The Family Rocks

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Pflugerville Christmas Parade

Poor Brennan was forced into being in the parade with his scout pack. We cosidered letting him off the hook because he really didn't want to do it, but I explained to him that it's important to be supportive. "What would happen if none of the boys showed up?" I asked him. "Then the leaders would know that it was a dumb idea." was his reply. He had a point, but we made him do it anyway. I'm sure that it wasn't all bad.

We hung out with our neighbors to watch the parade. This is Sophie with Collin.

Aiden had his first band concert last week. It's very impressive what the kids can learn in a few short months of school. The band directors hardly let them touch their instruments for the first three weeks of school. The kids did a great job.
Here's a sample. Slow tempo, but very good. It was fun to watch. At least it was for parents. I'm not sure that Brennan and Sophie were all that impressed.

These are the kinds of doodles that I find in Aiden's school notebooks. I wish that I could doodle like that.

This is what Aiden looked like when he got home from school yesterday. You must understand, that Aiden does not divulge much about his life at school, so in my mind, I'm playing through all of the possible scenarios while waiting for him to give me some tidbit of information. Baseball? Mad student? Mad teacher? Some really big kids elbow? Trombone accident in band? Meanwhile, Aiden is laughing so hard that he can hardly breathe. Turns out the theater arts teacher showed them a few stage makeup tricks. The part that surprises me is that Aiden was willing to walk around with a black eye for most of the day. Theater arts is 3rd period for him. At least he thought he was amusing, and it was pretty funny.

Last Minute

So last night at dinner this was our conversation:

Aiden: Mom, would you be super mad at me if I told you that I have a project do in English tomorrow that I forgot about?
Mom: Yes probably.
Aiden: What if it was in Science?
Mom: Yes.
Aiden: What if it was in Social Studies?
Mom: Aiden, don't push my buttons.
Aiden: Okay. It really is for social studies, and it really is due tomorrow.

So, after having worked all day, a big grocery shopping trip, and 5 loads of laundry in between, I helped Aiden work on his project. A mom's work is never done. He had to do an oral report, using props, on Mahmoud Ahmadinejab. For anyone as politically illiterate as I, he's the president of Iran, and not a very likable character.

The best part of this story is that he didn't end up giving his presentation today because they ran out of time in class. He better get a good grade.

Gratitude

I've been reading through various friend's blogs and their postings about what they are thankful for. It's been a good reminder to me of all the blessings that I have. I decided that I should mention a few.

I am so thankful for my children because...

They make me laugh.
Aiden figured out how to use his recorded voice as a ringtone on the cell phone. Now when it rings we hear Aiden saying "Cheesemuffin, cheesemuffin, cheesemuffin".

They keep me humble.
At the conclusion of an acne product comercial on T.V. Sophie informed me that I should buy it. I explained that that particular product is for severe acne, and not the occasional acne that I get. "So what are all those bumps on your face?" she quiried. I didn't reply. I quietly left the room to go and look in the mirror.

They are entertaining.
Brennan was doing some snappy, clappy, repetitive rhythm thing that included kissing Daisy (the dog) on the hip. The really frightening moment came when Daisy turned. He came within an inch of kissing her bum.

I'm thankful for my husband because...
He doesn't get mad when I go see Twilight with a friend while he's at work.
He's willing to let me ramble on about nothing, and pretend that he's listening.
He's willing to listen to my opinion, and often agrees (or at least he acts like he does).
And lots of other mushy gushy stuff that I won't inflict upon any of my avid blog readers (I'd like to think that I have some).

In all seriousness, I truly am grateful for the many wonderful things in my life. I'm grateful to be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Without the direction and guidance of a loving Heavely Father I'd be lost in this crazy world. I'm thankful for the wonderful people around me that inspire me to be more loving, generous, forgiving, and all around better.

Isn't life great when we focus on what is really important?

Aiden has become very passionate about movie making. His latest projects have been stop motion Lego films. He spends hours in his room taking photos of his lego people in different poses, and then puts it all together, including sound effects etc., on the computer. Here are his three films.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-T4gfCsPso

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM1pma8v09I&feature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgSrc0a91zI&feature=channel

This is Aiden's new look. Funny thing is that he's been using these straw glasses to drink his water for the past 5 days. It might take a while for the novelty to wear off.

Brennan and Sophie have been working on school projects. It's been fun because some of the projects are for the whole family. Brennan's class has been studying Native Americans, so they made totem poles. Each student was required to pick an animal that was meaningful to them in some way. Brennan decided on a duck billed platypus. It was a fun project.

I was having a hard time getting him to smile for the picture. I just had to remind him that I heard him singing "Hey hey hey, It's Fat Albert" in the shower this morning. That made him smile. I'm still not sure how he ever heard about Fat Albert, but we checked on Youtube, and found an episode. Go figure.

