He Did It!

Adam passed the trade portion of his test yesterday morning. It has been quite a bit of money to get to that point since he had taken it once before and missed it by five. He was a little frustrated with the test because the area he missed the most was roofing components and since he has been roofing most of his life you would think he would pass with flying colors, however when the questions on the test have to do with built up roofing (which is an out of date way to roof) and was before Adam's time then he could be considered a rookie. Anyways paying for a test he failed, another one he missed, studying, and then the test yesterday, that all racks up to quite a bit of money. Adam returned at 5 am Friday morning from spending the week in Arizona (10 hrs away) finishing up an LDS church re-roofing job. At around 8:45 am I drove him to Salt Lake, while he slept, so he could spend a couple of hours studying for the test ($250 just to study). It was a very cold day so I wrapped up in a blanket in the car and worked on business stuff on his laptop while I waited and for as long as I could take the cold and then walked to the front of the building and found a 'Ross' department store and greatly appreciated having some shopping time for once to kill time. I think that is the type of situation that causes me to like shopping (since generally I avoid it if I can). My sister Lillie watched the kids until 1:45 and then dropped them off at my mother-in-law's on her way to work. Phyllis watched them until Lillie got off work and then she brought them home. After Adam's test we hopped back in the car and drove straight home. Probably the quickest 8 hour trip I have ever had. Yesterday morning Lillie watched the kids again while I went with Adam to his test (sat out in the truck, for Taylor a pickup :) and kept turning on the heated seat to stay warm since diesel trucks don't idle giving you heat to stay comfortable. After his victory test we went to the temple and did sealings. A perfect way to end a very nervous and stressful week.

A funny thing that happened on Thursday morning was when I came out of my bathroom and found my clean pile of clothes strategically shoved up against the bottom of my bedroom door. After asking why they were there Tyson said, "I locked Santa Claus out, so he can't come in." He's back on his, "Santa Claus scary" kick. I mentioned it last year, while attending a family Christmas party at Adam's Aunt Angelyn's a very jolly, jingling, ho hoing Santa came bounding down the stairs and terrified Tyson. Everyone in the room was laughing at the scene of this 2 year old crying out in fear of this jolly character. Ever since then he is scared in his room because, "Santa Claus will get me" or he cries very worried and scared if I've locked him out of my bathroom and him and Lincoln are left alone in my room, he'll go and lock themselves in my bedroom to protect them from Santa. If he only knew. The other picture is just a random one I took of the boys before Thanksgiving after realizing that I don't have too many pictures with Lincoln in them.

When You Put Others First

I definitely have some backdating posts to do to catch up on some events that are worth documenting, however I always want to start with the most current and then do some back logging when the guilt becomes too much to put aside. This picture was taken back in April, but I haven't had a chance to post any for a while and really love these three boys in my life and couldn't resist.

This post is actually being driven from the Sunday School class I was in while visiting my inlaws' ward today for my sister-in-law Crystel's farewell (she's leaving for the Los Angeles spanish speaking Visitor's Center Mission). Toward the end of the class, which the lesson was on family history and temple work, Stuart shared a recent story that involved Wynn and his cows. A comment was made about how it was hoped that Wynn wrote in his journal about what happened as it would be a great testimony for his grand-children about doing temple work and the blessings that come. I thought that I didn't know if Wynn kept a journal and another comment was made about how sometimes people do not or cannot keep a record of their life, however if we have the opportunity to write things down for others we should. I committed myself right then that I was going to sit down this evening and document for Wynn but especially for his posterity this faith promoting incident that occurred last week.

Wynn and Phyllis usually attend the temple on Thursdays, however if you are the owner of cows then they don't always work into your schedule, except for Wynn this time. He had gone up to Smiths Mesa the day before and left some hay in the corral for the cows as the land up there was quite dead and dry. He hadn't seen the cows for most of the summer and fall and was starting to think that he might of lost them for good. On Thursday he was quite tempted to head back up to Smiths to see if he got lucky having any show up and possibly corral them. He decided against it and him and Phyllis headed to the temple. Friday morning Wynn, Adam, Tyson, and Lincoln bundled up and went up to Smiths to check on the status of the cows and to their amazement and wonder found all of the cows, including 3 calves that were born during their stay up there, all in the corral with the gate shut and locked. Prudencio (sp?), the name of the guy Wynn did the temple work for the day before is who came to his mind. He just knew that because he put doing the work of the Lord first, particularly Prudencio's work, then some help was kicked back his way. Wynn walked away that day with one less day of having to cuss the cows out (actually I could be wrong because they went up to check on the cows obviously not knowing what they were going to find because they had to come down and get the horse trailer and go back up and get them, so I don't know how herding them into the trailer went. All Tyson could talk about when he got home and at dinner was how, "we got the cows in the trailer and dad said, 'we got em Tyse, we got em'" Adam thought it was funny the things that Tyson retains in his memory from the experience. All Tyson could do was just repeat to me over and over what happened and what Adam said.

