A Room with a View

There is something about a beautiful view that brings perspective into your life. It reminds you that there is more going on than just the chaos within your own walls. It helps you remember that you are a small part of something great. Each time I look out my bedroom windows at the layers of mountains south of us I am reminded of this.

And more often than not I am reminded that my little girls still don't like wearing underpants!

Gardening

Spring has sprung and for many, including a few in my family, that means time to pull out the planting soil, shovels, and watering cans.

I could never be considered one to have a green thumb. I have had an occasional live plant in the house, but they don't last long. Ryan and I have grown herbs, pumpkins and tomatoes in some of the different places we've lived with varying success, but Arizona looks to be a bit more difficult.

So far our only Arizona gardening venture came last year when the kids gave me tomato plants for Mother's Day. Braden was vigilant in taking care of them, watering them twice a day to overcome the stifling heat. And we did get some, perhaps a half dozen or so, tomatoes to grow.

This year my budding gardeners are branching out. Braden has decided to grow avocado trees and we currently have three pits germinating by our kitchen sink. They say it takes two or three years before they produce fruit. I guess it will be a while before we see how avocados like the Arizona heat.

Perhaps Hadley's plant will do better. Hadley's growing a chocolate plant. Apparently no germinating is needed as she removed the "pit" (macadamia nut) from her Hershey kiss and plopped it right in the ground, burying it with a mound of dirt. She has been diligently watering it, but so far she tells me only flowers have grown. If a baby tree heavily ladened with kisses doesn't sprout soon I think she'll be devastated.

Actually we all will be!

Thank You for Coming

While Braden and Ryan were out of town for Braden's 6th grade field trip to Catalina Island, we girls decided to party it up. For dinner last night we chose a favorite... Chic-Fil-A. It's fast, delicious, and has free entertainment and a parting gift filled with helium to make leaving easier. The servers are also very courteous, always responding "It's my pleasure," an added bonus, teaching my children manners. There is also a thank you sign right outside the store. Does there goodness stop? Have you seen it? It's a red sign posted just at the end of the drive-thru so that just in case one of their courteous workers has forgotten, you are aware they are grateful for serving you.

Chloe knows just where that sign is. She got a great look at it. She would tell you it is very hard too.

Chloe tripped on the way in to dinner, splitting her head open on the bright red sign. As I looked at her head, I lamented that my husband was out of town... the husband who received eight years of specialized training in the medical field. Aren't they always out of town when you need a good stitching? So it was off to the ER with four kids in tow. It's important to note that even showing up with four small children, one gushing blood, won't bump you in line at the ER. Four hours and five stitches later (and a pan of homemade cinnamon rolls to a good friend), we are all healing.

The most unfortunate thing was that our girl party was cut short. We didn't get to paint fingernails, we didn't paint toe nails, and we never made it into Chic-Fil-A for dinner. Perhaps it is a good thing Chic-Fil-A posts a thank you sign outside their restaurant, otherwise how would we have known they were grateful for our visit!

Happy Birthday To Me

Today I went to pick up the girls from the child care center at the gym. I got talking to one of the women working in the center. She asked me about my children and didn't seemed ruffled in the least that I have five children, an oddity until I found out she has four herself and it turns out is a Latter-Day Saint.

It wasn't having children, she explained, that caused her to lose her figure. It was getting older. It was when she turned 37 that it all went downhill.

I'm 37 today.

Happy Easter!

Six o'clock a.m. and the kids are out dressed in their Easter clothes looking for Easter eggs. Is there no respite for the Easter Bunny?

"Pets"

Today Chloe asked if she could give her pet Liv a bath. Normally I would encourage my children to be responsible and would be thrilled. But in this case, I told her no.

No, I don't think crickets need baths.

But she's dirty. And off Chloe goes to prepare Liv the Cricket a bath.

It's no surprise that our "pets" don't live much more than a day. While I do not encourage the collecting of them, I did provide a receptacle in which to hold them. You would have done the same had you been the one to discover a cricket in a little pants pocket.

The girls are fascinated lately with bugs, spiders, flies, bees... really any critter from outside. Their favorites, based on abundance in the backyard, are crickets and mosquito eaters, but we have also been fortunate to have a preying mantis, a beetle, a caterpillar, and a bee. Our "pets" are often found "sleeping," though we have only had one burial, and being "awake" is not prerequisite for making it into the collection.

Now, I do believe in setting boundaries and that boundary came yesterday when Hadley rounded the corner saying there was a crab in the house.

A crab?

Hadley found herself a scorpion and trapped it under a cup.

No, there will be absolutely no scorpions in our "pet" collection. So in true boy style, Braden scooped it up, took it outside, and burned it with a lighter...

all to the sounds of Hadley protesting in the background.

I'm thinking pet crickets in pockets aren't so bad anymore.

Aloha!

Imagine that you could go anywhere. Where would you choose to go?

Ryan and I decided a while back to take a trip with each of our kids when they turn twelve-years-old and this is the question they face. It's just them, with us. They can choose anywhere they want to go, within reason, and whatever they want to do, within reason.

Braden turned twelve last month and he chose to go to Hawaii, and reluctantly we agreed to accompany him. His plans included surfing, body boarding, snorkeling, snuba diving, cliff jumping, driving to Hana, and seeing the sunrise on top the volcano in Maui. In just six days we somehow fit it all in.

In the mean time we learned a thing or two about Braden. We learned he would like to own a solar panel plant or windmill farm and produce clean energy. We learned he has ambitions of being a professional photographer. We learned he would rather spend four hours driving in the car to see the sunrise in 30 degree weather than stay in bed under the covers or six hours to drive the road to Hana rather than surf on the beach. We learned he loves plants (his exact words at the arboretum were, "Look at that fern!"). We learned, as we broke into a coconut and explored a black sand beach, that he is very curious.

I guess what we really learned is that Braden is really growing up. He is a young man with ambitions of his very own.

I guess if I could go anywhere for a week... well, I might go back a few years, to a time that was a little less complicated. A time with a little boy... a boy with lots of ambitions.