Happy Birthday for Alden and Thobe!

May is a crazy month for our family. Not only are we gearing up for the last few weeks of school, but Alden and Thobe both have a birthday. They had great birthdays this year.

Alden turned a whopping 10 years old. I can't believe I have a boy who is 10! On his birthday, we did a birthday treasure hunt in the morning before school, Michael took him and Thobe to Burger King for breakfast and met him for lunch at school with a Subway pizza. That night we met Warren and Chris in Monroe, Michigan to celebrate Alden and his abuelita's birthdays. We had such a great time. On Saturday, Alden had a Ninjago birthday party complete with a crazy obstacle course designed by Alden and Michael. They had such a great time!

Thobe's birthday was equally as exciting. Thobe turned 8 years old. I can't believe that he is that old. He's so excited about getting baptized and being older. We also did a treasure hunt for him before he left for school, and he also went out to breakfast with Michael and Alden, and had a Subway pizza delivered to him by his Papi. That evening we took Thobe's best friend Broderick Johnson with us to the Rain Forest Cafe for dinner and then went to Jeepers for an evening of roller coasters, bumper cars, and other fun rides. He had such a great day. He was especially excited about the eagle cake that I made him.

A Top Ten List

On April 25, 2012, we closed on our house in Lima.  I was fortunate to have the opportunity to walk by myself through my dear house one last time and say goodbye.  It was quite an emotional experience for me.  I heard the faint whisper happy boys playing in the basement, the patter of little bare feet playfully running around the circle, and little voices singing Primary songs in various places in the house.  I felt the love of my family and some of our most treasured friends that we made during the four years that we lived in Lima.  When I walked in the kitchen, I could still see the towels that Michael used to clean up the "rain" that Hyrum had made by throwing out buckets of water from the upstairs' bathtub.  When I walked in the boys' room, I heard Thobe's sweet two year old voice exclaim, "My Buckeye Room!"  The memories were palpable, as I walked through the house where I truly felt God had opened the windows of heaven upon us and gave us more blessings than we had room enough to receive.  I can honestly say that while I am very relieved not to have two houses, deep in my heart, I wished that we could some day go back to Lima and live in that same house.

When we first moved to Lima, I listed the top ten reasons that one should visit Lima, Ohio. While most of them were silly reasons, I want to end this chapter of my life by writing another top ten list--the top ten things I will miss about my old house. Keep in mind that this is simply the ten things that I will miss about my house--I could probably list 100 things that I would miss about Lima, certainly with our sweet friends that we made there being at the top of my list.

#1: Our Strawberry Patch. When we first moved to our house, the ground in the front of the house was covered with ivy. I worked so hard to pull it all up and off of the house (when I was working on this project, Alden came out and said, "Mom, why do we have Naomi growing all over our house--Alden has a cousin named Ivy who has a sister named Naomi). After all the ivy was gone, I wanted something else there, so we planted two strawberry plants. They grew and grew and grew. We loved going outside and picking a bunch of strawberries to add to our cereal.

#2: The clematis on my mailbox. While this picture was taken before it bloomed, every year in May, the clematis around my mailbox would explode with beautiful, purple flowers. I loved driving up to my driveway and seeing the beauty of it. I will definitely miss that!

#3: Our big open basement/TV room/toy room. I loved our basement. It had a ton of space and room to roam around. It also had a nice computer desk and built in cabintry. Our family spent countless hours downstairs entertaining, playing, and talking. I am very excited to have a finished basement at our new house.

#4: Our magic closet lights. In the coat closets in the entry way and also in our kitchen pantry, we had magic lights. When you opened the door, the light came on; when you closed it, it turned off. I loved that I never had to fumble for the light when I was cooking or putting groceries away. It went on and off automatically.

#5: The laundry shoot. Perhaps the thing I miss the most about my old house is the laundry shoot. I never had to worry about hampers or piles of dirty clothes in the bedrooms. All my dirty laundry was stored in the wall. Whenever we had dirty clothes upstairs, we just dropped them down the laundry shoot that went straight to the laundry room. I never had to carry a pile of dirty clothes downstairs. I did often wish for a lift of some sort that would allow me to pull my clean clothes upstairs.

#6: My new stove and double oven. While I will admit that I like my current gas range and built into the wall double ovens slightly better, I loved my double oven and range that I bought the November before we moved. If I ever by another range, I will buy one just like this.

#7:  My backyard deck. I loved being able to plant flowers and vegetables that I would hang on the deck in various places. I loved our apple trees and the trelace that we were going to use to plant grapes or kiwis. It was such a great backyard.

#8: Our simple swing set. I will so miss seeing the kids play out back for hours on our swingset. There were four swings for our four boys. I loved it when all four of them would be back there swinging having a wonderful time together. We should probably get a swingset here.

#9: Our big wooded backyard. I loved having a woods in our backyard. I loved seeing it bloom in the spring and watching the leaves fall in autumn. The kids never played in the forest, but it was a beautiful, peaceful thing to watch while eating breakfast or making dinner. I will miss that.

#10: Thobe's (and Alden's) Buckeye room. While I didn't know the first thing about Ohio State before I met Michael, that room particular room will forever remind me of being the thing that was the final selling point on the house. When two year old Thobe said, "Ahh, my Buckeye room," we knew we had to buy the house that we were already sold on.

The Tortise and the Hare

Thobe is an amazing kid. He is always saying and doing things that catch me off guard. From the time he's been very young, he has made some very interesting, humorous, and mature connections. For example when he was 5 years old, we were in the grocery store. He read a magazine that was featuring someone from The Biggest Loser. He read the words "Biggest Loser" aloud, and then laughed and said, "Hey, Mom, did you ever hear of the smallest winner?

The past two days have been no exception to Thobe's ability to play on words and make quick calculations. This morning when I woke the boys up, Alden bolted out of bed, as usual, and Thobe slowly stirred and moaned that to indicate that he wasn't interested in getting out of bed, also as usual. I persisted, racking my brain for some motivation to get him moving. I said, "Hey, Thobe, you only have 20 days left of school. Get up and enjoy one of your last days of school." He tiredly looked at me from the corner of his nearly closed eye and tiredly mumbled, "We have 180 days of school, so this must mean that today is my 160th day. Is that right, Mom?" I was impressed.

Last night, he made a comment that both shocked and amused Michael and me. Earlier that day, we we were driving through our friends' neighborhood and saw a turtle walking down the middle of the road. We stopped in the middle of the road and made sure all the kids saw the turtle. We all gave our appropriate Oooos and ahhhs, the boys told us some fact they knew about turtles that I didn't know (they are really into animals right now, especially dinosaurs), and then we drove on. Later that evening we were driving home. A rabbit ran out in front of us, and Michael said, "Don't let me run over you, Little Bunny." The boys all strained their necks to try and see the rabbit. Alden said he saw it, and then Thobe said, "I saw the tortise, but I didn't see the hare." He then giggled, and Michael and I laughed out loud. I would have never thought to say something like that, but he did. That's what he does. He's growing up so fast!