The Bits: February 17th Through Febraury 28th

I can't believe we are already through the month of February.  Where does the time go?!  Here's The Bits to finish out the month.

Adam and the boys had President's Day off, so we took a swim visit to the Y.  I love how they have goggle marks for half the day after a good long swim.

An unexpected plus of seeing the Lego movie on Valentine's Day was the resurrection of our GINORMOUS collection of Legos.  Tommy, Luke and Ben, in spurts, play with them pretty regularly, but now all five boys are enjoying them again, and with gusto!  One of the movie's messages is that you don't have to always follow a set of instructions to build very cool Lego creations: always a good reminder for the imagination!  Deep thoughts brought to you by Lego!

The spring winds are starting to pick up and while outside playing on President's Day afternoon, something blew into Tommy's eye.  He rubbed it out, but I think he scratched his eye a bit in the process.  For the next few days, Tommy would try to go about his business as much as possible without opening his eyes, because it helped his eye feel better.  He is so cute when he's trying to keep his eyes closed!  He squishes them up so tight!

Over the course of a couple of weeks, Luke made two pretty poor choices at school.  At the start of last week, I asked him if he felt he had been making good choices at school since those two unfortunate days.  He said, "Yeah, Mom, of course.  My shoulder angel was just absent that day."  Oh, how that made me laugh!  Funny boy!  Now, every day when he leaves for school, we check to make sure that the angel is securely in place on his shoulder, and flick away the shoulder devil.

For a week in November, Albertson's gave away free turkeys to shoppers who spent $100 or more on groceries.  As I am sure is obvious, $100 is not a hard total for our family of 7 to reach for groceries on a regular basis, so we received one of those free birds.  However, we spent the Thanksgiving holiday at the Murdocks' home, and they didn't need a second turkey, so it just sat in our freezer.  I knew the turkey was getting to the point where I either needed to cook it or toss it, and after Valentine's Day's ice cream sculptures, the issue was forced because we needed the freezer space for all those fine works of edible art.  So last Wednesday, we had a not-Thankgiving feast, complete with our delicious roasted turkey, red fingerling potatoes, gravy, salad and cranberry sauce.  Darn that I didn't think to make pumpkin pies!  Yum!  And leftovers for a week.  Yum, again!

I sure do love Joshie's curls.  I just wish he combed his hair more!  It's a constant battle: let the fro be so we can love the curls, or chop it off so he no longer looks like a wild child 50% of the time.  For now, they stay.

We learned a new weather word after a glorious spring-like week that ended abruptly with a night of a funky sort of snow: grauple.  The boys said it should be called "snail" for snow-hail.  That's pretty accurate to what it is, soft, snowy hail balls, instead of hard, icy ones.  Ben observed that it looked like Dippin' Dots were covering the earth.

We love waking up to this!

This time of year it always feels like the school long-haul.  It seems like the family should have the post-school-day process down to routine, so we get lax about making sure homework is checked.  This leads to procrastination which always has the side effect of forgotten assignments (ZAC!) and a late turn-in here and there.  For example, this Venn diagram project that Josh was given a week to do, but ended up doing all in one frantic and frustrating morning.  After the fact, I kept thinking that I did him no favors by letting him finish and go to school tardy, but that is what I did.  Hopefully Josh learned that leaving assignments until the last-minute is not ideal simply by the feeling of annoyance and discomfort that infused the morning, but somehow I doubt it.  Back to homework-checker vigilance!

Warning: spring closet cleaning in progress!  It's always so funny to realize that some of the items I plan to get rid of are once-upon-a-time favorites that were worn weekly but at some point became dust collectors.  How our tastes change!  This is precisely why I can't buy expensive clothing...even if I never wear it, I think, "I can't get rid of that; it cost $__!!!"  Cleaning out a sweater I bought on clearance for $8.50, and wore like crazy for a time, is much easier.

