Poem

I have an amazing little sister who is a very talented writer (my older sister is too, what's up with that? I guess it skipped one). She's been going to grief therapy since my brother died and her Dr. suggested she use the outlet of poetry to express her feelings, she's written several, but this one is my favorite so far. She posted it on her blog just yesterday and I just had to share.

Writing Poetry Therapy

When tears are not enough to ease the pain

When the heart seems full of agony and grief

When the mind cannot accept the reality

When death is the final word that was spoken

Remembering the happy times, the memories

Remembering the smiles and the laughter

Remembering the times together, just talking

Remembering the last time I heard your voice

Knowing my love for you was not enough

Knowing that I would have been a call away

Knowing that many good times were ahead

Knowing that you chose another path instead

Sometimes you have to accept the last choice

Sometimes you have to know it was an answer

Sometimes you have to believe it was for love

Sometimes you have to say goodbye too early

Refined Taste

Wanna know something kinda funny and quirky about Weston?

He loves to eat baby wipes!

I have to make sure I shut the top on the container or I'll walk in on him holding a handful and munching away.

Hmmm, baby wipes. So soft, so flavorful. Yum!

(It's hard to get a candid picture of him because everytime I come at him with a camera he drops what he's doing and bolts for the camera!)

Help!

I know I joke around about Tanner and his awesome powers of destruction, but it really is a huge problem. He's out of control.

He's almost 5, yet we have to lock every door, childproof every cabinet, hide anything that might be the slightest bit of a temptation for him. Despite all of our precautions he still manages to do the naughtiest things.

It's not just innocent curiosity. He'll get into trouble for something and go out and do the same thing the next hour, the next day, all week long. I feel like we've tried everything: time-outs, sending him to bed, sending him to his room, grounding, spanking, Love and Logic, 1,2,3, Magic.....nothing works! Nothing!

Does he need counseling? Medication? I'm to the point where I can hardly stand him.

Don't get me wrong, I love him. I love him to pieces, but I dread when he wakes up in the morning. I get so angry at him that I'll be literally shaking. And it seems to happen on a daily basis.....some days an hourly basis.

I've tried spending lots of time with him so he gets plenty of attention, I've tried keeping him busy and occupied with activities, I've tried being positive and making a huge deal out of every good thing I see him do. No change.

It's not just destruction, although that is a huge problem, he's also very defiant. I tell him not to do something and he'll yell back, hit, throw things at me. A couple of days ago he got into trouble for turning on the water in the backyard (again, and again, and again) and I sent him to bed early that night. We've been having him sleep on the futon in our storage room because we can't put him with the other boys (he keeps them up all night and last time we tried to let him sleep in his room he pulled everything off the walls......even made a picture fall down on Weston). I have some canning jars in there. He was furious at being sent to bed so he started throwing glass jars. I ran in there as fast as I could once I heard glass shattering, but he's already broke some and we had to clean up the mess.

He got into the child-proofed fridge downstairs and pulled out all the cubes of butter. I came downstairs and had butter everywhere. I cleaned it up spanked him and sent him to bed, but I guess he'd stashed a couple where I didn't see because the next afternoon he got them out and stuffed butter in every nook and cranny he could find....8 cubes of greasy butter all over the basement. Mike cleaned that one up and it took hours. Did it matter that he'd got in trouble for the same thing the night before? Nope. It never does.

I had a neighbor from around the corner come to my door last week and tell me that he'd almost hit Tanner with his truck because he was out playing in the street. He KNOWS he's not supposed to do that. He just doesn't care. He's so impulsive, he never thinks before he does anything. He doesn't consider consequences of any kind and it scares me.

This morning it's already begun. He shoved a bunch of dry cereal into a full carton of milk. After I tried, in vain, to remove it I finally just gave up and told him he wasn't getting breakfast this morning. He screamed and tried to hit me so I sent him to his room.....where he proceeded to tear everything up because he was mad. What should I have done differently? It would be one thing if he was two, or three, but he's almost five!

