Day Camp!! Aug 20th

Today Dwayne and I experienced Day Camp for the first time. We are the Cub masters for our ward, well stake really. Last year our stake combined all the packs together and it really was a great choice. It makes things much easier! Anyway, not only was it our first year at day camp but it was Mason's as well. He and all the other boys sure had fun. They did BB shooting, archery, canoeing, swimming, crafts (manly crafts of course) and hiking. But the high light of the day was the Hakka that the boys learned. They loved all the yelling and stomping. Mason is still singing it tonight. Dwayne and I were in charge of the neckerchief station. The theme this year was Castaways of the 'Cub'arrian, so we had the boys make their personalized Jolly Rogers. I can't believe how creative those boys were! So now Dwayne and I are EXHAUSTED!! We were up at 5:00am and didn't get back until 4:00pm. I'm glad we only do this once a year! Boys in the picture below are Mason, Bryce, Sam, Jadin, Dallon, Tim, Jake and Wyatt.

Parents, educate your children please!

My children have been laughing non stop for 2 days while watching Muppett Show clips on YouTube. As a matter of fact they were late for school this morning.
so, today in class I showed my students the Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody, they sooo didn't get it.
Come on mom and dad educate your kids please!
Turn off the blood and gore and turn on the Muppets!
Turn off Justin crapper and turn on Queen!

Taco Bell sauce..a cautionary tale

The following is a conversation I had with 3 year old Kwynn this morning
Mom,guess what?
What?
Last night when I went to bed, I had a squishy thing with me. (a Taco Bell packet that I keep in food storage)
Really
Ah huh. I had it in my mouth so Daddy couldn't see it. I was sneeky.
So Daddy didn't know you took it to bed huh.
Yup but then I bit it and Mommy it was all in my mouth and it was hot! Hot hot hot!
So what did you do?
I spit it on my pillow and ran and told Daddy. He told be to get a dwink. And I couldn't have pink pillow anymore. I was so sad and my mouth was hot.
So are you going to sneek things into bed anymore?
NO WAY! And squishy things eiver. They are very bad.

So the lesson of the story little children is this. Taco Bell packets are not to be played with. Please use them with caution. If you don't, you might not get to sleep with your favorite pink pillow at night. I do think it's funny that she tried the 'hide things from dad' game with Dwayne when I wasn't there. Denyce and I were at standards night at the church.

12 yrs old

Today in church Mason leans over and asks "Why is Porter passing the sacrement?" Porter is our friends oldest son and he was ordained a deacon 2 weeks ago. I Told Mason that Porter was a deacon now and he had the priesthood so he could pass the sacrament. He of course asked me when he could get the priesthood. On paper I lined out the different ages and offices of the priesthood. For High Priest I wrote "old" next to it and he turned to me and asked "Dad are you a High Priest?" :( So, I wrote :)
The best part of the lesson for him was when he found out that girls don't have the priesthood. He smiled really big, because at 8 yrs old, "Boys rule and girls drool."

Needless to say, Mason has a new check mark on his life list.
8 - baptism
12 - deacon
19 - mission
Then College and Marriage.
(His List)

Happy Anniversary

I don't know if you knw this, but I have been married to an awesome woman for the last 14 years. It hasn't always been easy, but it has a been interesting. She always lights up a room with a beautiful smile and an infectious personality. It was actually her smile that I first fell in love with. I love her more and more every year.
Kreslie, 14 yrs, 6 kids, and several animals later and we are still here. Love you!

Come on ref!

This is Dwayne (I don't want to tred on Kreslie's name)

Denyce bought me a "bad call brick" recently. It's a foam block covered in Denver Broncos fabric and you are supposed to throw it at the TV when you think the refs have made a bad call. Mason saw it and asked what it was so I told him. Laughing only the way Mason can he says, "Bad Call Brick, thats funny!" He then picks it up and throws it at our flat screen. (I'm gasping in terror right now!) It bounces off, hits the ground and he says, "Well, it works." and then bounces out of the room.
For all the guys reading this, the TV is fine. And I have hid the brick.

You did WHAT!!!

Oh the surprising things you learn at church. When church ends and we are on our way home, Dwayne and I find it a good time to find out what the kids learned that day. You know when it's fresh in their minds. Never mind that we usually get the reply of "I don't know" and the ever amusing "I don't remember." Anyway on this particular Sunday, I was asking Dwayne how his substitution of the older teen class went. He answered that it went fine but he purposely didn't get to the end of the lesson. Curious I asked why. " It was about circumcision." was his response. So we went back and forth on the reasons why they would have that topic in a lesson in the first place and the squeamishness of 16 year old girls on the topic as well, when we hear the question "Dad, what's circumcision?" It doesn't surprise me that is was Garrison that asked the question. Out of all of my kids, Garrison is the most curious and the bravest when it comes to asking the uncomfortable questions. When I was pregnant with Aubrey, he would ask me all types of questions about the baby and everything that went with it. The best question was how the baby could breath in my tummy because of all the liquid in there. I explain to him about the umbilical cord and all that it does for the baby. He was fascinated. When Dwayne got home from work that night, he eagerly repeated all that he had learned about the baby. He especially wanted dad to know all about the EXTENSION cord that did so much for the baby in mommy's tummy. Dwayne and I love that story.
But I regress, back to the circumcision, Garrison was understandably horrified when he learn all that it entailed. I believe "Ewwww gross!!!" was his main reaction. Dwayne explained that we did this procedure on both him and Mason when they were babies so they wouldn't even remember what happened. It was then that we heard a little voice from the back of the Suburban. Mason demanded "You did WHAT to my penis?!!" I laughed all the way home and Dwayne just about drove off the road. I guess he pays way more attention to the conversations around him then we ever realized!

