Other April Happenings

This picture makes me laugh.  Sexy Farmer took Boone while he went to get some parts in town.  They stopped to fuel up the rig and Boone saw this M&M guy.  Can you tell he was excited?  Apparently he "played" with him for a good 5-7 minutes.

Hoss had to give a talk in primary on Joseph Smith.  He practiced on the fireplace.  Well, that made Duke want to practice too.

That same Sunday, Duke brought home a fishing game from his primary class.  He kept asking to go fishing.  Since we know nothing about fishing, I told him we would have to ask Uncle Cory.

Someone seemed to have eaten all the frosting out of the mini oreos.  Nobody will fess up.

Sexy Farmer fabricated a new loader attachment for the farm.  He constructed it out of an old truck bed.

Now to load the planter with potatoes, it doesn't take nearly as long.

That is a lot of potatoes.

The boys wanted to sleep on the bunkbed cots.  So, Sexy Farmer set them up in the house.  They loved it.

Pinewood Derby

It's Pinewood Derby time!  Hoss has been super excited for this day ever since he brought his car kit home from the Fire station visit.  It was almost as if this day would never come.    He picked the design for his car (from one of the toy cars we have in the toy box) and they got to work cutting, sanding, and painting.

Since the pack is really small, they joined with two other community packs.  One from Ontario and one from Nyssa.  They met at the Veteran's Hall in Ontario for the race.  Each scout was supposed to bring a dessert for a silent auction that would be held during the races.  Here is what I made to contribute.  I found this website and thought it looked pretty easy, so I decided to test my skills.  I didn't have a pan the size of hers so mine is 1 scout and 4 trees short.  But I did add 3 fish!

His cake ended up being sold for the most money to the Mayor of Ontario, Ron Verini.  He was quite proud.

Hoss really enjoyed racing.  His car was pretty fast and it earned him 2nd place for Tigers.

Here is 1st, 2nd and 3rd place for Tigers, all from the same pack, all 3 boys that I'm the leader of.  1st place actually got 1st place out of everyone.  All Tigers, Wolves, Bears, and Webelos of all 3 different packs.  He has quite the car!

Duke wanted to make a car too and our Scoutmaster said that they normally let the younger siblings race too if they want, so we went ahead and made him a car too.  He wanted it to be Lightning McQueen.  It was so nice of the race organizers to let them race and even nicer that they gave them participation ribbons too!  He was very excited.

Hoss already has plans for his next car.  It's going to be a long year.

Boone - 18 Months

Where does the time go?  Boone is growing so fast, sometimes I feel like I'm dreaming.  He doesn't talk much, and when he does he is very careful not to use words that we know he can say, just to be ornery.  The words he does say are: Mom, Hoss, Duke, Papa (Grandpa), Shoes, Cheese, Apple, Up, Wow, Whoa, Kitty, Hi, Uh-oh, Please, Ta-Da!, All Gone, and Hot.  The one word we know he can say but refuses to is, Dad.  He mostly calls all adults Mom and all kids Hoss.

He has to be doing what the older boys do.  He would rather sit at the bar or table to eat instead of his high chair.

18 months also means he's old enough for nursery.  YAY! He LOVES church, really loves it.  Well, loves the nursery part, not so much the sacrament part.  But, I think it has to do with church being at 12:30, right during lunch and nap time, so it really messes with his schedule.  Our normal Sunday turns into Sexy Farmer taking him out pretty much right at the sacrament is passed (he is really struggling with only taking 1 piece of bread and 1 cup of water) then they go sit in the van and they both take a nap until I come out and get them for Sunday School.  At which time, Boone is all excited for nursery and Sexy Farmer struggles to wake up.  It's a great routine.  Anyway, he seriously loves wearing church clothes and would wear them daily if we let him.

He gets so mad if his ice cream cone is smaller than the other boys.  I normally try to get him the "courtesy" cone but he insists that he's as big as them and "needs" one the same size.  Don't get me wrong, he has a big enough appetite that he can eat it, but the problem is that it normally melts by the time he gets even halfway down.  Which makes for some nasty messes.

I love that he can pray with us without us having to hold him still.  He is much more advanced at this stage than the other boys have been because he will bow his head and close his eyes too.  The others would only fold their arms and kneel.  Granted, he doesn't keep his eyes closed the entire time because we often hear him yelling out one of his brother's names as to "tell on" them for not having their eyes closed, or we hear him "shush" them, either way, they get busted.

As much as he loves to be in the middle of everything his brother's are doing, he is also happy to play independently.  As long as he has a tractor, he's set.

We have really enjoyed having Boone in the family.  He always has the biggest smiles, and loves to sit and read books.  He's our first kid to enjoy playing with balls.  He is really good a throwing and usually has some sort of ball in his hand.  He still isn't very good at sleeping through the night.  He is really afraid of shadows, so we have to make sure his curtains are tucked away from the night light so it doesn't create any shapes on the ceiling.  We all really adore him.

Tiger Cubs

Hoss' Cub Scout leader decided to step down from activities, so I was asked to volunteer to be the new Tiger Cub Den Leader.  The den was WAY behind on their advancement so the first activity I was in charge of, I figured we were going to get back on track.  We took a hike, and mixed it up with some of the other electives as well, like picking up trash and a scavenger hunt.

When we got back to the church, I took a picture of each scout in front of the flag to be used for many other projects down the road.  I wish I would have fixed his neckerchief first.  Oh well, that just shows I'm not a very observant photographer and don't look for the small things.

Soccer Season

We signed Hoss up for Soccer this year.  It's a first for us, sports, that is.  I'm not really big into sports.  I loved it when I was little, but once it stopped being fun and enjoyable, I was out.  So, I've never really been into pushing my kids to start sports so young.  I know it helps build confidence, team building, blah blah blah.  But for some reason, it's just not my thing.  I'm not a soccer mom.  Anyway, we signed him up.  He had fun, enjoyed himself, and had a really nice coach.  Each teammate takes turns with an after game snack, so this is what we came up with for his turn.  Snacks are easy when it falls in a holiday month.

2nd Easter Egg Hunt

For Easter Sunday, we headed over to Boise to my sister, Danna Jo's, house for dinner.  At the last minute we decided to have an egg hunt too.  We brought over a dozen eggs for each kid, and each set of eggs were the same so they knew which eggs were which person's to find.  It worked out well.  Hoss had soccer ball eggs, Duke had baseball eggs, and Boone's were regular colored eggs.

Even though they still had their own set of eggs to find, it was still a race.

Hoss' eggs were hidden harder since he's older.  He had to look hard for some.

Danna Jo helped Boone.  It was nice that he wasn't competing against our dog this time.

They were all super excited and really enjoyed the hunt.

Easter Decorating

My sister, Kimberly, was going to be here for a few days before Easter.  We had to take advantage of the visit and planned to dye eggs and have a hunt for the kids.

She came over and we started dying the eggs.  My kids have never really done this.  My boys would rather be playing outside in the dirt, than inside crafting, so we don't normally do this type of thing.  But, when family comes, they put on their good boy attitudes and participate.

My mom has TONS of plastic eggs.  And when I say TONS, I mean TONS.  It's been years and years of collecting, so when it's time for the hunts, the kids are never disappointed in how many they can find.  She didn't bring her entire stash of eggs, but did bring quite a bit.  So, the eggs were hidden and then it was time for start hunting!

Boone was pretty excited.  Since this was hif first real hung to participate in, he jumped right and and figured it out.

Hoss with a full bucket already.

And Duke on the hunt.  Our dog kept finding eggs and breaking them open and eating the candy.  She would even steal them out of Boone's bucket.