What do I do? I'm at the end of my rope. I'm so frustrated with him on an almost constant basis. It doesn't matter how "strict" I am, nothing seems to change. I worry that I'm crushing his self-esteem by being constantly mad at him, but I don't know what else to do. He doesn't follow the rules. He doesn't care about punishments or even awards for good behaviour.

Help! Any suggestions?

Look Out Below!

This is one of those stories that never got told because at the time it

was. not. funny.

Now that a couple of months has passed though I see the humour in it and I have a feeling it's going to be a family classic.

Tanner likes to help. He's really sweet about it and when I keep him busy helping me he tends to get into less trouble (or so the theory goes). When Weston has a messy diaper I put it in a plastic grocery sack and my sweet little helper runs it to the outside garbage for me. He's been great about doing this little chore since Weston was born.

I guess he got bored.

I heard a knock on my door. I answered it and it was the neighbor who lives behind me. She is mad. Fuming mad. Apparantly for the past few days instead of taking the dirty diapers out to the garbage like he was supposed to Tanner decided it would be a lot more fun to lob it over the fence into the neighbors yard. Unsuspecting little me, I just kept giving him more ammunition and thanking him for "taking care of it". This poor lady had been bombarded with stinky diaper after stinky diaper. She said one got stuck in her tree, one landed on their patio swing.....her dog had even gotten ahold of a couple and shredded them all over the yard. This had been going on for days before she finally drove around the block to confront me.

I was mortified.

I didn't blame her for being angry. I told her I didn't know he'd been doing that, but I got the impression she didn't believe me. I apologized and the next day we made a batch of brownies and I made Tanner walk over there with me to deliver them and apologize in person. Ever since then I went to great lengths to avoid them. They accepted our apology, but I never felt like we were on the greatest terms with them after that. Luckily, they just moved last week. I wonder if they gave the new home owners a heads up about what they're in for.

What will Tanner do next?

Springtime Fun!

I notice every few months that we had some fun family times that I never had the time to blog about. So......I like to do a little seasonal post every now and then.
I can't believe I never posted our Easter pics!

The boys in their handsome Easter suits.

We watched The Lamb of God on Easter Sunday and Caeden really payed attention to the story of Christ's death and resurrection. I love that he's finally old enough to "get it".

Digging in their Easter baskets:My Easter craft: tie-dye eggs. I found the idea here. It was so easy and I loved the end result.

Flying kites for FHE. The boys flew their kites for about 5 min. and then ran off to the playground. Weston loved to watch them though.

My boys can't ever seem to get enough of their grandparents. I loved this picture of all of them crawling over their Papa.

For Memorial weekend we went camping with Nana and Papa. We also brought my niece, Kaylin, along with us. We went to the Scandanavian Festival and parade in Ephraim. Caeden called the marching band "Horners" (because of their trumpets) and the clogging dance troup "Stompers".

Kaylin thought the local royalty were all Princesses and wanted a picture with one of the girls:

This lady was telling the neatest early pioneer stories. We stayed here for probably 40 min. because the kids were so enraptured.

This was the best part:

I made this for a family dinner after Memorial Weekend. I love how it turned out. I got the idea here

I just have to post this. Tanner is such a heavy sleeper and he always ends up in the oddest positions. How can he sleep like this?

A Heavenly Message?

I've often heard that for children the veil between Heaven and Earth can be thin. I'd like to think that a special message was sent to me. I don't know if that's the case of not, but it's touched me all the same.


Tanner likes to collect stuff. He picks up the oddest assortment of things. We rarely know where he even gets the treasures he brings home (yes, he's a bit of a klepto and usually brings home "souveniers" from peoples houses). When he was out with his Papa and Nana he found a balloon. It was one of those little message balloons that is usually on a pick. He brought it home and was playing with it. I didn't pay any attention to it. About an hour later he brought it over to me and said "Here mom. This is from Uncle Wayne. He said to give it to you." I picked it up and this is what it said:

You'll Be Missed.

Tanner can't read, he thinks all balloons are for birthdays. I even asked my Dad, his Papa, if he'd said anything about Wayne when Tanner found the balloon. He hadn't and Tanner never said anything about it to him. When he gave me that sweet gift it brought tears to my eyes, but they were good tears. I think I might go stick it on Wayne's grave. My way of telling him "Right back attcha."

