Beach - Memorial Day

I apologize in advance for the length and randomness of this post. Twenty years from now I'm sure I'll appreciate it anyway.

Memorial Day weekend was a blast. We joined the Temecula Donaldson’s for their annual family Easter Egg Hunt, belated this year due to Cathy Jacobson’s son Brad coming home from a mission. Our kids had so much fun! Monday was a perfect San Diego beach day. Michael’s been out of town so much that it meant a lot to spend the weekend with him home and available to play.

Jonathan

Jonathan was happy to finish 2nd grade. He had a nice teacher, Mrs. Love. He was voted by his classmates as “The Best Boy Mathematician” and also given “The Awesome Reader Award”. Michael taught him long division for fun one Friday night and the next day he spent most of day writing problems he made up and checking them. I’m grateful Michael loves teaching math. I’m trying to figure out how to best help Jonathan with handwriting. He earned his Bobcat last month. It was one of Michael’s work-late or out-of-town days and the other three weren’t up for Pack Meeting so we played at the park and the poor kid had no one there to put his pin on. One of his scout leaders took me aside to tell me what a smart kid Jonathan is and how polite he is. It means a lot to me when teachers of his say things like this. If only she knew how it felt when people right and left were giving up on that kid a few years ago. He had a great time at Scout Camp this last week. We just got cement on one side of our house so the kids can play basketball. He is often saying funny things, like “Whenever I try to do pushups, I always fall asleep”. A checker at Costco invited me to play basketball with him. He had missed that I am married and I somehow missed that it was in a date context. I usually avoid going grocery shopping with children and guess my ring needs to be more obvious. So because of this, Michael playfully told Jonathan that if any guy likes me he needs to give the “evil eye” and asked if he knew what that meant. Jonathan replied, “Yes, it’s what you do to people who have nasty intentions.” Really? Where does this kid come up with these things? He’s quite observant and pointed out, “Teachers really like coffee”. So now we know how they get through the day. He memorized and passed off the 13 Articles of Faith at church. Our primary presidency had him stand up and gave him a cup of goodies for the accomplishment and he just stood up there in Sharing Time looking so happy with his long hair. Michael refuses to let me cut the boys hair until school starts so his bed head is something else. Jonathan says he and James are the only boys at school who don’t play Minecraft, have never been to Chucky Cheese or Disneyland and have their own personal electronic game system. Michael decided to take him to Rio so I suppose he shouldn’t feel too neglected. I miss them both but they’ve been having a lot of fun. Check it out.

James

James was sad to see school end. He was quite fond of his kindergarten teacher Ms. Fenny and enjoyed school. In fact, I found two hearts. On one he had written, “Mom, Please be nicer to me.” and on the other “I love you Miss Fenney”. She must be really nice or I must have changed pretty quickly because both Jonathan and James agreed that I was nicer than Mary Poppins six months ago. She doesn’t make him clean his room or stop annoying his brother so I guess she has that going for her. I told the boys to make sure they told their teachers “thank you”. I found out he gave Miss Fenney a kiss on the lips on the last day of school. That boy can be quite the charmer when he wants to be. My second cousin, Lauren is teaching the kids swim lessons for two weeks this summer. During the first week, I noticed him just lying there on his back smiling up at her lazily while she supported his back in the water and thought, “That kid is having too much fun.” He has memorized the first eleven of the Articles of Faith and is working on the last two. He likes to go to the library, ride his bike and play board games with Jonathan. He and Jonathan have started to ride their bikes to the park or friends house together and enjoy that a lot. Michael took the three oldest to How to Train Your Dragon 2. Someone had to stay home to babysit Ryan so I got that job. Michael texted me a cute pictures of the kiddos in their dark 3D glasses that I’ll try to find and post soon. The three of them loved it, especially James. We have a sweet little bedtime routine of songs and back scratches and he thrives on that security, consistency and familiarity. I think he may be like me that way. My aunts and old primary teachers say he looks just like I did at that age, although I see some of him in pictures from when Michael was young too. He’s such handful at times but absolute angel at others. We’ve been staying with my sister and brother-in-law in Provo while Michael and Jonathan are in Brazil. He’s had so much fun with cousins, going non-stop. On Sunday he took a couple walks with his cousin Jacob to see my grandpa and had a little quality time with him. Michael took away Jonathan and James’ Pokémon cards because they were fighting over them. They have to be nice to each other for two months straight (or something like that) before they can get them back so they’ve been up high in our closet for a year or so. James said the bad thing about Jonathan going to Brazil is that he couldn’t go but the good thing is they couldn’t fight for 10 days. Maybe they will get those Pokémon cards down from the closet yet. The first thing James said to Jonathan on Skype tonight was, “Guess what I’m doing as soon as Jacob comes home? Playing Pokémon cards and look I’ve got a cookie.”

Gracie

Gracie loves to sing and dance. She is quite affectionate and continues to be quite a cuddle bug. She enjoys her bike with training wheels and is always disappointed when she can’t join the big boys in board games or on bike rides. She especially loves playing hide and go seek and insists that the person hiding yell, “Hollie, hollie, hee hooo!” so they are easier to find. A couple weeks ago she was being difficult and I told her it is hard to be patient with her sometimes. She told me that Heavenly Father and Jesus are patient with us because “that’s just who they are”. Her Sunbeam teachers absolutely love having her in their class and she really gets into singing time. She came to me quite distraught because her cousin Christian had told her she isn’t brave but she insisted, “but I am brave!” The other day she was telling me all about how she used to be in my tummy and said, “hmm, how do I get out of here” and decided to climb out. It took a lot to get her to leave the Children’s Bean Museum at BYU today. She and James kept asking if all these animals actually exist. She loves playing dolls with her older cousin Emily who has been really sweet with her.

Ryan

Ryan is officially a tricycle rider now that he can ride independently. He likes to tease us by pretending to be asleep in his car seat. He enjoys keeping up with the big kids and playing with anything water. Last night we had dinner on my grandpa’s back patio/yard. Ryan and his three other little 2 year-old cousins had a lot of fun playing with the hose, watering the grass, flowers and each other. It was fun for my grandpa to watch his little great grandson’s playing around in the same yard where he raised his own eight boys. I’m sure enjoying time with him.