Duck, Duck, Duck. . .Goose!

I'm not sure who taught Jameson the "duck, duck, goose!" game, but one night as we were starting family prayer, all kneeling in a circle, Jameson popped up and touching each of our heads said "duck, duck, duck, goose!" as loud as he could and started running.  Yeah, not our most reverent family prayer ever.  I think he must have learned it from the neighborhood kids and he just couldn't help himself when he saw a bunch of people circled up.  What a character!.

Last Sunday at church Korinne noticed something on Jameson's leg.  When I pulled up his pant leg I gasped as I saw a huge blister 2 inches long and about an inch wide.  Thinking back to the morning the only thing I could come up with is that he had hit the girl's curling iron with his leg after climbing up on the bathroom counter while we were all in there getting ready.  I knew the curling iron was on so when he got up on the counter I went and unplugged it and put it in the other room.  What I didn't know was that he has already touched it with his leg crawling by.  Why didn't I know this? Because HE DIDN'T CRY or have any kind of reaction to the large 2nd degree burn he'd just received!! Hello!  Help a Mom out when you get burned by at least whimpering a little!  When we found it at church it was too late to put lavender on it or treat it and bandage it up properly.  The next day the blister came off with his rough play and he refused any bandages so it's red and raw and doesn't look great and I'm just hoping no one calls family services on us.  Even with the warm weather I've put him in pants all week to try and protect it a little when he is outside playing. Sorry, no picture of the wound.  I'm not one of those annoying Facebook moms that post super gross pictures for the world to see. You can thank me later.

Someone had a big birthday this week!

Adam is now 38 years old.  For his birthday we were planning to go out to dinner to celebrate, but then we got word that Britton's soccer team's end of year family party was the night of his birthday.  It was at a park and pizza was provided and everyone brought side dishes or desserts.  Adam decided it was fine to make that his celebration so we went and hung out with a bunch of parents we don't know very well.  Nothing says Happy Birthday like good old fashioned awkward conversation.  The boys all ate their food rather quickly and then headed out for a little pick up game of soccer.  When the sprinklers turned on they just kept right on playing.

As Britton jumped in the car in his wet clothes he declared it the best party ever.  We had every intention of going to Charlie's after the party for shakes (Adam's favorite) but there were sooooo many desserts at the party we decided to postpone it for another night.  A lot of Adam's celebration will end up happening sometime in the future when we have an open night.

 

The highlight of his birthday was probably his surprise present.  Adam has wanted an iPad for years, but there was always a reason why it wasn't a good time to get one.  We had mini tablets that worked ok for him so he just couldn't ever justify getting an iPad even though he really wanted one.  I decided that this was his year so I enlisted the help of some good friends with a lot more Apple knowledge than myself to help me find one for him.  Our neighbor Josh found a 3rd generation full size tablet on KSL.com in Lehi for a great deal and actually went down and got it for me on the same trip he went to Spanish Fork to pick up material for a deck he is building this summer! How cool is that?! Then Josh went a step further and got it all ready for Adam and since I paid for it with hat money from a separate account Adam had absolutely no idea it was coming.  When he opened the box he simply said, "What?? Really?" He was genuinely surprised. The kids were just as excited and wouldn't give him an inch of space to look at it.

 

Jameson thought it was for him. Boy, is he going to be disappointed.

 

Adam and Britton went on the father's and son's campout a week ago Friday night (I forgot to blog about it last week because they didn't take pictures) and Britton went on another campout with the scouts this last Friday night.  The scouts haven't had a lot of luck with rain.  They have been rained on the last 3 campouts.  This week the weather was gorgeous, but then out of nowhere the rain started coming down exactly at the appointed meeting time Friday afternoon as if on cue.  Good thing they are tough and take it all in stride.

Breakfast of Champions

This was the week the famous Wellsville Mile was run.  It was the 34th running of the mile and 1,300 4th and 5th graders from 9 elementary schools converged in Wellsville for the event. It was a perfect weather day for all of the young athletes, sunny and 51 degrees.  Not too hot, not too cold.  It felt warmer than low 50's to me so the sun was definitely out.   Jenna decided she wanted to beat her time from last year and worked really hard on all of their training runs at school.  On the day of the event I could see she was nervous and excited to go out there and have a good run.  Here she is with some friends before the race.

The girl on the left is Gracie, her best friend.  Gracie is the smallest girl in the class, Jenna is the tallest girl in the class.  They make quite the pair.

All of the 4th grade girls were divided into 3 heats which they qualified for on a training run at school.  The 1st heat is the slowest heat, the 2nd heat is the middle heat and the 3rd heat is the fastest heat.  Jenna was given the option of running in the 2nd or 3rd heat.  She decided to run in the 2nd heat.  Last year she ran in the 1st heat and finished her mile in 8:24.  Her goal was to beat her time and run under 8 minutes.

