My helpful children

I got our boxes of fall decorations out last week with the promise that we'd put them out on Saturday. Since Broden got sick in the morning and I came down with it later that day, it never happened. When Jacey realized that it wasn't going to happen, she took it upon herself to do it for me. This is just one example of her carefully placed decorations. Not exactly how I would have done it, but to be truthful, I haven't touched a thing. She was so pleased with her helpfulness, I decided to leave it for a couple days before we rearrange it together!

Gathering of the cowgirls and cowboys...

Jacey had her birthday party last week, which was a lot of fun! She decided she wanted a cowgirl party, which I thought was very fitting for her last birthday in Texas. We had a great time, and they loved the pony race, pass the snake, and the western wear and grub! Thanks to all of our friends who came to celebrate with us! Jacey is so lucky to have so many good friends! It will seem so strange next year with a smaller guest list...

Tough boy

Last week I took Jacey to soccer practice. After they started I took the other kids (Broden and her our friends Caleb and Jacob) over to the toys to play. Broden lost interest in the toys after awhile, and went to sit down on the concrete edge to the playground. I was close enough to be able to see him, but not right there with him. I saw another little boy, about 8 or 9, walk over to him and start touching his legs. Finding that odd, I went over to see what was going on. When I got there, the boy said, "He has ants all over him." I looked down and saw that Broden was sitting on top of an ant pile full of fire ants! I got bit by fire ants a couple of weeks ago, and had to bite my lip not to scream. Broden just looked at me, then looked down at his legs and said, "Ehh.." Way to go Broden, for being tougher than your mom!

I am officially a "soccer mom"!

Soccer season is here! Jacey has been looking forward to this for a long time, especially since she knew she was going to be on her friend Hannah's team. We've had a lot of fun going to her games. Dan and I have enjoyed learning the "rules" of parents at the games, which include:
1. Cheering for anyone and everyone on the field, no matter what team they're on.
2. Cheering for EVERY goal scored. (see rule #1)
3. Use each girl's name at least once while cheering, along with a lot of "Go Team Lightning!"
It's so fun to see how excited each of the girls get when they have the attention of so many adults. Jacey's face lights up every time she hears her name.

We are now into week 3, and here are the highlights of the season so far....






Week one: Jacey's team (Team Lightning, in the green uniforms (she's #6)) plays "The Pretty Ponies" in the pink uniforms. When we first got there, I was afraid that she would be sad that the other team had the cuter uniforms, since she LOVES pink. Their team won 25-2 (if you count the 2 goals that the other team scored after missing the goal, going out of bounds, and turning it back around to put it in the goal. All of us parents convinced the teenage ref to ignore the minor detail of the out-of-bounds thing and just give it to them:) Jacey was thrilled in her first soccer game ever (the rest of the girls have played for one season already) to score TWO GOALS! Way to go Jacey! I asked her when we got home if the team uniform/name thing made her sad at all, and here was her response: "No way Mom! Pink is prettier than green, and pretty ponies are more fun than lightning, but lightning is WAY faster than ponies, and that's why we won!"

Jacey relaxes with her biggest fan during halftime.

Jacey runs "fast as lightning!"

Week 2: After a slight oversight on my part (I got home from my long run last Saturday with about 10 minutes to shower and for us to be out the door on our way to Jacey's game) I didn't check my email to make sure her game was still on, even though they told us to. With Hurricane Ike, they thought that games might get cancelled. It was a BEAUTIFUL morning, so I assumed that everything would still be on as planned. Of course, when we got to the fields all we saw was a big empty parking lot. So, we decided to take a quick picture of Jacey in her uniform and then play a quick family soccer game. It was so much fun! My favorite part was watching Jacey try to teach Broden what to do. It was great! Another advantage to her team name, is that it helps me out SO much at home! If I need her to hurry and finish dinner, get her shoes on, etc... (since she tends to get distracted sometimes), all I have to say is, "Can you do it as fast as lightning?" She then gets her arms going and runs as fast as she can to whatever she has to do.

Week 3: No pictures this week. Dan was at a seminar, and I knew that I wouldn't be able to use my camera and keep Broden off of the field (a daunting task) all at the same time. I honestly am not sure if her team won or not. I'm thinking no, because the other team definately knew what they were doing a lot more than "The Pretty Ponies". The highlight for me was Jacey's goal. On the first play of the game, Jacey got the ball and took it down the field and with the most powerful kick I've ever seen her do, put it right in the goal.....well, the other team's goal. That's ok. She doesn't know, and she doesn't care. All she knows is that she got another goal. I must admit, I kind of give her credit for it too. All of us adults may have known that she was going the wrong way, but NO ONE on the field did. Not her, her teammates, or the other team. So she still took the ball down the field with other (quite aggressive, might I add) girls trying to take it from her. Pretty impressive if you ask me!

We love soccer season. Many more (entertaining, I am sure) stories to come!

Happy Birthday Jacey!

