playing with the christmas toys

So Brendon (Adam) got a rocket for christmas.  It lauches 1100 ft in the air. YIKES!  We launched it today, and I have to say it was pretty awesome!  I felt like i was at cape canaveral! There was so much smoke.  The rocket went so high we couldn't see it forever. Then the boys caught sight of it, adam and I still couldn't see it.  It finally landed about 2 minutes later clear out by the main road by our house about 250 yards away.  They were so excited it worked. It turned out to be a good gift. :)

Christmas Morning

I love Christmas morning! Even though our kids are totally lazy and don't get up early at all(which i am not complaining about). I love watching them be excited for things to come, even Tanner who is 12 can't hold his excitement in.

As much as Adam and I try to say we are going to cut back this year and not spend as much this year, we just can't help ourselves. We have so much fun buying for the boys. I do make a list of things i want to get the boys. I am pretty systematic. I try and get everyone the same amount of presents so one person isn't still opening when everyone else is done. It is getting harder to do this since the boys are getting older and they are wanting more expensive things but it has worked out so far.
I think Adam has more fun than i do shopping. All year he is telling me to spend less, spend less. Then Christmas comes and I am saying we have enough, no we can't buy that too, would you stop shopping. :) I love it! He is such a kid at Christmas.
Anyway, the boys loved all their stuff and have a lot of things to build and work on. Adam, I mean the boys, should have lots of fun. :)

Halloween

Well we scored trick-or-treating this year.  My boys have enough candy to last them the whole year!  I actually only got to trick-or-treat with two of my boys this year.  Tanner ran off with his friends and Brendon went to a completely different neighborhood  with his friend.  Ethan was crazy and ran for two hours straight, just the thought of all that candy for a sugar addict was enough to keep him going.  Now i just have to keep my beady little eyes on his candy bag and make sure he doesn't overdose. :)

Gavin the dead skateboarder

                                            The Joker

                                     I know you know this is OZZY!

Ethan is the vampire in the front. he loved the cape!

Volleyball

Ok so most of you know I am a total sports junky. I love sports! (Hmm wonder why i have 4 boys! ) But i truly love volleyball. I could play this sport all day every day and not get tired of it. One of my biggest regrets of my youth was not playing in high school and maybe in college. I wish someone would have made me play. But i am making up for it now by playing in a league in Boise that is just awesome! I love it!! I am so glad my boys are old enough to watch themselves.
I have a new team this year and it has taken us a while to find our groove but we finally have and we are playing great. So in the league we play in they have different levels of play. The highest is Power (college players) C1(mostly college players) and so on, down to about C7(recreational). My team plays in C1. Most of the teams in C1 are also on a team in the Power league so it is really good volleyball and did i say i love it! :) Anyway i thought i would blog about it because we totally kicked butt tonight and won all three games. Our setter was on fire and so the hitters (me) got to hit a ton. It is just fun to go out there and play hard and sweat! It is my form of excerise since i am not motivated enough to work out in the gym. :)

scouting

I really love that my boys are still willing and eager to go to scouts. It is sometimes hard to work on all their badges and achievements with everything else going on but i think it is building good character in each of them. So far i think has been hardest for Gavin to get his stuff done but he is doing a great job. Last night he earned his Wolf badge and 4 arrow points. So in a month on his bday he will move into the Bear den and start on a new badge.

It was Safari night

Brendon is almost done with his Webelo Badge and will be working on his arrow of light here soon. Tanner is on track to be and Eagle scout by sept 2010. There are about ten boys in his troop that will all get it together. Scouts are AWESOME!!

My skinny boys playing football

Football is not the first sport i would choose for my boys to play but for some reason Tanner and Gavin have been drawn to it this year. I'm not sure Gavin enjoyed it as much as Tanner did though. Gavin is still pretty young and doesn't take the hurt like Tanner does. I really enjoyed watching them play, it was a sport we haven't done and it was fun to change it up. Tanner's team unfortunately didn't win any games and that was tough on Tanner because he is slightly competitive. (wonder where he gets that) He play wide reciever, punter, and saftey. The first game he took a helmet to the kneecap and it was bruised pretty bad, he couldn't practice for 3 days. But he got right back in there and did great.
Gavin also plays wide reciever. He can catch anything thrown at him in practice but he hasn't caught one in a game yet. He'll get one soon. Gavins team finally won a game last weekend. They were sooo excited it was fun to watch them. I'm not sure if Gav will play again next year but i know Tanner is going to.

In the pics below, Tanner is wearing the green jersey #18 and Gavin is in the bottom two pics wearing a blue jersey, white helmet with a B on it. #14

Tanner's great catch
Look at those skinny legs

The punter takes a beating but there was a flag thrown on this hit. It hurt his ribs pretty bad.

