Graduation and Annie

May 23 2011
Okay. So I fell of the bandwagon for a few weeks again. I do feel that my time this Monday morning should be spent in some lofty laundry goals but we have been instructed to keep a journal and I am not sure that face book counts. Anyway. Jon took the 4 oldest boys on a father and sons campout on the 13/14 of this month and it was the nicest two days together in the whole month of May. They had a good time and booked it back early so Marcus could play in his soccer game on Saturday. I spent most of that Friday Cleaning out and packing the camper. I get a GOLD STAR for removing the packrat that was dead on my bed. The bedding was washed in “kill all germs” detergents and a lot of Lysol was sprayed around inside the camper. Currently the camper is sitting in my drive waiting for me to clean it out again after their overnighter.
In the midst of this month I turned 16 doubled this year and the Ward threw an awesome Birthday party for me at the local roller-skating rink. Actually they deemed it a ward party but who really wants to get too technical about that stuff. I got to see my Mom and Dad that day as they were in town for the morning packing up Dallan to move him home to the farm for the summer and they stopped by with Lunch and a hug. Jon surprised me with Jason and Camille’s gutter bill that is to be paid in Premier Design’s Jewelry directly to me. So I am waiting patiently for the new catalog to come out this summer.
We had to put down our little horse Rose last week. Today would have been her birthday. Somehow she got a puncture type injury and it messed up her insides so much that the Vet deemed it un-repairable and we decided to let her go. It makes us a little bit bummed around here. But before she left she managed to step on Jon’s foot and, I think, break his toe, as well as taking a huge hunk of skin off of the back of my hand when we were trying to give her a shot. We are both healing and would rather have our horse instead of these battle scars but sometimes you just have to take what you are given.
Pack night has come and gone again. The three Vera brothers that my boys have invited to join our pack were all awarded their Bobcat badge and at the meeting asked if they could go to church with us on Sunday. Later the 9am time and the 3 hour long church detoured them to their usual 1 pm 1 hour church. But they are coming over today after school to play. It is a neat thing to watch my young boys being little missionaries to their friends. It makes me want to try harder to increase my joy by bring just one back to the fold. The Vera boys will go to Colorado for the Summer to be with their Father who works in a mine. Stiles and Marcus are quite bummed with the idea that they will miss their friends for the whole summer. But they will be back when school starts in the fall.
Despite lots of clouds and rain and some wind the Garden is mostly planted it is only waiting for the plants form the greenhouse to be added to the area. The Peas and Carrots and onions are all poking up and the radishes sprung up overnight I think I saw one bean yesterday and I think I will try and plant corn tomorrow or maybe in the middle of the night so the chickens don’t go right behind me and have a treat. We have been fixing fences but there is still much work to be done, Stiles and Marcus are big helpers and Erica is feeling the effects of being a built in babysitter.
Just for MJ, the Lilacs bloomed yesterday and it is so fragrant. I think that Roses smell wonderful and I Love Daisy’s, but nothing smells better than Lilacs, they remind me of my 15th birthday and visiting with LeAnn and Adrianne out under the Lilacs. Makes me miss Momma LeAnn and wish that ‘A’ lived closer.
Erica graduated from Kindergarten on Thursday. It was a tough two year program but she came through with flying colors and was the top of her class. She kept her cool during the ceremony when the kid next to her lost it and tossed his cookies all over the three kids in front of him. Too bad I had turned off the camera it would have made an awesome U-TUBE video. After the affected children had been hurried off the stage the teacher turned around and said “WELCOME TO KINDERGARTEN”
The Next day Stiles showed his stuff at the 4th grade production of Annie Jr. He was narrator #1 and said all of his lines clear and loud. And knew all of the songs. His friend Macey Hugues was Annie and she did a fabulous job. We even took her some flowers and a candy bar to congratulate her. I taped the whole production and will spare any of you being forced to watch it. But if you want to I will share. He said that at the first showing of the play to the school the girl next to him lost her cookies but managed to direct them away from the rest of the kids on the stage.
We are trying not to force William to potty train but we are not going back to diapers with him. He can do it, the question only is: Will he? In the mean time there is EXTRA laundry around here, as if there wasn’t enough of it around here already. In the midst of the whole process Wyatt acts like he thinks it would be cool to not wear a diaper anymore either. I’m all about that idea but just kinda too busy to implement all that goes along with it . He mostly just likes to take off his diaper when ever he has done his business. No one ever told me that this part of raising kids whould be such a huge milestone and a hard one to really do not to mention I had to clean a bunch of poop out of underwear pants and shoes this last week.

Love you all.
Love Monica and the rest of the Woodin Nickel Knuckleheads!!!