2nd Place!

I have a kind of legacy to live up to. I haven't slept well for a few days, and last night I didn't sleep at all. I kept thinking of letting down my son, my hubby, and my Dad.
Tonight it all came to pass. I am so grateful for those words...everything always comes to pass.

Here is Mr. Perfect's Pinewood Derby car. Pretty cool. He and Dad cut it and sanded it. Papa helped with the wheels and axles, and Mom (me) helped with the paint and weights and actually putting it all together. Wow, it takes a village... This is just as the races were starting. He was SO excited. I tried to talk to him about "What if you don't win?" He said, "My goal is to get in the top three." With the amount of racers I wasn't sure that was going to happen.

Here is a pic of the pack. They are all really good kids. I was surprised not to see any tears this year, but I did see a lot of cheering for each other and congratulations. One kid that hadn't won any heats finally won one and the applause for him just made me happy. And even in the end there was a boy who didn't win any and he was so cool about it. I was really impressed.

Here is a little video of one of the last heats. I love watching Mr. Perfect skip to his seat to watch. He was very happy tonight. Yea 2nd Place!

Goodnight Sweet Prince

Tonight I left the three younger boys at the Crimson's while I went to the Pinewood Derby with the older boys. When we went to pick them up afterward this is how I found Mr. Prince. Gosh! He is so adorable!

To My Big Brother

Happy Birthday Johnny.

You are in my heart today even more than usual

I have thought about you much

And though I don't know where you are physically,

I know you are here inside.

I am who I am today partly because of you.

You touched my life in ways

you may never know of or understand.

There was a time I would do anything you said,

simply because you said it and I trusted you implicitly.

I love you, and though we are far apart right now,

my love is always with you.

Happy Birthday.

Yosh.

Happy Birthday Mr. Super

It's been a few days, but we have been celebrating... and there are a few more people we would like to celebrate with but just haven't found the time to do so. But I thought if I didn't get it blogged soon it would never happen. So....
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. SUPER!
On Super's birthday morning we made muffins and he got candles on his. He loved it. He got to spend the day with Mom. We went to several stores running errands and he found something at each store. Mom totally indulged him. He totally scored. (Mom did save some of them to open at a later date, but for the most part he got everything good on his birthday.)
Nana and Papa sent birthday cars both in email and snail mail. He loved them both. The one on the computer had a dog that went bizerk and he watched it over and over and laughed and laughed. It was fun to watch. He also enjoyed getting mail in the mailbox. It was a 3-D card too (Nana is so cool, she made it!) He carried it around for the whole afternoon. I also have to note that he was dressed as SuperWhy and told me that his card was his book. Cute. This actually was a few days before his birthday. He and Grandpa Crimson were playing with Grandpa's Itouch taking pics. I love the look on Super's face. He is such a happy guy.

Mr. Super shares a birthday with a good friend of mine. So for their birthday she made him a Superhero cape. He loves it! (His brothers do too. And he shares it well too. Cool!) Thanks Bluebell, you're so wonderful.

It wasn't as much for his birthday as it was just because he loves tools. But the Crimson's bought a tool set specifically for Super to play with at their house. He loves it. Maybe in the future he can become Mr. Fix-it. ;)

We had the Crimson's over to dinner last night to celebrate with cake and ice-cream. We missed Grandma Crimson who is out of town waiting for her grand baby Smudge to be born. (*soon-fingers crossed*)

Happy Birthday little man. You are already four years old and progressing so beautifully. I love how much you are trying to talk and use real words. Your sentences are getting better and it is getting easier for me to understand you. I love that you say, "Hello Mommy" and "I love you" those are two of my favorite sentences that you know. You are Super to me. I love you!

Oh and just a note...did you notice in most of these pictures he is dressed as some sort of Superhero? I'm just saying...

Super Caveman!

I have mentioned it before....Mr. Super loves to dress up. Well, the other day, in the middle of the afternoon Mr. Super comes upstairs with nothing but one of my woolly winter scarfs on. We thought he might have been trying to dress up like a caveman. Whatever he was. He sure looked cute!

Perfection can be painful

Today Mr. Perfect got braces, a process he didn't enjoy but didn't mind, he was actually really good. But by this evening he was in real pain. He was crying and I explained to him about how his braces are actually moving his teeth. He understood it, but he also asked, "Why can't I just have straight teeth without braces?" To that I simply shook my head and told him, "Because you're my son, and your genes say you'll have crooked teeth without them. Sorry." He was sorry too. Poor kid. (I told him someday he would be grateful for straightening his teeth, I don't think he believed me.)

Mr Perfect and an object lesson

Today a friend at church gave my boys a Rubik's cube to play with during Sacrament Meeting. (Just as a side note, I love the girl that loaned it to us so much, I wouldn't dream of offending her by telling her we didn't want it for the hour.) However it was quiet and once it was in my boys hands it wasn't going back until the meeting was over.
At one point Mr. Perfect was playing with it and he leaned over to me and said, "You know Mom, this is just like life. We mess up our lives and twist it in all kinds of ways. But then if you give your life to Jesus, he can fix it."
Thanks for the reminder Mr. Perfect. I love you.

Mother to Son

Mother to Son by Langston Hughes
Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor--
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And somtimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now--
For I'se still goin' honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

Today Mr. Music had to read this poem as part of his homework. He had to discuss the symbolism and such. It was a neat assignment to do with him. The last question of the assignment I couldn't wait to hear the answer to. The question was: Is this poem true or not true as a metaphor for your life? Mr Music wrote: Not true, I love my life.
Now that is music to this mothers' ears.