Sophie's project was to disguise a turkey so that it wouldn't get eaten. She chose to make the turkey look like princess Leia. We were quite proud of our accomplishment. Hopefully her buns won't fall off of her head before Thanksgiving. Have you ever wondered who should receive the credit for doing Kerry Fisher's hair that way?

Sword Fight

Once again, another Aiden movie. The sword fighting scenes are a little long, but his ideas and editing are fun. Keep in mind that he is a boy, and he makes these movies when we're not around. No blood though! His singing and sound effects are amusing as well. Maybe I just think so because I'm his mother.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ardc7U5C0

Some of the 2nd grade classes had a "Crazy Hair Day" this was Sophie's hair doo. It was pretty funny watching her run to catch the bus. She looked like some sort of Dr. Suess character. She said that most of the kids just had messy hair, so they were impressed with this doo.

Help the technologically challenged

So, I want to add a few more elements to my blog. Anyone want to tell me how to add music, visitor counters, and all of the other cool things that I see on other people's blogs?

Halloween Again

All of our kids went separate directions this Halloween. Aiden ended up palling around with his friend Shawn, and a few other kids from the neighborhood.

Sophie went with friends Kelly and Kelli.

Sophie was so pleased with her makeup and how hot she was looking, that she told her friends to call her "Diva". What am I to do?

Brennan went trick-or-treating with this guy. We probably should have been worried. This is his friend Ethan. Andrew also went with them, but I didn't get a picture of him. They were gone forever. Brennan came back with 8 pounds of candy. That should last until Easter.

Aiden has posted a new movie on youtube. He's getting better. In this one, I like how he filmed from different locations and angles. Enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijIeL8T1AlQ

We attended our ward Trunk or Treat party on Tuesday. Of course I was finishing Aiden's costume at the last moment. I work best under pressure, or at least I like to tell myself that.

Aiden is Link, the Nintendo character from The Legend of Zelda. Brennan is Zorro, and Sophie is the prettiest devil you'll ever see.

Poor Brennan is always the one under attack.

So does anyone else think that Aiden needs a haircut?

Amazing! I often think that I've got the weirdest kids. When I was little, I spent most of the day outside playing. My kids tend to play inside most of the time. About a week ago, they had a day off from school. Sophie's friend Kelli was here, and the kids spent the entire day outside playing with toads. They built this school for the toads out of construction debris. The house was such a peaceful place that day.

Brennan's 10th Birthday Continued

Last night we let Brennan choose where we should go out to eat. Rudy's was his choice. Rudy's is BBQ Texas style. Considering that I come close to being a vegetarian, this normally wouldn't be my kind of place. There's not much chance that you will ever catch me gnawing on a big old turkey leg. The first time that we experienced a Texas BBQ I spent a lot of time looking for the salad bar. The only members of the vegetable family that I could find were pickles and onions. Baffling! Anyway, somehow, I've been won over to Rudy's. What little of the meat that I eat is really good, and the creamed corn is to die for. They also provide you with a half a loaf of white sandwich bread still in the bag. The kids really like that part considering that they rarely get white bread at home. Hopefully one day they will grow to appreciate the heartiness of a good whole grain bread.
We ate until we couldn't eat anymore, and then we went home for ice cream and cake. Good thing that it was Fast Sunday today.

Here's Brennan sitting in front of what remains of our dinner. It was great fun! Sophie opted to stay at her friends house for a little longer while we went out to eat. She was highly dissapointed that we didn't bring home any white bread for her.

Brennan's 10th Birthday

Today (October 12) is Brennan's 10th birthday. Since his birthday fell on a Sunday, we decided to celebrate earlier in the week. Instead of choosing just one day to celebrate, we ended up celebrating for about three days. That's just how things work out sometimes, and it was great.
We went to a place called Austin Park and Pizza. We rode the go-carts, climbed the climbing wall, played lazer tag, and played arcade games. We had a great time! The place wasn't at all crowded that night, so we almost had it to ourselves.
The go-carts were a big hit. The kids thought that it was great to be driving their own cars. Lance and I both decided that we are very grateful for power steering, and that our own cars have more leg room.


The climbing wall was more of a challenge than we thought it would be. Everyone got a turn except for me. For some unknown reason, the attendant had to leave right when I was next in line. Maybe next time.

New Addition

Okay, so our new addition is just a chair. We considered buying all new furniture for our living/family room, but decided to buy a chair to add more seating. We really like it, and feel better about not spending a lot of money for something that we wanted but didn't necessarily need. I've never owned a leather chair before. It makes me feel kind of uppity.

