the non stop chatter of my Ethan

Ethan: "Daddy, we went to the store and picked out a mommy huh"
Ethan: "A long time ago"

Ethan: "Cuz we had to find a good mommy huh"
Daddy: "Yep, we had to find the best"
Ethan: "Yep"

Where did my sweet little boy go?
I see glimpses of him every now and
then, but this scowl has taken him over.
I want to be able to take a picture
of him just once without him giving me this
face as soon as he sees the camera
sigh ...

yummy marshmallow anyone?

You'll have to look close.  Ethan and Mason have been cooking smores outside pretending they are camping.

I was a little slow catching on to why they wanted little marshmallows over and over again, but

yesterday I went outside to check on them and they had stuck the little marshmallows on our sprinkler

turner.... yuck!!!! Spencer has informed me that boys will be boys ... which I don't get

that does not give them a license to get muddy right after I've put them in nice clothes

or to eat things that I seriously wonder if what they are eating will cause permanent damage!!  I'm going to

take a deep breath and enjoy this cute picture and hope their roasting days are now behind them.

mosquito bites

For those of you who haven't seen ethan's reaction to mosquito bites here is one that is a mid range one.  we've had worse and we've had better, but this should give you an accurate picture of what a mosquito bite does to ethan's face.  We seem to get them every June ... reminds me to have the mosquito repellent out and ready to use.

This picture does not do Ethan's black eye justice, but thought I'd post it anyway.  Yesterday Ethan fell up my concrete stairs and has a huge black eye.  I thought it was funny today when his teacher immediately started questioning him about it.  I think we've made the list of children to watch for abuse, so let's hope we don't have any more mosquito bites or injuries for the rest of the school year:)

We decided to go up to Echo lake today ... what a mistake:)  We paid the 10.00 to get in, drive to the beach, unpack and pack up and come home.  It literally felt like we were riding full speed on a boat, but we were just sitting on the beach:-(  However, the kids did have fun for the 10 minutes we were there. Minus the wind it really had everything that makes them happy: rocks, mud, sand, water, sticks, swimsuits and permission from Mommy to get dirty.

PTSD

Can't go back to sleep, thought I'd write about it.  I took Mason with me tonight to Young Women's  so Spencer and Ethan could do homework. Well, on the way home (Spencer and my other two boys had walked up to pick us up) we had just rounded the corner to our house and two cars were coming so I yelled ahead to my two boys on bikes that there were cars and they in no way should go into the road.  I continued to watch them to make sure they had heard me and weren't going to do their normal dash across the street on the downhill momentum (concerned about Mason the most ... Ethan is usually pretty good.) well, it looked like they had heard me and had both come to a stop when Mason darted across the street, literally 1 foot in front of this big white truck that had luckily seen him and stopped.  Mason was completely oblivious to the truck and to Spencer and I screaming for him to stop ... It was so terrible!!  We wouldn't have been able to get to him in time and he would have been hit. We were so lucky that this particular truck was going slow enough to stop and that he was paying attention, but who really wants to depend on luck when talking about your child's life.  I keep running it over and over in my mind.  I wish I would have been up there to make sure they didn't cross, I wish my punishment for him crossing had been more immediate, and I wish I could positively say this wouldn't happen again.  hmmmmmmm  I guess when I figure out the answers to these questions I'll be able to go back to sleep.