Gavin pushing and shoving

Finally a big hit!

Hiking

So this last weekend the boys and I decided to go visit Adam in La Grande, Oregon. We planned a camping trip so we wouldn't be couped up in his trailer all weekend. :) We did decide to take the trailer camping instead of using the tents, which i must say i could definately get used to. Except for the stress of getting the camper (which is an old piece of crap) into the camping spot without breaking something on it or our truck it was much more luxurious than tents. And a lot less fighting. (adam and i never fight by the way).

Not only did we go camping but we went camping where there were a zillion hiking trails to a zillion lakes. We went to Anthony Lakes which is 40 miles out of la grande. We camped about a mile away from Anthony Lakes campground. The first 10 minutes we were there the boys walked through the woods and found a meadow and there were 2 deer standing there looking at them. They were very excited. So our first hike consisted of hiking to the campground then to black lake. Which for only being one mile from the campground it was very quiet and secluded. There was only one other group there. The boys had a blast fishing. They all caught one and so did I. :) except for when adam was getting it off the hook he dropped it back in the water. :( That hike was 4 miles round trip. It was awesome scenery and good times. The boys really enjoy doing this.

The next day we decided we had time to hike to another lake before heading home. It was another 2 mile hike into Upper or Lower Crawfish lake. I can't remember which one. This one was really awesome. Beautiful! It was an easy hike in all downhill. Oh ya but that means you have to walk uphill all the way back. AHHHHHHHH!!!! But the fishing was awesome at this lake too. Even ethan caught one. He was sooooooo excited. He said "Mom will be so excited I caught my own fish!"

I really want to hike in and camp out at a few lakes but we just don't have the right stuff for that yet. I think we are going to start gathering things like packs and good light sleeping bags though. It makes for some great family times!

Camping

So the past 2 weeks have been quite fun and busy for us. We went camping 2 weekends ago for 5 days with my Family. It was really fun! Probably one of the better camping trips we have been on with my family. Adam and I actually packed, camped and unpacked without one cross word to each other. (this never happens) So that in its self made the trip worth while. The weather was awesome! The boys swam in the creek everyday, road their bikes, wandered, ate lots of junk, watched my dad and brothers shoot things that made big fireballs (see picture) road 4wheelers in the dark scary forest. I love camping!

This year my brother zack decided he was going to make sure we all stayed clean while we camped. He built the sweetest shower. He brought and 50 gallon barrel which we lit a fire under and heated our shower water. He pumped the water out of the barrel and up into ad actual shower head. We made a shower room with some tarps and angle iron. It was great! Another reason camping was awesome.

There were no 4wheeler accidents this time and that was also nice. Over all we spent 5 days together as a large family and we all had fun and got along. :) I hope we get to go a few more times this summer.

This 4th of July weekend we spent in Cascade, Idaho. We stayed at my brother John's house. Cascade has a great fireworks show for a little mountain town. They had a great parade in the morning, then we went swimming at the lake for about 4 hours. That was fun! The boys were in the water the whole time. I got sun burned of course. Then we went back to John's and changed and headed out to the fireworks show. The fireworks there are awesome, they do a really good job. I think that next year we are going to try and head to Idaho Falls. They have the best fireworks show i have seen and it would be well worth the drive.

Anyway i am definately ready for a nice quiet week at home. :)

T-BALL

So i signed Ethan up for Tball. I forgot how funny tball is. Little kids that watch butterflies and the clouds instead of the ball. They run the wrong way, and really only come to get the after game snack. :) It is so relaxing to just watch them have fun and not be all stressed out like I am at Tanner's intense soccer games. Ethan has fun. The other day though he was being sooo lazy. He was standing on 3rd base and I heard him say "Coach I'm done. My legs hurt" and he started to walk off the field! What! I swear that kid is the weirdest child i have. He is very random but we love him.

Meanest mom ever :)

So last night Gavin and Ethan thought it would be SOOOOO much fun to take a mud bath. Yes i said MUD! They dug a hole and filled it with water and then proceeded to wallow in it like pigs. Of course i was in my own world and had no idea this was going on. While i was outside somewhere Ethan decided he was done being muddy and needed to take a real bath. I bet you know what it coming. Yep, he walked through the house covered head to toe in mud. Through the kitchen up the stairs and of course he couldn't help but touch EVERY wall. He then got a towel out of the cupboard, now covered in mud, and went into the bathroom. The WHITE tile in my bathroom is now brown by the way. There was mud in the sink on the vanity, the door knob and the light switch. When i came into the house and looked up the stairs and met Ethans eyes i thought he was going to pass out. He started crying immediately cuz he knew he was in serious trouble.
Well, Ethan and Gavin got a bath but it wasn't the kind of bath they wanted. Mom was mean and gave them a hose bath with some very cold water. Needless to say i deserve the mom of the year award. :)

Brendon's next 3 weeks

So i took Brendon to the Orthopaedic doctor yesterday. He took some xrays of Brendons wrist and knee. End up that he has a fractured growth plate in his wrist (which we knew his wrist was broken somehow) and a fractured growth plate in his knee. His knee we thought was just banged up. The hospital in McCall didn't take any xrays of his knee or even seemed concerned about it. They just said here is some crutches it is just sore. HMMM! Anyway here is what Brendon looks like for the next 3 weeks. :)

Ok so now i want to put Brendon back in his shell!

