Stephen: of worms and school

What four year old doesn’t like to dig up worms?  These were dug up at my parents house under the same citrus trees I used to dig worms under!

 

A nice juicy one…

 

Stephen started going to the public preschool nearby.  He is one of the only Caucasian children in his class (there are maybe three out of 18).  He is learning a little Spanish and he LOVES, LOVES, LOVES going to school!

My handsome boy, ready for his first day!

He is in the afternoon class and I thought that it would be a big problem for him since he was still taking an afternoon nap every day up until school started.  To my surprise and delight he has done very well and falls asleep so much quicker at night!

Boston is devastated that he doesn’t get to go to school with Stephen.  I have to sign Stephen in and out of school everyday and so I have to drag Boston along and each time we go into the classroom he wants to get down and play.  I think he is finally figuring out that it is not going to happen because he doesn’t throw a huge tantrum anymore when I tell him he can’t.

 

Stephen is my little artist.  He likes to make “projects.”  One day we spent a good hour drawing pictures of food which we cut out and he taped on the walls throughout the house to simulate his favorite movie, “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.”

July At a Glance

We watched fireworks with the Smiths and my sister, Celsea. 

 

This is me and my beautiful sister Celsea. She is a freshman at BYU (but that is another post…) and I miss her like crazy!

 

The boys had a blast with their Smith cousins in the bed of the truck.  There was a bit of a dust storm that kicked up – hence the squinty eyes.  I didn’t know that Boston was putting the glow sticks in his mouth until this very moment!

 

We drove three hours to Thatcher to visit Scott’s grandparents and attend his cousin’s mission farewell one weekend.  Scott’s aunt Paula captured these pictures of us:

 

Scott’s brother Josh, his wife, Shea, and their son, Bently.  I love this picture!

 

Scott’s sister, Brooke, her husband, Justin, and their children, Talan, Atley, and Ryker.

 

Us.

 

A huge portion of this month was spent helping my mom care for my sweet sister Celsea after she had major surgery on her jaw so her teeth would line up properly.  After having her upper and lower jaw broken, and shifted around to match up properly, she now has metal plates and 30-some-odd screws/pins – some in her upper jaw and some in her lower jaw.  This picture was taken several days after the surgery when the swelling had come down significantly.  What does jaw surgery get you?  Six weeks of liquid/blended diet.  NO CHEWING allowed.  Yikes!  She is doing very well now and is off at BYU!  (Did I mention that I miss her?)  It was really fun getting to spend so much time with her.  We watched dozens of movies together (including all of the Harry Potter movies in a 2 day time period – too much!)  She was an excellent patient – no whining or complaining…well part of that may have been due to her numb face/tongue.  It was fabulous living so close to my family – I can zip down to their house in 10 minutes instead of the 20 minute drive it was from our old house.

We moved.

Fourth of July weekend we moved 20 minutes across town.  It was rather hot that day…118 degrees.

I think he would have ridden up there the whole way if we had let him.

We had a ton of help from family and friends despite the nasty heat.  We are so excited to live closer to our families - we are in Scott's parents' ward now and only 10 minutes from my family!

We ate lots of fast food that week/weekend.



The boys thought that all the bubble wrap was awesome – here they are having a “bubble wrap party.”  Sadly the bubble wrap monster came in the night and made it all disappear!


I took Stephen and Boston to check out the empty rooms at the old house – they weren’t around when we moved everything and I thought it might help them to have some closure to see the house empty.  Even though we disliked that old house – it really was very gross – it was so sad to leave it behind!  We loved the neighborhood, our friends, and all the memories we made there over the last three and a half years and it was so much harder to leave than I expected. 


Ready for the first Sunday in our new ward.

I blame it on May

The lack of blogging for the last while I blame completely on the insanity of the month of May.  It was a great month!  We found a house to rent…

It is small but it is very nice, close to our parents and it has a huge backyard!

 

We celebrated my sister, Celsea’s high school graduation:

 

We celebrated Scott’s brother, Dylan’s high school graduation:

I love this picture!  So sweet. 

 

We did spend a little time at home but didn’t feel the need to do anything too exciting:

 

Well, maybe Boston thought being at home was kind of dull…

Boston chose to spice things up by becoming extraordinarily mischievous this month.  He is BUSY all the time.  More so than Stephen ever was at this same age.  He is constantly doing messy, naughty things.  Funny sometimes but occasionally very dangerous and aggravating.  For example: climbing in the laundry basket in Stephen’s closet and getting stuck (you can’t tell but it is on top of a box), putting Desitin in his hair, or playing in the toilet.  Those things are funny/kinda gross.  But do you see the innocent-looking rocking horse?  It is very rarely ridden as pictured.  Mostly it is used to reach things.  He can climb on the kitchen counters by using the horse as a step-stool.  I found him with scissors in his hand on one occasion but usually he is trying to get a cup to get a drink of water which he then ends up spilling all over.