Jacey is 5 years old! That is crazy to me... This sweet girl started out her birthday with kind of a bummer of a day, but I think it ended on a good note. She got sick on Monday, and it carried over to Tuesday, which was her birthday. She woke up with a fever (not as high as the day before, but she definately was not up to par.) We let her open presents from family that morning. She loved her pink coat from Aunt Natalie and Uncle Chris (very clever, since Jacey still remembers her Aunt Natalie's pink fluffy coat from the first time she met her, before her and Chris got married!), her digital art kit from Grandma and Grandpa Sillito, her "credit card" as she calls it from Grandma and Grandpa Johnston (Visa gift card- she's SOOOO excited to go shopping, and has even told me she'll buy me something with it. :), and her camera from us. The day kind of went downhill from there a little. She had to miss preschool (which she was very sad about) because she was sick. She spent most of the day in bed. We couldn't figure out how to install her digital art kit on our computer (Dan finally figured out we had to download something else from the internet before it would work a couple days later), and her camera wasn't as cool as it looked on the box. The screen on the back was tiny and fuzzy, didn't show the picture right after you took it, and the flash didn't work. She tried so hard to be a good sport, even though it wasn't a great day. When I finally asked her if she really liked the camera though (because I thought it was kind of lame myself) she said, "I'm sorry Mom, it looked like it would be fun, but it just didn't really work." Luckily she was feeling better and her temperature was gone by the time Dan got home from school, so we just threw bedtime out the window and went out to dinner at her favorite resturant, The Rainforest Cafe. After that, we went and rode the caruesol at the mall, and at the end of the day, I think her birthday was saved!

So, Happy Birthday Jacey! We are so lucky to have you in our family! Here are a few of my current favorite things about Jacey:

1. I love that she's girly! Especially now that she's old enough that she enjoys getting her hair done, likes shopping for cute clothes, and wears dress-ups every day while she dances in the living room.

2. I love that she's more aware of right and wrong, and (usually:) makes good choices. She must have had a particularly memorable lesson in primary one week, because for the past little while she's been talking about following Jesus vs. following Satan. We do talk about following Jesus in our house, but I don't think we've talked a lot about following Satan. She gets very concerned that whenever Broden does something he's not supposed to, he's following Satan!

3. I love that she is so helpful! She calls herself a "mini-mom" and I've noticed that Broden sometimes uses "mommy" interchangably with Jacey and I. She always asks me what she can do to help, and a few weeks ago I gave her a squirt bottle with baby shampoo mixed with water and a rag, and told her she could wash the walls (more just to keep her busy than anything else). She took her job very seriously, and now considers that her "job" around the house.

4. I love the funny things she says. I love that we have real, grown-up conversations. I love that she tells me she loves me out of the blue, and the way she tries to interject big words into our conversations. In the past week she has told me, "I never suspected it could be this cool today." "Mom, I'm really impressed by the dinner you made tonight." and "Mom, Broden is so distracting when he makes noise while I'm trying to fall asleep."

Thanks for making our family so much fun, Jacey! We love you!

Elder Bednar comes to Texas!

We were so lucky to have a special stake conference with Elder Bednar! It was incredible. Dan volunteered to help with the shuttle (since they were expecting 2000+ people and our parking lot is not that big) and had to be there at 8:00. The meeting didn’t start until 10:00, so we decided to be really smart and all just go with Dan so that we could get a soft seat in the chapel. When we got there we realized that we weren’t the only people with that fabulous idea. We got there 2 hours before the meeting started, and still ended up sitting almost halfway back in the cultural hall. It didn’t matter though. The biggest miracle of the day was that our kids sat perfectly reverent for 4 hours- throughout the whole meeting and the 2 hours before in hard metal chairs. We couldn’t walk around the building beforehand, because they made it very clear that there was no saving seats, and Dan was driving shuttle, so it’s not like one of us could have stayed behind to explain. I was very grateful they were so good. Elder Bednar’s talk was wonderful, just like I knew it would be. We were very excited, however, at the beginning of his talk. He told us that he had asked our stake presidency what he could do for the members of our stake, and they told him that our stake consists of a lot of graduate students and young families just starting out. He basically geared his whole talk around students and young families. Here’s the key points that I remembered:

*Happiness is not in the absence of a load, it is simply choosing the right load. It is so easy to think “I would be happy if only I didn’t have to….”, which is simply not true. We will always have something, we just need to choose the right things that will give us “spiritual traction”.

*Being a busy student (or a busy anything, for that matter) does not excuse you from serving in the church. When Elder Bednar was a graduate student he was married with 2 kids and served as the YM president and seminary teacher. WOW! Interestingly enough, he was the only one out of the 5 students in his graduate program (the other 4 were single guys with no other commitments besides school) who finished the program.

*Sometimes when we are raising our families we think we are “too busy” for family prayer, scripture study, family home evening, etc. THAT IS A LIE! (with heavy emphasis on that last sentence). He was VERY bold and direct on this one. I loved it. I think he even threw the word stupid in there a couple times in this part, after which Jacey’s eyes got big and she leaned over to me and said “Ooohh… Mom, the apostle said stupid! (which is a bad word in our house :)

*The real teaching in our home doesn’t necessarily come from the lessons we prepare for FHE, scripture study, etc. The real lesson learned is that we do these things consistently, even when it’s hard, because we want to be obedient and make the gospel a priority in our lives.

There was so much more, but I just don’t have all day to write about how wonderful it was. Another interesting note- at the beginning of the conference Elder Fluckiger (who is the seventy over this area) was talking about Hurricane Ike. The closer it got to making landfall, the projected path was supposed to go through Galveston, Houston, then come up through Dallas. Ike made landfall early Saturday morning. Elder Bednar was here along with President Uctdorf, Elder Nelson, as well as a couple members of the 1st quorum of the seventy. They were watching the forecast very closely from Utah earlier in the week, trying to decide if it was still safe for them to come. Elder Fluckiger prayed about it and felt like they should still come. So they got on a plane to come down here, even though the forecast hadn’t changed at all. After they got there, the storm turned east and missed us altogether. How cool is that? I'm so grateful for the opportunity we had to be at this conference.