Last Friday night, Adam and I attended our ward's adults-only Olympics party.  It's always hard for us to want to actually leave the house when we have a night at home, so we weren't looking forward to it.  I feel as if we've become more hermity as our lives have become so consumed by the busyness of our family's schedule.  Like it's made us very protective of our home time.  But I was in charge of one of the activities, the winter clothing relay, so we had to be there.  And I am so glad we were!  It was a very fun night with our ward family, whom we love.  We were part of Team Jamaica, placing, as Jamaica surely would, 5th out of 6 countries after all the events.  We also ate a delicious Greek dinner and laughed a lot.  I love that Adam and I are of an age and connected enough with our ward that we no longer socialize simply with couples who are in the same age/stage as us.  We enjoyed sharing a dinner table and teaming up with couples of all different stages of life.  Our table had one woman our age with two boys our boys' ages, a couple who have only one of their two children still at home, and two sets of couples who are empty nesters and probably just slightly younger than my parents.  It was such a pleasurable night with great conversation.  GO JAMAICA!

Ben and Zac spent the weekend with Adam down in Pueblo, playing in the spring outdoor season opening tournament, the Sunbelt Classic.  The boys played hard, had fun and enjoyed being back with all their teammates.  Zac's team played well against some majorly tough competition, but didn't end up making it to the final game.  Ben's team made it to the finals, played a great game but ultimately lost, placing second in their age group!

More puzzles!  It's a family craze these days.  Momentous occasion of note: the Super Mario puzzle was Josh's first 550 piecer, completed 95% on his own, with only a little *unasked for* brother help.

With the brothers away all day Saturday, Josh and Luke were happy for the distraction of attending the Harry Potter-inspired 9th birthday party of a girl from church and school, Emma, whose younger brother, Daniel, is in Luke's school class.  The boys had a great time, and the balloon animal owls they brought home (created by Emma's father who is a balloon artist) inspired two fun days of Hogwarts-themed play, most notably: wizard duels.  I also loved and appreciated that Emma's mother remembered from Daniel's birthday party last month that Luke couldn't eat food dyes, and made him his own little mini-Hogwarts-castle birthday treat sans food-colored frosting.  So thoughtful!

Another 1,000th piece placed on a quiet Sunday afternoon while sitting in a warm ray of winter sunshine shining through the dining room bay window.  Ahhhh...yesssssss.  Satisfaction.  What a lovely puzzle!

Monday morning of this week, Luke woke up with a fever and a stiff neck.  Here's something that is unsettling to google: "fever" and "stiff neck" together.  The two top results were "meningitis" and "childhood leukemia."  Ummmmmm....  SO Luke was brought into the doctor A-sap.  It was determined, thankfully, that he had neither of those things, just a virus, and that his stiff neck was probably typical fever aches being felt by the super nerves of a highly-sensitive child.  It was also determined that Luke had lost 8 ounces since his check-up in November.  Dang it!!  Back to the stressful grind of trying to manipulate high calorie food into Luke's mouth.  Grrrrr....

I push it up, Tommy pushes it down.  He loves to wear his hat super low like this so that he can barely see out from under it.  I guess peripheral vision is overrated in Tommy-world!

This.  The only perk of a fevered kid.  On day two of the fever we tried to snuggle the fever away.

Tuesday night was a lovely relaxing night of yoga with instruction by Mary, a SUPER flexible and zen yoga guru from our ward, and my one Laurel, Jessie.

Dad ain't a shabby player but this is happening more and more.

Wednesday, Zac and Josh had their annual well-child check-up.  Both boys are both nice and healthy.  There was a little concern over Zac's height, and that if he continued on his curve he'd only get to around 5' 5", so we were given a prescription for a bone age x-ray.  This would determine if his bones 'think' he's 13 or if they 'think' he's younger.  If they think he's younger, well, then he's just a late bloomer.  If his bones are on target for a 13-year-old, then it's off to the endocrinologist to make sure he's producing enough growth hormone.

