I am on the phone...

 With Tech Support....

Nana and Papa

free and clear

we do not have the pox! doctor's visit today confirmed it.

and it continues...

we have the chicken pox.

so far only one kid has it, JoeBubba. hopefully it stays with only him.

we found out that someone at school had the pox and so we quickly got a few of the kids immunized. it is possible that joe's pox are only a result of the shot and not a full version of the disease.

i hurt joe's feelings. when i came home from work i didn't want to touch anyone since i've never had the pox. i jokingly said to joe, "get back, you bearer of plagues" or something similarly harsh. later at dinner he was looking down and i asked him why and after a little bit of badgering, it came out that his feelings were hurt. i apologized profusely and we gave each other an air hug.

Slow Easter Sunday

Ben went to a Bible conference in Texas and we are dog and cat sitting for him.

The kids were all getting their buddies ready for church and we noticed that GiddyBug smelled like poo. Since GiddyBug was standing in the bathroom, Silas was assigned the job of cleaning the bathroom. After a few minutes he yelled exultingly, "I found it!" Ben's cat had pooped in the bath mat and somehow it had gotten folded up so we couldn't see it.

Assuming that the poo problem had been solved after a load of laundry, we went on with our morning.

GiddyBug still smelled though. At first we thought it was his arms and we asked him to wash them. Then one of the kids said it was his armpits, since obviously armpits always stink. We found out it was his shirt that smelled like poo.

Robin was getting new clothes for GiddyBug and noticed that the next shirt that she pulled out also stunk. She tried another and another, each one smelling like poo. We emptied the drawer and found that Ben's cat had pooped in GiddyBug's drawer, all of the shirts smelled.

We went to the spare clothes boxes in the garage to find something to wear, and went to church.

We had a Easter breakfast potluck at Frontier School of the Bible dining hall. It was decorated with chocolates on each table and the food was fantastic.

After breakfast, we were walking to the church service, and GiddyBug said, "I'm gonna puke." Both of us, in our seasoned parent skepticism, said, "go ahead."

We placed Abblet the Omlet and GiddyBug in children's church. In the middle of the service we were informed that GiddyBug had puked in children's church so we drove him home and Robin stayed home with him. He apparently had been gobbling up chocolate from many different tables during the breakfast.

Reunited at home after church, we were relaxing in the living room. Robin and I were talking about our 13 years of marriage -- what a wild roller coaster ride it has been :)

Robin looked up at me and said, "Yes, it sure has been wild, I'm glad things have slowed down recently."

p.s. When Robin read this post, she giggled about she honestly thought that things and been going slowly for us lately.

Sayings XXXXIV: Hazelnuts

Dad was driving Josiah to the cafe for saturday morning breakfast special time. Joe picked up Dad's bag of glazed almond snacks and said wistfully, "I remember when you let us have some of these glazelnuts."

Planting Seeds

We bought 1,000 paper cups from Sam's club for $15.  We poked a small hole in the bottom of each cup, added some potting soil and planted our seeds.  It was a fun day.

Sayings XXXXIII: Whirlpool

Titus: "Dad, when you stir your coffee, it goes round and round and make a little hole in the middle"

Dad: "Yes, that's kind of like a whirlpool."

Titus: "Wow, a werewolf?"

Overheard II

Today I heard Robin ask, "Where is the wall?" :|

Silas enjoying a new toy

Backyard Play

They turned a slide upside down over a hole they had dug.  Its their favorite thing to do.  Why do my kids enjoy digging so much???

Sayings XXXXII: Elk

Dad was eating breakfast Saturday morning with Sam and one of the nearby people were telling hunting stories. Sam heard them talk about seeing 13 head of Elk and Sam's eyes got really big. He whispered incredulously, "Dad, that guy saw a 13 headed elk!!!"

Abbey on the phone

Abbey loves to babble with a phone on her ear.  Today I called my Aunt Otte.  At the end of our call Abbey was way overdue for a nap.  Otte could hear her crying in the background and decided to have a chit chat with her.  Abbey loved it.

 

 

It has begun.

Sleeping Arrangements

Matt was out of town last night working on a prison network in Rawlins.  The boys always beg to sleep in our bed and last night I gave them a treat.  Anybody who wanted to sleep in my bed was invited with the exception of Abbey.  Elijah didn't want anything to do with it.  Joe got in and 5 seconds after he was squished in the middle later, he was out and in his own bed.

Left over we have from left to right, Silas, Titus, Sam, (Mom-missing), Gideon, and Luke.

The boys kept kicking the covers off and I kept pulling them up.  I decided it was unfair for me to make them hot so I got out of bed and put on a sweatshirt.  I was still cold and they continued to kick off the covers.  I was also hopelessly squished, so I laid horizontally across the end of the bed with my own blanket.