One day he somehow managed to grab a bottle of Nair that I had put on my (very tall) bed and applied it to his hair!  I freaked out about that one, having visions of his hair falling out but mostly being worried about it getting into his eyes and burning them.  Luckily, it didn’t seem to harm his hair – it never fell out and I managed to wash the Nair out without it running into his eyes.

 

So now we just have to watch him like a hawk and if he is gone or quiet for more than a minute or two it’s “where’s Boston?” in a a slightly panicked voice.

Easter Sunday

Easter fun – finally, pictures of hunting for Easter eggs!  First we had to search to find where Mom hid the Easter baskets.  We don’t do the whole “Easter Bunny” thing so they know the candy and gifts were from Mom and Dad.  I made the boys some little personalized quiet books.  I got the idea from this blog.  You can download the cute little scrap book pages and add your own pictures.  I made Boston and Stephen each their very own.

There they are, in Dad’s closet.

 

See Stephen’s quiet book peeking out of the top of his basket?  I don’t think Boston was quite awake yet…

 

Later at the Smith’s house Stephen got to hold little “Chirppy.”

 

 

Easter egg hunt!

I can’t take it with me…but I can take HIM with me!

As we are preparing to move to our new-to-us home I have developed a new motto “it’s just stuff.”  This has empowered me to part with many things that I have been holding on to.  I have already thrown away and given away many things, most of which I already forgot I had and will never miss. I keep thinking about the slightly short-on-storage house and then I just give/throw away what ever I am holding. 

One closet cleaning lead me to my old ballet costumes.  After 16 years of dancing I had quite the accumulation of lovely costumes  They had been taking up almost half of Boston’s closet and finally I sat down and looked at them and picked a few out to give away.  The rest (the prettiest), I stored carefully in a new plastic tub along with various Halloween costumes, snapped the side handles/clasps shut and carefully labeled it “costumes.”  If I should ever be blessed with a little girl, she would love to play in them.

We took a load of boxes over to the new house tonight.  The costume tub was placed on the top of the stack and we went on our merry way.  Upon arrival, I noticed a maroon bit of fabric draped across the top of the load and my eyes trialed up to the now lidless costume box.  To my horror the tub was now half empty (definitely NOT half full) – and what should be missing but the three lovely ballet costumes that I had placed on top!  Somewhere along the 10 mile drive, the lid had blown off and I lost my costumes!  I cried because I was so sad and frustrated that chance would have it that that tub would be on top instead of a box that was taped closed or full of replaceable things.  But no, it had to be the ballet costumes.

On our way home we retraced our route going 35-40 mph instead of the usual 45-55 mph, carefully scanning the side of the road for any sign of the costumes.  We found a gold sash for an ugly pirate costume I made myself, a lace hair piece that went with one of the costumes, and the lid of the box.  NO costumes.  Twenty years of careful preservation and poof – gone.  This is when I have to tell myself over and over, “it’s only stuff…you  can’t take it with you.”

Now to the positive side of the story.  Scott is going on a backpacking trip tomorrow and so he ran to the store pick up a few things after our return home.  He was gone for a long time and when he got back he said, “someone took them.”  “Huh?”  He then proceeded to tell me how he drove all the way back to the other house and searched for the costumes again!  He is now convinced that someone saw them beside the road and picked them up.  I hope whoever found them has a darling little girl who is on cloud nine playing with her pretty ballet costumes.

What a sweet, devoted husband I have!  He felt so bad about me loosing my ballet costumes that he spent a good 40 minutes searching for them again.  It is now 11:40 pm and he is still trying to get everything ready for his trip.  So tonight I lost some valued possessions but was reminded of what a treasure I have in my wonderful, supportive and thoughtful husband.  I love him so much!  What a blessing it is that the real treasure, my husband and family, I CAN take with me!

Suddenly I realized that Easter was a month ago

I was looking at my blog and realized that my last post was about Easter…kind of the same thing as having my Easter decorations out until just a few days ago!  Ha ha!  I have been pretty preoccupied and busy lately.  We are going to be moving in July and that fact has taken over my life and completely consumed my brain.  I find my self going back and forth between the plan of cleaning and organizing the whole house before I pack up or organizing and tossing clutter as I pack.  At the rate I am going it will definitely be organizing and packing at the same time but that bugs me for some reason. 

I am excited for the change that the move will bring but also very very sad because we love our ward and our neighborhood.  We are moving just 20 minutes across town to the middle of Mesa  - Gilbert and Southern.  We will actually be renting a house in Scott’s parents ward!  There are a lot of pros and cons to the whole thing but I have to say that the most exciting part is that we will finally have a big backyard for the boys to play in!  Also, we will be so much closer to both of our families which is nice since we spend so much time driving back and forth across town visiting them. 

We have done a whole bunch of other stuff the last month (or two?) but I will have to upload the pictures to remember everything.  That is why I must blog – otherwise I would never remember anything!