A quote was shared from a classmember today that went very much along with Wynn's experience. Elder David B. Haight quoted John A Widtsoe who wrote : “I believe that the busy person on the farm, in the shop, in the office, or in the household, who has his worries and troubles, can solve his problems better and more quickly in the house of the Lord than anywhere else. If he will … [do] the temple work for himself and for his dead, he will confer a mighty blessing upon those who have gone before, and … a blessing will come to him, for at the most unexpected moments, in or out of the temple will come to him, as a revelation, the solution of the problems that vex his life. That is the gift that comes to those who enter the temple properly.” (“Temples and Work Therein,” Ensign, Nov 1990, 61) I had to chuckle as Wynn's cows quite often are "problems that vex his life".

"Grandpa Won't Help Grandma"

I don't have a picture to post with this yet, but I did want to document some pretty funny phrases that Tyson shared in observation of a few things. First, I watched my neighbor's boy, Tate, this morning until 2:30 this afternoon and spent most of that time at the Flat as I had arranged with my mother-in-law to help her clean out and defrost her deep freezer on the deck. She needed to do it, but needed some support and push to do it and after she was so kind to pretty much end up bottling a bunch of peaches for me two days ago while I had my phone strapped to my ear all day and wasn't much help, I felt like putting a good part of the day aside devoted to very worthy cause. She unplugged the freezer last night so it would thaw out and everything worked out great except for........the blasted cows! Be glad I don't use my father-in-law's words to describe them :) Anyways Phyllis (MIL) said she needed to go help Wynn get the cows in and so I continued to work to put the somewhat frozen items back neatly in the freezer when Tyson came up to me and said, "Mom, grandma's trying to get the cows and grandpa's not helping her. We need to go help her." I assured him that grandpa was probably getting something or finishing something up before going to get the cows. I yelled out to Phyllis to see if I needed to locate a 4 wheeler to help round them up as it didn't look from the deckside view that it was going very well. There was one 4 wheeler that was a possibility but I could not find the key so I headed out to see what I could do to help. We were running around and trying to circle them together and as Phyllis and I had a majority of them cornered, Wynn was tromping off into the field cussing away at the stray cow. I thought that cow better hope that Wynn doesn't catch him or he'll have wished he had stayed on the other side of the fence. Wynn got that cow back over by us by way of chucking rocks and dirt clods at them. We closed in on them and managed to get all but one in. The same dumb cow that Wynn had cussed out headed would not go in and managed to get by our cornering and took off across the road into the watermelon patch. Phyllis was saying to leave him, that he's not worth it, but I volunteered to run out into the patch through the high weeds and steer him around towards the fence line. I chucked a few dirt clods at him as well and we managed to get him in and head back to our reloading of the freezer task. As the last cow went in Tyson said, "Good Job!" I looked back and with his beat red face, and hands loaded with dirt clods he had a look of satisfaction and 'We showed those cows who's boss' expression on his face. At one point in the confusion of gathering the cows up Tyson was standing with a cow on either side of him as he had focused at yelling at the one in front of him and not paying attention to what was behind him and an instant look of fright and terror came over him as he noticed the position he was in. Grandma Phyllis yelled for him and after registering in his mind that he could run to her, he quickly did. He's growing up so fast and quite the helper to grandpa on the farm. He wandered down to the shop to help grandpa with the bailer without telling me where he had gone and he just always wants to be helping grandpa out with whatever farm tasks and chores he has to do, no matter how hot it is outside. After Tate went home I told Tyson I needed to go to the restroom and after getting sidetracked on a few things and then heading to my bathroom I found him at my toilet. I told him that I needed to use the toilet and he needed to go to his bathroom to go potty. He quickly informed me that, "Daddy said I could use this bathroom and that you need to share." I said that is fine, but right now I will use my bathroom and if he wanted to wait he could use it after me, otherwise go to his bathroom down the hall. It was a little bit of a shock to have him pull the sharing bit on me with my toilet, which I don't like to share.