Of course, every annual check-up deserves a sweet treat follow-up!

Wednesday was fever day 3.  Good grief!  Poor Luke had been feeling badly so long that it had become his new normal, and he wasn't even acting like he had a fever anymore.  He was ready to be back at school!

Monday had begun with a frantic realization that I had forgotten to pick up the BoxTops to distribute for trimming, date-checking and sorting at the end of last week in order to get them returned in time for the March 1st biannual submission deadline.  Fortunately, the mom volunteers that help me do this were awesome and worked their scissor fingers to the bone to get 'er done!  I got bags full of BoxTops to these helpful ladies before the end of the school day on Monday and had them all returned to me by Wednesday.  Together we all trimmed, date-checked and sorted over 6,700 BoxTops and many more Bonus Certificates.  It came to nearly $750 worth of BoxTops, aka PTO Gold, all sent in the nick-of-time to Michigan for our March submission.

While Tommy was at school on Thursday, Luke and I enjoyed a quiet snuggle watching Disney's African Cats on day four of his fever.  He would stay home Friday too, although his fever {finally} broke early in the day of Friday's day five.  YES! 

Book club: one of my favorite things to do!  Good food, good friends, good books!  Thursday afternoon's book club certainly fit this bill.  And I love that Adam works from home, so I could still go, even with a sick boy.

Thursday before soccer practice, Zac had his bone age x-ray.  We had a good laugh over the teeny tiny gown he was given...he's not THAT small!  He had been instructed to take off all but his socks and unders, but when he came out of the changing room he declared that his soccer shorts were staying put or there would be way too much southern exposure.  Hahaha!  Results: Zac's hand say he's 13.  Not what we expected to hear, as he comes from a long line of late-bloomers.  We are off to the endocrinologist to make sure he is producing enough growth hormone and then we will see what comes after that...but first we have the 4 to 6 week waiting period to get an appointment.  Nice.

This kid.  What a crack up!  "Mama!  I'm a fly!"

My friend Kendra is 4 days away from her due date, and has been on the verge of having her baby for weeks!  Five centimeters dilated and nearly 100% effaced.  No one even understands how she is still pregnant, including her doctor!  Yet she still kindly offered to touch up my roots and give me a trim today, Friday.  I felt kind of like an evil friend to make her do this, feeling 1,000 years pregnant, and tried to let her out of it several times, but she was determined.  I'm hoping she's not too sore tonight from all that standing, and hopefully even in labor!  She does such an awesome job, and the chit chat is so great, plus we were joined by Adri, as a sweet bonus.  What a great way to spend an afternoon!

Math: what Ben does for fun on a Friday afternoon when he gets home from school.  I kid you not!

Sometimes a mug of hot cocoa is all it takes to remind you of who you are.

Friday date night. {bliss!}  Here's one of the awesome things about Zac.  When we texted at the end of dinner to find out how things were going at home, he related the irritating evening he'd had with getting Luke to bed.  We didn't have after-dinner plans, so we told him we were on the way home and could help.  He said, "No!  That's not why I told you.  You asked, I was just telling how things were.  Stay!"  We said we had planning on coming home anyway, because we had a movie from Redbox to watch, plus Adam wanted to finish up the last 30 minutes of Indiana Jones, which he and the two older boys had been watching in spurts over the week, before they went to bed, and Zac said, "Go get dessert.  A date is more important than Indiana Jones."  Love my conscientious boy!!!  So we stopped for hot cocoa at Starbucks and more discussion to honor his request.  Now if only he could apply that thoughtful consideration to all aspects of his school and home life.... :)

The Bits: February 10th Through February 16th

Valentine's Week Bits:

Monday, I thought, "Oh, Valentine's Day is this week.  How did that one creep up on me?  We better get some valentines going."  Tommy had a great time making these simple sponge-paint stamped cards, to which he chose to attach vials of bubbles.  For those and for valentines for the other boys to give, I had to head to the store.  I arrived at the grocery store to discover that a clerk was moving the Valentine's Day stuff to the end-of-aisle display in order to set up Easter stuff.  Fortunately, I still found some make-your-own paper airplane valentines for Josh and Ben, and window cling bug valentines for Luke to pass out to their classmates, and, of course, plenty of over-priced candy.