We had a little bit of excitement this Memorial Day weekend. We went camping like usual. We can't go camping without our 4wheeler though. Adam also traded some stuff for another 4wheeler. So we took 2 of them. The boys pretty much hogged them the whole weekend. (which is what we brought them for.) :)
Well after 2 days of riding and getting used to the new bike, the boys were getting pretty comfortable with the bikes. I was sitting at the campfire enjoying the outdoors when i heard a sound i didn't particularly want to hear. That sound was metal hitting metal and screaming.
Everything from this point on was pure craziness. I started running for the road cuz i knew that some had crashed and i was praying that it wasn't into a car that they met on the road. When i got out to the road i saw Brendon's 4-wheeler in the trees upside down and my sister holding Brendon in her arms on the side of the road. My heart immediately plunged into my stomach.
I could hear Brendon crying and yelling "my back, my back". Just as i was about to call 911 a car stopped on the road and it just happened to be two EMT's. (one of the many blessings that happened this day) They immediately took over. I called 911 and they sent an ambulance and put life flight on standby.
So what happened was Tanner and my nephew Joey were riding the other ATV and when Brendon passed them they slowed down to pull in behind him but Brendon slowed down also and they clipped his back tire with their front tire. Which caused Brendon to spin out. When his ATV turned sideways it flipped sending him airborne. He flew 25 feet and hit the gravel road and bounced off the road down into a grassy area. His ATV flipped 3 times and landed 145 feet from the initial accident. Brendon's helmet and shoes flew off during all of this. (weird)
Brendon was so lucky in a ton of ways. First he didn't hit any objects, like the 2 tree stumps and boulders 5 feet from where he landed. Two EMT just happened to come around the corner 30 seconds after his accident. His ATV didn't chase him while flipping and land on him. And he came out of all of this with a small fracture in his wrist and a few scrapes that didn't even bleed, a sore knee and a sore back. We spent 5 hours in the ER getting xrays of his wrist and back and a CAT scan of his back. When we were done in the ER we went back to finish our weekend of camping like any good camper would do. Brendon even asked for a 4 wheeler ride from his dad the next day!
So like the title says i would like Brendon to return to his shell and stay there where it is safe!!!

Brendon coming out of his shell

I really enjoy watching Brendon play sports and doing other activities with a group of people. I like watching him loosen up and just having fun and not worrying about what people are thinking or what he looks like. :) (Something that i do) Brendon loves baseball and he is REALLY good at it. So far this year he has hit a triple, a double, caught a couple pop flies and only struck out twice. And he actually talks to his teammates and coaches. Something he didn't do last year. :) Of all my boys I think Brendon is the one i can see changing the most (in a good way). I love it!

We also just had our pinewood derby in scouts on Saturday. Phew! Glad that is over. It was stressful to plan and to make every boy and PARENT happy. Never works. There is always someone. But all the BOYS had fun! And that is the whole point, right! Anyway Gavin and Brendon built some pretty cool cars. Brendon's car was the winner though! We thought for sure his car was going to fall apart on it's first race but it SMOKED every car in the room. He came in first everytime. No one ever beat him. He was thrilled. Gavin did pretty good also. We had 17 cars racing and Gavin came in about 7th. I didn't get a whole lot of pictures cuz i was the one running the show. But i got a couple.

I now have a 12 year old!!!

Adam and I have come to realize we are getting old. :( Can anyone tell me how in the world my cute little red headed baby is now 12?!!! I really am in shock. I have to say though that he is such a good kid. No really he is. He is in middle school now and I feel like we still have a pretty good relationship. *Crossing my fingers*
I took him and a few of his friends bowling for his birthday party. As you can see by the score, Tanner isn't really good at bowling. :) Actually he was pretty funny to watch. After a while he gave up and just started rolling the ball down the lane in random postions.
12 year old boys are great! It was fun to listen to them talk with each other. Some of the boys talked about girls (which i thought was hilarious). Tanner didn't have much to say on the subject, probably cuz i was sitting there. :)
Tanner also passed the sacrament for the first time this week. It was great! He was super nervous but he did a great job. Oh next thing ya know he will be driving!!! YIKES!! I think i will like it though, one less person to drive around. :)