Fun Quick Visit

Today was another challenging sacrament meeting as Tyson has changed dramatically the last couple of weeks and doesn't know how to be reverent. Everything I brought for him was useless. The crayons and coloring book were not as great as Sister Jolley's set and the books were a similar situation...hers were way more fun to look at even though I'm just sure they had the same horse and pig and kittens etc. She was good to entertain them while trying to listen to the speakers. Tyson made one trip out to the hall where he had to show me how we are suppose to be reverent before he could go back in. I pretty much make the hall visits as miserable as possible since I don't get to be in the chapel listening to the speakers then I might as well make the stand with him. He begs me to go back in, which is nice. We'll keep working on his behavior. After sacrament meeting Tyson went with his old teacher to class and I caught up with him in nursery after remembering that he managed to get to church with underwear on and not a pull-up. I took him into the bathroom and had him try to go to which we had success and he managed to go all day and into most of the evening before he pooped a little in the underwear and then finished up going in the toilet. That's the latest on the potty training. I was set apart during second hour of church, for my new calling with the 14 and 15 yr olds. I'm told there are about 13 youth in there so we'll see how next Sunday goes. I'm sure going to miss my Mia Maids though. After getting set apart we took Tyson out of Nursery and came home to get everything set up at the table for my brother Will, Leslee, Brock, Keili, Roger and Barbara (Leslee's parents) to stop in for lunch/dinner while on their way home to Cali. Susie cooked up some yummy rib style pork tenderloins and brought a fruit salad and drink. I cooked up the yummy crockpot (rolled in butter and garlic and wrapped in tinfoil) potatoes, green salad, and choc chip cookies and the meal was a hit. We visited and let the kids get their energy out before getting back in the car for another leg of their trip home. We were sure glad they made the time to stop and eat/visit. Here's a few pictures I took of the kids. I do need to point out that Tyson has found his girl to cuddle this go around. He's for some odd reason fatuated with pretty girls and is entertaining to watch around them. Definitely a trait he was born with. We may have a challenge on our hands when he gets older. I'll keep these pictures around so I can point out how close he absolutely cannot get to girls when that age approaches :) Adam had a priesthood meeting at 6 pm and then when he returned we went outside and sat in our camp chairs on the driveway while Tyson and Lincoln played in our pad of dirt. Adam and I are tired as we missed a Sunday nap, went to bed late last night, and got up early this morning for Adam to go to his Elder's Quorum meeting.

To Prove the Saying...

...my face broke my fall. That is pretty much what Adam is sporting here. I called him this afternoon to check up on his day and heard the words that I dread "I fell of the roof." As I collect the details I find out that it was really from the top of the ladder. After asking him if anyone saw him he said "yes" and then asking what that person did in response and the guy said, "It hurts your pride the most." to which Adam replied, "not yet, but it will" and here I am helping that statement along. I had just finished taking the kids for a late afternoon walk through the neighborhood and found them both like this when we got home, so I pushed them inside and let them be. After pulling out the camera I couldn't help but ask Adam if I could take a picture of his face, just for documentation purposes and a good laugh down the road. As for Tyson and Lincoln as you can see in the pic they are quite the pair. If Lincoln were a little taller they would be mistaken for twins I think. Tyson has great fun wrestling Lincoln on the floor to which Lincoln is always coming to me and crying. Sometimes I try to ignore it but most of the time I have to step in and rescue Lincoln before he gets smooshed by Tyson.

