It kinda sucks when I rock hits your windshield while you are driving down the highway....

...until the windshield repair guy shows up to fix it.

And captures the full and complete attention of your children for an entire 15 minutes.

I have not enjoyed a more peaceful, post-children breakfast.  Thank you, windshield repairman.

Also - I don't know how that windshield crack repair machine works, but it's pretty amazing.  You can barely tell where the crack used to be.  Which is a good thing.  It seems like our cars have an affinity for renegade rocks on the highway.

Happy Mother's Day!

Had the opportunity to take the kiddos down to the temple yesterday while Kenta and I attended the wedding of a good friend. It was a great way to ring in Mother's Day weekend. As a wise woman pointed out at church today, oftentimes the things that bring us the most joy in life also bring us the most pain, frustration, exasperation, irritation, vexation (any other "-ation" word you can think of), etc. So it is with motherhood. I couldn't imagine my life without these sweet kids. Even on the days when I would like to box them up and send them to Grandma for a week. I know I would miss them thirty seconds after the mailman left and would likely run out of the house and chase him down the street to bring them back home.

And besides - what in the world would I post on Facebook if I didn't have Thomas around to inspire me? Hahaha....

Happy mother's day to the women out their who have mothered - whether it be mothering a child of their own or being an influence for good over a child of another. I'd be nothing in life without the women who have helped me along the way. Happy Mother's Day, y'all!

Weapon of choice

Multiple choice question for you.

No. 2 pencils ready?

Here goes:

Which "gun" have I been "shot" with this past week?:

a)

glue gun

b)

harp tuning key

c)

The state of Florida

Don't over think it.....



need a little more time?




Ready for the answer?





Answer:  d) all of the above.  Yeah.  Kind of a trick question.  That wasn't really fair of me, was it?

I have no idea where Thomas learned how to shoot a gun.  We don't have any toy guns.  To my knowledge, he has never seen a gun being shot in real life or on TV.   I'm just convinced little boys are born with a gene that enables them to turn any object into a weapon.  You and I see a puzzle piece of the state of Florida.  Thomas sees a gun.

But if he had to choose a weapon, I'm glad he chose a gun.  This mom pretty much sums up my feelings on pretend weapons.  Guns are just safer. Just a few pictures to illustrate the point.

Please appreciate that there are no bullets coming out of the toy gun.  And the distance between Abby and Thomas. And that she is really unimpressed with his antics.

So there you have it.  I let my son play with guns.  If only you could hear the shooting sounds he makes with them.  Again.  No idea where he learned that either.

And how could we talk about weapons of choice without thinking of Christopher Walken dancing through an empty hotel?

Enjoy:

One of the most important lessons I learned on my mission was this:

In the midst of a cloudy day, the Lord will always send a ray of sunshine.

Of course, I'm speaking figuratively here. Some days just suck. Nothing goes right. The kids are cranky. I am cranky. It's 6:30 a.m., and I am already counting the hours until bedtime.

Not too long ago, I had a week straight of days like this. Just when I was on the brink of insanity, the Lord sent me a ray of sunshine in the form of a Costco receipt.

Thomas had been in rare form that week - pushing all my buttons, picking on Abby, and protesting every tiny request from Kenta and me. I had to make a Costco run and on the way out the door, as he always does, Thomas asked the person checking our cart and receipt to draw him a smiley face. The kind man drew two - "One for you, and one for your sister", he said. Thomas refused to give me the receipt, so I wisely chose not to fight that battle until we got to the car. After I put the groceries away, I asked Thomas for the receipt. He handed it back, but I noticed it was torn into pieces. Kenta's really a stickler about keeping track of our expenses, so I knew a shredded Costco receipt was not going to be received very well - especially if part of it was missing. Kind of annoyed with having to track the missing pieces down, I asked Thomas (a bit exasperatedly) "What happened to the rest of the receipt??". He looked at me and smiled, then pointed at Abby. My hard heart turned to a mushy puddle when I saw what she was holding.

Of course he would have given her smiley face to her. Of course. That's what big brothers do. They look out for their little sisters.

This was my "ray of sunshine" for the day. Seriously. This ripped up little Costco receipt was the highlight of a difficult week and carried me through the next couple of rough days.

A good reminder to look for the rays of sunshine. They are out there. Sometimes they are easy to miss if you are too focused on the rain.

In like a lion....

I've been meaning to post pictures of the March snowstorm we had...like...uh...forever ago, but, as usual, I have been lazy at keeping up with the blog. After hardly getting any snow since "Snowtober" (I think we had one storm in January), we finally got a good snow at the beginning of March.

Kenta was bummed that he couldn't stay at home and play in the snow and was mumbling something about what a shame it was that we hadn't built a single snowman this winter, so I decided to surprise him with a little snowman before he came home.

Let me just preface this picture by saying that it had easily been twenty years since I had built a snowman.

Also - I had planned to go grocery shopping, but didn't make it to the store because of the snow. Result: we had no carrots.

Also - building a snowman is hard work. Thomas almost knocked the head off. I almost got mad at him for doing that.

And without further ado, I introduce to you the very first snowman to be built in our yard since we moved into this house a year ago:

I learned a few lessons from building this snowman:

- Brussels sprout eyes are really, really creepy.

- Trying to press yellow pepper slices into hard packed snow will result in half of your snowman's face falling off. My fingers were too frozen at that point to try and repair it.

- Snowman building requires your full concentration You will notice that there are no children in any of these pictures. Thomas was outside with me while Abby was napping. He was having loads of fun. I, however, did not document it. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Anyway, Kenta was pretty pleased when he came home and saw this in front of his parking spot:

Good times.

Of course, a week later, it was 70 degrees and beautiful outside. There was still some snow on the ground, so Thomas took the opportunity to use his snow shovel for (probably....hopefully) the last time this winter.

He got momentarily distracted by a school bus, but I told him to get back to work

He obliged

Unfortunately, our little snowman friend did not survive very long because of the unseasonably warm weather.

Thomas was actually a little distressed watching the eyes fall out of the snowman as it melted. It seems like each day we went out, he was missing another body part. Then he just disappeared. We weren't mourning his passing for too long, though. Melting snow means warmer weather and sunshine and SPRING!

More on that later :)

Prediction....

Don't let that innocent look fool you

This one is going to color all over the walls. We'll have to keep an eye on her. She did knock over a floor lamp today and shatter glass all over the living room floor, after all.

Good news

I conquered my fear of turning the oven on after almost a week of not using it. I would have been fine going a little longer without turning it on, but my family was getting tired of eating soup and quesadillas.

And I'm happy to report that the old gal works just fine.

She's a bit beat up from me hastily throwing her through the cleaning cycle last week. I'll let the scars remind me to never make hasty decisions again. Or to never clean again.

Anyway. Just happy to have baked food back in our meal repertoire. And more happy that my oven didn't blow up.