We gave Jordan a surprise party when he turned 16. There were about 40 kids who came and they were so much fun. They gave him the funniest gifts. I am convinced they are just as weird as him so I guess the adage it true- Birds of a feather flock together. The real problem happened during and after the party. First of all, I hate to admit to my husband that he was right and I was wrong - especially when it was me who was totally stupid. But here it goes-  I told him I was giving all of Jordan's friends silly string to spray on him when he came in and Todd was like- "Michelle! Honey! I know how you are but DON'T DO THAT! Silly string is the worst to clean up! Seriously honey- don't do that." Of course I looked at him.. that way ...and told him he was a party pooper and completely ignored his warning. Had I known that it would have cost me 5 hours of clean up the next day and that I would scrape all of my fingernails down to callouses in cleaning I would never have done it! (OH-- Here is why I couldn't''t just leave the remnants of the silly string as a yearlong souvenir...I had the party at my brother in laws house to throw off Jordan. So it was not my house or we would still have string everywhere!) Please, I am begging you! Don't use that silly string. It stains and it does NOT come up with the following: Goo Gone, Comet, magic eraser, baking soda, tide, Joy detergent (worked the best) hot water, cold water, swearing, scouring, swearing, mops, towels, swearing, knives, spoons, shovels, the only things that worked were MY FINGERNAILS!!!!!! Imagine all those cans of silly string and my fingernails!!!!!!! Oh-We are going to use confetti at our next party- ha ha haha-just kidding!

Happy Thanksgiving Season! So, for over a month now my kids have been involved in the musical Oliver! It has been a totally overwhelming and time consuming experience. They are gone every night until late, up early and do rehersals over agian. The play was last weekend and this weekend too. I am so excited besause my family is coming to visit us and some are even staying for Thanksgiving. i ahve 26 people coming over for Thanksgiving dinner and I am doing a pretty cute napkin holder that I will try to video if I get the time. Here are some photos from the play...Food Glorious Food

My song Jordan turned 16 and he just got his actual drivers license! It has been a totally scary experience and we have had a fight or two in the car. It usually goes like this:

Me: "Nice driving, Oh!..Whoa... Wait..slow down, oops okay now...if there was a person there in the bike lane, you would have killed them. Okay there pal... you are driving like a grandpa... you can at least go the speed limit...STOP!!  oh wait- no.. you can make the light---oops that was too close...pull in here to get me a diet coke...you have to pay now because you are in the drivers seat....look at that your phone is ringing, oh wait don't you dare text or talk while driving...this is cool I can get all of my texts done while you are driving. Don't pull in so fast into the driveway... don't pull in so far on the right... or left... make sure you leave me plenty of room to back out. We are rolling! Put the car in park!!!!! That was fun...good job... shall we do it again tomorrow?"

Jordan: NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Dad will YOU take me driving next time? Mom is psycho.

Wow, where has the time gone? My September newsletter never even got posted. I am sorry for that. We start school in August here in Arizona. With school starting and the daily routines of carpools, lessons, homework, laundry, working, church and all of the other events that came my way, I am just coming up for air.

A good example of my life is what happened last week. I called my friend Chrissy, who I have not seen in a while and I said "Hey! I have the day free, well at least a few hours, let’s go to lunch." I told her I could go right after we got Kaila’s cast off. Wouldn't you know that not only did I end up getting her x-raysan dcast off; I also ended up getting my daughter Lily x-rays because of her sore ankle the same morning. One cast off is good but the other child has starting physical therapy is not. I was home later than I thought and was checking my messages when the school nurse called me and said "Is this the mother of Josh Woods?" I said "Yes, Celeste, you know exactly who I am!" She said that I needed to come to school because Josh had fallen on the play ground and he might have broken his arm. I said, Celeste that is not funny. I just got home from the Doctors. She very seriously told me to come right in!

