Good Times

I've been staying away from the computer more lately. Never fear I will always be a blog addict, but I'm trying to keep it under control. I have MANY things to include in this catsup blog, so I hope I don't forget half of it.

It seems to me that parenting is sprinkled with many highs and lows everyday. Take yesterday for example, our basement flooded (DARN thing! We have done MANY a thing in hopes of stopping the flooding, but every year we get one or two rains where it is just too much, and it gets in. I'm still hopeful that we can fix it though.) Anyway, while I was in the laundry room washing the clothes that had gotten wet, I heard the sound of glass breaking. I ran upstairs to find that Justice had broken a glass vase. I cleaned that up and went back to the basement to find that J & C had made a bridge or something in the water with our couch cushions. GREAT! Then I had to call poison control because the kids broke a bottle of car wax in the closet and I was afraid that Clayton might have tried a taste of it. Also someone dumped an entire box of croutons out in my bed. This is about a typical amount of mayhem for one day at my house.

Then there are the highs that just make it all so much more than worthwhile. Sunday we went to my brother John's house and we got to talk to our little brother (a missionary serving in Switzerland / Austria / Germany) on the phone. That was great. John, Bruce and I took the kids for a walk in the rain. It was actually a really fun time. We got yelled at by some guy for making a dam in a parking lot's drainage pathway with some rocks. It might be wicked but we made a lot of dam jokes. Ross and Mark kept yelling things like "I need more dam rocks!" It was pretty hilarious. I just had a good time watching the kids jumping in puddles. There is NOTHING cuter than a (nearly) 2 year old running around and splashing.

Yesterday Justice was playing with a toy dinosaur and he says "Mom, if this dinosaur was alive, Heavenly Father would be afraid of him!"

I guess he was thinking that the dino was just THAT scary. Then we had a conversation about how Heavenly Father made the dinosaurs, so he wouldn't be scared by them. It took some convincing, but I finally managed to get him to understand that a dinosaur wouldn't eat Heavenly Father because He could just make them go away.

Let's see, here are some pictures from the Father / Son camp out. Bruce may post them, but I want them on mine too.












One day last week, a baby bird somehow ended up sitting on our windowsill. It was really neat. The kids and I watched the mother feed it a worm or two.


Last night we gathered at my parents' house for dinner and family night. "Uncle Christmas" (a long time friend of the family) came over too. For our family night game, we reaffirmed my parents' neighbors' longstanding suspicions that our family is a little nuts. We played a round of follow the leader around the block. Five adults (Mom, Ashley, Chris, Bruce and I) and our 5 children ran around the block jumping, yelling, flailing, and doing whatever nonsense the kids could invent. I saw at least one neighbor watching us out their window. It was really fun!