Clarification

Kerry asked a good question, "Will his teacher really believe that Aiden did all that sewing?". Fortunately, we didn't have to sew anything. We used fusible webbing. You cut it out to match the shape of your fabric piece, and iron. It melts and bonds the two fabrics together. It's really quite genius, and very user friendly. Aiden did all the arranging, labeling, and some of the cutting.

Aiden's World Project

Over the weekend Aiden completed his first school project of the year. For his World Cultures class he had to design a map or a globe with various required elements. He decided to make a T-shirt globe. We're hoping that the teacher will appreciate all of his (our) hard work. We think that he did a good job. I think that it looks really nice with his pajama pants.

Aiden's 12th Birthday

Today Aiden turned twelve. First he tried to talk us into letting him stay home from school. We said "No", but he pretty much got his way the rest of the day. He didn't have many ideas for how he wanted to celebrate, so we just made it up as we went along. His only request was that he have a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. We added a little kitty litter to the top.
Aiden didn't seem bothered by the treats that the cats left on top. This is Aiden's kind of cake.
We gave Aiden the option of going out to eat, but he wanted to stay home and eat a rotisserie chicken.
Normally the cats don't get to be on the couch. We made a two minute exception.
Do I ever get any respect around here? Even Sophie tries to give me bunny ears in photos. Aiden is putting together the Lego set that he received. What's a birthday without Legos?

Grandma June has come for a visit. We're always grateful that she's so willing to make the trip to see us. Our children have been blessed with good grandparents.
After dinner, we went to 5 different stores so that Aiden could find something to buy with the birthday money that was burning a hole in his pocket. He finally decided on the Indiana Jones Lego Wii game that he saw in the first store that we went to. It was a long shopping trip, but worth it if it made him happy.

Sophie Starts Ballet

Sophie has been very excited about starting ballet classes. She likes to come home after class and show me all of the new steps that she learned. She informed us yesterday that all of the girls in her class must shop at Walmart because she recognized all of the leotards and skirts from our shopping trip.

Just Being a Mom

Yesterday was one of those crazy days that happen too often with mutiple kids and mutiple activites. I worked until 3:30, ran home to sew a few badges onto Brennan's scout shirt. Fortunately, he had a ride to scouts at 4. I took Sophie to dance, left here there to pick up Brennan, took him through the drive thru at Taco Bell, gave them my money, got my change, and promptly drove away.
Brennan: "Uh, Mom? My food?"
Me: "Oh yeah."
Drive back thru the drive thru to pick up Brennan's food. Race across town to pick up Sophie from dance. Drive back across town to drop Brennan off at soccer practice. Beg a kind hearted soccer mom to please bring him home. Stop at the Taco Bell drive thru again to get food for everyone else. Feel really embarrassed because I'm sure they remember that a half hour before I had driven away without my food. Eat in the car while driving back across town to home. Pick up Aiden, throw his tacos at him, and race to the middle school open house. Race back home in time to be there for Brennan's arrival. Then I went out to walk the dog. Lance's 12 hour shifts sometimes wear me out. It's all good though.

What Was Lost Was Found

Our cat Stipy is quite the scardy cat. He hasn't hardly stepped foot outside since we moved here last year. Last Friday night Lance let Stipy outside knowing that within 5 minutes that the cat would be meowing at the door to come in. He never came back. We had decided that either someone had taken him, or that he had become a coyote snack. Besides being so fearful and cautious, he's a fairly intelligent cat, so we just couldn't imagine that he would have gotten himself into trouble. The kids were sad, and we were sad (Lance won't admit to it), but knew that we would be okay.

At 6 a.m. this morning, more than four days after his disappearance, I found meowing at the door. I thought for sure that I was dreaming. I really had given him up for dead. I was so excited I had to wake Brennan up to show him. It sometimes seems silly how attached we get to our little pets, but we sure are glad to have him home. It feels as if a weight has been lifted from us. The kids were all so happy this morning. Hopefully that feeling will last for a while.

Sophie's bedroom furniture

We've been planning for a long time now that we would get Sophie some bedroom furniture. The day finally came, and she now has a bed, a dresser, and a nightstand. It's very simple, but she likes it. We also redid her lampshade. She's grown out of the princess stage, so it's time to look for something new to hang on the walls as well. We'll get motivated enough to paint one of these days.

Aiden on Youtube.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH6r_5bF2uE

We all have different ideas about what is funny. This is Aiden trying hard to entertain himself this summer. It's long, but if you know Aiden, it's funny.

Continued Summer Updates

One thing that we seemed to keep doing this summer was finding turtles. We really don't live by any water, but we kept finding turtles traveling up our street. So far we've found six. This guy was the biggest and the mossiest by far. Who knows if they appreciated our help or not, but we took each of them, as we found them, to the lake, or one of the ponds. I don't think that there was even one among them who enjoyed the car ride.

