That One Time When Ben Turned Seven

I keep telling Ben that he does not have my permission to get any older, but every year he defies me and does it anyway.

Stinker.

Ben's birthday happened in the middle of a crazy week.  It happened on the day before Easter and the same day as my CERT disaster simulation.  To try to make the day special, we made a pocket of balloons outside his door.

He thought that was a pretty cool way to start the day (thank you, Pinterest).

But we had little time to enjoy the balloons as we had to head north to the simulation.  He was a little hesitant about being one of the victims survivors, but a nice lady brought doughnuts and I think that chocolate covered pastry gave him courage.  So into the tower he went and hid with his "broken" arm.

Once we got home, we decided to do some presents early.  Mainly to give him a chance to play with them before he'd have to wait until Monday to play with them again.  Nana sent him some money and he used it to buy Lego Dimensions (thank you, Tom, for introducing the boys to this - they love it!).  You get to build the characters and the portal and then play on the Wii with them.  It's like all the things that are good and beautiful in this world wrapped up in one glorious box.

We did eventually drag the boys away from the Wii so we could have dinner and cake.  Nothing quite as impressive as the 6-layer chocolate cake and not as cool as the image on Pinterest, but this castle cake seemed to make a good impression.

And the big surprise hit was how much Isaac adores balloons.  Ecstatic might not be a strong enough word for it.  And it definitely isn't a loud enough word for it.

I think (and hope) he had a great day.  We love our Ben-Ben.

Disaster Simulation

I have been attending community emergency response team (CERT) training every Saturday this month.  It is a great course that contains a lot of useful information for personal/family preparedness as well as training for community response to an emergency.  None of the training is at a professional level (we didn't learn how to put out wildfires or perform a tracheotomy), but we did learn basic triage skills and light search and rescue.  The first rule of CERT is personal safety, so we also spent a lot of time learning when not to help.  All great information.  The course culminates with a day of simulations.  

Simulations require volunteer victims survivors.  It turns out I have three children who were very excited at the prospect of pretending to be injured.  When I first asked them if they wanted to participate, they were very enthusiastic.  I came to find out a couple of days later that they thought they would be able to choose their injuries.  Josh wanted his legs and arms cut off.  Ben wanted his head cut off with a lightsaber.  Michael wanted his arms cut off and a long scar across his face.  They were a little disappointed to discover that their injuries would be more mundane: broken arms and legs.  But they were still good sports and had a great time.

The simulation was held at a fire department training center.  Pretty cool set up.  The boys were each given an injury to act out and then allowed to hide wherever they wanted inside.

The simulation had four parts: search and rescue, cribbing, fire, and head to toe assessments.  My group was assigned to cribbing first.  All I have to say about that is: cribbing is a beast.

 Then we moved on to search and rescue.  My "battle buddy" was the incident commander, so I got the job of scribe and recorded information from the victims survivors and the CERT teams.

We moved on to fire and got to play with the fire extinguishers again.

And finished up with head-to-toe assessments.  I got to check out Josh who was suffering from a broken left arm and a case of the giggles.

It was a fun day and a great opportunity to practice the skills we've been learning all month.  The boys had a good time and I hope this gets them interested in this kind of stuff as well.  Jason came as well and was a real trooper - watching Isaac and being the photographer at the same time can be a rough gig.

Spring Celebration and Palm Sunday

As part of our ongoing mission to ruin our kids' childhood (that one was for you, Mom!), yesterday we had our Spring Celebration.  We do this in lieu of the Easter Bunny on Easter.  The goal is to give them the fun and make Christ the center of Easter.  On the first day of Spring, we usually do an activity outside as a family, like flying kites or hiking and then do Spring Baskets, but with the 60% chance of rain and church this afternoon, we decided to go straight to the Spring Baskets.

There were no complaints from the boys.

All the ones who could cover their eyes did so and sat on the couch.  Of course, that meant Isaac got a look at his bucket of goodies first.  He was interested for a minute.  

