Pictures Please!

I know. I have TOTALLY fallen off the wagon. My last two posts were TEXT overload and slightly lame. Here are some photos to make up for lost time. Just a sneak peek as to what has been on our camera lately and the short version of the stories to go with them! Enjoy!

Conner's Stitches
Let's just say this is not his first set of stitches (although I can hope for it to be the last, right?). This child, I tell you! He is soooo stubborn and determined (Hmmm, can't imagine where he gets that from?)! So, he decided he needed to cut his own grapefruit. He watched me slice into mine and carefully cut away each section (just like Grandma used to do) and although I shared some of it with him and offered more, I guess he thought he needed his own. Shame on me for believing my son would actually listen to me when I said, "please do not try to do that-you better not be using a knife". About five seconds later, he rushes over to us holding a little pool of blood in his hands (at least he was being cautious about dripping all over). I ran his hands under water to find the wound and wrapped it tightly in a towel. Of course, this was all very chaotic with Conner screaming, "am I going to lose my finger?" and Steve frantically trying to decide if we should take him into the Insta-Care place. With no signs of the blood stopping, we decided to pile in the car and head there. Halfway there, the blood stopped flowing so we headed back home and slapped on a bandaid. Phew. Problem solved-right? Well, we went to my mom's for dinner and after we ate, the blood started flowing like a river again! No problem-now we've got MY mom to figure it out. "Let's just put the bandaid on tighter this time." This sounded like a logical solution. However, about twenty minutes later, I couldn't believe that dang finger started bleeding again. I finally took him into our doctor's "night light" clinic (we were the only ones there-thankfully) and we stitched that boy up! Two stitches and a few tears later, the blood has finally ceased! I really don't care to see any more of it for a long time-so hopefully, Conner, if you're listening? Hopefully you've learned your lesson!

Wall of Fame

So, my little brother turned thirteen this weekend. We headed to Blue Bunny to celebrate. They have this thing on the menu that appealed to Kirk and his clan of five friends. It is basically 21 scoops of ice-cream in a giant sundae bowl. If you finish the entire thing, you get to put your name on the Blue Bunny Wall of Fame (very prestigious). So, the boys picked the flavors and toppings (with a little coaxing from us) and we were told we could "sample" a little bit of it from the big pot. So, before the boys dug in, we all scooped out our shares of the ice cream and then let them have at it! I can't imagine what the melting pot of flavors must have tasted like there towards the end (not to mention all the saliva that was swapped) but the boys were determined! I think they probably set a record too. They had the ice cream devoured in no time. Thus, all of them are now proud owners of a strategic place on the Wall of Fame, and on top of that, it was a fun birthday party! Happy Birthday Bro!

Lewis' Art

Speaking of walls, these little jewels of Lewis' have been on display at school in the hallway. He really enjoys art and has for a long time. I love seeing what he comes up with and the little fun touches that he adds to things. I really need to do a whole post devoted to Lewis' art and some of his on-going projects. They really are something to see!

Award Winning Door

I had to take a picture of our award winning door! Our kindergarten class won a popcorn party because of this baby! You can never go wrong with hand prints and children's writing when something is to be judged-seriously. And, if you're wondering how I can come up with such a creative Red Ribbon Week Door decoration idea? Well I have four words: stolen from the internet. Yes, this is someone else's genius just brilliantly executed by the K kids at the last minute. I loved how it tied in with our new high frequency word we were learning, "LIKE"! Killing two birds with one stone is always good:)
 In case it is difficult to read:

100% Me!

I like you!

You like me!

Together we will stay Drug Free!

Keeping Warm in STYLE!

We are to the point now where Conner has a ton of clothes (thanks to Lewis' hand-me-downs) and poor Lewis has slim pickings. We used to get oodles of awesome clothes from my sister's boy, and they were always JUST the right size when we got them-but they moved! He still gets hand-me-downs from another cousin (who is only one month younger) but he somehow wears like two sizes bigger than Lew.?.?. This summer while I was shopping for deals on clothes for the boys, I kept remembering the giant storage container of hand-me-downs for Lewis and I kept myself from buying him much, thinking everything would fit. In fact, I did not buy him any pants. Well, we have gone through that container several times and only one pair can fit (barely)! We are still waiting for him to fit into some of those clothes. Anyway, I decided poor Lewis needed some stuff so I used some of my Old Navy bonus bucks and bought him some new duds. A few pairs of pants and this cute jacket with wool lining. He was thrilled. Conner-however was not! He had a complete come apart about not getting any "new" clothes. "Ummm, excuse me?" I said, I opened his drawer and pulled out THREE bran new pairs of pants (that I got on sale this summer-WITH his approval) that he REFUSES to wear! So, finally I came up with a plan. If Conner would wear the pants, I would buy him a cool jacket with wool on the inside too! Viola! Now everyone has clothes to wear and DON'T those kids look cute in their new jackets?

Alright. I am gonna have to stop there for tonight. I had a few more pics I wanted OFF my camera but I'll have to get to those sometime in the near future. But, at least I got a new post up! Woo HOO! I'll catch ya all later:)

The 50 Book Challenge!

The 50 Book Challenge!
I completely stole this entire post off of my friend's website. I have been looking for a great new year's resolution and I think this will be it. My life is SOOOO different than it was two years ago. Two years ago, I was a part of two book clubs and read all the time. Now the only reading I do is informational type reading for school or lame magazine reading for "vegging"! So, I am going to take this 50 book challenge and see how far I get! This information is available on the Shelfari website.
When asked about the new Amazon Kindle product, Steve Jobs CEO of Apple computer had this to say: “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”
Basically .... the challenge is to read 50 books in one year. Or...establish a goal for yourself it's up to you.

