Gregory wanted to see what shock would do to me :-)

GREGORY MADE THE KIDS' SMOOTHIE THIS MORNING *WITHOUT BEING ASKED!* I'm still beside myself in shock. I struggled to get out of bed. He got me up saying, "Mom, will you please come here for a moment?" When I got up and followed him, he had the contents of a Good smoothie in the blender and just needed a little more water and to blend. WOW! :-)

Bragging on kids again. :-)

We took the kids and a neighbor boy to the HAFB Easter Egg Hunt yesterday. They had different areas for different age groups: 0-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12. This put Sara and the boys in different areas. Kyle had Sara and I had the boys. Parents had to stay outside the fence line where the kids gathered eggs. When Sara got in there, she gathered 20 eggs. When all the eggs were gathered she looked around and saw several kids who had ZERO eggs. She IMMEDIATELY started passing out her eggs to those kids. Kyle said there was one three-year old boy who was crying because he didn't get any. Sara went over, said, "Here's an egg," and promptly walked off to find someone else. Kyle said the mom looked up, started crying, and said Thank You (Sara was already gone). Kyle told me and we are SO PROUD of that little girl of ours who shared without prompting or expectation of reward just because others didn't have any and she had plenty. She ended with four egg.

The boys also gathered lots of eggs. Scott got 9, Gregory got 8 and our neighbor friend got 4. We asked the boys to give eggs to their friend and the made all their egg stashes equal with no complaint. Sara became a little disappointed when she realized she had fewer eggs than her brothers. Her brothers then shared their eggs with her with no prompting and helped her feel better.

It was WONDERFUL! I LOVE THESE KIDS! I am SO PROUD of their giving and loving natures and feel TOTALLY BLESSED to have them in my life. :-)

Sara's pain tolerance

We went over to Grandma and Grandpa Wiberg's house for a big family dinner last night. Sara got dressed in her pajamas and went back outside to play. Well. . . she was running down the stairs and missed the last three. . . She broke her wrist. I honestly didn't realize it might be broken until 10:30 last night when she came upstairs and told me how much her wrist hurt. I wrapped it, gave her some Ibuprofen, cuddled, watched "Phineas and Feb" and sent her back to bed. She came back up around 5:00 and I let her cuddle in bed with me. We took her into the doctor this morning and she was FANTASTIC. She got her x-rays done with zero complaint and zero movement or talking that wasn't requested. She was her normal friendly self, just disciplined. :-) When the x-rays weren't being set up or taken, she was entertaining the x-ray tech with stories. :-) She has what's called a "buckle fracture." She currenlty has a splint and we'll see orthopaedics sometime this week to determine if she needs a cast. She's behaving SUPER well with no complaints. She's not allowed to play for at least an hour and half or two hours from the time she got the splint (one hour down) to let it set completely. In order to avoid hyper, we didn't go to church :-( and she's calming watching Liken the Scriptures' "David and Goliath" which is one of her favorite "Jesus movies." She has rarely even complained about her wrist hurting and I wouldn't have suspected a break except that it woke her twice. I even feared that the x-ray would show nothing because she's been so good about it all. I'm glad I took her in, though. :-)

Kids at Beus Pond in Ogden

It was early day out for the boys. It's spring. Kyle had a doctor appointment in Ogden. We dropped off Kyle and the four of us went to Beus Pond in Ogden to feed the ducks and the geese. I wish I had thought to video the kids feeding the greedy geese and ducks, but I thought of it after the loaf of bread was gone. I have attached some pictures and some other video from the pond below. Enjoy! :-)

Ring has returned. . . :-)

Our boy hamster Ring just woke Gregory from sleep. He climbed up on Gregory's bed, ran across his leg and Gregory, thinking he was a spider or something, started trying to smash him. :-) Once he found that it was Ring, he gathered him up and brought him upstairs. Funny. It's a good thing Ring is a brave, kind hamster. Next question: do we take Bella back because really you should only have one hamster in a house and she's SKITTISH or do we get another hamster cage and keep both hamsters. . . PetSmart has a 14 day guarantee on live pets. The kids love BElla OODLES, so we may be a two hamster family. . . Funny. . .

New hamster Bella

Meet our new hamster Bella. (She helped choose her name by calming down once we voted on it.) Ring escaped from his cage the middle of February and we haven't found him alive or dead. . . No trace. No smell. We got Bella yesterday. She's skittish and jumps out of hands, but seems willing to adjust to her new home. :-)

I think the kids could't love her any more than they do. They're SO EXCITED to see her running on her wheel! :-) They take that as a sign of growing comfort. :-) Scott and Sara both cheered for her when she was running on her wheel. We all look forward to her being comfortable enough with her new surroundings to be held. . .The kids do NOT want to wait the obligatory 2-4 days (per hamster owner manual we picked up when we got Ring) for her to grow accustomed to the smells, sounds, and general surroundings.

Kyle speculated last night that if Ring's in the house and smells a female hamster, he might just make his appearance again. :-) If he does, we'll have some logistics figuring to do. We don't want baby hamsters.

Interesting development

The whole family has taken turns with strep the last couple of weeks. It's been unpleasant. The interesting thing, for which I am SO GRATEFUL is when Sara has chosen to be MEAN to me, disobedient, defiant, etc, Scott has CHOSEN to be exactly the opposite. He has chosen to try to help Sara calm herself down. He has chosen to speak in a calm, quiet voice. He has chosen to tell me that he doesn't hate Sara and to remind me that she will calm down eventually. He has chosen to do kind and gentlemanly things (such as opening doors for me, especially as I carry a screaming, kicking Sara through the door). He's been WONDERFUL whenever she's been awful. What a blessing! :-)