C's 9th Birthday

We just had C's party Tuesday night. It turned out to be a lot of fun and a lot of craziness. We invited 8 boys over to our house to celebrate. We had a western party full of fun. We started out the night with a cow pie flinging contest. I bought little nut cups and meant to have the boys slingshot the pudding (cow pie) onto the fence. The slingshot didn't work too great so we had them throw it at the target. One of the boys said, "wow, you're the nicest mom ever. My mom never lets us throw pudding at the fence."
Then we moved onto the cow pie eating contest. Anything with "cow pie" in it made the boys laugh. I knew it would.


Next was the gold rush. We buried a bunch of gold coins in the sand box for them to dig out. This got a little wild as the boys are pretty competitive.
Next we pulled out the squirt guns. See the profiles made out of tissue paper taped up around the house and on the fence....we had each boy line up in front of their guy and they had to shoot him with the squirt gun until their guy was dead. I meant for them to just shoot a hole in them, but they ended up soaking them until they fell off the fence. Then we did the classic pinata. We had a cowboy hat pinata. You can see it in the picture below. I didn't get too many pictures of the pinata since it made me nervous having that many boys and a bat. So my hands were busy keeping the boys back from the swinging bat.
We opened presents and had cake and ice cream. The cake turned out pretty fun. Connor decided he wanted a rattlesnake - so I looked online at a picture of a rattlesnake and this is what we came up with.
We still had quite a bit of time before the parents were going to be coming so we went to the front yard and played flies-up with the football. The boys love that game. It got a little violent, but only a few tears were actually shed. Most of the boys were pretty tough and able to put up with quite a bit of abuse as they got pushed and shoved and hit with the ball.
We took pictures of all the boys to send with a thank you card. It was a lot of fun overall. Every year I keep saying that I won't do a friend party since people in our neighborhood don't do friend parties every year, but I just LOVE parties and when the time comes closer to do the party, I can't help but do it. It is so much fun for me to watch the kids having so much fun with all their friends.

Summer Update

As far as summer life goes, we've been going to Lagoon about 3 times a week. Then we come home and either run through the sprinkler or the kids go to friends houses that have swimming pools. It's a tough life. :)
We had a great fathers day. The kids were all SO excited to give dad his presents! We bought dad some new clothes and a hat to wear while working outside/going to Lagoon. We had actually gone to Lagoon the day before so we pulled the hat out early so he could wear it. Sunday, J really wanted to give Dad his hat for Fathers Day - so he went running upstairs and said, Dad, where's your hat. Then he brought it downstairs and with the help of E and C, wrapped it. He still expected Dad to be incredibly excited when he opened his present.

C has pulled out his BB gun and has been target shooting. He thinks it's awesome. I'm still a little leary, but we haven't had any accidents so far. A really wants to get in on the action, but we will probably wait another year or so. He has a little more aggression in him then C does. :)















E is still dancing up a storm. She is always changing into her old costumes and coming up with her own dances. She will be doing a solo dance this next year. Dad looks at it and all he sees are $$$. I can't even wait! It is a little expensive, but we probably won't ever do it again. She's at a great point for doing a solo - her technique is really good, she has learned some fun tricks (she can do her round off - double back handspring now), and she is incredibly cute. It's good to do the solo thing before they get to that awkward teenage stage where they get self conscious.

J is just being his cute little troublesome self. :) He LOVES entertaining everyone. If anyone laughs at him, he is in HEAVEN! His favorite ride at Lagoon so far is Bulgy the Whale. It is just a simple ride where he goes up and down and around in a circle while you sit in a little whale. J gets on that thing and puts his arms high in the air and screams. It is SO funny! I keep trying to remember to take the video camera to Lagoon and record him doing it. All the other kids on the ride just look at him and he is in his own little world.
And he is fascinated with umbrellas right now. He thinks we need to have an umbrella with us where ever we go - Lagoon, the grocery store, the library, inside our house....where ever! He's fairly certain that we will get rained on so we totally need this.

Dad and I are great. We've become ultra careful about sunscreen and wearing hats and sunglasses outside. I went to the eye dr and he said I have buildup on the whites of my eyes from sun damage. There's nothing you can do to fix it, you can just prevent further damage by wearing really good sunglasses. So I invested in a good pair of sunglasses with ultimate UV protection. Then I went to the dermatologist to get a little growth removed from my forehead- it came back with atypical cells. Which really doesn't mean anything but watch that spot to make sure that it doesn't come back. Atypical cells sometimes lead to skin cancer - not always. It is one of the stages before skin cancer, but it could also lead to nothing. So I bought myself a large brimmed hat for being outside. So now I definitely look the "mom" part when I go to Lagoon. Big sunglasses, large hat, pushing a stroller, and rounding up lots of kids (we take two neighbor kids with us when we go so I have 6). I guess it's finally time that I just admit it - yes I am old - and yes, I'm past the point of having to be stylish, I just want to be healthy - big hat, sunglasses and all. :)

Awesome summer learning game

We came across this game to help the kids remember their multiplication throughout the summer months. It is called Timez Attack and is a really cool video game style learning game. My kids spent a good 1 1/2 this morning working on times tables. Usually it is 10-15 minutes and a lot of whining. :)
If you go to www.bigbrainz.com then go to the bottom of the page you can see the place to download it for free. It helps to click on How to Play on the website - then you can see how the game works, what is supposed to happen, and how it reinforces what has been learned as well as the new items being learned. I think it will be a huge help to us this summer. You can purchase the game to get additional things added, but the free game takes you through the times tables 2-12.
Awesome! Awesome! Awesome!

