Little boys and Rocks

I went to Seattle to visit with my family and see Matthew speak in church. While we were there we went down to a place called the spit. The spit is an inlet of the ocean just a couple of miles down the road from where my parents live. The beach is made up of rocks rather than sand. Seth loved every second of it. He kept asking my mom if the rock he was holding was her favorite rock and when she said that it was he would throw it in the water and then laugh. (kind of sadistic) I can't say that the rest of us didn't throw rocks in the water too. Matthew actually ran into two of his friends while we were there. Now all of the boys sat and threw rocks. The older boys turned it into of course a contest...who could throw the farthest, skip the most, or any other thing that they could think of. In the end we left the older boys there throwing rocks on the beach. It was a great trip and even the airplane ride went fine. We didn't have to jump out with our parachutes and Seth only had meltdown while we were in the airport.

Seth and the airplane

Seth and I are planning on flying to visit my family tomorrow. Seth is excited and keeps talking about flying on the airplane. He was a little bit worried though about jumping out with his parachute once we get to Grandmas house. I assured him that the plane would stop and let us off without having to jump. He was assured but I am not sure he fully believes me. Yesterday he came to me and said that we couldn't go on the airplane because we didn't have airplane helmets to wear. I told him that we were going on a special airplane that drove people on it so we didn't need helmets. He then said that I should drive the airplane and refused to believe me when I told him that only special people called pilots could drive airplanes. I think that he is going to be somewhat disappointed in our journey tomorrow because he saw a commercial that was showing jets flying off of an aircraft carrier. He just sat there watching them and yelling AWESOME!! Hopefully he will be tired enough and it won't matter what kind of airplane we are on. Grandma's house here we come

Easter

Easter was a good, but busy day. I am leaving to go and visit my family in Seattle on Wednesday so I have been running errands and getting things in order for days. Saturday turned into a very busy long day of running sooo...Sunday morning we colored our Easter eggs and had a nice breakfast (luckyily for today we have church at 1:00pm right now.) and then went off to church where I had to teach RS. We then ran home and straightened up some so that our neighbors could come over and have dinner with us. So I rushed around to get mashed potatoes made and quick rise the rolls that I forgot to get out before we left for church. We then welcomed three other children and two more adults into our chaos. After dinner the kids went on a Easter egg hunt and then sat and ate more candy than they should. After our neighbors went home the rest of us relaxed and watched the Work and the Glory III. Joseph really enjoyed these movies especially because they were about his name sake Joseph Smith. Now that Easter is over I am back to scrambling around to get everything ready for me to leave tomorrow. Do you know how much laundry a family of six produces?

Fundraisers

It used to be that we would have one fundraiser in the fall and one in the spring and I didn't mind particpating because it was for a good cause right? Steve would get really into it and try to help whatever kid to win something. Hannah once won a ride to lunch in a limo for selling the most (whatever it was). The next time she won a $50 gift card for coming in second. Now that I have three kids (in three schools) we get some kind of fundraiser almost every week. This week we got Avon (for the middle school band) Joe Corbi (for Wright Denny playground fund), Kings pizza (combined school spirit fundraiser??) and Bob Evans (for some other wonderful cause). This doesn't include the scholastic book fair next week that they are asking everyone to come and also donate $1. They are also having a change drive (at both Page and Wright Denny) to buy school supplies for the classroom. I just can not get excited about any of it. I sometimes wonder if I should just send in a big check and be done with it. Of course we can't participate in it all so I find myself just throwing everything away because it just gets to be too much. Maybe I should home school and then have a fundraiser for myself.

Just Stuff

I always feel like there needs to have been something funny amazing or interesting before I post something. Well none of those things have really happened. Life is just happening right now. I have done the following things in the last few weeks
*Planned and executed RS Birthday enrichment meeting
*Went away with my sisters for a weekend (more of that to come later)
*Had all of my kids be sick. I took Seth to the Dr yesterday because he couldn't breathe and had been coughing for days. He has a sinus infection. Todd is home for the second day in a row for the mysterious I just don't feel good disease. Oh well what can you do.
*Had allergies knock me on my rear end
*Decided to go out to Matt's mission farewell (I will be getting tickets later on today) He is going to LasVegas West
*Became the mom of a teenager
*Felt like strangling said teenager.
*Decided I am thoroughly done with middle school homework

The only thing of real note is that Steve got released from being YM president. He was in there for over three years. He was sad to be released, but it was time to move on. He got a call last Friday asking that he and I meet with the Stake president Sunday morning. He was called to be Elders Quorum president. I am so proud of him I could just see him take on that new mantle. I am a lucky lady!! It will definitely be a new adventure for us all.
Life just keeps on going whether I keep up with it or not.

No more school, no more books no more teachers dirty Looks!

Is it summer yet? This week has been a doozy. With Todd in middle school, I though that maybe my days of standing over him and helping with homework would be diminished. It has actually escalated ten fold (is that a scripture reference or just a literary one?) This week we have had one paper that took "us" 5 hours to do even though it only had to be two pages long. We then had a social studies project in the midst of vocabulary, spelling, and memorizing the capitals of South American countries, and other various school assignments. The SS project (for the social studies fair) he decided to do on how your economic choices of today can affect your future. "We" searched the web. As a side note on that. I don't let the kids just randomly search the web. I try to help narrow down the words that they should use etc. You just never know what will pop up and I keep trying to point out that they should look at the web address before clicking on the link because Target.com will not help them with social studies. So I did a lot of the research and then printed the pages so that he could read them and highlight the things that he thought was important- Side note done. This project had to have some stupid abstract with it that had to be on the form that they presented so I spent the day while he was at school getting this form onto the computer so that he could put the information in it when he got home. I also typed up the information that he had already compiled and written. We spent the first night make a mach up drawing of how we wanted to lay our the information on the tri-fold board-which I made a special trip to Walmart to get because I forgot it when I went to buy groceries (Remembered to buy math notebooks, treasure chest items, glue stick, tissues, hand sanitizer, and stickers for the other kids classes). We worked on it every day this week and then was up until 11:00 last night finishing it. I all have to say this morning is that we had better get an A! Who thought up a Social studies fair anyway-They must have been jealous of all the science people because they had a fair (which we have already finished thank heavens.) I AM DONE!!!

Wrong kind of Praying

At the end of the summer a lady in our branch gave me a HUGE fern. I love plants and this one was beautiful. I had it in my sun room until Christmas and then I moved it up into my bathroom in order to have room for the Christmas tree. It took me a while before I really got everything put back where it belonged after Christmas..... With that background comes the following experience

I was getting ready for church a few weeks ago and I noticed something on top of my lotion. It was a tiny green praying mantis. I like praying mantis(es) or manti? so I wasn't so worried. I took it down stairs and shook it outside. I came back up into my bathroom to continue to get ready and I looked again. OH MY GOODNESS!!! There were at least 20 to 30 little tiny praying Mantis all over my bathroom. In the tub, the surround, the floor etc. I looked closely and realized that the bugs were coming from the plant. It had been outside until it got too cold. Apparently it made a good nesting place for bugs. I quickly grabbed the plant and carried it downstairs and put it on the back porch leaving a trail of leaves and mess along the way. I then spent the next 45 minutes with the vacuum cleaner cleaning up the mess. We were subsequently late for chruch. My adoration is somewhat lessened now that I have had the critter all over my bathroom. Life is just one of those totally laughable experiences.