Trash Talk

I don't know how many times I've mentioned this, but we love the people here in Ohio, especially the people in our ward. Several months ago, a new family, Josh & Kristi Burke and their three kids, moved into our ward from Utah. When they spoke in church and Josh said that he didn't prepare his talk until the wee hours of morning because he stayed up late watching the Jazz game, Michael knew we would be friends. He has been right. Our families have gotten along splendidly, and we are so glad that they moved here. There is one minor problem with our friendship that will meet its climax this weekend--the Burkes are University of Utah Ute fans. This has been especially troubling for our children who as most of you know are avid BYU fans (yes, they like to Buckeyes and Rockets very much too). Thobe will often mention with uneasiness the Josh that is a Burke who is a Ute fan, and Alden has done more trash talking with Josh than I ever thought he was capable of. Don't get me wrong, Josh encourages this more than you can imagine, but Alden plays right into it. They often argue about which team is better and which team will beat the other team when they play. Alden gets really fired up. Josh is always trying to convince Alden that he should be a Utah fan by bribing him, and Alden adamently stands his ground. It's actually pretty hilarious to listen to the two of them.

Anyway, yesterday we had our Primary program in Sacrament meeting. I'm the chorister for the Primary, so I've been pretty involved in making sure the kids know the songs. Alden and Thobe wrote their own parts for the program and both sang solos as well (our Primary is small enough that everyone who wanted to sing a solo was able to). Anyway, I was so happy with how everything played out and how all the kids did. Thobe is a really quiet kid at church. He has a reputation of not saying much and having his pants at his ankles (I finally found some suspenders that he will wear every week from now on). Anyway, he really stole the show with his part. So many people said afterwards, "I didn't know that Thobe could talk that well." We just smiled (I'm going to attach the video of them saying their parts to this post. I was really happy with how they did).

So after we finished, several people stopped us and talked to us, including Josh that is a Burke and a Ute fan. Josh started talking to Alden about the big game on Saturday and caught my attention when he asked Alden what sign he was flashing him all throughout church. He questioned, "Alden, were you telling me to hang loose?"

Alden said, "No, I was showing you the Y in sign language. Go Cougars."

So even though I thought we were having this very spiritual, uplifting meeting, and my six year old son was silently trash talking his rival. Certainly his love of sports comes from Michael, but I don't think even Michael would trash talk someone during church. I guess we'll have to work on that one.

Anyway, as promised, here are the videos of my kids saying their parts. Alden is sick today, so he might sound muffled. It probably didn't help that Thobe was pounding something in the background. I have both the part that they said and the song they sang. I think it's adorable.

Happy Second Birthday, Hyrum

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Yes, I know, it's been over a week since Hyrum's birthday, but I wanted to take a few minutes to write about his birthday and how much I love him. As I've said 100 times, Hyrum is a wild kid. He gets into everything and is constantly climbing and grabbing and throwing. Today I cringed as I heard many, many, many different objects being thrown down the stairs. When I asked Thobe what was going on, he started giggling and said, "Mom, Hyrum's throwing everything downstairs!" Everything may have been an exaggeration, but if he could get it into his hand, it was being chucked down the stairs. Despite all my frustration over some of the things he does, Hyrum and I get to spend a lot of time together with the Alden in school all day now, and Thobe in preschool in the morning Monday through Thursday. He also has somehow worked it out that he gets to stay up later than his brothers too, which also means more one-on-one time with me and Michael. Admittedly, I love this time that we have together. We often play and giggle, and he'll turn to me with a very serious look on his face and say, "Blah blah blah blah, bla bla bla bla bla." I'm certain he knows what he's saying, but I don't yet. Nonetheless, I love that he wants to talk to me. I don't want to communicate here that he doesn't say words. He does. Everyday he says something that I didn't know he could say. His most recent, "I know," when I tell him to do something that he doesn't want to do. He very clearly tells us what he wants too. "I want this" or I want that" (usually the this or that is actually what he wants). I love that he loves music. He is always singing a song and especially loves singing the ABC song. The other night, I tried rocking him to sleep. As I sang, he sang along with me. I loved that time! He loves giving kisses and hugs and will wave at everyone in the world whenever we go anywhere. He is such a doll.

He had a really great second birthday. Michael's parents came down to celebrate with us. We had some of Hyrum's favorite food for dinner--mashed potatoes, jello, and meat, and then he opened his presents. His two favorite presents were a keyboard from Grandpa and Abuelita and a horse that he can ride on. I'll attach a video to this post to show his reaction to his horsey. We had a very fun time, and I think I can say this for our whole family when I say that we're so grateful that Hyrum is part of our family.

