Leaves...and lessons

Last week on one of the few days Nathaniel went to school, he saw a mom taking pictures of her kids in some leaves under one of the trees there. He wanted to go home and do that. Heaven knows there are plenty of leaves in our front yard...and they aren't picking themselves up and putting them in bags! Quite a switch from last fall where the house we were living in had two tiny little saplings (being generous) that I doubt that all the leaves that fell off of them would have filled a lunch bag. Anyway, then he got sick again...and other stuff has been going on. Finally, yesterday, he was feeling better and needed to get outside. And he'd done a ton of make up work (from being sick at the end of Sept/beginning of Oct and again this past week...he has attended school more days than he's missed this month - barely). So I told him that after I picked up Joshua and more (!!) make up work for him, I'd rake the leaves and he and Grace could come outside and play. They were ecstatic. Not so the cool middle schooler when I picked him up and told him what would be going on when we got home...he was grateful to have science homework and trumpet practice. But as you can see by the pictures - he did have fun. I think he thought I was wanting him to do the raking.  Our front yard is well, steep, to put it nicely...so I was raking uphill (both ways!!) Then the fun began. Of course, I kept nagging on them to not hurt each other (when all three decided to jump in at once...who got hurt - Nathaniel of course...), to not sweep all the dirt out of the "flower bed" (But momma, I'm makin' a special path...), to cooperate and actually look in the same direction of the camera - with not just their faces but their eyes too..to smile, for reals, not just fake. They're all great fake smilers. I was tired and cranky and achy...but looking at the pictures now as I uploaded or downloaded or whatever, I saw the joy on their faces...and I hope I didn't take all the fun out of it with my nagging at them and trying to make them be "perfect". They aren't and I'm sure not. I unsubscribed to a couple of the "mormon mommy blogs" I used to read because I got so tired of feeling like crap and a horrible mom because I didn't do art projects to go with each conference talk so my children had last conference memorized or whatever.  Not that I blog all that much or anything, but seriously, these "serial bloggers" were killing my self-esteem. And then I thought about how my trying to make the kids fit in to the little slots I had in my mind of how they should look in these pictures...well, I was doing to them what the stuff I'd been reading was doing to me. So I'm going to apologize to them tomorrow. And thank them for the lesson and the reminder that I really need to chill out!

Soooo, don't know where that all came from, not what I'd been planning to type and I should erase it, but I'll need to read it again - two or three times a day for the next 50 years probably. And since probably only about 5 people read this, no biggie. 

And here are our photos...leaves are fun, don't taste great, (the wind can blow them up your nose apparently), get in our shoes, our socks, our hats, our hair (well, if you're a girl and it's long...not too bad if dad just cut your hair the other day and it's nice and short), our pants(!) and if you jump into the pile after it's been stomped down a bit - not quite as cushiony as when it was in the nice big pile Mom first raked up.  Oh, and a side note...the cool middle schooler who didn't want anything to do with this project at first...yeah, he got the great idea to rake them back into a big pile (which he did with some sibling help) and then he was going to climb one of the trees in the front yard and jump into the leaf pile. This is the boy who is smarter than many adults...yet under all the brains he's 11. I realized what he was planning as he reached for the lowest branch and grabbed his arm. Informed him I didn't think so...then the 7 year old figured out what his brother had been planning (a little too smart for his own good too sometimes) and tried to make it to the tree. That was about the end of our leaf jumping - and I convinced them to go in and get showered and we'd have french toast for dinner...think they forgot all the nagging and griping I did at them with those words because I got hugs. I love my kids...the forgive me easily most of the time - especially when I feed them :)

Sorry there are way too many pictures...but I wanted to include plenty of the not-so-perfect as well as the almost-perfect since that was part of my ramblings above...

Milliseconds before crash



Looks like he's laughing - but he's really not...he's crying

Last year's hats I crocheted for them still fit - barely.

Attack of the little sister...

Attack of the little brother

The boy doesn't hold still...and if he does, we know he's really sick...