On command, the older boys opened their eyes to take a look.  At which point, Isaac became far more interested in what was in everyone else's buckets.

Very interested.

Daddy had to step in at that point.

Which was only helpful until he found another route.  This year's buckets contained collapsible camping cups which can also double as a hat.

That was the morning.  The first day of Spring also happened to be Palm Sunday this year.  After church, we started our week of Easter activities.  This year we have a "Love One Another" jar (that is supposed to be a heart, but Josh can't stop himself from touching wet paint it seems) where we are supposed to write two nice notes to someone else in the family each day.

And this is how we are encouraging the boys to participate: candy.  I knew that the leftover candy hearts from Valentine's Day would come in handy.

And then on to the annual Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem play.  Which gets sillier and sillier every year despite our attempts to teach the boys to be respectful.

The pictures look more like a blooper reel than anything else.

But hopefully they still learn something.

Except this guy.  It's his job for the next few years just to look cute when we put stuff on him and run for the camera.

Vitamin D!!!

The Sun!  The Sun!  I didn't realize how much the cloudy weather affects me here until the sun came out one morning...and then all I wanted to do was throw myself down on the driveway and just soak in the sun.  Which was ridiculous because it was 7 in the morning and about 40 degrees AND the driveway was soaking wet from all the rain we'd had overnight.  I do have some self-control, so I refrained.  However, we've had a couple of sunny (hooray!) days this week so I have tried to get out of the house and work on making some vitamin D.  The Friday forecast was truly spectacular - almost 70 degrees and no rain - so I decided it was time for Isaac and I to do some exploring in Olympia.

I was not disappointed.  We had two hours of free parking.  We used them to check out Heritage Park, Heritage Park Fountain, and Percival Landing Park.  With the sun warm and shining, I think we had a little taste of what the summers can be like here and it was beautiful.  I took lots of pictures to help the memory last for the next few months.  :) 

Good days and bad days

With Isaac, we have good days and bad days.  And for the last couple of months, it has been predominately bad days.  Screaming, whiny, clingy, screaming (did I say that already?) bad days.  To the point that our being here may have convinced Rachel never to have children.

Yeah, we have that effect on people.  And we are willing to loan out our services if you have any teenagers you would like to convince not to have (unprotected) teen sex.

Anyway, if you are a parent or other sympathetic adult, you may be feeling badly for me right now.  However, to be completely fair, I should provide a prospective from the other side.  So here it is:

10 Things My Mom Does to Make Me Mad by Isaac Miller
1. Change my diaper.  And she does it several times a day.  If it makes me this mad, STOP doing it!
2. Not change my diaper soon enough.  C'mon people.  The service is horrible around here.  If I have to sit in my own urine for more than 30 seconds, someone is going to hear about it.
3. Bathe me.  It's like she has a problem with my natural odor that I have been working on for a couple of days.  What happened to loving that "new baby smell"?
4. Take me out of the bath.  Warm water with tub toys to put in my mouth or the shockingly cold air - which would you choose?
5. Feed me properly.  There is a pattern, or a rhythm if you will, to how I like my bites of food.  For lunch today, it was chicken-chicken-chicken-strawberry-strawberry-chicken-strawberry-strawberry-chicken-chicken-(water)-chicken-chicken-chicken-strawberry-(water)-etc.  How hard can that be?  And she acts all put out when I throw food on the floor to let her know she got it wrong.  I just don't get it.
6. Pick me up. I can move on my own.
7. Put me down. I love being carried.
8. Not let me suck on the grocery cart.  Hello!  If I wasn't supposed to suck on the handle, they wouldn't have put it where my mouth can reach!
9. Put away the pots and pans.  It just makes it more work for me to get them out again.
10. Make me sleep in my own bed.  Seriously, if I sleep by myself, there is no one to kick in the crotch or gouge the eyeballs out of in the middle of the night, and where's the fun in that?