Lining up at the starting line

There were over 100 girls in her heat

Waiting for the gun.

The go around the block 2 times and when we saw the runners after their first lap I was quite surprised to see Jenna in 2nd place!  One of the high school cross country runners was pacing her.

I ran down to the finish line and waited for the runners to come into view.  Coming into the finish line Jenna was still in 2nd place!

She held on strong and finished in 2nd place with a time of 7:24, a full minute faster than last year!  She was absolutely thrilled with her time since she had worked so hard.  We watched the 3rd heat and saw that if she had run in that heat she would have done really well and finished in the top 20 or 25. She made a goal and achieved it and had a GREAT Wellsville Mile.  Just in case you are interested the winning boys time was 5:50 and the winning girls time was 6:20.  That's pretty fast. The girl who won the whole thing is in Jenna's class at school and was diagnosed with skin cancer just days before the race.  Her last day of school was Friday and her surgery is on Tuesday.  We are hoping that good news comes out of the surgery and she will be on her way to a full recovery. 

We got an invitation in the mail for the "Breakfast of Champions" for middle school students who achieved a 4.0 during the school year and their parents.  For the 6th graders it was at 8 a.m. on Thursday at the school. That morning I had just gotten home from a ride and still needed to get the girls off to school so Adam went with Britton on his way to work thinking it was just some cinnamon rolls and would be quick.  When he got there he realized that it was a little more formal than that.  The tables were full and they had speakers and program and then the cinnamon rolls.  They gave each of the students a box of Wheaties with their picture on it and a medal.

The Breakfast for the 7th graders started at 6:30 a.m. Yikes.  I guess we will have that to look forward to next year.

Yesterday was Britton's last soccer game of the season and since his team will be undergoing some changes next year it was his last game with this group of boys.  The game was in Bountiful and I thought it would nice if the entire family went to his last game to support him.  It was great in theory, but once we got there and the girls were grumpy and bored and Jameson didn't get his full nap and wasn't being very cooperative and it was super hot sitting in the sun we were second guessing ourselves. Fortunately a trip to Costco and a churro for every kid did wonders and they decided it wasn't such a bad day after all.

Jameson's new favorite thing is to take off his clothes and diaper and run around in the buff.  At home it is one thing but out in our cul-de-sac it is becoming quite a problem.  Oh, and sometimes his diapers are stinky when he takes them off. Fun stuff.  We already had a problem with keeping his shoes and socks on, but as you can see it is spiraling out of control.  Hey, the kid loves his freedom, we're just not sure what to do about it. Sorry, no picture for this paragraph. :-)

Our 13 year old next door neighbor was involved in an accident last week that will have permanent consequences.  He was with his friends and they decided to make a bomb with an empty CO2 cartridge and black powder.  He has always been a thrill seeker so it was no surprise to his mother that he was the one who volunteered to light it and throw it.  Unfortunately it exploded before it was away from his hand and he lost 2 fingers on his right hand from the knuckle up. The Doctors are hopeful they saved his thumb, but it isn't out of the woods yet.  They basically had to piece it back together and if it gets infected or is bumped too hard he will lose it. The night it happened Adam went up to the hospital at midnight to give him a blessing after he came out of surgery.  It has been devastating and I've felt so so sad for him.  I'm good friends with his mother and we've watched him grow up these last 5 1/2 years and the whole thing has really affected me.  There are lessons to be learned from this and I know a lot of kids have been affected, too.  Hopefully some future catastrophe will be averted because they will remember this experience and STOP before doing something stupid. His Mom's facebook post was simply, "The hardest thing about being a Mom is watching your child make a poor choice and knowing there is NOTHING you can do about the consequences." Well said.

Jenna Performance Week

May is always busy with games, recitals and special programs.  For Jenna everything violin related was scheduled for the same week.  She performed a LOT.  Both Wednesday and Thursday nights she performed at Kent Concert Hall with the Mountain West Strings as part of the Ambassador group. 

 

You can see Jenna right in the middle under the balloons.

Packing up her instrument at the end of the concert.

 Jenna has been taking Suzuki violin and piano for a few years.  Her teacher also has the students learning recorder to help with note reading and is giving them opportunities to accompany each other on the piano.  It's kind of a all around music school and Jenna loves it.  She had 2 recitals this week.  One was a very small group where you can hear your child perform on all instruments during their regular lesson time and the other was a big group recital on Saturday night.  Here is Jenna performing all 3 instruments.

