Our little nest

We had a bird make a nest in our wreath and I was worried about it since the door gets opened and shut so much, so I moved it. The little bird was determined and she built it again. This time I decided to leave it there. Its been fun having a little bird for a pet. John has not felt so happy about the bird....the bird has flown in twice when hes opened the door and then hes had to chase it out.

Today he decided to look at moving the nest but when he peaked inside look what he found!

They must have just hatched. Its hard to even tell how many there are. How fun that we have little chicks!

Mothers Day

What a great Mothers Day Ive had. Ive been SPOILED!

I woke up to my favorite breakfast and beautiful cards and a gift card to Home goods! My Dad bought me some plants for our yard and I'm so excited to have things filling in.

I got to get ready for the day all alone, and then when it was time to go to church I walked out to a bow on my car. John had snuck out last night and washed and detailed the inside. Then this morning he vacuumed the whole car out at 5:30 - with the whole vacuum in the car so we wouldn't hear it. He is so good to me!

Church was beautiful and then I took a loooong nap when we got home. I spent some time playing on the computer, and then had the BEST dinner ever! Homemade lemonade, flank steak, baked potatoes, green beans, and Key Lime Pie for dessert.

Other highlights of the day were chatting with Grandma Henderson, John detailing the boys (he cut all their finger and all their toenails), watching the 3rd period of the Kings game, and then them winning.

My house is clean and I haven't done a thing today! Seriously its been the best. The last couple years have been hard on Mothers Day. Part of it is not just that I miss my Mom, but there was also guilt about enjoying myself. I know it doesn't make much sense but it felt like enjoying Mothers Day somehow wasn't acknowledging the loss of my Mom.

Today I felt no guilt. It was just a wonderful day. Even in Relief Society when the lesson was on death and I thought a lot about her and her whole experience. I was touched and cried, but it was for joy. I am glad that I have come to this place.

I'm so lucky that John takes such good care of me and treats me so well and I feel so blessed that I get to be a Mother!

 

I'm one lucky Mama!

Sand dunes

My Dad is in town and tonight we had the Hickens up for dinner at last minute, and of course Mark brought some toys for the boys. They all went up the Sand dunes here at Sand Hallow while Elaine and I had a great chat with Maycie here at the house.

The boys had a blast and Caleb was able to drive a 4 wheeler for the first time all by himself. My Dad said Beckham liked it so much that when they got out to take a break he wouldn't let them take him out of his seat.

Spelling Bee

I'm so proud of Caleb for making it to the finals. I walked in and started crying. Seriously the pressure, the memories from Elementary school, my fears of spelling bees, and my desire for my boy to do good - all just overwhelmed me! He wasn't the first out and that was all I was hoping for.

So proud of you Caleb!

bună ziuam (zee-wa)

{This was my rough draft/outline for when I went to Caleb's school and talked about Romania. I decided to post it here for journaling purposes. No critical reading here. This was my notes}

That's how you say good afternoon in Romanian. Romania is a county far away that is between in between Europe and Russia. I lived in Romania 13 years ago for 3 months. 

Its just a little bit bigger than Utah but in Utah we have almost 3 million people and in Romania they have 21 million people.

This is what their flag looks like.

Their money looks really cool and I brought some that you can pass around and look at.

They speak Romanian which is what they call one of the Latin languages so it is kind of like Spanish and french. If you were a boy in Romania your name would be something like Narcis, Nicoli, or Florin and if you were a girl your name would likely be Roxana, Mariana, or Adriana.

Romania is a really poor country so the people don't have a lot of things...

·         How many of you have a car at your house. How many of you have 2 cars at your house?

In Romania very few people have cars.

They have trains that go all over their country. Instead of planes to go from city to city they ride trains. (picture) In the city though you travel on trams that run throughout the whole city and then you do a A LOT of walking! If you are really rich you can ride in a taxi but most people don't have that kind of money.

·         In Romania they have really little refrigerators, In fact they probably are about as tall as...pick a student. 

They buy fresh food almost every day. Bread especially. Every morning if we wanted bread for breakfast we had to go to our little corner store to buy it and by the next morning it would be as hard as rock. There are little corners stores everywhere so its not hard to get bread. They don't have stores like Walmart but just all sorts of little stores all over. 

·         They have piatsa

If you want fruit and vegetable you have to go to the piatsa. Its a big outdoor market where they have fruits and vegetables that the farmers bring into the towns. Its a lot like our farmers markets but its the only place to buy fruits and vegetables in Romania. The town I lived in had 3 so they are not as common as the little stores.

·         Most of the homes in Romania are very small apartments built right on top of each other.

How many of you have your own room? In Romania most of the kids have to share rooms with all of their bothers and sisters and often times the whole family shares 1 room.

·         The food in Romania was not my favorite kind of food. They eat a lot of cabbage, sauerkraut, and they pickle everything! 

Some of their traditional foods are polenta - which is cornmeal but its made to be runny and then you add a cheese and sauce to it that is like sour cream.

Sarmale is also a big meal and it's a cabbage roll that has meat, sauerkraut, and tomatoes in it. 

They also drink carbonated water. It's hard to find a water bottle filled with plain water in it because they like their water with bubbles. They never drink water out of their sink. They have to buy their water. That is one phrase I will never forget - Izvorule alb which meant water without bubbles.

Don't worry though if you don't like their food they do have McDonalds in Romania but it's really expensive there! Something interesting is when you get a meal here in America the fries are large and the drinks are large but in Romania they are all small. I don't even think they had large fries on their menus.

