Month: December 2009

Tucker still loves to sew, and for along time now, he’s been working on making a quilt, out of the scraps from my fabric pile.

Well, at his school, they have an art’s program called Reflections, where the children are encouraged to create a project then submit it for a contest.

This was enough of an incentive for Tucker to work hard and finish the quilt he’s been working on for awhile now.

Of course it’s full of more robots, and space stuff. That he carefully crafted. He loved this long one.

My favorite was this black square and

this arrow robot.

Here he is with the quilt on awards night.
(Wishing I would have gotten a better shot of the whole quilt. Live and learn.)

Everyone who participated got a ribbon and prize bag. Tucker was thrilled with this.

The children returned to their seats, and then they announced the winners of each group. We had been talking with Tucker before this event, about how lots of kids had entered, and he might not win. We wanted to prepare him, just in case. He was nervous.

But then his name was called.

A medal was awarded

With a gift certificate for an ice cream.

He was mostly proud of the fact that he had gotten a medal with his name engraved on it.

And his proud parents, took zillions of pictures.

We just couldn’t have felt prouder of this Talented amazing boy.

We love you Tuck!

In the next month or so, his quilt will be entered in the State contest. It will be fun to go and see what other children have created, and what is on display. Obviously, more pictures to follow!

if only this is how the world worked.

Last month, the kids and friends set up a table at the end of our culdesac. with this sign:

A Leaf Store.

And amazingly, because of the wonderful neighborhood we live in, the kids made a total of $4.00.

That’s a dollar for each of them. Selling leaves.

I’m Magic.

Tru found an old pair of Toph’s glasses, and the paint brush in the garage earlier that day, and spent the entire day painting with those glasses on. I’m not positive that I understand the correlation between glasses, paintbrush and magic, but I am an adult, and imagination has gotten a little rusty as of late…

And I think we’ve totally entered the exploratory/trouble phase 🙂 but yet, we’re all still just crazy about him.

Another season of Wrestling is complete.

With 7 Weeks of twice a week practices, and Saturday Meets, it was a busy season. Tucker really enjoyed brushing up on his skills he learned last year, and this year was really, really able to enjoy the sport.

His practices lasted a couple hours a piece, and I kid you not, a MAJORITY of the time he had this look on his face.

do you see that SMILE SO BIG?

He loved every minute of it.

Whether watching and learning how to perfect his techniques,

or through practice,

or at the meets where he wrestled his little heart out,

he was so happy, you couldn’t wipe that smile off his face…

Even when his kid was trying to squeeze his guts out. Still Smiling.

Of course it didn’t hurt that he had his own personal cheering section!

And one of his proudest wrestling moments this season? Advancing from the White Shirt to the Gray Shirt.

(He had to pass off the following requirements: Proper Stance, Proper Motion, Know Neutral position, how to sprawl, Do the Knee walk, Do a double leg, Know both starting positions in Referees Position, and lastly understanding the scoring on Take downs, escapes, Reversal, Near Falls, and Falls.)

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again…I’m one proud wrestling mama.

enjoy.

Living across the country from our family when Tucker was born has made us grateful to have our family so close.


Even as close as we are, we still don’t get to see our family as often as we’d like.


So when the Phillips came down one Sunday, we were so grateful just to see them. But that was not all we had to be grateful for, they came and made us dinner, and brought along a cake to share.

And share that cake we did.

Truman enjoyed it immensely, can you tell?

And then he sneezed.

What is that frosting on my hands?

That might be fun to put on my face?



And then it just continued from there.

Until he needed a mirror to see himself.

The eyes were a perfect touch to end the moment.

Silly, silly boy.
Thank heavens for bathtubs.

Thanks again Grandma, Grandpa and Patrick. Come again, no dinner required!

After a wrestling meet, we celebrated a job well done for Tucker with some doughnuts, look at this cute little sneaky boy.

Whilst dad was reading, he found a little treat.

Apparently he loves doughnuts too.

A little sweet treat, for our little sweetie.

to be the favorite parent.

Every once in a while, I wonder what it would be like to the be the ‘novel parent’. The one that the kids don’t get to see as often, and therefore get chosen to go on the special dates, the one who the kids cling too when they first see them, because they just can’t get enough of them….

But then I realize, with gratitude, that because this wonderful man works so hard daily, I get to be home with our little miracles and experience the miraculous little moments of discovery, wonder, awe and excitement that can happen every single day.

So with this realization, I know that I may not be chosen as the favorite, but to be honest, I’m okay with it, because I think he is my favorite parent too 🙂

Any one who has followed this blog, knows that I love fall, but I don’t love leaves..and the raking of them 🙂 ( So pretty much, I chose the wrong house)

So last year, being pregnant and sick, I did not participate very much in our leaf raking process. But this year, I had no such excuse.

We spend so many days raking, and bagging and then my nice neighbor (thanks Jame) let us fill her truck with leaves to take to the green waste dump, and then we raked some more…

So this may seem like a million pictures, and it is alot, but honestly I think over the 3 weeks or so of raking, I took nearly 200 pictures. (At Least).

We really rake daily for awhile, so naturally there’s going to be alot of pictures.

Tucker enjoyed being buried in them,

Truman enjoyed swinging through them,

And Elliot enjoyed eating them. I can’t even tell you how many leaves I pulled out of his mouth.

This year, I feel as if a tender mercy was granted in my behalf.

Usually once the leaves drop, there is a big storm before I can get them all up, leaving us with wet yucky leaves.

Miraculously enough there was no such storm this year.

The leaves were crunchy, and loose, and not slimey!

There were a few really nice, even warm days, not frigidly cold weather.

Which honestly was a huge blessing for me, crunchy leaves are so much easier to clean up than slimey wet yucky leaves.

As you can see the boys loved the leaves, and playing in them together, and of course with the chicken too.

If only fall could be as wonderful as this every year…

If so, I just might not mind the leaves.