She did a great job.  Korinne was also taking lessons up until April when she abruptly decided to stop because it was "so boring."  At the recital I looked to see if Korinne was missing her music lessons, but she was too busy playing in the hallway of the church to notice what was going on.  I guess that would be a no.  I still have hope that she will pick the violin back up when she gets to 4th grade and can take orchestra at the school.

Britton had 2 soccer games this week that required a substantial amount of traveling.  Adam went to his Wednesday night game which was at 6 p.m. in a location over 2 hours away.  Britton had to leave at 3 p.m. to get to the field an hour before the game starts (as per team rules) so when Adam called me at 8 p.m. on their way home he was hesitant to tell me that the game never happened because the refs didn't show up.  WHAT?!?!  I'm sorry, but when you take 6 hours out of your life for a soccer game on a school night you need to be allowed to actually PLAY THE GAME!  I was more than a little bothered by such a waste of time and gas, especially since I had to battle with Jameson at an orchestra concert up on campus by myself.  The second game was on Saturday and was at a location 2 1/2 hours away.  For the first time ever we just sent him with the team carpool and didn't attend.  Adam had been gone all week so being gone for an additional 8 hours on Saturday for a game was a little much.  Mostly we did it so Adam could make it to at least one of Jenna's recitals and because Britton was totally cool with it.

For Mother's Day Adam took me to dinner on Saturday night with some friends and we had a great time.  For two weeks I told the kids not to get me anything for Mother's Day because all I wanted was a clean house. Period.  As we left on our date Saturday night I reminded them about my one and only wish was to have the house cleaned up and I had hope that a miracle would happen and I would come home to a clean kitchen and family room. It was not to be. We returned to a VERY messy house and I ended up staying up until 11:30 p.m. cleaning (which for me is equivalent to 1 a.m.) and went to bed with a request to not be disturbed until I decided to leave my room.  Yes, I had a very grown up Mother's Day tantrum. I slept in as late as I could, took a bath, and hung out in my room until about 11:30 a.m. Best. Morning. Ever. Adam was the only one allowed in and he brought me a strawberry/granola/vanilla yogurt parfait and an orange Julius. Perfect.  He didn't have his usual meetings and we were all more than happy to have him home.

I received a great spice rack for Mother's Day and I loved it for 15 whole hours before Jameson dumped out half of the spices while I was in the shower.

Awesome.  It's a good thing he is so cute.

Woofems

The weather has been fabulous and we were outside and loving it this week.  Our new neighbors and  friends, Lacie and Dave invited a few families over for a BBQ and a fire pit this weekend. Wow. They are party planners with a capital P.  After a fabulous dinner we sat around the fire and made the obligatory s'mores for the kids. As that was wrapping up Lacie said, "Ok, I've got the woofem sticks if you want to get started on those".  Wait, woofems?  Is that even a word?  What IS a woofem?? They were genuinely surprised we had never heard of them, and I was genuinely surprised that they had. They pulled out a refrigerator can of large biscuits and brought out vanilla pudding, cherry pie filling and some cool whip.  Then they showed us how to wrap the biscuit as thin as you can around a special stick with a wooden cylinder at the end.  After roasting the biscuit until it is toasty and brown you take the wooden stick out of it and fill it with the pudding, pie filling and whip cream and wah-lah! You have yourself a fine woofem.

Biscuit on the stick ready to start roasting.



Adam roasting a woofem.

Ok, I'm not going to lie, they were delish.  I guess they are so good you "woof 'em" down. he he Yeah, I just go that.  Dave and Lacie have a great back yard so the kids were very entertained, so much so that this is what Jameson looked like by the time all was said and done.

What a mess!  I'm kind of surprised he got so dirty because he doesn't like to have his hands messy but I guess he got carried away in the partying spirit.

It was a pretty typical week except that Jenna did come home sick from school on Wednesday and didn't get completely better until Friday morning.  She missed her big SEM debate night that she spent the last few months preparing for.  SEM is the gifted and talented program at the school and the 5th graders do a debate but since she still had a fever and was feeling crappy she didn't make it to the SEM Evening of Excellence at the school.  She was disappointed, but what can you do?

Britton had a big spring on his braces break on Friday night.  It was bad enough that we had to call the ortho office and someone had to go to the office at 8:30 p.m. on a Friday night to fix it. Oops, sorry about that. Nothing like getting called for an emergency brace repair on a Friday night. Britton got his braces on in May of 2010 which means he has had them for 4 years. 4 YEARS! Can I just tell you how ready I am for him to get them off? Seriously, I've taken him to the ortho over 35 times--can he just be done already??  They tell me soon, but they have also been saying that for a year. 

I took Jameson to a park this week and he got such a kick out of the train tracks up high in the air a.k.a the monkey bars.

I guess they do look just like train tracks.  He sure was tickled, it made his day.