Fun in weird ice-snow-stuff

I wanted to give a little glimpse of some of the fun we had today in the stuff that fell from the sky last night. It wasn't snow, it wasn't rain, it wasn't sleet, it wasn't hail. Maybe it was slush. That sounds right about right. We didn't go out into it until it was slush anyway. We were all sopping wet by the time we came in. But it was fun. (And the boys did like getting an extra day off school for it.)
Here is Mr. Perfect trying to do a snow board type thing on the sled. Nice wipe-out. But he sure loved the adventure of doing it.

Mr. Right and Mr. Prince walking back up the hill. That's the hard part of sledding. But I didn't hear one word of complaint. YEA!

Mr. Perfect. One happy camper.

Mr Music even joined us outside. WITHOUT being asked to come . That's almost a miracle! Mr Right, on the other hand, was one of the first ones out and the last ones in.

Mr Right was also so helpful with all of the other boys. They all would ask him to push them, and he obliged them quite a bit. I was really glad to see how much he was willing to do. Mr. Prince is such a cutie.
Mr. Super kept telling me where to go. I wasn't ever in the right place. Mr. Right got the snowboarding thing down pretty well.

Mr Right keeps asking for a snowboard. After watchin him today I am starting to think it's probably a good idea. One of the neighbor boys came to play for a while. He just hopped on with a couple of the boys. Our neighborhood is full of boys. It's great!

And my sweet Mr D.A. is so adorable. Look at that face. Who could possibly resist it?

New Blog for the New Year

With the New Year comes new nick-names. I actually quite look forward to this each year. So, to fill you in on the names for the new year here is some help.

This is Mr. Perfect, he will be 10 this summer. He says his favorite thing is drawing. (I thought for sure he would say Pokemon...but what do I know.) My Mr. Perfect is a perfectionist. He is sensitive to the feelings of others, and always tries to help when someone is in crisis. This is Mr. Prince, he will be turning 8 this year (YEA we have a baptism to look forward to.) and his favorite thing is maps, especially maps of the States, but world maps are almost as cool. This kid is royalty. He is a perfect gentleman and wonderful when everything is going his way, and if it isn't...well let's just say he likes to get his way. This is Mr. D.A. he will be turning 6 this year. His favorite thing is Baby Dog. But really anything soft will do just fine. We have been through a few Baby Dogs, as long as it feels soft to the touch chances are he will love it. We're not sure if the D is for Destroying or Delightful but the A is certainly for Angel. My D.A. is my best helper, and has a larger than life personality.

This is Mr. Music. He will turn 12 years old this year. (Oh my goodness, is that possible?!) His favorite thing....MUSIC! He spends any spare time he has browsing Pandora, ITunes, or Amazon.com's music department. Music is this boys whole life. If he isn't designing his latest CD cover he is listening to, singing, playing, or in some other way performing his music.This is Mr. Super, he will be 4 years old in a few days. His favorite thing is Super-Heroes. But he also loves to jump, loves to play, loves to sing, loves to dance, and loves to laugh. Mr Super is my own personal Super-hero! He loves Super-Heroes and even when he isn't dressed up like one he is a Super Great Kid. This is Mr. Right, he will be 13 in a couple of months. (AAAHHHH I am going to officially have a teenager!! He already eats like one.) He says his favorite thing is video-games. See he's acting like a teenager already. I would rather have him focus on video-games than girls though. This guy is not only my right arm, he is also (very much like his Dad) always right. He loves to make people laugh and is a great example! Me and Dad are part of the family too, but we're not nearly as cute.

So here is your official welcome to 2011

Christmas 2010

We decided to drive out and surprise my family this year for Christmas. It was so much fun. I took more pics than this but can't find them. Sorry.

We hit a couple of church history sites on the way there and back. We learned a lot and my hubby and I loved it. But by the last day of our journey our boys were pretty much done with church sites though. Of course we spent the entire day going from site to site to site. It was a good day, but very tiring.

One of our stops was at the Kirtland Temple. We didn't get to see as much of it as we wanted, but we did enjoy our time in Kirtland. We learned a lot there and really gained an appreciating for all that happened during the time the saints were there.We also stopped at Winter Quarters in Nebraska. What a place it was for the early saints, we learned a lot and found ourselves counting our blessings constantly. And our boys enjoyed dressing up as pioneers. In the basement of the visitors center they had a Christmas display of gingerbread houses. All sorts of submissions were there. It was so neat to see all of the creations. We arrived at my Mom and Dad's house at about five in the morning. They didn't know we were coming. I called my Mom and told her I had just been told that her Christmas present was left on their porch and she needed to go outside and get it because it couldn't stay out in the cold. She opened the door to us on her doorstep. It was fun. We did do plenty of damage while we were there. (Sorry Mom and Dad.) But we LOVED being with Nana and Papa and our family out there.One morning we did our Christmas tradition of building a gingerbread house. It was a very SWEET way to start the day. We also got to spend time with the Crimsons who had gone out for Cinnamon's graduation.(Congratulations!) And on our last day we kidnapped our Angel and spent one one last outing with her. We will miss her terribly and we enjoyed every last minute with her. We also got to see K, J, and College Girl. We love them so much and miss having them here at home. We're trying to convince them to come back to where they belong. We only got to see them for a few minutes as we went to get ice-cream. But at least we got that. We spent New Years Eve in a hotel. The room we had was awesome. It had an XBOX for the boys, and they had their own little suite with bunk beds and stuff. YEA! We then drove home and were forced back into regular life. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

Happy 2010, looking forward to 2011.