The books the Shelfari staff loved in 2007:
1. Harry Potter the final - 15 votes 2. The Kite Runner - 12 votes 3. A Thousand Splendid Suns - 11 votes 4. Twilight - 5 votes 4. The Thirteenth Tale - 5 votes

With 4 votes each:Water For Elephants, The Road, The Red Tent, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Middlesex, Eat, Pray, Love

With 3 votes each:Eclipse, My Sister's Keeper, Suite Francaise, Shadow of the Wind, The Lovely Bones, Jane Eyre, His Dark Materials (plus 3 honorable mentions), The Glass Castle, Girl With the Pearl Earring, Darkly Dreaming Dexter

With 2 votes each:19 Minutes, Black Swan Green, Dogs of Babel, Heart-Shaped Box, In the Woods, Into the Wild, Kafka on the Shore, On Chesil Beach, The Book Thief, The Memory Keepers Daughter, The Stolen Child, No Country for Old Men, Marley and Me, New Moon

This will SERIOUSLY be a challenge for me, but I am up for it! Happy Reading!!!

Favorite Five for the Week

Piano Lessons Finally!- We have been on the search for almost an entire year to find somebody to teach Lewis the piano. There has been nobody that lives on our side of town and that could make our crazy schedules work, until now! We are soooo stoked about the great teacher Lewis gets to learn piano from. She is the organist in our ward and taught lessons for a long time while her kids were growing up. She is an older lady with the most fun, awesome personality and she decided to pick up a few students to teach after work a few nights a week (she works full time and could only teach lessons at night-um PERFECT for us)! Anyway, it was so fun dropping Lewis off at her house the other night and watching him settle down to the piano with her. Of course, he was stoked to come home and show off his stuff. He is a natural and is picking up fast. I spoke with his teacher at church today to find out more about their frist session and she said she really enjoyed Lewis' company and that he ia a natural (I suspected):) She said a lot of kids have trouble with timing initially, but Lewis was great. He has already been working hard on the first half of his first book and I am looking forward to some Christmas entertainment this year. He is on fire!

Election Day!It was soooo much fun to share election day with our boys this year. Having them both be old enough to understand the process and make formative opinions was something I wasn't expecting but was pleasently surprised by. A brilliant teacher at our school (Lewis' teacher actually) set up a mock election for our students to participate in. She even registered the children to vote(she thought of every detail). She set up this bulletin board in our school that showed all the candidates, both local and national, and posted results of the election through our mock votes as well as the real deal so we could see the comparisons. She taught the children in her class about the candidates and their different platforms and encouraged the other teachers to do the same in their classrooms before the kids voted (I'll admit, we did not get far in kindergarten-we are still trying to figure out the difference between Mrs. Peterson and Mr. Peterson - I am still being called Mr. Peterson in this late date in the year). Anyway, through this mock election experience, the kids were able to learn all about the elephants and the donkeys (and what they stand for), how voting effects our country and most importantly that every vote counts! In our house, we were all unanimously McCain, but overall, Obama won the mock election at our school. It was fun to see the boys get passionate about "their" candidate and tell why they supported him. Lewis blew me away with his growing political mind. He is already surpassing me in knowledge and this scares me! I thought I had a few more years before he realized that really, I don't know much. Anyhow, we really had a fun election day this year, and although our first choice did not pan out, we still live in a great nation!

THURSDAY NIGHT- Usually, this is our busiest, craziest day. A couple weeks ago, I posted "a day in our lives" and it was a pretty busy Tuesday, but seriously, that day doesn't hold a candle to what our Thursdays are usually like! I think it is so funny that every thing gets scheduled for Thursday nights these days? I guess it is a good night for most families? Usually our Thursday involves needing to call in some extra help from friends and neighbors to make it all pan out-but this week was different! Steve usually has meetings on Thursdays leaving me to run ragged getting the kids to and fro. Everything seems to start at the same time and on opposite ends of town. Luckily, this night-Steve was home! He ended up droppping Lewis off at scouts and taking Conner to his football game. Leaving me to only have to pick Lewis up from scouts and take him to his football practice. THAT is do-able! We actually were able to eat dinner as a family around the dinner table! It was GREAT! I know this seems so lame, but for me, it was a nice change.

Primary Program- Our primary put on their annual sacrament meeting program today and it was such a good one! I have been the CTR 6 teacher for almost three years now (and I hope they keep me there forever. . .I LOVE IT) and I gotta say, this has been my favorite since I've been in the primary. The theme for this year, "I am a Child of God" was presented in such a cute, special way. The kids knew the songs really well too and I think that makes a difference. Their voices were just awesome! Lewis actually had a chance to give a talk in our program and I gotta say, he was very impressive! He spoke very clear and loud and even made EYE contact from time to time! Who taught him that? Actually, he has been surprising us a LOT lately with his little hidden talents. He was in charge of our Family Home Evening lesson this week and all we did was give him his scout book and showed him the page he was supposed to present to us. The lesson was on "Cooperation". He was a NATURAL at teaching the concept and THEN, he came up with a little game to go with it. He actually came up with little scenerios and we had to guess if it was an example of cooperation or not. Steve and I about died at how cute this lesson was and we were left scratching our heads as to how our son became this great little presenter/teacher?

DAY OFF- The best part of our week is that we have a three day weekend this week! So, more fun to be had tomorrow! Here's to a great week next week too:)