Adam is working from home about 70-80% of the time now, more with all the snow, and it's working out pretty great.  Tommy's good about not bugging him, it's just me!  I have to remind myself to leave him alone!  Every so often he'll come find me to show me something he is working on, which is often some *super sweet* spreadsheet.  "Honey!  Look at this awesome spreadsheet I put together!  Look what it can do!"  Ummmm...spreadsheets???  Gotta love my Excel Wizard!  Who can resist a man who gets excited about his work, even if it is spreadsheets that make no sense to me whatsoever?

Speaking of Wizards.  Tommy is truly a Perler Bead Wizard.  If only there was a bright future possible for him in Perler beading!  I was so impressed that he built this spider, just by counting the rows and copying the positioning on the picture.  Even though he can't make his first million off this skill...wow.  He's four!  Smartypants!

Yes, I did, in fact, eat dessert first on this fine lunch outing with my friend Sarah.  How could I not?  Look at that thing!  It was a good week for friend time: lunch with Sarah on Tuesday, then Kristen on Thursday, and pedicures with Kendra on Monday.  This is NOT typical; I was a bit spoiled this week, but all three were long overdue and just happened to converge all at once.  Friend time is sure soothing to the soul, even if my constant buddy, Tommy, is with me all the while.

He had been so patient through a long lunch chat with Sarah on Tuesday, that when we got home, Tommy and I thought we should do something fun, like make sparkly pink playdough to give to his preschool friends for Valentine's Day in addition to the bubbles.  This picture kills me with cuteness!

Monday afternoon was pretty terrible with Luke and for Luke.  When I picked him up from school, his teacher had pulled me aside and informed me of an incredibly poor choice that Luke had made that day in class.  Two HUGE steps back.  Arrrrrgh!  I was so frustrated, and he was really upset, but also, miraculously, seemed to get that I needed space and spent a lot of time in his room without a fight all afternoon.  Bad afternoon, irritated evening, defeated night.  Blah.  Tuesday started with a huge hug, and as I sent him out the door, I said, "Go make it a blue day, Luke!"  And guess what he did.  BLUE DAY!  He usually has green days, occasionally has yellow days, has had a handful of blue days and has had only one red and one purple day, so this was really exciting.  Tender mercy.  Two little steps forward.  Thank goodness.  He needed it.  And so did I.

Spring outdoor soccer season 2014 has begun, even if they had to plow the fields to make it so!

Tuesday night was our Cub Scout Pack Meeting Blue and Gold Banquet.  Happy birthday, Scouting!  Josh's Bear Den put on a funny little skit, and Adam, with his voice still hoarse from his illness, pulled off a great evening with the efforts of the great den leaders he serves alongside.  Pack Meeting can be a pretty chaotic night every month, not always my favorite time, but, perhaps because people were eating dinner all the while, this one was pretty tame and really fun.

New favorite Winter Olympics event: Slopestyle Skiing!  The snowboarding was cool, but WOW!  The skiing!!

Thursday was Lynx Laps, the annual fund run at the boys' school.  On Lynx Laps day, the kids get to run around the school's circular hallway; it's the only time running in the halls is approved and encouraged.  They count their laps and collect donations for the number of laps run, like a traditional walk- or run-athon.  I had been a part of the event's PTO planning committee, my job was soliciting funds to help defray the costs of putting on the event, and we had had many generous donations.  I spent the day at the school counting rubber bands all morning (the kids get one each time they go around as a way to keep track of their laps), and then passed out rubber bands in the afternoon.  It was so exciting to have Lynx Laps finally here...and to know I could check that off my to-do list!

