7 months old!

Austin has hit the 7 month mark. It is rotten how fast kids grow up. I love the snuggly newborn stage that doesn't last long enough. If I could change things, I would make that stage last about 6 months at least. Anyway, the week of Austin's 7-month "birthday", he got a tooth and decided it was time to sit up like a big kid. He has also learned that if he screams really loud, he will get attention from someone. At least he still loves his mommy the most-that is the best part of being a mom-the unconditional and constant love from a child!

He could sleep anywhere!

Rhett is a typical 3 year old boy. He goes, and goes, and goes, and goes until he crashes. He always seems to crash in funny places. I swear this boy could sleep on a cold slab of cement in the dead of winter if he was tired enough. We have caught him is some funny positions. Here a few of them. He was so tired the other day that he laid down on the stairs and couldn't even finish the bread that he had just asked for.

High School Musical

So Bekah is turning into a "tween". She told me a few weeks ago that her room is too babyish and she wants it to look different-she is 6 1/2 you know!. I asked her what she wanted to change it to and she said "High School Musical". She loves the movies and can't wait for #3 to come out this summer. She loves Zac Efron. She actually discovered him in the movie Hairspray and then when she figured out he was the kid in High School Musical, she was hooked. Anyway, we are making her earn her HSM bedroom by doing extra chores and stuff. Bribery works well with her. So far she has earned a decorative pillow and a fleece throw. She wants her entire bedroom to be HSM, even the walls need to be the bright crazy colors. So, we are taking it slow in hopes that we won't actually have to make it look like HSM blew up in her bedroom.

New scrapbook room

So this has been a work in progress for a long time. My scrapbook stuff/supplies continue to outgrow the spaces I put it in. It first started out in our hall closet in a 3 drawer plastic cabinet with wheels. I would sit on the floor at the coffee table and scrapbook-killer on the back. I then moved it to some cabinets in our dining area. I would pull it out to work on it at the kitchen table but I hate the clean up part so there it would sit for weeks-dinner suffered alot at our house. Anyway, last year Neldon bought a gigantor desk to put the computer on-it was time to get the computer out in the open since the kids started wanting to use it. So, the desk in the third bedroom upstairs was now free for me to takeover.

We moved beds around and made this my "Scrapbook Room". I finally had a space where I could spread out and be creative. But, I just kept piling stuff in that room. I would go in there to organize it and just get overwhelmed. My Grandma Sessions used to have one of those cans with a springy snake shoved in it and whenever you opened the can the snake would spring out of it-well, this is what the room got like so I just kept the door shut.

Well, last week my sister Lori was here for a few days. She has a son that is Rhett's age so they entertained each other great. I made her make me work on the room. I wanted to paint it to get a fresh start. I wanted to do a golden (not lemony or sunny) yellow because the shelves and desk are brown and I thought they would go together nicely. Plus, yellow is a bright, cheery color and maybe it will be inspirational. So, we picked out two yellows, one a shade darker than the other to do an accent wall. Well, it wasn't quite what I pictured-it is very bright-but I do like it. It looked better once we got the furniture back in place.

The boys got excited and wanted to help. We told them that there weren't any extra paint brushes. Well, kids are not stupid. They dug through the stuff that I had moved out of the room and found some little foam brushes and said "We are ready to paint. We found little brushes just for us." Aren't they cute?! Rhett the Exhibitionist and Cohen the Picker.

Now I just have to put all of the little stuff away-that is the hard part. I want to get it done soon. I am going to do a scrap day on 4/5 with Jaime and Diana so I need to be able to find stuff.

3 year old boys-UGH!!!!!

So, being the mom to a 3 year old boy is challenging. On Sunday morning, he decided to barf his pancakes up all over my couch. This morning, he was playing with a friend and they konked heads and it got Rhett just in the right spot to give him a bloody nose. All of the blood freeked him out so he wouldn't calm down. The bathroom looked like a murder scene. Add that to the non-stop cleaning of pee because he hasn't figured out the whole aiming technique yet, and I seem to be cleaning up a lot of body fluids from him. Add that to the constant tormenting of his brother and sister, always getting into stuff he shouldn't be, and all of the other things 3 year old boys do........UGH!

Good thing he is cute because that earns him points.

How old am I?

On Friday, I enjoyed a blast from my past. One of my favorite rock bands as a kid, Night Ranger, was in town performing at the Green Valley Station. I took Jenny and an old friend, Matt Able with me to see them. Matt and I have seen them before, about 20 years ago in Hannibal, so this was kind of a fun moment to re-live our past. The three main members of the band are intact, with two of the original members no longer there. Overall, it was a fun show, the band played with a lot of energy, but was still showing its age a bit. They played all of our favorite songs, including a couple Matt, Mike Grimes, myself and a couple of other kids from the ward once mimicked in an air band contest at Youth Conference as kids. Good times and good memories. It does remind me how old I am though, as Jenny repeatedly poked fun at me and none of her friends had a clue who Night Ranger is. Seeing some of the "rockers" who were in the audience in their middle ages, yet still sporting 80's rock hairdo's was also funny. Yes, I am getting old.

Another funny (well, not really until it was over) story that recently happened to us: Not long ago, Jenny tried to sneak out of the house to make a run to the local Target and pick up a few miscellaneous items. Instead of opening the garage door and driving out in her car, which would alert the troops, she left out the front door and took my car instead. I was upstairs with Rebekah doing homework in her bedroom when Rhett came in room and asked me where mom was. I noncholantly told him that she had gone to Target. Rhett said OK and I heard him go down the stairs, and thought no more of it. After about ten minutes, I began to wonder where Rhett was as it was suddenly unusually quiet. I called his name a few times and got no answer, so made a quick run around the house and he was nowhere to be seen. I checked to see if he had crawled into Jenny's car (as he often does), but he was not there. Now, I was getting nervous. Often, Jenny walks with the kids over to Target, so I ran out and checked the road, then walked a little of the way, but did not see him. Now, I really was getting a little stressed. I called Jenny's cell as she walked in the door and told her the story. We checked the house room by room, and finally went back into the garage. We finally found Rhett curled up asleep in the little buggy we hook up to the bicycle sometimes. You could not see him from the direction I first passed by while checking the garage, but from the other way, he was easy to spot. Here is a picture we took of the little guy.

There is no way to describe the empty feeling you get when you can't locate a lost child. You feel panicked, scared, and completely helpless in those situations. Conversely, the relief you feel is just as hard explain. You can only understand when it has happened to you.

Pictures of the boys

Jenny went out and got pictures of the boys today. I think they are a couple of cute little buggers, but I'll let you be the judge. The top is Rhett and Austin, the middle is just Rhett and the bottom is Austin. Jenny paid $117 for them and came home with a gazillion copies, so if you know us at all, you likely have one on the way.