We tried to spend as much time as possible with Wade and Jodie and the girls before they left for California. That wasn't any easy thing considering all of the friends that they have. Lance and I have decided that we are way to grouchy to be that popular. Anyway, one of the places that they we went together was Landa Park. This is Brennan as he let go of the swing. Aiden (busy adjusting his goggles and nose plug), Aubrey and Wade are in the background awaiting their turns.
Daisy came through her heartworm treatment with flying colors. We're still having days where we're left wondering why we thought that we wanted a dog. Yesterday we went out for our morning run and decided to let Daisy off the leash for a while. We've done this in the past, and it hasn't been a problem. It was yesterday. We kept trying to catch her, and she just kept running. We finally managed to corner her, and Lance leaped through the air superman style, and pinned her down. Of course where they both landed happened to be in a fire ant pile. I took her back to the house, and Lance ran another two miles after he had already completed a four mile run. He was so mad, he probably could have run another two. Somehow, all the irritation seems to go away when we see Brennan enjoying her so much. I still think that she's stinky.

She is starting to calm a little, and she's learned a few tricks. She'll eat just about anything, but her favorite food is bananas. She even helped herself to one one day.

Long Time

Okay, so I've been chastised by a few people for not updating our blog all summer. I've been the "Anti-Blogger", and I really don't know why. It could be that we're a computer/camera loving family, and I never seem to get a turn with either device.

One of Sophie's summer highlights was getting her ears pierced. She and her friend Kelli decided that they were both ready to endure the pain, so they did it together. Sophie has really liked having earrings, and excited about changing them out. She's done really well, and only had a couple of painful moments. Sophie and Kelli have played together a lot this past summer. One of their favorite occupations was the "toad game". I didn't know that toads like to play house, but apparently it's at least a tolerable activity for them. I'm not sure that they enjoyed being scrubbed with toothbrushes, but that was probably the worst that they had to suffer. The kids were nice enough to let the toads go at the end of the day, and go and find new toads when they were ready to play again. And to think, no one got warts. Notice the blob on the couch in the background. Is that really the way that Nintendo intended the Wii to be played?

Brennan played in a 3V3 soccer tournament at the beginning of the summer. There are only three players from each team on the field at one time, and no goalie. The halves are only 10 minutes, so it's very fast paced. The team didn't do as well as they would have liked, but it was a good experience. Brennan is #10.

Aiden has been making movies this summer. So many, that he's been requiring Brennan to sign contracts saying that he will help with the movie. Brennan is apparently tired of being bossed around, and sick of being in films that Aiden makes up as he goes along. I finally took the time to sit down with him, and type out the first three scenes of a script. The video clip is one of the scene's that he's filmed. Brennan thinks that there needs to be some scenery other than the piano and the boxes from Sophie's bedroom furniture. I'll make sure the entire movie gets posted if and when it gets finished.

Daisy and her Heartworm Treatment

This is Daisy Saturday night after her treatment.

Daisy started her heartworm treatment on Friday morning. We had to take her to the vet early in the morning, and then pick her up in the evening. They gave her a shot in her hind end that travels through her blood stream, and kills the heartworms. The process was repeated again on Saturday. The injections kill the adult heartworms which eventually dissolve. While the heartworms are being broken down and dissolved the dog must stay very calm and sedentary. If the dog gets too excited or worked up, they run the risk of having a heart attack. We have to keep this dog quiet for six weeks. No walks, no playing fetch, no barking when the doorbell rings. We even have to put her on a leash when she goes out to relieve herself. The injections are very painful, and can make them sore for quite a while. We were initially told that she would be given pain pills that would keep her in a semi-sedated state for about two weeks. I figured that the first two weeks would be a breeze. How hard is it to keep a sleeping dog calm? We were misinformed. She acted like she didn't feel well on Saturday night, but she seems to have made a full recovery. It's going to be a long six weeks.

Out of the Nest

We can't believe how much these little birds have grown. They seem to make significant changes each day. I took this photo on Saturday, June 21st.
Sunday morning Lance heard some commotion, and when he eventually went to investigate, there was only one little bird sitting in the tree's pot. We were worried that something bad had happened, but have now come to the conclusion that the parent birds kicked them out of the nest. The babies have been hopping around the yard eating bugs, and hiding in the bushes. They are really rather noisy. We haven't let the cats out, and probably won't until we're sure that the babies are all gone, or able to fly. There were six eggs, but only five hatched. The other egg was still at the bottom of the nest. It's been a fun process to watch, but I'm kind of hoping that we don't have a repeat performance next year.