 This morning when the kids got out of bed they described their experience as frozen solid.  Maybe I should have been selfish and kept pulling up those covers.

 

Elijah made dinner.

Matt's real dad, Bob, lives in California.  Bob was in the hospital for a few days and Matt went to see him.  The day Matt left I was tired and had a sore throat and asked Elijah if he was interested in making dinner. He was!  But, he said, he wanted to be able to make his own dish.  He assured me he had nutrition in mind.

What he came up with was yummy and even included vegetables.  He boiled and chopped up chicken breast, cooked egg noodles, made a white sauce from scratch, and also steamed broccoli and asparagus.  Then he combined those ingredients and added a can of cream of mushroom soup and topped it with cheese.  He made two casseroles worth because he said, "that way you don't have to make dinner tomorrow either."  What a sweety.  We all loved it.  Deeelicious.  Thanks Elijah.

Abbey and her hair cut

She LOVES her toothbrush and stands in the bathroom waiting for me to brush her teeth.  I thought it would work as distraction while I cut.  It did.

I wanted her and I to look at the camera at the same time.  This is the best that I got.

Birthday Pancakes

Titus and Silas had birthdays this weekend.  They liked their Chocolate Chip pancakes.

Handy Wyoming-California Translation Guide

In California	In Wyoming
Diverse or Lifestyle Choice	Sinful and Perverted
Arsenal of Weapons	Gun Collection
Delicate Wetlands	Swampland
Undocumented Worker	Illegal Alien
Cruelty-Free Materials	Synthetic Fiber
Assault and Battery	Attitude Adjustment
Heavily Armed	Well-protected
Narrow-minded	Righteous
Taxes or Your Fair Share	Coerced Theft
Commonsense Gun Control	Gun Confiscation Plot
Illegal Hazardous Explosives	Fireworks or Stump Removal
Nonviable Tissue Mass	Unborn Baby
Equal Access to Opportunity	Socialism
Multicultural Community	High Crime Area
Fairness or Social Progress	Marxism
Upper Class or "The Rich"	Self-Employed
Progressive, Change	Big Government Scheme
Homeless or Disadvantaged	Bums or Welfare Leeches
Sniper Rifle	Scoped Deer Rifle
Investment For the Future	Higher Taxes
Healthcare Reform	Socialized Medicine
Extremist, Judgmental, or Hater	Conservative
Truants	Homeschoolers
Victim or Oppressed	Criminal or Lazy Good-For-Nothing
High Capacity Magazine	Standard Capacity Magazine
Religious Zealot	Church-going
Reintroduced Wolves	Sheep and Elk Killers
Fair Trade Coffee	Overpriced Yuppie Coffee
Exploiters or "The Rich"	Employed or Land Owner
The Gun Lobby	NRA Members
Assault Weapon	Semi-Auto (Grandpa's M1 Carbine)
Fiscal Stimulus	New Taxes and Higher Taxes
Same Sex Marriage	Legalized Perversion
Mandated Eco-Friendly Lighting	Chinese Mercury-Laden Light Bulbs

 Thanks to kludge for this one. original here.

Today

Today, I lost sight of what is important.  I want to use what life brings for the Lord with a spirit of joy that comes from the confidence that walking in Him brings.  I am not always successful.

It was a busy day as Boyd busy days go.  I had made breakfast and dinner the night before to make the day a little smoother.  It started at 5:30am when Matt, Ben, Josiah, and Elijah went to men's breakfast together at church.  The rest of us got up at 6:30 to eat breakfast, dress, pack stuff for the day, pick up the house and repair the dryer.  At 8:00 we head to Cheyenne for dentist appointments.


We had 8 appointments.  All of them good.  Elijah and Josiah will not need braces.  Yay!  No cavities for Elijah, Josiah, Samuel, Luke, Gideon, or Abbey.  The dentist is waiting to see how Sam's eye teeth come in before they know if he needs braces.  They want him to try to wiggle out an unloose baby tooth to get the eye tooth moved down.  They say its rarely possible, but I'm encouraging him with a bribe of ten dollars and 4 hours of computer game time if he gets it out by November.  He is making me put it in writing so here you are Sam. : )  Titus and Silas have 2 cavities each in the back.  The dentist said he thought Abbey was marvelous at her first appointment.  He said, "Its very unusual for them to be so easy at this age. "  He probably tells all the moms that their baby is the best. : ) 

Next was a tour of Matt's office.  He works at the Department of Corrections Headquarters in Cheyenne.  We had never been there and he offered to show us around.  We met about 30 people and each time they wanted to know all the kids names and ages.  The kids got really fast, "I'm Elijah I'm 12." "I'm Sam, I'm 11." "I'm Joe, i'm 9", (squeak)" Silas I'm 7", (loud and bossy) "Luke 6", "I'm Titus and I'm 5", "um i'm Gideon and I'm 4". (All of us) "Actually he is 3.  And this is Abbey."

