Answers to Prayers

So, I've mostly just written about our fun times and haven't really touched on issues I have. Well there's always a first time for everything. (WARNING: the following might be too much information, read at your own risk.)
I taught the Relief Society lesson yesterday. I decided to teach on Malachi 3:10--"prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. I based it on using the scientific method--which steps include observervation, hypothesis, experiment, analysis, and conclusion. I tried to have the sisters in our ward see that as we follow what the Lord wants us to do, he will pour out blessings for our obedience and we can progress toward our goal so much easier. One example we discussed was paying off debts and the Lord opening up avenues to have more money come into the budget to help pay off those debts.
Of course my personal example was the current struggles that I am having with Tom and Charlie. As you know, they are very active, fun loving young boys. I love that about them, but I struggle that they don't want to listen to me specifically. I made a personal observation that something needed to change with their behavior and I needed to be the person to help facilitate that change. I hypothesized that if would re-focus myself through scripture study, prayer, family home evening, etc; then God will help me to understand what I needed to do to help them change their behavior for the better. I am experimenting with different things that I can do. I have studied in my scriptures what makes goodly parents, I have prayed for help and strength to help my boys, we have recommitted to having family home evening, and I have decided to adjust my work schedule so that I can spend time with my boys and give them their attention that they deserve. I am not to the analysis part, but I think that these changes are helping, but I know that my conclusion will be that as I rely on the Lord for my guidance, he will open the windows and pour out blessings that I will know how to help my (sometimes out of control) boys.
I have already seen that they Lord is answering my prayers. Just this afternoon, one of the sisters in my ward called to have the boys come to play. I love these sisters in my ward and I am so glad that Heavenly Father can use them as tools in my life. I know that Heavenly Father answers prayers and I know that he will continue to help me help Tom and Charlie.
I'll let you know how this experiment is going and the analysis of all of our efforts.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Ours will soon be growing in Amanda's backyard. Thanks to her and some help we are preparing a little 16x30 foot plot to grow our favorite things. We were going to get the ground ready for planting yesterday, but instead Emily and I ended up deciding to increase the garden by two swipes of the till. Little did we know how much work that would make for us.
We tilled for ever to get some more space in our garden. So now we have very sore arms and backs. I wish we would have gotten pictures of us to post--it was very funny to see us pushing and pulling this huge machine around the dirt.
We did map out the garden for the most part. We have included: tomatoes, peppers, squash, zucchini, carrots, cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe, raspberries, and pumpkins. We'll see how well we do. We'll keep updating with pictures as the garden grows. Were planting on Tuesday--pictures then.

Shoe Dilemma

Notice the above outfit that Charlie put together to go out side and play. I'm not so worried about the t-shirt and short combo as much as I am the Cowboy boots. (Just an FYI: he is not wear socks under the boots either.) The reason he is wearing these boots is because he couldn't find his tennis shoes. I looked for two days and I couldn't find where he put them.

After some nasty blisters on his ankles from the absence of socks, I decided we'd have to buy him a new pair of shoes. We went shopping last weekend originally to find Brian some new shoes, but Tom and Charlie ended up getting these cool new shoes. We found them for $10 a piece and had to get them.

These are Charlie's, Tom's shoes didn't get a picturen taken. They really love them and truly believe that they make them run faster. Tom's look just like this, but are yellow instead of green. I think Chuck even asked if he could wear them to bed too. (This uni-red outfit was his pajamas. He didn't go to the store looking like that. He got changed into his jammies and then put the shoes back on.) With the shoe obsession that the boys have they are definitely part of this family. We love shoes here.

Fishy Update

So, our first round of swimming lessons ended last Thursday. If you click on this picture to make it really big, you still can't see where the boys are, but this is the best one I could get. They have these little platforms that the put in the water and then the children can stand on them and have the water be not so deep. I think that it might be one of the smartest things.

In this picture, Tom's class is the yellow platform that's in the front and Charlie's is the third one.

Charlie wanted nothing to do when swimming lessons started. It took Brian coming to his lesson and threaten him before he would stay in the pool and participate with the rest of the class. Because he is stubborn and a late bloomer, he is now retaking level 1. I hope that this time he does what he's supposed to and can move on. He is a goofy child.