Just wanted a post a few things that have happened recently.

Just wanted a post a few things that have happened recently. I've debated posting these because I keep thinking that they are things I just want to forget, but on the other hand, I really don't think I will ever forget the feelings of these two incidents.
Anyway - Incident #1
About 1 1/2 weeks ago on Sunday I was at welfare meeting at the church and Dad was home with the kids. He was reading stories to C, E, and A while J was playing Lego's on the floor. I got home and dad asked me where J was. I didn't know and neither did he. We looked all around the house with no luck. I started calling his friend's house's with no luck. We checked the garage and his bike and scooter were both there so we knew he was on foot. Dad took off on his bike one way and C took off on his bike the other way. I left E and A here to man the phone and I went up and down our street trying to think of where he would go. I checked a few neighbors houses and ended up being by the creek. I couldn't even bring myself to go look by the creek so I didn't. I went back home and tried to think rationally about where he could be. C was home again so I sent him to the church to look there. He rode his bike around the outside and walked the halls inside with no luck. I thought about how they say that lost kids usually fell asleep in some random place in the house - so I started checking under all the beds, in all the cabinets, everywhere I could think of - all with no luck. I went back outside and a bunch of neighbors were out helping us look and call his name. I was really starting to get worried. One of my neighbors suggested that he had been missing long enough that we should probably call the police. I lost it. I totally started to cry. I hated to admit that this was out of my control. I decided before I called the police I would call Dad. Luckily Dad had just found him. He had walked down to go to church all by himself. He got there and couldn't find anyone so he went into sacrament meeting of the earlier ward and was wandering the aisles. Some lady noticed that he wasn't from their ward and held him on her lap during sacrament meeting. After it was over she took J up to their bishop to see if he knew who this little guy was. They asked him what his name was and he said J. They asked him his mommy's name and he said P. Then they asked him his last name and he said "Jamsontoast" (his nickname). :) They didn't know me, but luckily my friend from that ward was interested in finding out who this little boy was and walked up to ask them. He said his name and my name again and she asked him Are you a [last name]? He said yes. Then she knew who to call to get him home again. It was a very scary experience. I've never had a child go missing for that long before. When he was home again I wasn't sure if I wanted to hug him or beat him!

Now for incident #2 - the sad thing is that it involved the same child!
Yesterday I took the kids to the store. We got out of the van and needed to cross the parking lot. The kids started to walk past the back of the van when an SUV came zooming down the parking aisle. I put my arms out to keep the kids from crossing the street while this SUV zoomed by. It was a little irritating that they were going so fast and not even watching for people, but not a big deal.
The SUV got to the end of the parking aisle so I put my arms down and started walking across the parking aisle. I looked back to see where the kids were when I saw this same SUV with it's reverse lights on flying back towards us. J was right in the path of the SUV. I screamed a blood-curdling scream like I have never ever screamed before. I was only a step away from J so somehow I was able to position my leg behind him (mind you - all this happened in a few seconds) and the driver luckily reacted to my screaming and stopped his SUV. Even just typing this up makes me cry again. Anyway, the SUV stopped just as it hit J with the back bumper. I have this image permanently in my mind of J with his little hands on the brake lights of the SUV, falling back into my legs. He never hit the ground - he was facing the back of the SUV so when the bumper hit his waist it made him bend and he hit into my leg as I swooped him up into my arms.
I had so much adrenaline running through my body and I was totally in shock I didn't really think about what I did next, but I was holding J in my arms and walked up to the passenger window of the SUV. I looked at the driver and just slowly waved at him probably with an expressionless face. :) He put his SUV in drive again and took off. I couldn't even think what to do next so I walked over to the curb and just sat on the curb and cried for a minute thanking my Heavenly Father for protecting my little guy. C said, "Wow, J almost died!" I checked J over and he was totally fine. He wasn't even scared or anything. I gathered up all the kids and went into the store. My legs were shaky and my whole body just felt weak. A worker in the store asked me what that scream was - I told her it was me and that my son almost got ran over. I don't remember what she said, but I was surprised that they heard my scream from inside the store. I really think that my scream was the only thing that made that driver stop his car. It seems so long writing this out, but it really all happened in a matter of a couple of minutes.
I'm just grateful that Heavenly Father is watching out for me and my children. Little J has put me through things that I've never dealt with before. You'd think with the 4th kid it would all be old hat by now, but I'm still learning and experiencing new things every day with these kids. They keep me on my toes!