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...

This and that from the past few weeks.

I just downloaded some pictures off of Joshua's camera - most of which I took.

Summer has been crazy - one of these years it is actually going to be nice and relaxing and slow...ha, ha, ha.

Anyway, here are some things from the past couple of weeks...

This is the front of our house in Ft Jones...it is where we have lived for just a few days shy of one year. We really have liked this house, had a great landlady and neighbors. The house is currently being painted so I sent the boys out one day to take some pictures before...so we could remember what it looked like most of the time we lived in it. The faux shutters had been taken down for repainting already, however. I'll take a picture again when it is all repainted...so we can remember how our house looked the last couple of weeks we lived in it before we moved again.

Grace has wanted to have a tea party with a friend for months. Poor kid, it just hasn't happened. She drags her brothers into it every once in awhile (think Mrs. Nesbitt from Toy Story - well, she doesn't make them dress up)
This is how I found her one afternoon - she was feeding her teddy bears. She has quite the array of food there for them.
Ignore the disaster - between her room being so dang hot during the day that I haven't wanted to clean it, to being gone and now packing to move - it has gotten scary.

Grace and her teddy bear babies!

What better thing to see - all three kids, curled up in the living room reading books!! One benefit of the wretched smoke from the wildfires in our area and in Southern Oregon - can't play outside so we might as well just stay in and read :)

Miss Grace the other day - stretched out coloring so nicely. Can't remember what the boys were doing, but she colored undisturbed for quite awhile.

My most recent project - baby blanket and matching hat - crocheted. Started the blanket when we went to Woodland in June...finished it on our way back from Woodland in July. Made the hat last week - they have matching trim :) Either to sell or for the next family member that has a baby girl ;)

Sunbeam Grace in her new dress from Uncle Ken and Aunt Liliana in Tennessee. It came in the mail the other day and she had to wear it to church today.

The following pictures are a teaser...we had a Primary activity a couple of weeks ago that gave the kids a teeny idea of what it is like to be a missionary. The got their mission calls in the mail and got tags (I got to make those). I hope to make a separate post about that.  See if you can guess - by where they are pointing on the map - where they each got their calls too. We told them that if they were really to go there we would 1) pick Grace up when she was finished 2) maybe pick up Nathaniel when he was finished and 3) pray really hard that Joshua would come home in one piece :)

The Elder Lees :)

ELEVEN!!!!!

Seriously, I can't figure out how THIS little guy:


















has become THIS young man:

it really doesn't seem like it has been that long since "little" Joshua Ammon (all 22 1/2 inches and 8 lbs 15.9 oz of him) entered our lives and made it so much better and more exciting.

It doesn't seem like that long ago that he was just a little baby...not interested in much by sleeping and eating and smiling at us.

Now he's a big brother (times two), a 5th grader, voracious reader, Sacramento Kings fan, baseball player

 (4th year in Little League), Legomaniac (Ninjago, Star Wars, you name it), artist, writer, top of his class, methodical, scientist and expert frog disecter (what we did in science last week - I got to "help"), loves to learn,












Webelo Scout about to achieve his Arrow of Light,

loving, kind, caring, helpful, respectful, trumpet player (if he doesn't have music to a song, that doesn't stop him, he figures it out by ear...), singer (takes after his dad, not me, thank goodness), budding piano player (teaching himself) and guitar player, bottomless pit appetite is beginning,











great swimmer, soccer player,

School Spelling Bee Champ (last year he was 3rd place, this year he won),



and I could just go on and on about the totally terrific son he is!  He already plans on going to BYU after high school and a mission. He is so excited that the age to go on a mission has changed from 19 to 18...but that means one less year of him at home.  He's not set on what he wants to be when he's a "grown up" yet - some days it is something to do with music, other days something with writing and/or drawing, some days something with animals. But no matter what he does, we know he will be AWESOME!!







Being as he has a game tomorrow night, we celebrated his birthday on Sunday - with Great Grandma Darlene and Great Grandma Donna and Grandpa Bruce and Grandma Lorrayne. He choose Dad's meatball casserole for dinner and requested a Ninjago cake from Mom. Well, that was a little much for Mom, so I went with making the cake (kind of) look like Lego bricks and then putting Ninjago characters around.

Cool candles that had flames the same color as the candle!

The three amigos...they'd used their recycling money to buy him a catnip kit - he's been wanting it so he can grow some catnip for Shadow...
 

Scout shirt from Grandma and Grandpa - now he's really ready to advance from Cubs.



Seeing the circuit science kit from Mom and Dad.

His face when Grandpa uncovered his eyes so he could see the surprise Dad had brought in for him...

 

A new bike...yeah, he was really excited/shocked/surprised/happy.