Nathaniel's birthday

Being as, for the third time, we were moving around Nathaniel's birthday, we decided to celebrate it a week or so early. Which turned out to be a good thing because on his actual birthday we signed papers on our rental in Grants Pass and it was kind of a chaotic day.  So about a week and a half before we had the great-grandmas and grandma and grandpa over for dinner and cake and ice cream before we really got packing.  Hard to believe that he is seven already!!

I found an Angry Bird t-shirt (not that he needed more t-shirts) in his FAVORITE COLOR.

Grandma Lorrayne crocheted him a loony bird tooth pillow...hopefully he'll start losing some teeth pretty soon!  He's like Joshua in that department...Joshua was almost 8 before he lost his first tooth.

Reading one of his cards...he loves to read.

Angry Bird game for the computer from Grandma and Grandpa

This kid is hard on backpacks!!  This is his third one in 4 years I think. Skylanders is quite the favorite in the house :)
But he's still using the Cars 2 lunchbox that came with last year's backpack.

He requested a Finn McMissile cake this year.  So with the help of a coloring book picture and someone else on Pinterest that had had my same idea of altering the Lightning McQueen cake pan I already had, I made Finn.

Guess he looks good enough to eat :)

Blowing out the candles...Grace is there ready to help if needed.

Up to something...

First picture in our new house!!  Grandma and Grandpa brought a load of our stuff up for us the day we FINALLY were able to get in to our house. They got him a cake on the way up so he had a cake on his actual birthday too!

This is Nathaniel...silly goofy cute kid! We've missed this Nathaniel the past few weeks as he has been battling double ear infections and strep throat as well as adjusting to new school and everything else. But we're starting to see this Nathaniel coming back :)

Easter 2013

This year we decided to try things a little differently.  Usually our Sundays are so hectic and crazy with church and dinner and life in general, then toss in Easter baskets and an Easter egg hunt...yeah, the day is done and everyone is tired and cranky and we really never took much time (except at church) to even think about Jesus and and his life, death and resurrection and the blessings of the Atonement. Everything is mixed up with Cadbury eggs and who found the most eggs and jelly beans. So, since this year Brian's schedule worked out and he was home on Saturday, I thought, let's have the Easter Bunny come on Saturday!  The E.B. is pretty flexible...he had no problem accomodating us. And since it was such a nice day, he hid the eggs outside...we've got a nice big yard so our 25 dyed eggs and 13 (10 little and 3 big) plastic eggs were nicely spread out. That wouldn't have worked on Easter - it was rainy a good part of the day.

Saturday morning we dyed the eggs...the first round wasn't enough so I boiled another 10 or so.  Later that afternoon, after Grace had been asleep for an hour or so, the boys decided to go hang out in their room so the E.B. could come...they closed the door and everything. I was walking up and down the hall putting away laundry and they thought the bunny was jumping around. Once Grace woke up, they discovered that there were Easter baskets on the couch with a note that told them the eggs were outside.

 Sunday we enjoyed Church. All three kids sang with the Primary during Sacrament meeting - even Grace got up there. I think this is the first time all three kids have sung together with the Primary. Grace didn't know all the words, but she made sure to chime in on the Hosanna choruses :) 
Both Brian and I teach every Sunday now - he gets to teach teenagers and I get to teach 5 year olds. I only had two kids this week - the rest were all visiting family elsewhere.

After Church we were having dinner at my parents. We didn't get there as quick as planned because Brian was helping someone. So I took pictures of the kids in front of the church...I'd wanted to be sure to get pictures of them before they changed out of their nice clothes...looking back at last year's pictures I saw that I'd not done that. So I think Grace wore this same dress last year, but there's no proof that we did a repeat ;)  I swear, it takes a miracle to get all three of them to look at me at the same time and have their eyes opened, looking the right way and a smile of sorts on their faces.  I did get some cute pictures, though.

Dinner was delicious...both my grandmas were there as well as my sister Sarah and her husband Dave who had surprised us all when they came up from Sacramento the day before. After dessert we headed home for naps for most of us and then time to get Brian packed and ready to head to Redding for his clinicals. We ended the day reading in John 20 about Christ's resurrection.  All in all a very lovely Easter.

I love how they all three finally cooperated - all have their eyes closed!