to this great new method for cooking veggies Michelle decided to try and test it out on us. Maybe this would be the secret weapon in her arsenal to get us to be more healthy.

Well, it was a good idea but probably not the best investment of our hard-earned money. We didn't quite make it through all of the veggies. Even Uncle Kyle had a hard time with this one.

David's Birthday Party

David is an interesting kid. He's been looking forward to his birthday since he finished opening his Christmas presents. We knew he was going to be excited for this special day. Michelle and I spent the night before (after the kids were in bed) putting up the balloons and birthday banner, blowing up the balloons and (Michelle) making his birthday cake. By the time we were done putting the party together we may have been more excited than he was.

Well, on the big day he seemed to forget that it was his birthday! He had his school program to prepare for (even on a Friday when he doesn't normally have school), aerobics and computer class in the morning. But the most important thing for David was his daily dose of Wii. He is almost religious about getting in his Wii time, even if he isn't super interested in the specific game of the day.

Well, he had to turn the Wii off as his friends started to arrive. Picture bingo seemed a great way to keep the kids occupied while everyone showed up. Although, there is a certain age where kids truly begin to understand what they are doing and not everyone there was quite to that age yet. But they still had fun putting beans on all the pictures.

Michelle was very excited about the birthday cake. David said he liked it so we made him pose for a picture to prove it.

He received all sorts of presents but seemed most excited about the attention he was receiving today.

These foam swords were the absolute hit of the party. We may have opened them prematurely because they were a distraction for all the kids for the remainder of the party.

We did manage to get the swords put aside during most of the present opening, but once the presents were done...

David proudly displays his Olympus High school head-band and wrist-band from his grandpa Jones.

Michelle made David an adjustable apron that he can use when he is helping mommy in the kitchen. It features an adjustable strap that will allow the apron to grow as he does and has two nice front pockets for all his cooking needs.

We're excited that we could celebrate David's birthday and have so many wonderful friends come to support him too.

Wii Cake

David has become a true Wii fan, even with the limited selection of games in our home. But a day doesn't pass by that he has asked to play the Wii at least a dozen different times. So Michelle thought that a Wii cake would be appropriate for David's Birthday. I think it turned out marvelously.

Kindergarten Program

We had the privilege of watching David in his school's Kindergarten program. The program illustrated the typical day in a kindergarten classroom. However, they did manage to shorten the time to just 90 minutes.

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't been there myself. We arrived about 30 minutes early to ensure good seating and we were already resigned to sit in the back half of the gymnasium, behind the extra tall parents! What we discovered was that there was front row seating if you were willing to sit on the floor and Michelle thought that was a fabulous option. So she took Donovan and Michael to the front. Since it was just Aleky and I left (I wasn't in the mood to sit on the wood floor for 2 hours) Michelle found me a single seat on the front row next to some of our friends in the ward.

All the kindergarten students participated in several group songs. But selected students would help with portraying a classroom activity or act out special parts in the other songs. David got to participate in the wiggle wiggle dance.

Jungle Uno

Saturday night we had the chance to play some games with a few of our friends. One of the games we called "Jungle Uno" which played was a traditional deck of Uno cards. I heard of many variations of the game. Here are some of the rules that we added to the original game:

1. Match - if a player has the exact same card as the last card played, they may immediately play that card and play resumes from that point.

2. Compounding - if a Draw Two is played the next player may also play a Draw Two and may avoid drawing the cards. The next player must then draw four cards. If that player also has a Draw Two they may play it and the following player must draw six, etc. The same applies to a Wild Draw Four, if a a Draw Four is played and the next player also plays a Draw Four then the third player would draw eight cards, etc. And we allow the Match rule so that if a player can Match a draw card then the next person in order of play would have to draw the resulting cards.

3. 0 - if a zero is played then all players exchange their entire hand with the person next to them in order of play.

4. 7 - if a seven is played then that person must exchange their hand with the person of their choice.

We had a lot of fun as we added these rules into our games. It sure makes the regular game of Uno seem a little dull. I wonder what other variations people have played with this simple game of Uno?

Jones Soccer Game

After our chores were done the boys were ready to play a game of soccer with Daddy. We set up our soccer goal on one side of the field and a set of cones on the other side. The game started as a 1-on-1, David vs Goliath (Daddy).

This first game went pretty good. It was close and I was able to hold my own against David. I'm not sure what the final score was because we started to get some interference from Donovan who didn't want to be left out of the action. So he jumped in and was playing on David's team. At first he wanted to play forward and score the goals but he was having a difficult time keeping up with the fast tempo and decided he would do better as the goalie.