This is not right

Bad morning!!! I hate it when I wake up and I'm still tired. Morning is not my favorite time day. It usually takes me until 11 to really wake up and I can be real cranky up to that time. Dwayne being my opposite in many ways is a great morning person. I swear if I had known this before we were married, I might of had second thoughts. So let this be a warning to all the single ladies, this is an important question, "Are you a morning person? Cuz if you are..I might have to shot you!" Anyway now that we have firmly established my extreme annoyance with the perky morning person maybe you can sense that this particular morning I was not in the best of moods. So when Lily gets mad at me for putting little smiley faces on the water bottle I was irked. Then she refused to take said water bottle to school because it wasn't how she wanted it. Throwing up my hands in frustration, I let it go. At the same time Mason was throwing his own fit because Dwayne couldn't take him to school today. To make matters worse, where I usually drop him off at school was blocked off because they were trimming a tree. I had to pull around to the back side of the school and drop him off there. The whole time I was pulling around he was saying under his breath "This is not right, this is not right, this is not right." Needless to say he went into school very unhappy and agitated. I really felt bad for the kid but part of what we are trying to teach Mason and Garrison is that life is not perfect and it rarely goes how you want it. They have to learn to adapt to upsetting situations in their personal routines. And I have to lean life doesn't always go the way I want it to either. Sometimes it's crappy being an adult.

Happy Birthday Denyce!

Today Denyce is 13 and I kinda can't believe it. She has grown up so fast that this birthday has taken me by surprise. I remember taking her to the park when she was a baby and helping her down the slide again and again because it was her favorite. When she was 2 she knew so many primary songs such as Popcorn Popping, Wise Man and Foolish Man and the Smile song. She would sing while walking around the apartment, outside and especially in the tub at the top of her lungs. One of my favorite stories of Denyce, she was two and one of the chores we were doing that weekend was to go to a car wash. This was her first experience in one and Dwayne and I were wondering how she would react to all the water, soap and brushes scrubbing the car. About half way through, Denyce started saying "wet". We did the 'parent' answer and said "That's right Denyce, the car is getting wet". But she kept saying it over and over. By the time the car wash was practically over, she was shouting "WET!" Finally sensing that maybe she referring to something else, I look over my shoulder and realize that my brilliant daughter was right. She was all wet. Dwayne had neglected to roll the window up all the way. She gave us a look that seemed to say "You two are idiots". We still get that look to this day.

I am constantly amazed at my daughter. She has an inner confidence in herself that blows my mind. She is kind, thoughtful, smart..man so smart, loving and so very helpful to me. I am so proud of her. I think back to when she would stand next to me in the kitchen helping my make homemade noodles with a smile a mile wide when she would get it right. So Happy Birthday my darling daughter. I love you so much.    Mom

I am Number Five...I guess

Ok I admit it...I number my kids. Sometimes it seems a little anal and Von Trapp family-ish but it works for me. Anywhere and anytime I can yell out "Count off!" within my children's hearing and I will hear the numbers one through four. "Wait a second (I'm sure you are saying to yourself) she has 6 kids." Well you'd be right. We forgive Bree for not yelling her number as she can only say acouple of words and routinely calls Dwayne mom. I'm sure the whole process would just confuse her. The hiccup in my perfect Where's Waldo plan is Kwynn. Yes she is adorable but the little cuss is as stubborn as a MULE! She insists that her number is three because she is three years old which is very understandable. But the problem is Mason is number three and he is EXTREMELY protective of it. He always wants to be third at everything. She refuses to say five because she's three! We go over it again and again.
"Kwynn, what's your number?"
"Three!!"
"No. Mason's number three. You're three years old but your number is five."
"Oh. Ok."
"So how old are you?"
"Three"
"What's your number?"
"Five!"
"Great! You got it. So whats your number again?"
"Three."
"KWYNN!"
Now she doesn't say a number at all. Count off now goes like this
"Count off!"
" 1,2,3,4... and ME!"

I tell myself to let it go. I close my eyes and go to my happy place (I'll tell you where it is later) and breath. Because if I didn't, I would be arguing with a three year old and that my friends would be real sad.