John Deere Green

Recently we became the proud owner's of one of these.  Adam and I don't seem to have too much of a preference when it comes to lawnmowers, although I have always felt like a John Deere would be more reliable, but mostly because our boys love John Deere and they love to sing the "John Deere Green" song.  You should hear Lincoln sing this song when it gets to the part that says "...on a hot summers night..." he hits that high note like Alfalfa off of Little Rascals.  It is really entertaining.  I could listen to Lincoln sing songs all day long because he is so animated with his face and voice when he sings and also does it with such passion.  Anyways I recently wrote my brother-in-law who is serving his mission in Samoa Apia and told him that "since his mom’s lawnmower left for two years Adam and I saved up to replace it/him with this.  In case you haven’t seen one of these it is a RIDING lawnmower (hee hee).  You said to take care of your mom, and since time is difficult to come by then we decided it would be much easier to find to zip through her lawn and ours."  We have found great use for this machine especially as a motivator to the boys to help work.  We are glad that we were finally able to purchase it and I have noticed that mowing the lawn has become more of a relaxing thing for Adam to do with the boys then a dreaded chore, plus he seems to be taking greater care of our yard, which I am grateful for, since I would like to but find it difficult with a toddler to do so (I'm just not as strong and coordinated to drive it around while having a couple of kids along for the ride.  I do have to point out the helmet that Tyson is wearing.  A couple of Saturdays ago I took the boys to a yard sale the Young Women from our ward put on and even though I don’t generally go yard selling I think Tyson may have turned into a fan of yard sales because he was wandering around the place and found a helmet for a motorcycle/4 wheeler and was instantly attached.  We went to go ask how much it was and the lady said she had not seen it before, so she did not think it was for sale.  You could just see Tyson’s face drop with great disappointment.  I told him we would have to wait and see, but I wanted to make sure that if it was for sale that he was able to get it and not some other kid that showed up and grabbed it.  I had him go put it back and then asked the girls at the goodie table if they saw anyone bring the helmet to sale and one said she saw someone drop it off and then the lady’s husband had showed up and I asked him and he said he remembered someone bringing it in one of the first boxes that was donated, so I asked him to go let his wife know while Tyson was already on to what was happening and had reclaimed the helmet to take back to the lady to buy.  Susie stopped by and said that Tyson just set the helmet on the table and they told him it was $5 and then he realized he needed money, so he told them to hold on as he quickly found me to complete the deal and then he didn’t take that helmet off.  He rode his bike home with this huge helmet, which was entertaining to watch.  

Before the yard sale find, Adam took the two older boys to the Aaronic Priesthood Commemoration (formerly known as Father and Son’s) Campout.  The boys were excited all week about going except when Friday came Lincoln wasn’t feeling too good and so we were trying to talk him in to staying and started to unpack his stuff, but as Adam began loading the truck Lincoln went to the bathroom with diarrhea and said he was ready to go and seemed to be back to a little more of his normal self.  Adam said that Lincoln was fine with going to bed in the tent after they ate dinner, so I think he just had a little something ailing his body.  Adam had a mountain biking ride the next morning from the camp with his young men so the bishop brought the boys back home since he had to come back anyways and he said that Tyson kept trying to talk him into going on that bike ride because he thought he could keep up just fine.  Getting his bike fixed has given him new freedom.  Adam and I managed to get a babysitter and went to the movie “The Avengers” and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Last Sunday it was my week to teach the lesson in Relief Society.  I felt like it went well, aside from me leaving my lesson outline on the computer at home (I didn’t even get around to printing it off).  Luckily I had put everything together that morning, so it was fresh in my mind and my biggest challenge was just having it all flow from class participation, lesson material and quotes.  

How Fitting!

You want me to pose?

Started walking 1 wk after bday

Did you miss us?  I don't know if many read this blog, which is fine, however after one relative coming out yesterday and asking why I don't post on it anymore and then spending some time last night catching up on a friend's blog I went to bed with a great reminder about how I need to make this blog more of a priority for the journaling of the happenings in my family since I don't do anything beyond this.  I also woke up this morning with a determination that I was going to try and do better, so I figured that determination starts by just posting.  I'm sure there is alot I have missed in the past year since I last posted (hopefully we did some fun memorable things :), however I decided to just start with the right now so that I don't get discouraged with the missed past postings I should have done.  How fitting it is that the last post I had was after our sweet Jason Wynn Stout was born and here he is a little over one year later still bringing great joy to our family.  He also is the only boy with me right now since the other two went with Adam on the Father and Son's campout last night.  I'm glad I get to have Jason for one more year, but he is already at the age that he does not like being left behind and feels that he should get to go wherever the boys and dad goes.  He fits right in with the crew and doesn't like being left out.  I still have to train myself to take more pictures (I should carry it around like I do my cell phone :)  I know that having pictures to post helps encourage me to write, so I will have to figure something out there.  My sister Susie took these pictures of Jason and did a great job.  She caught some wonderful facial expressions, this one being one of my favorite.  I'll have to get some of the others from her since I had a few more I especially liked.  As you can tell he is a cutie and his personality adds even more.  When we were getting ready to have Jason join our family, Adam and I could not imagine what kind of personality a third boy would have since we felt with Tyson and Lincoln that we had the personalities covered, but Jason brought a new twist and makes us all laugh.  His older brothers adore and take great care of him.