Happy Thoughts from the Past Week

Happy Thoughts from the Past Week:

• my little boy is safely home and was only chased by one grizzly bear (imagine the teacher standing between the kids and the bear with bear spray in hand, shouting to the kids to sing louder to scare the bear away). "Don't worry 'bout a thing, 'cause every little thing is gonna be all right!" Micah said he sang the very loudest.
• darling little polka-dotted dancer
• black feathers floating around the halls of the high school
• the kids arguing about whether the house belongs to me or James. Why is this open for discussion? The house belongs to me. The boat belongs to James.
• The jump-roping master (see twins' blog)
• baby burp cloths and receiving blankets
• it's finally hot! I hope it lasts!
• soccer, baseball, soccer, baseball, soccer, baseball, soccer, baseball
• a soccer shed moving slowly through town
• green Lander Valley Tigers paint
• Cameron received his last required merit badge for Eagle
• Cameron lost his soccer game Thursday night. That's not why this is a happy thought. He and Kamden were subbing out and the other team, who had lost a lot of their players to a North Elementary band concert, asked if our team would give up a couple players for them. Since they were already out, our coach asked Cameron & Kamden if they wanted to play for the other team (they both said no). Janet, the ref, asked the coach, "why would you give up your good players?" There was a time when Cameron had no interest in sports. It is nice to hear him described as one of our "good players," not because being good at sports is so important, but because he decided he had an interest in soccer and it's nice to see him excelling at it. That is one good thing about Micah not being there -- he tends to dominate the show when he's there and most of the other players just stand back and let him do all the work (including Cameron, although he is consistently good at defending the goal), but with Micah gone all week all of the players had to try harder. We lost pretty bad, though. I think the score was 5 to 2. That was the first thing Micah asked when he got off the bus, "did we win our soccer games?" Nope, we lost them both. It's a good thing, though, because this team had not won a game yet and it's pretty sad to go the whole season without winning any games. We beat them once and tied them once. So we're completely even now.
• yellow and black chicks
• we have water storage (the Lander water treatment plant was shut down yesterday due to problems)
• finally getting use out of a big red Christmas present
• summer clothes (I will probably regret that, but the kids are all excited)
• Teancum made me a Mother's Day poster that I just barely remembered to open. It has a silouette of him on one side and a letter on the other side. "The important thing about you is that you work for money. You do dishes and laundry. You always stay with me. I love you so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so (this goes on for a while) much. But the important thing about you is that you work for money. X O X O X O X O X O Love Teancum Whiting." I asked Teancum what made him think I work for money. I work at James' office, but don't get a salary. He said that I clean the house and must get paid a lot for that because I always have money to pay him allowance. Jamey set him straight by saying that Daddy works for money and then I just spend it all. I happened to be in the classroom when the kids were writing these letters for their moms and I sat by a seven-year-old boy who couldn't think about a single thing he loved about his mom. I kept making suggestions (I know his mom), but he kept saying, "nope." Apparently she does nothing for him, isn't pretty, doesn't work hard, etc. I felt very sad for his mom. He finally ended up writing that he loved his mom because she took him to Disneyland and she drives him to school (because I told him he couldn't move from his seat until he finally wrote SOMETHING on his paper). So I was pretty excited about what Teancum wrote. At least he could think of something....
• James is in the Young Men's organization once again. This time he's the 2nd counselor, assistant scout master, deacon's quorum advisor. He's excited. He'll be working with Cameron and Micah, and then the twins. During the nearly 6 years that we've lived here, James has been in Young Men's for all but 6 months of it. He enjoys it, so I'm glad he gets to serve there again. And I won't have to pick up Cameron & Micah from mutual anymore.

Classic Quotes from the Past Week:

• Rebecca: "Mommy, I just looked in the mirror and I look FABULOUS!"
• Rebecca: "I sort of sound like Sharpay when I talk." We had a little discussion about how it might not be the best thing to sound like Sharpay, and Rebecca said, "I want to be like Sharpay because she is in charge of her whole family and they do whatever she says." I told her that is not a good thing because Sharpay is not very nice to people. Rebecca said, "yes she is, she's nice to Troy Bolton!"
• Rebecca: "Mom, we need to wash our feet." "Why?" "Because didn't you see the picture of when Jesus washed peoples' feet? But we shouldn't do it on Sunday!"
• Teancum: "Mom, do girls have hairy feet?" "No, why?" "Well, boys have hairy feet." "What boy did you see with hairy feet?" After explaining a bit, I realized he was talking about the old movie "Some Like it Hot" (black and white, I think it has Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon in it). "I saw them shave the hair off their legs" (when they were pretending to be women). I explained that men have hair on their legs, and that women would too if they didn't shave their legs. He was TOTALLY grossed out!
• Teancum: We made fruit bouquets at Enrichment Night. I brought mine home and it was gone within 2 minutes. As Teancum was scarfing down the watermelon, strawberries, grapes, and cantaloupe, he mentioned, "next time order chocolate."
• Teancum: The boys were teasing Teancum that he couldn't say a sentence with five words in it. He said, "yes I can! I LOVE OLIVIA." They said, "that is only three words." He thought for a minute and then said, "I LOVE OLIVIA'S SWEET LIPS." I told Olivia's parents about this and they just laughed, but maybe they better keep Olivia locked away for a while...
• Teancum: "Which body part are you going to move this time?" (to Rebecca, before her dance recital)
• Rebecca: "Mommy, smell my feet." "Why?" "Because I was wearing tights and I think my feet are stinky now. Wait, let me smell your feet." "How do they smell?" "Yours smell stinky too." Lovely.

Cameron received his Emergency Preparedness merit badge. Now he's all set to get his Eagle once his project is completed!

The traveling shed

I got to be in Teancum's classroom for their Going-away party for the chicks. The first graders get to have baby chicks each year. They keep the eggs in an incubator and get to watch the chicks hatch. Then they get to take care of them until it's time to give them away. Mrs. Faerber gave each of the kids a little chocolate egg and a little pretend chick to take home with them. They each got to read their stories about the chicks to the kindergarteners and hold the chicks one last time.

He's home!