Our Happy Halloween

When we lived down in Texas, I learned that there are people in the world who do not "celebrate" Halloween. They don't carve pumpkins, they don't trick or treat, and they don't even dress up. This seemed strange to me at first; however, I must admit that their skepticism of celebrating the "devil's holiday" has made me question whether I should celebrate Halloween too. Fortunately for my kids, Michael thinks that trick-or-treating is a necessary rite of passage each year for kids, so we always dress the kids up for trick-or-treating and have a great time carving pumpkins. Interestingly in Lima, Halloween is not celebrated; HOWEVER, trick-or-treating is. They just have it on a different night and everyone goes all out for it. All the stores in the mall and many other businesses have trick-or-treating times, each township has it's own "Beggars' Night" celebration, which allows kids to go to several different townships for trick-or-treating. The celebration of this holiday can be literally a week long event. So, needless to say, we had a fun week.

On Monday for our Family Home Evening, we carved pumpkins. I found a Pumpkin Carving kit on Amazon for $2 that came complete with a CD where you can make your own jack-o-lantern pattern. The boys had a great time picking out their pumpkin face. Alden wanted a scary face while Thobe wanted a funny face on his pumpkin. They all enjoyed pulling out seeds, and Hyrum especially enjoyed trying to steal the pumpkin carvers and knives from us. Not to brag, but I must admit that these were the coolest pumpkins that Michael and I have carved (nearly everyone in the neighborhood's pumpkins looked better than ours, but they were our personal best). Anyway, it was a fun FHE.

On Tuesday, someone in our neighborhood "Booed" us, which simply means that they left a bag of candy on our doorstep and a note telling us that we needed to pass it on. This was an especially fun surprise for the boys.

On Wednesday, we went to our ward Halloween party where the kids finally got to wear their costumes. Back in August, shortly after seeing Star Wars Clone Wars, Alden informed us that he wanted to be a clone for Halloween, and Thobe said that he wanted to be Obi Wan Kenobi (his favorite Star Wars character). I began scouring the Internet and in the end, got ripped off on Alden and Thobe's costumes--oh well. I wanted Hyrum to be Yoda, but I think every parent who had any interest in Star Wars wanted their 2 year old boy to be Yoda too and were quicker about buying their costume than I was, so we ended up settling for Darth Vader. Anyway, all three boys were very excited to wear their costumes. At our ward party, we had a very large hodge podge of soup and corn bread. Then the kids played a bunch of games, and then they all went around trick-or-treating from room to room. We came away with a ton more chocolate and candy than should ever exist in the house of a person like me who has no self-control when it comes to sweets (fortunately, I also had dental work that day that left me with a very, very sore tooth--it only deterred me a little).

Thursday was Thobe's Halloween party at school. Hyrum and I went to help out as the kids in Thobe's class went to the offices all over his preschool to trick-or-treat. It was very fun and cute. Later that evening was our neighborhood's trick-or-treat. We had several families from the ward come over and trick-or-treat with us. It was a lot of fun. We really had a nice time, although again we got more candy than we got rid of, which makes a bad weight gaining situation for me.

Friday, Halloween day, we went to Dayton to follow up with Thobe's nephrologist. He was given a clean bill of health, and the doctor confirmed to me that he must have had a virus, like strep, that did temporary damage to his kidneys. What a great relief it is to not only know that Thobe is a healthy boy but more importantly to know that God hears and answers our prayers. When we got home, I rushed to Alden's school to help with his Halloween party in his class, and then we went to the park to play with a couple of Alden's friends from school. That night was a typical Friday night at the Monday house-- a little rowdy, yet fairly relaxed, with a lot of singing, giggling, and fun.

It's Cryptonite

I have so much to update here on my blog, but I thought this story was so funny, that I didn't want to not write it. Today, Alden stayed home from school with a cough and cold (it's really hard for me to tell when I should keep him home--even when he's sick, he's really good natured). Anyway, so today we were watching Sesame Street (another confession--I found that if I record Sesame Street, I can turn it on in my bedroom when I get tired, close the door to trap my boys, and have them watch TV while I sleep for one hour--it works especially nicely with my distructo Hyrum who I recently discovered will, like a brain-dead monkey, sit in front of the television for a very long time without getting into trouble, which is a very nice thing because I thought before he turned two he was adventurous and curious, I had no idea--anyway, that is for another post). So today on Sesame Street, Elmo came on with his friend, Christopher Reeve. This was filmed, clearly before Christopher Reeve's death but also after his cripling accident. During the summer, Alden and I found the old Superman starring Christopher Reeve in the library and watched it at home in our Clearplay (another thing that I love to have, although we don't use it a ton because we don't watch a lot of movies). Anyway, I told Alden that Elmo's friend was actually Superman from the movie that we watched during the summer. I told him he had some kind of accident, but I couldn't remember what had happened to him.

"He got Cryptonite on him, Mom. That's what happened to him," Alden so knowingly explained.

"No, Alden, he had an accident."

"Yeah, Mom, with Cryptonite."

"Oh," I said, and left it at that. I don't think anything that I could say would convince him otherwise.