The boys woke up Thursday morning, totally stoked for Lynx Laps and Valentine's Day parties (there was no school on Friday for a teacher planning day), plus Josh had a field trip to the fine arts center too!  What a great day!  Ben ran 37 laps in 20 minutes, Josh ran 26 laps in 17 minutes, and Luke ran 15 laps in 15 minutes (the grades get different lengths of time to run).  Thirteen laps is a mile.  It was so fun to be there with them; I love that I have the opportunity to volunteer at the school, thanks to Adam's great job.  Nice work, boys!

Friday was Valentine's Day!  I had wanted to take the boys up the Cripple Creek Ice Festival for the day to see all the amazing ice sculptures, but it was snowing up in the mountains and I did not want to get stuck up there, or halfway up there, so we ditched that idea and went to see The Lego Movie instead.  The boys had been DYING to see it since they first saw a  preview for it almost a year ago!  It did not disappoint.  They loved it!  They've been singing "Everything is Awesome," the movie's theme song, throughout the weekend and building all kinds of wonderfully creative Lego creations everyday since we saw it.  And I laughed out loud several times myself, so I can't complain.  I just wished Adam had been there, so we could have laughed together at all the adult-oriented jokes.

Since we couldn't see the ice carvings in Cripple Creek, we decided to do some ice cream carving of our own at home.  Ben, inspired by the movie we had seen that morning, made a Lego brick.  Zac, with Tommy as "manager," made Tommy's stuffed bear, Stuffy.  Josh, channeling the holiday, made a valentine.  And Luke made himself!  Then they had ice cream for lunch.

One of the nice things about canceling our trip up to Cripple Creek is that I was able to make Adam's dark chocolate-dipped salted caramels, his Valentine's Day gift from me.  I've made caramels for Adam several times now, and the process of candy-making still intrigues me!  Look at that beautiful bubbling sugar that will soon be caramel!

"If ever two were one, then surely we."  --Anne Bradstreet

After a fun day with my 5 little valentines, it was time for a date with my number one.  We went to see Monuments Men, which we both really enjoyed, and then had dinner at Pei Wei.  We forget how much we love the food there, yum!  It was a perfect and simple celebration.  Adam is really one of the best men on this planet.  Lucky, lucky me!

For the past week, the Chaos has been hard at work on this puzzle set.  Within minutes of finishing my 1,000 piecer, Ben ran down to the basement and grabbed a box of assorted ocean-scene puzzles, declaring that we should do them all!  Just a little over a week later, with all 7 of us diligently working when we could find a spare moment here and there, we had put together two 100-piece puzzles, four 300-piece puzzles and four 500-piece puzzles.  Luke and Tommy even helped by finding edges and did a few 25-piece puzzles of their own.  And that's what the Chaos calls "fun!"

Josh: "I hate that Zac is always better at everything than me."  Me: "Josh, you have to remember that he is FOUR years older than you, so he has four more years of practice.  What you can't do is let him being better defeat you, let it motivate you to practice instead."  Josh: "When we are both all grown up, then I can beat him."  Me: "True, but by then you'll care a lot less about beating him."  And then he went back outside and kept practicing.

It has been a warm and VERY windy weekend!  Sunday, after church, Ben pulled out his small kite.  It was flying so crazy, it was almost too windy to fly!

  Josh and Zac strapped on their rollerblades and, using their jackets like sails, let the wind blow them up the street.

Zac misplaced his cell phone after church.  While on the hunt for it, I was checking his bed (where it SHOULD NOT have been, and, thankfully, wasn't) and discovered this Preach My Gospel manual hiding under his pillow.  I had to laugh.  I figure this would not be one of the top answers if "Things You Find Under a 13-year-old Boy's Pillow" were a category on Family Feud.  Hahaha!  Sweet Zac!