Summery Summary

When your friend who is moving away asks if you want a free horse, you can't exactly say no. Especially when said horse "spurred" hours of "horsing around" for two little boys, and even accented their sense of caution as they decided on their own to don helmets for safety reasons. And that's how we got a springing nearly life-size rocking horse.

Lincoln has yet to take a ride on the saddle, but he's no stranger to his spaceship these days.

One blessed morning, I was getting ready while Lincoln was on my bed playing. I noticed he was slowly getting more quiet and by the time I was ready he had effortlessly put himself to sleep! Why can't it be that easy every time?!?

And while I'm getting ready for the day, a certain middle child is usually getting into some sort of mischief down in the kitchen -- either by getting into Lincoln's walker...

Or by getting into the peanut butter.

Here's the day I was certain the second Utah tornado of all time was preparing to touch down in my backyard. We've had some threatening thunderstorms this year! Which is why my neighbors have seen my silhouette lurking by our sliding glass door with a glass of root beer in the late evening, looking excited. And neighbors, even though I'm lookin' like a creeper in the window, the lighting is all I want to see flashing me, thank you very much.

Staring at the lightning has turned into my stress reliever after days, nay, weeks, nay MONTHS of trying to get a certain little someone to properly expose of his excrements. This is as close to success as we've gotten:

Come to find out, if you immerse your potty training child in nature, nature will finally call. Which is exactly the WRONG time for nature to call. When there is NO SIGN of a potty anywhere. Swell.

We've taken a turn for the outdoorsy. Well, by outdoorsy I mean we left air conditioning for 2 solid hours one evening, so that counts, right? We scaled a mountain in what proved to double as a homemade rendition of Fear Factor for me and made it to a campsite where we told our boys we were "camping."

Because everyone knows "camping" is when you go up the mountain and eat marshmallows for dinner and fight the urge to properly expose of your excrements for the first time, right? RIGHT?!? NO ONE TELL MY KIDS OTHERWISE!

They know nothing of tents or sleeping bags or starry skies and I'd like to keep it that way until their 12 years old and the scouting program can support their camping cravings. We like our camping in 2-hour chunks. See how outdoorsy we've gotten?!?

We couldn't room in with the bears overnight anyway, because we had to meet up with Jeff's parents the next day. They just left to serve a mission in Canada and we were so glad they were able to sneak away for a little bit to say goodbye to us.

I can't help but think of the three future missionaries I hope to have one day, and I've been trying to think of ways to help establish a desire in them to serve a mission. I keep having the strong impression that my boys seeing Jeff's parents be on a mission will help them gain an interest in serving a mission which makes it a little easier to say goodbye to them for two years.

I'm so grateful for their example and I can't wait to hear about all the amazing things they will get to be a part of.

And luckily we will be able to Skype them and talk to them on the phone, so they can still see Eli and Carson doing goofy things like the day they decided to draw mustaches and beards all over their faces (thankfully with washable markers).

If I don't have a lightning storm to stare at, dinner with my friends is a pretty good way to unwind, too.

One day Eli was doing a puzzle and Carson sat down next to him, attempting to do a different puzzle with much frustration. Carson kept whining to Eli, begging Eli to help. Eli kept ignoring Carson, completely focused on assembling his own puzzle. Finally Eli distractedly said, "Carson. Just say a prayer...to get help... ... ... ... from Jesus."

I loved that he used his gospel knowledge to attempt to get out of having to help his little brother do a puzzle. And I love that he specified at the end that the prayer should include his help coming from Jesus and NOT from Eli.

That same day, Eli got on a Christmas kick. He started rambling all these things to me that he wanted for Christmas and he could tell I wasn't really taking any of it to heart, so in an effort to get me to take him more seriously perhaps he created his first ever (picture) Christmas list. It worked, Eli. You got my attention because this tickled me pink.