And my baby graduates from Kindergarten

It's hard to believe.    Can Chase really be this old?  Can I really be this old? 

Yes and yes. 

I have thoroughly enjoyed the time I have had with Chase while the older boys have been at school. 

But he is so ready to be a big boy. 

 Am I ready for him to be a big boy?  That's a tough question.  There's a little bit of yes and no in the answer.  Time marches on though.  The key is to enjoy and be grateful for every stage of life. 

Busted!

I don't say much about our dog Andi on my blog.  Probably because there isn't much to say.  She's a dog...with issues.   Despite her issues, she's not a bad dog though.  She is well-behaved in the house and for the most part doesn't give us much grief.  

But, she is a dog and dogs can be naughty.  In fact, as a matter of habit we tend to lock her in her crate when we are gone, just to make sure that we don't find any surprises when we get home.   Part of the well-behaved part is that we have trained her not to jump on any furniture or beds and we rarely ever see her do this.

Andi tends to like to hang out in our bedroom a lot.  It is her little safe place when all the scary people come into our house (I mentioned she has issues right?)  Every once in awhile when I leave the house, instead of crating her, I will leave her in there.

For the past six months or so, I have noticed on occasion that the pillows on my bed have been messed up after I had made the bed for the day.  At first I thought it was just the boys caving around.  They will often do that.  But then I realized that the pillows were messed up when the boys were not at home.  Hmmmm  That got me to thinking that it was our dog jumping up there and doing whatever she wants to do when we are gone.

But, we have never been able to catch her!  She is smart.  She only does it when we are not at home.  Yesterday, though she made a mistake.   Scott was working in the kitchen and he heard some rustling in our bedroom.  He immediately thought it could be Andi.  So he opened the door with his phone in hand and guess what he saw?

Andi on our bed.  Not only was she on our bed, she was obviously luxuriating up there.  On her back, feet in the air.   Scott expected her to jump right off, but she just gave him a look like "What? Am I doing something wrong?"

 Dogs.....

Lego Guys

Several months ago, my brother Dalin challenged my boys to sort through all of our Legos and put together all of the guys.

We have a ton of Legos, so my boys looked at the huge box and decided no way.  Yesterday,  after church Scott went down in the basement and with the help of all the boys started sorting and building.  The rule was that each guy had to have a body, legs and a head.  It took them a good part of the afternoon to finish. 

The counting proved problematic.  I'm not sure why, but each of us counted them multiple times and we each kept getting different numbers.  Finally we settled.

341.  That's a lot of Lego guys

18 years and counting

Here's to my wonderful husband of 18 years.  I love him more than I can say and am so grateful that he is a righteous priesthood holder, a wonderful husband and father and a very selfless man.  Looking forward to many more happy years.

I would like to personally thank Taylor for taking this picture.  Despite taking a year of photography in 7th grade, he still struggles mightily with focus. :)

My Family Room

My family room has been a little sparse when it comes to decorations.  Once Taylor came along and started pulling himself up onto furniture,  all of my cute decorations got pulled down and broken.  So, I put them all up and as more boys came along I just learned that it wasn't worth the battle to put things in the destruction zone.  Throw pillows got constantly thrown and I ended up picking them up off the ground so many times that I just put them away.  Plants turned into a sandbox and the dirt was strewn everywhere.  Anything fragile, was broken.   As I talked about in a previous post, when I have considered buying something nice (ie expensive or fragile or both) for my living areas I have realized fairly quickly it is a foolish thing to do.

For many years my family room has consisted of couches, a chair, a bare coffee table and an end table holding a fake plant, a clock that worked occasionally and a broken lamp with a chewed up cord.  Surprisingly though, I have some cheap ceramic candlesticks that have sat by my fireplace for 5 years and have never been broken.  I didn't think they would last a week when I put them out.  Maybe the reason why they are still around is because they are cheap and I could care less what happens to them.
 
About a year ago I got a new sectional and got rid of the end table with the broken lamp.  I hadn't had throw pillows for so long that I decided to give it a go.  I made a couple and put them on the couch.  Surprisingly for the most part they have stayed on the couch.  I have not seen them get thrown around or used for stepping stones on the floor to stay out of the imagined shark infested water.  My boys may be growing up or they are just getting sneaky. 

The other day as I was looking at my coffee table I started to wonder.  My boys don't jump on the furniture or the coffee table anymore (mostly).  Let me re-phrase that.  I do not see my boys jumping on the couch or coffee table.  They do a decent job keeping their balls and wrestling matches in the basement.   I wonder if I could put something on that table.  You know.   Freshen up the space a little bit.  I thought about it and decided if I could find something that was cheap, tough and non-sentimental I would give it a go.

I bought the tray at Hobby Lobby and painted it yellow (cheap).  I bought the bird at Michaels (really cheap) and the plants (cheap).  I had the books and I only needed to buy one large pot to match the 2 smaller ones that I already had from IKEA (cheap).  Do you see a theme here?  I put it all together and I liked how it looked.

I am not emotionally attached to any of this stuff and short of the boys knocking the bird or the plants onto the carpet,  I can't see what they would do.   There is still plenty of room for TV remotes and feet on the table so they can't complain about that.  I like how it looks in the room and the only thing I have to remember to do is water those plants every few weeks. After 13+ years of bareness,  I will see how it does.

I Like Birds

That should be no secret.  We have 12 chickens and we love having them!  They are funny little animals with their own personality.  Yes, chickens are dumb but we have been surprised at what they learn.  Every time they hear the back door open and close they know we are bringing them something to eat.  As soon as we turn the corner towards their coop, they are right there waiting for us.  When we let them out of the coop to roam the yard they will oftentimes just follow us around waiting for us to give them something.

In addition to our lovely ladies, several years ago Scott and I put out some bird feeders and a bird bath.  We love to watch the wild birds year round.  Apparently our yard has become a popular place to hang out because we go through sunflower seeds like mad.  We have been buying them at IFA in bulk just to keep up.  But those birds are definitely fair weather friends.  If we aren't offering them food, they disappear.

Back in January,  I added to our bird feeder collection, and put up another one by our family room window full of thistle.  I had no takers for quite awhile.  But, within the past few weeks these amazing neon yellow finches have been coming around.  American Goldfinches, I have learned.   Hordes of them swoop in to eat and hang out in the yard daily.  They are beautiful and I love to watch them.

Here's to enjoying the simple things.

First Stake Dance

It's hard to believe that he is old enough to attend a stake dance.  Yikes.
Here is how the conversation went.

Taylor casually mentions "Mom, there is a stake dance tonight."
I casually respond "Are you going to go?"
Taylor: "No"    (translation: I'm thinking about it. It all depends on what my friends do)

For the next hour there is a flurry of text messages coming out of his phone.  This friend is going, this friend is not.  This friend is 60% sure he is going, this friend is 90% sure he is not.  And on and on.

Finally he decides he will go with some of his buddies.  It also helped that Scott mentioned to him that they usually have food at these kind of things.  (They have to get the boys to go somehow.)

Then he starts wondering what he should wear.  They are supposed to wear casual dress and he has no casual clothes.

The only thing that Taylor owns is sport clothing and one pair of church clothes.  That's it.  No collared shirts.  Nothing casual, just sporty.

He finally settles on a cotton Nike shirt and a pair of jeans that he has never worn.

And off he went.

The good news is that he had a good time and he said he would go again. Was there any dancing that happened.....well I just won't say.

My boy is growing up.

Checking last minute texts from his buddies