Adam left Tuesday afternoon with his cousin Jordan and headed to Phoenix, Arizona to pack up for Jordan's sister Kara and her husband Skyler all their stuff and bring it back to Hurricane. They stayed that night and then headed back Wednesday morning with the goods in tow. We had quite the ordeal before Adam left as Tyson wanted very much to go with Adam. For this kid seeing the truck, horse trailer, and Adam's lemonade container he just knew it would be the time of his life. Adam told Tyson, "you don't want to go with dad. It is just sitting in the truck for a long time driving. You'll have more fun staying home with mom" to which came the reply "I don't want to have fun, I want to go with you." What does that say about me and all my fun huh- quite a blow. Anyways as usual Adam walked out the door with his boys screaming and hollering that they have to stay home and have fun. Yes, Lincoln is right in tow making a scene of despair. At one point during the day when I let Tyson talk to Adam he said, "Daddy, come home right now, grandpa needs the trailer." The kid apparently calls the shots for grandpa now too. Whatever it takes to be with dad. So we are glad their trip was a safe one and then of course today Tyson told me, "Kara coming to my house today." So Kara there is your invite when you get into town.

A Surprise Visit, Finally a Date, and a Blessing

This last week had a few good days of enjoyable weather and the other days consisted of a cold north wind that made it pretty miserable for getting anything outside of the indoors done. One highlight of the week was having my dear friends (practically family), Ty, Kaly, Raleigh, and Kysa Shippen blow in on Thursday night and stay over during their spring break California return trip. The kids enjoyed playing together and I enjoyed Ty and Kaly's visit as well as them getting to meet and know Adam more. Kaly had made it to our wedding and when I visited them two summers ago Adam was unable to come with me due to work, so it was good to finally have Adam and Ty meet. Ty gifted a Skyline Grizzlies basketball shirt to Adam as we found out that to be the name of Ty's b-ball team name in Idaho where he coaches and Adam's company name for roofing. All in all it was great to meet up even though it was short. Saturday Adam and I were finally able to get away for a few hours on a date since our last lousy excuse for a date was to Stake conference and then who knows before that time. Yes, we don't make time enough to spend just the two of us together. We tried to go to a friend's basketball game over in St. George, but showed up at the time he told us only to find out that it was all over having started two hours earlier than informed. I told Adam I wanted to see what this new store 'Shoe Carnival' had to offer the area and so we went there and it just so happened that they were having their Grand Opening so we splurged and purchased a new pair of basketball shoes for Adam as he has had his current ones for three years and they are pretty worn (these new ones have a little higher support for his ankles as he managed to sprang them both last month). He has also worn holes in his work shoes and so he can now switch the old basketball shoes to semi new work ones. We then took advantage of the buy one get one half off and purchased a pair of running shoes for me. They didn't really have women's basketball shoes in and so I'm just going to keep my current shoes for the court and use these new ones for outside since the current ones I have can't be worn very long when just walking since the heels are worn to the plastic frame and give my heels blisters. So it was a productive date. Sunday I went to choir practice in the morning and then we headed to Enterprise for Canon's blessing (Adam's niece Anna is holding him in the pic). There was a good family turnout as Adam had a few siblings in town with their families for butchering their pigs. (The third pic is of Emily, Erika, Tyson, and Samuel sitting on this cute little furniture that Monterrey has and the fourth pic is of Savannah with Sophia as she had bought the Jordan outfit for Soph on sale and it was too cute especially when Soph gives you the peace sign whenever you say, "Say Cheese". That's the connection she has made with taking pictures).

The Projects & Linoln's 11 months

I decided to show some of the projects that I helped my sister-in-law Heidi accomplish at her house. This first one has Emily, Erika, Lizzy, & Tyson posing on the bed where Heidi made the quilt and we made the time to put up a wallpaper mural that Stuart had wanted/purchased 2 1/2 yrs ago. I had never wall papered before, so this was a first for me. It had 8 panels that we strategically put together and in my opinion we did pretty good. It was an added bonus that Heidi knew how wallpapering was suppose to be done too. This is also the room that Adam and I stayed in when we lived with them (a very different room now). This next one is of the kids in front of the World Atlas mural that we put up this last Wednesday. We liked this one quite a bit more because it only had 3 long panels and seemed to be a better quality which made it easier and did not take us nearly as long to put up. It was a little tricky trying to get letters and lines to match up, but it worked out pretty good in my opinion. Heidi had purchased this one for Stuart a little over 3 years ago and it felt good to be able to help her get these two projects done. She told me how my mother-in-law, Phyllis, had one in each of her homes so that her children could learn where states and countries were located. The kids would spend hours in front of the wall mural pointing out places. I appreciated learning this bit of information from Heidi because it explained why Adam and his brothers have such an infatuation with maps. If you ever want to provide some kind of entertainment for them just pull out a map and you are good to go (don't do it if you want any attention though :) So this last picture is of Lincoln sitting on the pool table, which is mostly why I took out the camera because he is in his 11th month of life and doing great. He has his bottom two teeth in and the two side top incisors working their way out along with the front ones. He continues to pull himself up and stand anywhere he can, so we know he'll be venturing towards the walking soon. He greatly dislikes it when his dad leaves for work early in the morning (yes, he is up then), and cries his eyes out until I get up and distract him with breakfast. Adam is greatly loved by his boys as a few days ago Adam was playing in a church b-ball game and as we arrived early he went to take Tyson out to the hall so they could bounce the ball around and when Lincoln saw that he started crawling after Adam and yelping at him. Adam has his hands full with excited, loving boys. Linky also loves his brother Tyson. Earlier this week he was up before Tyson and decided after playing with mom for a while that it was time for Tyson to get up and he crawled down the hall to my bedroom door and started banging on the door while yelling who knows what. He got what he wanted. We sure do love this boy.

