On and off the court (not "in and out of"...just to clarify)

Basketball season has come and gone and now we are waiting for the snow to be done with us so baseball and bike rides can begin.  And gardening.  (Every year I tell myself I'm going to get my cold tolerant veggies in on time and it never happens, but this is the year!!)

Here is how we've been hunkering down through the last few weeks of winter.

 Rosie has commandeered Luke's set of dinosaur magnets (which he hasn't been too happy about) so I sprung for her own set.  She wears her hair like this most days, usually rubbing most of it loose from the rubber bands while she cuddles her blanket or her Daddy or the kids.  I'll let her narrate for a minute:

 This is how Daddy does my hair.

I may look like a little angel... [she likes to remind us to get ready for prayers]

 But sometimes I'm a bit busy with my own projects, as shown above, or often emptying out sock drawers or getting into the laundry piles--hopefully the clean pile--but not always the clean pile.  One of my favorite accessories one day was a pair of blue undies (clean) belonging to my sister.  I also like telling Mom which shirts in the pile belong to which brother and sometimes ask to wear those shirts over my clothes all morning.

 I love looking at Mom's seed catalogs.  

Especially the strawberries.  Here I am telling Mom, "Berries, num num."  I also like to say "Hello" or sometimes "Hello Rodie" to my doll.  On a phone I was playing with this week I said, "Hello.  Dis is Maynie."  And my mom's not sure if I was talking to Macy or pretending to be Macy.  My Dad thinks the cutest word I say right now is "Ba Dubba Dub" for bathtub.  I also like to sing/squeak at the very top of my vocal range a few songs, especially "Slippery Fish", "Dookle dookle" little star, and "We are a happy family".

 Leslie turned 18.  She told us for her birthday she wanted to go to a concert--Kelsea Ballerini.  When Mark got the tickets she found out that Kelsea was actually opening for Kelly Clarkson, so that was pretty cool.

We also had red, white, and blue balloons signifying her "freedom" birthday, now that she's an official adult.  Then we enjoyed telling her that she is now legally authorized to adopt or atleast maintain guardianship of all of our kids if something happens to Mark and I, and also administer our estate.  Wahahaha.  And that week I helped her open her checking account and got her registered to vote.  My favorite part was while the two of us were sitting at the credit union and our cashier asked her who the beneficiary of her funds should be if anything should happen to her. 

"My Dad I guess."  Very funny.

 Leslie also went to a fun Sweethearts' Dance with some friends.  My friend Heidi did her hair (which was good for both of us) and my friend Sara did a photoshoot with the whole group.  We have the best neighbors!  Thanks ladies.

Leslie said it was a little surreal going with her friend Andrew, who is around 6'7".  She wasn't quite sure what to do with herself in heels.

 I love this picture.  I love that she laughs like Julia Roberts.

We laughed about the "taco hand" photobombing this cute running picture.

Speaking of great neighbors, this is also my friend Danielle who agreed to accompany Leslie for her flute solo for this year's music festivals.  Here they are practicing for a minute.

Leslie is definitely feeling some senioritis as far as feeling like she is "growing out of her own life", as one of my sisters-in-law put it.  She is antsy to go to college, be done with high school, and although she is too nice to say it, find some peaceful relief from our raucous household.  She has also really been feeling like a third wheel as many more of her classmates have been pairing off, especially since she made a hard but excellent decision a while back that she was not going to have a boyfriend in high school.  So, she has been keeping busy with homework and trying to pass the time with Science Olympiad, which has been a great activity for her all through high school.   I loved this text (I think I cheered out loud actually) that she sent Mark and me while on the bus on the way to one of her meets:

Good job Leslie!  She embodies this quote I keep on the bulletin board (and strongly believe)... and has been a great help and friend to many of her classmates with their struggles.

And that includes life-threatening struggles--I got a fun and surprising call from the vice principal last month asking if I was Leslie's mom.  "Yeesss..."??

I was then informed that she had just successfully performed the Heimlich maneuver on a severely choking student at lunch.  I just had to laugh--sometimes we refer to her as our little merit badge.  I could just picture her brothers grumbling and rolling their eyes, almost like in a sitcom.  "Sure.  Straight A's.  Beautiful.  Obeys the rules.  And now she does the Heimlich."  

She told me more about it when she got home.  It was her friend Ammon who had taken her to homecoming.  He was sitting across the table, freshly recovered from a wisdom tooth extraction, and choked on a hot dog.  When Andrew, sitting next to him, saw that he was coughing a bit, he had whacked his back a few times, but then Leslie saw that Ammon just went silent--no more air flow-and was making the choking sign.  She jumped up, raced around the table, told him to stand up, and gave him the Heimlich.  The first time didn't work and she told Andrew that he'd have to take over if she wasn't strong enough.  Second time didn't work.  Third time was the charm as hot dog and milk came flying out all over the table.  

She thought it was particularly funny that the lunch ladies brought Ammon a new hot dog.

Her Aunt Rachel says she should have an automatic admission to nursing school (wouldn't that be nice?), and a local police officer visited her at the high school a few days later and awarded her some movie tickets for "saving someone's life at school".

Our upcoming merit badges enjoyed their basketball season, and I enjoyed having Boston home to babysit the littles since basketball is not his favorite.

Macy almost made her goal of scoring every game.

 These boys are smiling through the tears here, ending their nearly undefeated season with a loss.  Cooper is so fun to watch and I'm excited to see what happens next year.

I've been enjoying being snug in my house watching the beautiful snow (and my beautiful sons shoveling said snow--usually Boston since he gets home from school first and is almost always in a rush to get done with chores so he can go hang out with his buddies).  This was a big job, getting eight passport applications filled out in preparation for Leslie's graduation trip.  I told Mark I definitely earned my paycheck that day:)

We have been enjoying a helpful new family bible study aid (titled Come, Follow Me) put out by our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, this year, to help us teach the New Testament to our kiddos.  It's been really good for me to be a more intentional parent and have many more really important discussions (ranging from "repentance" and "by their fruits ye shall know them" to "age of consent" and escaping bad situations) instead of just our normal family fight we called scriptures and prayer.  We had to change several things--including our proximity to the pantry--and it has taken some practice--but the kids are being troopers about it and I think they are starting to enjoy our study time.  It helps to just pick one or two concepts for the week to focus on and try to teach that at a bunch of different understanding levels over the course of the week (think, Luke style vs. Leslie style).  I decided to transform our TV room in our basement to more of a learning center including purchasing a giant white board for the wall next to the TV, which has been really fun and useful.

I also greatly enjoy teaching our adult Sunday school class at church once a month, so of course our family discussions become material for the class.  Last month I got to talk about "A Broken Heart and a Contrite Spirit", and as an object lesson did my best to reproduce this diagram on the board:

This is what the doctor gave us when I was pregnant with Luke, so it was fun to talk about our experience with his physical heart and our spiritual hearts as we go through hard things.

That might have been a little gory to put on the kitchen chalkboard, though, so I borrowed this idea from facebook for the month.  The kids thought I was some kind of genius, hahaha.