Thomas really surprised me at his excitement to swim each lesson. He really learned a lot from the 5 weeks that he took lessons. He really liked his teacher. You can see him in the first picture. He's the one with all the curly hair. Tom's now in level 3 and doing great, yesterday he jumped right in and swam all around (they don't use a platform in his class.)

Charlie's 4th Birthday

Yesterday was Charlie's 4th birthday. It's hard to believe that my sweet smiley Charlie is a big boy now.
His birthday was all about him. He got so many calls to wish him happy birthday and he loved every minute of it. He got to spend the morning with his Gram. They played so many board games and then he got to play MLB on Uncle Dan's Playstation. He got to eat treats and then after we picked up Tom from school he chose to eat a happy meal for lunch.

For his real birthday treat he picked dinner at Applebee's and then a trip to the Nickel-Cade.

He was so excited when he went in he kept running around to all the video games, not sure of what he wanted to play first. He picked a gun game first. Here are pictures of the kids playing the games. It was a fun evening and we only spent $9.50 to get us all in and we used $4.00 of nickels to play all the games we could handle. So fun!

Here's Tom playing a racing game. A favorite for sure.

This is Charlie playing a fighter jet game. Tom played it first and kept picking the training round to play rather than a real game. That lost his interest really fast.

Here's Brianna showing Chuck how to play the boxing game. (She really didn't want to have her picture taken.)

This is Brianna and Charles playing a Big Rig game. Charlie was so interested in this game that he even went and sat on the bench seat with some strange guy while he was playing. Chuck is not afraid of strangers or overstepping his boundries.

Some of the games gave out tickets that you could collect and turn in for a prize. After all of our playing, the five of us collected 23 tickets. The boys (well Charlie was still really pumped up about all the games that he couldn't focus long enough) went to the counter to pick a prize and of course they wanted the one that was 250 tickets. I kept telling Tom that he could only pick from the 5 buckets in front. He was really dissapointed, and really wanted the Spider Man. The girl working there took pitty on him and gave him the 250 ticket blow-up Spider Man.

Here's Brianna, in charge of inflating our new toy.

The boys can hardly wait for her to finish so they can play with it on our way home.

When we got home we sang to Charlie and then ate cupcakes with super hero rings.

Tom picked one that had red frosting and it looked like he was wearing lipstick. Such a cheese for the camera.

Here's Charlie with his new Spider Man friend. He hasn't put it down since we got him and even asked if he could sleep with him last night. This might have been the BEST birthday EVER.

Easter Parade

We had a wonderful Easter. Gram and Opa brought the Easter treats on Saturday evening. They had candies for Brian and I, a new journal and pen set for Brianna, a new transformer and movie for Thomas and Charles. They loved those surprises.
Sunday morning, the Easter Bunny brought new Sunday shirts for the boys, and a couple of cute striped shirts for Brianna. Everyone got a new movie: Everafter (Brianna,) Over the Hedge (Tom,) and Madagascar 2 ( Charlie.) The boys also got new books and Matchbox airplanes. He also left a ton of candy for everyone.


Here are the kids after our Easter service. They were so good to wait for us to take pictures after church. They also look really cute in their Easter outfits.
Here's Brian and I looking fat-n-happy. I thought we should have our picture taken because it's never just us.

Thomas and Charlie wanted to do a funny face picture too, so here's them in all their funny glory.

When we were taking our Easter pictures, our across the street neighbors were having an Easter surprise as well. If you look really hard, you'll find an Easter goat. I had no idea that's how some celebrate Easter. To each his own.

Another Easter treat was a candy surprise from Charlie's primary teacher. He showed up in sacrament meeting with a ring pop in his mouth. Yikes! He had blue sucker all over. Brian had Brianna clean him up before the meeting started. When we got home, he hadn't finished his treat, so he wanted to finish it before he laid down for a nap. When he woke up this was the face that greeted us.

Happy Easter!

"Egg"-celent Easter Eggs

Tonight we did one of my favorite parts about Easter, we dyed Easter eggs. The boys were so excited and kept asking about when we would color the eggs. It was so fun, they loved to make them deep colors, but Charlie didn't like to leave them in long enough for them to be as dark as he wanted.


Here's our final result. I told them to put their faces down by the eggs and they literally did just that. They are funny boys...they must get it from their dad.

Speaking of their dad, he provided the music for our dying pleasure. I'm sure he doesn't want me to share this picture, but we needed to see his face during our egg coloring adventure.
It was a really good time.