Accident Prone

So last week ended with quite the accidents. Adam has been helping a friend of the family frame his house and earlier in the week he managed to pull the trigger on a nail gun only to find it having shot through the side of the board straight down to have stopped at the bone on the top of his foot (no picture) and then on Thursday he was framing again and will tell the story as "WE" forgetting to nail down a board and I will politely interrupt to make sure that he truthfully tells the story as "HIM" forgetting and the board falling down and hitting him on the head inflicting a nice gash that exposed alot of blood to which that night he begged me to pick off the mound of scabbed blood so that he could go shower without having to worry about it opening up again...not an enjoyable chore for me (shown in picture). He finished off Saturday night spraining his other ankle and almost staying home for church, however managing to get some movement after some help to the bathroom and getting a shower. Then there is Tyson, who while we were helping my sister-in-law Shelley clean and unpack in their new house he decided to try climbing up their shelving in their closet and we think that one of the shelves slipped out and wacked him in the nose splitting open a couple of gashes. And then there is Lincoln who while trying to crawl to me from our bathroom to the closet he lost his grip and wacked his forehead on the tile floor (shown in the duo walker picture which I turned around today and found Tyson having invaded Lincoln's space- love my boys). I came away from the week without a nail, sprain, cut, bruise, or scratch. Feeling pretty lucky!

Babysitting

So today I found myself with 3 children age 1 and 9 months and a kindergartener. Susie needed someone to watch Addy and my neighbor had class so within a 30 minute time frame I had changed 3 diapers and then by the end of the day I had my plastic bag hanging on the door knob in the garage full of them. I didn't know how the 1 year old would treat Addy and Lincoln, but he pretty much acted like they did not exist. He is a very big kid for his age and is not much shorter than Tyson(2 1/2), but Tyson felt like he had to always be trying to pick him up, so in the days time I managed to wrap up breakfast sometime around mid morning (which started out with just Adam and myself), change diapers, shell pecan nuts during the in between times, try putting children down for naps multiple times in three different rooms/beds, feed Tyson and Scierra lunch, and get Scierra off to kindergarten on time by 12:40 and then keep Tate entertained until 3:30 when his mom came home. It was a great day outside even though I didn't realize that until the early evening. I snapped the shot of Addy trying to pull herself up to Linky's walker and then all of the children in the same vacinity.

De Ja Vue

The legos that I got the boys for Christmas have been a big hit and the best thing is that I don't have to worry about Lincoln swallowing them. The two love to play with them together and Tyson is always wanting Lincoln to join him. We have enjoyed them for a FHE activity making some homemade guns (Adam's invention), so it was a good buy. Lincoln turned 9 months on the 12th and I have noticed a couple things that remind me of when Tyson was around this age. 1. He doesn't care to master the crawling thing and 2. He is more interested in trying to stand and pull himself up to things. I took this picture to illustrate what I am talking about. Although I can say that a few days after this he did start crawling. He doesn't do the army crawl but does the actual all fours and it is pretty cute. I also noticed that he has some pretty long eyelashes, not as close as Tyson's but they did stick out during this shut eye picture. I attempted some ties on the boys for church today and it was a hit. I had to use the "don't you want to be like dad" phrase to get Tyson to try it. He saw his tie in the closet yesterday and pointed it out to me and then said, "I want to go to church." It was cute.