So, I took Josh to urgent care. I hate going there. I had been there two hours with a six year old before the nurse told me the doctor was at lunch and it would be another hour or so. I ended up walking out before the doctor came. By this time Josh was jumping up and down on the exam table and pushing himself up with both arms happy as a clam and every time I asked him where it hurt, he would show me a different place. Listen, I am no fool, I am experienced with hypochondriacs. This kid was fine. I think he just wanted some TLC and a cool cast like his sister. We left - but not with out a serious lashing from the urgent care nurse and her glaring at me! How dare I leave! She must not have kids. That was a week ago and Josh has never mentioned his arm hurting again. Too bad I missed my lunch with my friend. I guess I will breathe and wait for the next events!!! Such is life with five kids!

 

We had a very sad event happen in our community this past week. There was an 11 year old boy named Jason who died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. As you can imagine there were a lot of tears and talking to our kids about the event. My daughter was in his grade and new him. I was really proud of how our school handled the situation. The students were told in a loving and supportive manner and allowed to call their parents and spent the day writing notes and pictures for Jason and his family. I went to the school to pick up Lily because she was so sad.

Later that day received a call from our principal asking me if I could put together a “Mexican” dinner for the family, students and friends for a memorial on Thursday. I said of course and then I went to work. I had no idea how many people we would be feeding but I immediately emailed and called parents from our school and the response was wonderful. It was a special experience and we ended up with over 600 people there. The cool part was the love, friendship and food that just kept showing up. It really restores your faith in society to see people from all walks of life come together and rally around a family. The family was so thankful. Our hearts and prayers go out to them.

Kalia thought it would be a good idea to stand on a stool and practice her High School Musical cheerleading moves. This, as it turns out, is not a good place to do your cheerleading. As she was a movin' and a shakin' she fell off the stool and broke her wrist. Thank goodness we have three orthopedic surgeons in our family. It is slightly embarrassing that EVERY summer we go up to Utah we have to pull out the "Hi- Remember us? We are your cousins five times removed and can you fit us into your incredibly hectic schedule because we are FAMILY?" card. And- they do!!!!  Thanks to all of the doctors in our family who take care of my kids. And sorry it took soooo long to decide which color caste Kalia was going to have. We didn't plan on the debate over colors vs. school outfits lasting quite so long!

Joshua wants to water ski so bad. But there is one BIG problem. The legend of the Bear Lake Monster. This is a scary story that is older than me for sure and- depending on who is telling it- scares kids into thinking their is a giant dragon like monster that lives in the lake and will eat them!

So, Josh being six and having been freshly retold the story of the Bear Lake Monster by his cousins was a little scared to water ski.

Not going to show fear he begged to be the first one to go skiing. Having had experience with many a child skier, I said- Why don't you wait and watch a few others ski. But no! He was determined. So, we started the whole process of getting the skis on, sizing them and putting him on the back of the boat. (about a 20 minute process) Once he saw the water he said- Uh mom, I don't want to ski right now. I will do it later. The later turned into the next day as none of the kids were particularly successful- he wasn't about to get in that freezing water.

So, the next day he declares that he is going to ski- after seeing many of the cousins get up and ski. We go through the whole process of fitting the skis again, putting him on the back of the boat and with all of the positive encouragement we could muster- and

1.      Promising there is no Bear Lake Monster.

2.      He won’t drown with his life jacket on.  

3.      Fish will not eat his toes.

He made it into the water!

He sat in the water for 10 seconds before he declared. "I am not going to ski today mom!" Back up in the boat he went. My goal for next time is for him to get in the water and at least to the end of the rope…

 

Every summer my family travels to one of my favorite places called Bear Lake. The lake is spilt in two with half of it in northern Utah and the other half in Idaho. I love riding my bike along the lake because I can say that I rode my bike from Utah to Idaho and it sounds really far! In all it is about a 30 mile round trip from the place we stay. This is a beautiful lake and it is notoriously cold.