There were two narcotics dogs on site and the boys got their own demonstration of the dogs looking for drugs.  The officers brought out a bag of marijuana and let Sam pick a spot to hide it.  Then they gave each dog a chance to find it.  It took seconds and each dog alerted to the drugs.  They also let the boys smell a bag that had marijuana on it.  The dogs would alert by sitting down.  The odd thing was one of the dogs kept sitting next to Luke...

During our tour Matt was in the front showing the way and I was in the back with Abbey and Gideon.  At one point we entered an office to say hello and as we were doing introductions I realized Abbey was gone.  She had just been in front of Gideon!  Where did she go?  We looked around the office, out the door, down the hall, under the desk.  She had escaped.  She had turned back and run down two hallways before we caught up to her.  Embarrassing with a capitol E.


By the time we left it was almost 2.  We went across the street and had lunch at Wendys and then went to my 2:40 eye doctor appointment across town.  Matt came with me to babysit while I had my appointment.

It wasn't until 4:30 that we were out of the eye doctor and I was driving Matt back to work.  Long day.  Matt and I had both assumed the eye appointment would be 30 minutes or so.  We had no idea it would go on for 2 hours.  He was very disappointed that he had missed so much work that day and decided to put a few more hours in that evening.

On my end, I still had an hour to drive home, a fitness class to lead, and no hubby home to watch the kids while I was at it.

We made it home at 6:05, I had to go potty something fierce.  I was also feeling a bit backed up and crampy - probably from fast food + driving.  As I'm sitting in the bathroom,  I hear Josiah talking to someone.  Soon, Gideon opens the bathroom door and there stands our lovely friend Michelle Hanson who has stopped over to ask what time the fitness class was.  I don't think she saw me, but it was embarrassing.

I couldn't find my flashdrive that has our workout music on it, I didn't have my fitness cheat sheets printed up, and Luke was tattling on multiple people.  I was still backed up and had only about 10 minutes before class started.  I chugged some water and coffee to help my backed upedness and to give me a little energy before class, fed everyone a banana to hold them over for dinner and we all headed for the gym.

The boys settled down to play in the gym, and a few boys took Abbey and played on the playground where at some point she fell off some equipment.  No boo boo, but not very happy either.

So where did I lose sight of what was important?  I was not together for the fitness class.  I like to be organized and unhurried and despite my best efforts, I was neither.   But, that didn't mean I have lost sight of the goal.  Before saying yes to leading the fitness class, I had been very prayerful and considered the time cost for my family.  Matt encouraged me to do it and I felt comfortable with it.

The point that I lost sight of what was important, was when, I began to take my eyes off of Jesus and onto myself.  I looked at myself and thought, "what a bad job I'm doing".  I'm hurried, I'm not giving the fitness class what they deserve, the children are having to hang out here instead of eating their supper at home with dad. 

If I were truly looking at Jesus, I would have had a different perspective.  I would do the best job I could with the time and resources I had and trust the rest to him. While I didn't know how late the eye appointment was, and I hadn't counted on Matt not coming home, God did know those things.  There will be those days when I lack foresight and over schedule.  But that doesn't mean I should have a low self esteem moment.  Those are the times to remember that God is bigger than my failures.  Those are the times when he gives grace to the humble, encourages the weary, and grows wisdom in His children.

So my next eye appointment will NOT be on a day when we have fitness class.  Actually as it stands, one Tuesday in May I have scheduled, 2 follow up dental appointments, and 8 eye doctor appointments.  Time to reconsider the schedule and keep my eyes on Jesus....

The tip of the Iceburg

We are doing a garden again.  We made it a little bigger than last year.  This first picture is of the garden spot we had last year.  Everything to the left of Elijah is new garden area.

We had a small dead tree in this spot which I cut down last year.  Elijah decided to dig out the root.

Turns out the dead small tree was actually an off shoot of a very large dead tree that had been chopped down years ago.

 We got it down enough to cover with dirt and let it continue to decompose naturally.  Nobody got hurt although Matt nearly had his lower leg taken off by an axe.

Here is another stump in the yard that we removed.

 Here is the back of the garden.  Notice Elijah's spot on the left.

Here is the garden from the front.

Matt and Elijah did almost all of the tilling. Oh and we spread aged chicken manure over all of it.  A whole trailer full of it.  No lost keys this time though. : )  Now we are starting lots of plants inside.  In Wyoming you can't plant till May.  So we will start them inside and see how it goes.

Saings XXXXI

One morning I asked GiddyBug how he slept and he said, "Well, I just close my eyes and lie real still, that's how."