Buppy our Puppy

Poor kid. His nickname was Buppy, but that has slowly evolved into Puppy. "Puppy, come have a bath." "Puppy, it's time to eat." "Come here Puppy." It sounds degrading, but when we use his sweet little nickname it's full of all the love, adoration, and fondness we can possibly squeeze into the name. The whole family is madly in love with this little baby.


He hasn't shown any interest in walking. Instead he does this quirky little knee-walking. It's not a crawl, but it's not walking either. It's so funny to watch him. Ouch! I think that would kill my knees.






Last Sunday I was sitting in Relief Society and he just let go of my chair and walked up the aisle! I couldn't believe it!! None of the usual, one wobbly step, maybe two wobbly steps, fall down. Nope. He just went for it and walked 5-6 steps in one go. Crazy! Of course his daddy is skeptical because I haven't been able to get him to show him his neat new trick. Where is my camera when I need it? Of course now that I have access to my camera I can't get him to do it again.....figures.

Caeden-Bug

Caeden told me one night that he wanted to read Harry Potter. I knew why he wanted to read it. It didn't stem from love of literature, reading, or even a desire to know the story (I haven't let them watch the movie, too scary!). No, he wanted to read it because one of his friends was reading it. This friend is an older boy (gasp! he's already baptized, which in Caeden's world makes him an automatic beacon of wisdom and knowledge) and he knows all things Pokemon......this amazing combination of traits has caused Caeden to have a bit of hero-worship. So, in his world it's simple logic that if he's reading Harry Potter, Caeden therefore must read Harry Potter.

Not one to ever discourage my kids from reading I agreed to pick the book of from the library and we could read it together. Honestly, Caeden had never read a long chapter book that didn't have pictures, so I expected his interest to fizzle out within a couple of days. To my suprise he loved the book. In the beginning I would see him squirming and being fidgety. He would seem really distracted and not paying attention. Well. I didn't want to read the whole book outloud if he wasn't going to even listen to the story, so I would stop and ask him what had just happened. Never-fail he recited back to me exactly what was going on with the plot at that point. We read the entire 1st book of the series together and we've started on the second one. He has always loved being read to and it's fun for me to actually get to read a book together that's interesting for me as well.

My favorite part? He snuggles with me the whole time. Just for that alone I wish the series would go on forever.

Here he is with his 1st grade teacher. She really did an excellent job with the class this year and I'm happy that she's going to be following him through 2nd grade as well. And yes, despite the face he's pulling he really does like her, he said he wanted to have a pirate face.......?.....okay, whatever.

His end-of-year program.

He's growing up so fast!

Tanner Bo-banner

This little guy graduated from preschool recently (but not really because we're sending him back for another year instead of on to kindergarten).

He loved Ms Angie and he loved carpooling with his good buddy.

He was so excited that both of his grandmas came.When his teacher handed out the diplomas she made a few comments about each child's personality. With Tanner she said that he was the classroom DJ. He had a whole arsenal of tunes that he would belt out all the time. He would request everything from 5 Speckled Frogs, to Follow the Prophet, to Boom-Boom-Pow by the Black Eyed Peas, to Queens Greatest Hits (he LOVES Queen, especially We Will Rock You). It was so "Tanner"......he loves music. He loves loves loves music. He rarely watches TV unless it's the Wiggles, the Doodlebobs or one of the Disney musicals. He can be such an angel.....

He can also be such a little devil.

What? He doesn't look like a devil. That's because he's having a mandatory naptime after he colored on my basement walls, got into my car and emptied out all my cubbies and glove box, stole and ate an entire pack of gum, dumped my jewelry out onto the floor, sneaked into the cupcakes I had set aside for FHE (I found the very messy remains behind my living room curtains), turned on the hose and flooded part of the backyard, and dumped a sack of potting soil on my front porch. Oy! I don't know if I'm ready for Summer Vacation afterall.

I love that little stinker.