I was only there for 3 months so I didn't get to see it but I heard that in the summertime when you go the piatsa there is watermelons piled in mountains and that every watermelon is the best watermelon you will ever eat!

·         Who has heard of Transylvania? How about Dracula?

Romania is rumored to be where Dracula is from, the castle Bran. Guess what? I got to go there! It's just a rumor though there was no Dracula living there!

·         I'm dressed up as a Romania Gypsy because Romania has the largest population of gypsies in the world but they are not like gypsies in the movies you see. Most of the don't tell fortunes its just a different race of people. 

They like to live in separate colonies and they have a king they all work for. Its easy to see Gypsy's from far away though because they have a little bit of darker skin and wear really bright clothes! Romanians and Gypsies don't get along very well and don't like each other very much. When I was all by myself in Romania the Romanians were not very nice to me because they thought I was a gypsy. 

·         Even though the people live in not very nice houses, everywhere in Romania they have huge old churches!

They have churches that are hundreds of years old and they are so pretty! They even have big government buildings that are huge and pretty like this one here. Show book. That is very much what Romania is like. The government is very corrupt and run and by not good people. They build really pretty buildings for themselves while the people are left to be hungry and live in old broken homes.

·         How many of you have heard of communism? It's a type of government that collects all of the money and food then gives it back to everybody. Its suppose to make it so everyone has the same amount of things. The goal is that there is no rich but there also isn't any poor people either. The problem is that there are always corrupt people and it doesn't work out the way they say it will. 

Romania was one of the last communist countries to go to a democracy, which is like our country, and that only happened in 1989. That was only 22 years ago and so their government is still trying to learn how to work. I've heard its getting much better since I was there. When I was there communism had only fallen 10 years before and the people were still very poor, very suspicious, and very sad.

I have some pictures here that I bought off of an artist in the city because they reminded me of how the Romanian people looked - kind of sad. Not like how we smile when we take our pictures.

(If time tell the flower story)

So now I want to tell you about why I went to Romania. When the old communist government was in power they made it so people had to have a lot of babies but then they were so poor so they couldn't take care of their babies. This meant that there were a lot of kids that were getting abandoned on the streets. So they made orphanages for these children. In the town I lived in there were 13 orphanages for all these babies that didn't have a Mom, Dad, Aunt, Grandma to take care of them. I went over to try to help these babies for 3 months. 

Each day I would go to the orphanage in the morning and I would just hold, play, and rock the babies.

Cubs

Oh man. Today I felt old. Although old is not the right word because it has a negative connotation. This isn't negative, its just I'm seeing myself as we have become. We have hit a whole new stage of life. Gone are the days when I wondered if I would ever leave the house and have a reason to shower again....now are the days of half a tank of gas in a day!

I look around in Church during the 2nd and 3rd hour when my kids have gone to Primary and Nursery, and I see young Moms caring for babies and chasing toddlers. That not me anymore. Its weird to see another generation take my place and see myself move into the next stage.

Caleb got to play in his first machine pitch game tonight and he just looked so..... big.

They play positions, he knows the rules, they actually catch and throw the ball, he was decked out in catchers gear for heavens sakes! He swings and it looks...well like its suppose to!

He did great! He hit all 3 times he got up to bat.

Hes a fast little guy and made it all the way around the bases.

He really liked playing shortstop.

And he did great at catching.

Beckham didn't want to miss out on the action.

Good night these boys are so good looking! He also went searching for bugs under first base!

We came home and practiced hitting and he really got his swing down. He was smacking them way over my head! Then we played catch and we had such a great time. Hes just as good as I am and he has a really good arm.

Surprisingly I think I like being a baseball Mom more than a Soccer Mom.

Spelling Bee Finals

Caleb made it into the 2nd grade spelling bee finals. Only 4 from each class get to go. I'm so proud of him because he certainly doesn't get it from me, as you all are well aware! Luckily Grandma Silly and his Daddy both are good spellers. As I was beaming with pride over his spelling abilities I pulled this out of his folder and was reminding that there is still a lot of his Mama in him :)

Camping in Kolob!

We took our trailer out for the first time and it was great... well at least after John went back to get the key! Trailers from the 60's don't have keys, so it didn't even occur to us to grab it. Whoops! Good thing we weren't to far away!
 

We went with our good friends the Brinkerhoffs who were testing out their new trailer too! Foil dinners and a s'more bar - YUM!

Becks and I headed to bed a little earlier than the other boys who were fishing for crawdads.

They did some fishing the next day, but it was too windy to catch a whole lot. It was pretty cold. They boys were running all over but us wimpy adults just sat around the fire.

It was a good maiden voyage. There were a lot of things I need to add to the trailer. We are headed back up to Kolob in a couple of weeks and I'm hoping it will be 10 degrees warmer and the trees will have bloomed :)

Redsox

Davis started T-ball and is having a lot of fun!

We have been doing a lot of practicing and he is getting better each time. Last game he had 2 great hits on the first pitch each time. I'm really proud of him!

Calebs arm update

Caleb got his cast off last week. His arm was a mess! It was peeling and scabby. I would scratch it while washing it and he would roll his eyes back in his head and purr it felt so good. It was super funny. He is in a sling for another week but then he should be able to play soccer and baseball finally!

 

His skin had begun to grow over the pin and so it wasn't real fun to get out. They made me wait in the waiting room since I had the other boys with me. He was a champ. It healing good. I didn't realize they had cut his arm down when they put the pin in. He will have a pretty tough looking scar!