I think that he should be awarded the Defensive Player of the Game. Since we didn't actually have a recorded keeper or statistician I don't have exact numbers but as near as I recall, Donovan has something near 78 saves! I think it only fair that I be awarded the Offensive Player of the Game with at least 97 goal attempts. In the end I was thoroughly defeated. The final score was 7 - 2, the boys.

Don't, for a minute, think that Aleky and Michael didn't get into the action. Aleky was there playing on my team. He got a few good passes in but wasn't doing much on defense. Michael kind of played hit and miss, sometimes he hit (kicked) the ball and sometimes he missed. But we had a blast playing in the beautiful spring weather. We finally called the game at 12:30 when I realized I had forgot to feed the boys lunch.

Hairdo

Michelle has been talking about doing something with her hair. Of course I think she's beautiful just the way she is but there come a time in everyone's life where you just need a little change. While it is still taking Michelle a few days to adjust to the change I think it turned out wonderful!" You are so beautiful to me!"

Spring Clean-Up Turns Into a Party

As Michelle walked out the door for Stake Women's Conference she blithely said, "Oh, and you could take care of the tree in the front yard. I wouldn't mind." I have learned that such suggestions and casual comments have much deeper significance than a simple off-the-wall comment. So I decided it would be a good idea to remove the splintered remains of our tree (that was run over this winter).


"Oh, and if you wanted to clean off the back patio that would be nice too," was another comment Michelle made as she finished her preparations to leave. What other reason could I have for cleaning the patio except to have a fire and invite some friends over? Besides, there wasn't a cloud in the sky! Of course the temperature wasn't exactly psaltery but why should that stop us? I couldn't think of a good reason. And so it began. What started out as a simple yard clean-up had sown the seeds of jubilation and rejoicing.

While the boys were distracted I slipped out the back door to begin extracting the sad remains of our once proud tree from the front yard. Once I had pulled the trunk free of the ground I dragged it to the backyard gate. But when I slipped into the house to get the key for the gate I couldn't get back outside unnoticed. Before I knew it all the boys were geared up for outside and wanted to help. And let me tell you, I have some big helpers.

The boys loved it. Chopping and sawing the wood kept them busy for hours! As they began to weary from the strain their interested changed to other fun outside activities. While I finished cleaning up the tree shrapnel and started sweeping off the patio the boys pulled out their toys that had been in storage for the winter.

Our patio was prepped for the fire and one thing lead to another. We ended up with 3 additional families joining us for dinner: the Johnsons, the Simmons, and the Andersons. We got the fire started and the grill hot but once the sun went down we definitely noticed that it was quite a bit cooler than we would have preferred.

In the end, the kids decided that inside the warm house was preferable to playing outside in the cold. It was so fun to see the little kids inside playing and having such a good time.

Eventually we would get all the kids to bed except for Eleanor who would stay up while the adults played games. We certainly had a great time. It wasn't until 11:00 pm that we finally had to call it a night. We are grateful to everyone who was able to participate with us in this family fun filled evening.

Ward Activity - Getting Ready for Spring

Tonight was our ward activity. We had the privilege of learning what we need to do to get ready for spring, at least in relation to our gardens and pruning our yards. Michelle has done quite a bit of research in the past trying to get the best possible garden so most of the information sounded very familiar. And since Michelle is our garden mastermind I just follow her directions as closely as possible.

Because of her expertise and previous success in gardening, last year excepted, she was asked to share a few thoughts on container gardening. While container gardening isn't really her forte, she did do a presentation for the Relief Society last year and apparently the bishop remembered. So she was one of the three presenters at the activity.

Our boys were definitely not interested in learning about gardening and were busy being boys. David managed to get a scratch from his temple to his chin, Donovan fell off the stage into the easel holding the gardening example drawings, Michael smashed his nose into the front table and Aleky kept through bean bags at the back of people's heads. (I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to quarantine my family for church on Sunday.) We finally had to sit all our boys down to prevent anything else from happening during the 90 minute activity. But since there was ice cream at the end, they felt justly compensated.

Donovan ended up falling asleep at the table waiting for everyone to finish talking about pruning trees. David and Michael made a break for the open door and had to be corralled at the far end of the building. Aleky decided he was done running and wanted to take a stroll back to the car. But in the end we headed home as quickly as possible and had all the boys in bed in just 15 minutes! We glad that the we could participate in our ward activity.