I have been going to Bear Lake since I was three and it is so fun to share it with my kids. This was the year we decided that we needed to get all of our younger kids to be better at water skiing. I love to ski so I volunteered to get in the cold water and be the helper mom and teach my kids and nieces and nephews be successful little skiers. (A side note- my nieces and nephew told me that I was nicer to them then their moms- that’s why they wanted me in the water! Take that sista’s!) So what started out to be nice morning turned into me staying in the lake two solid hours turning purple and a total combined effort of all skiers up and out of the water and skiing -about 10 seconds.

Now, I am no quitter and my reputation of the best teacher, favorite aunt, and best cheerleader in the family was at stake so that meant we had to face another day of water skiing. We woke up the next day- and this is a funny side note for my LDS friends out there. There were no boats on the lake that we could see except one and they just returned from a very early ski. As they were walking past us we said hi and because I was facing two hours with no wetsuit in the water, I ALMOST SAID to the older man wearing a wet suit. “Hey- you’re a wimp wearing a wet suit out there. Can’t you take the cold! But something stopped me and they went on their way. My mom said that was cool we talked to them and I said who? She said “Honey, that was Elder Eyring.” (He is an Apostle, a very high position in the LDS faith.) Yikes!

I did have a silent chuckle. That day of skiing was a lot more successful. Maybe I was being blessed for NOT calling an apostle a wimp. Two of my students- er -uh kids skied 1 minute and 40 seconds each and two made it up for at least 6-10 seconds (depending on how fast you were counting!) What a day! And just for the record- I showed off to my teenage nephews with a great ski and I can still jump the wake at 40 years old!

Josh hates to sit still. He also hates learning to read. This having been said, it goes to follow that sitting still AND reading are his two least favorite things to do in the world. He just can't stand it. He makes every excuse in the book not to sit and read. Then one day last week he came up with a great solution!  He said "Hey Mom, I am just going to do my reading over here in front of the TV, it helps me concentrate better." What a great idea I told him as I turned off the TV. He was not thrilled with me after that.

The adventures of Joshua Woods is the saga of my crazy six year old son. These life adventures are hair raising especially in the past few weeks. If you are just starting to read my blog, I will get you up to date on my little handful. A few background points of interest are:

1. When Josh was born, he swallowed his meconium (that black baby tar poop) in the birth canal and he spent seven days in the NICU fighting for every breath and basically for his life. We knew we were in for an adventure with him right from the start!

2. When he was 3 years old, he walked head first into a jumping cactus and had six firemen get him off the cactus, an ambulance ride, and spent 2 hours in surgery. They removed over 500 cactus needles all over his body. His favorite saying that year was "I Hate Cactus!"

3. When he was 4 he had a seizure in the middle of the night that has gone undiagnosed although one doctor believes it was a scorpion bite.

4. When he was 5 he had another seizure and spent a week in the children's hospital and still came away with no answers.

5. Besides all of the mischievous behavior, bumps and bruises along the way, we are brought up to these past few weeks. Josh decided that it would be a great idea to race his 15 year old brother on his bike. Of course he did not wear shoes or a helmet. (I know, I will not be winning any mother of the year award.) As they were racing, Josh hit a bump and flew head over heels on his bike and cracked his head open. We rushed him to the ER where he got stitches on his head. The good news is that there was still time to get to my daughter Lily's performance as a mouse in Mice and Mozart, the 5th grade play! Josh went, bloody shirt and all!

6. Everything was fine for five days until Josh had a great idea. Mr. Smarty pants was feeling like he would pop all of my birthday balloons. This would be fine behavior for any six year old but Josh added his personal touch and popped them with a pocket knife! As he was popping happily along, the pocket knife snapped shut with his finger inside. Josh sliced his finger from the top just under the fingernail, straight down the middle to the bend in his finger. You could pull the whole skin out and look inside. So, another trip to the emergency room he went and this time spent four hours and ended up with numerous stitches.

We have had a few quiet days and we are hoping for some peace. Are you allowed to put a six year old in a straight jacket?