T is turning 6

T is turning 6 on Sunday and he is SOOO excited. I bought cookies today and he passed them out to all the kids after co-op, tomorrow is his birthday party and his two requests were those party horns that you blow and the "frog tongue" unrolls and a pin the tail on the donkey game. Not bad when I can grant both those wishes at the Dollar Store. Oh, and he wants sugar cookies withthe colored sprinkles from the bakery at the store instead of cake. He is super excited that he will get to choose a birthday sucker or a pencil at church on Sunday. He already knows what sucker he wants-- a red heart one, so I hope it's still there.

This Sunday I also start my new calling, Nursery Coordinator. I'm not real excited, okay, I'm about as far from excited as you can get. I've spent a lot of time in nursery and while the kids are fun, I hate the isolation. And being in a ward that I really don't like very well doesn't help. It's an extremely old ward and most people are just in their own little world, so it's not friendly at all. Oh well, life goes on. I get to go to BYU Women's Conference with my mom and some friends in two weeks and that will be the spiritual boost I need.

Talent Show Star

Our ward had a talent show and dessert contest last night. I had encouraged R to practice a song on the piano and participate, but he didn't seem interested, so I let it drop. When we got there, the turn out was pretty small and there were only about 6 people signed up to share a talent. I mentioned to R it was too bad he hadn't brought his piano book, and he said he wanted to play Dotted Waltz that he has memorized. He learned it awhile ago, but it's one of his favorites, so we signed him up.

Then T said he wanted to do a talent too. He said he wanted to play the piano, but I reminded him he doesn't know how. He said he could just play a song he'd made up. Instead I suggested he sing a song and started suggesting Primary songs I know he knows. He thought for a minute and said, I know, I'll sing my skip counting songs. So we decided he would sing 2's, 3's and 10's. He would be the last performer.

It all went pretty smoothly with different kids playing songs on the piano or violin or singing. When R's turn came, he walked up and introduced his song and played it perfectly, then walked back with an expression on his face that said "That was cool, but I'm sure glad it's over."

T was announced next. He walked to the front of the room, took the microphone from the MC and said, "I'm going to sing skip counting songs." He then set the microphone down on the stage and walked out of the gym!!!

Several people turned to look back at me, but I had no idea what he was doing. I thought maybe looking out at 40-50 people had frightened him and he had just slipped out. But next thing you know, we can hear his boots clomping up the steps onto the stage. He walked out into the middle of the stage and started singing. He did the 10's and the 3's before a member of the bishopric got up there to turn the stage lights on. Then he finished with the 2's and walked off beaming!

It was the perfect finale of the talent show and everyone had a good laugh.

The dessert contest was next, and T was sure he would win. I had made fudge, but it hadn't set up in time, so at the last minute we'd been trying to figure out what dessert to take and T helped me spread cupcake holders on a pan and fill them up with jelly beans. What judge wouldn't choose candy over cake or cookies? When he didn't win, he decided it was because the judges were old people, not kids. Then he and the other kids enjoyed eating the jelly beans. From his perspective, it was the perfect night!

Swimming and Co-op

We've been doing swimming lessons the past 2 weeks and T has learned to open his eyes under water and float with a kickboard. This is nothing short of amazing for him. He has Sensory Integration Disorder and water has always been a challenge for him. Imagine the sound of fingernails on the blackboard-- that is what water feels like to him. As a baby/toddler we would have a major fight on our hands with every bath. It took forever to get him into the pool, and even after taking preschool swimming lessons twice last summer, he wouldn't bob.

We went swimming several times during the fall and basically bribed him into learning to bob with donuts. Knowing he could earn a donut per bob to share with our family and his cousins finally helped him get over the phobia. But now that he has mastered that obstacle, he seems to actually be enjoying swimming and being in the water.

R has learned to backfloat and will go down the slide alone now. Yeah! I have my hands full with the two little ones, so catching him was quite a challenge. J and A both love water and are little fish. Hopefully when they are old enough for swim lessons they will still love it.


We also started our homeschool co-op Friday. I am teaching PE to the Class B, 7-9 year olds. We played junk food tag, where some of the kids have play junk food and if they tag you, you have to sit down because you are out of energy until someone with a vegetable or fruit tags you. We then played several other games and ended with water balloon volleyball and teamwork/cooperation activities with the water balloons. The kids had fun and I enjoyed teaching it. I also enjoyed the two hours when the older 3 were in their other classes and I could just read and visit with other moms and they liked showing off what they made and learned.

Happy Birthday J

J turned 3 on Mar 29th and got a dollhouse that is bigger than she is. It's a Kidcraft wooden one that is 4 feet tall and 4 feet wide. A little girls dream-- and it wasn't even too bad to assemble. The kids have all really enjoyed rearranging the furniture and moving the dolls around. J tends to be a little bossy about just how things should be arranged, but the boys are pretty accommodating. She got a couple fairy dolls from the boys that fit perfectly, and a little baby with a crib from A. When I took the boys to the Dollar Store, they had a hard time choosing how to spend their $3. I told each of them they could only buy one food item-- R chose cotton candy and T chose ring pops, and of course, as soon as they were opened, they were asking J to share-- which she did willingly. We used the money from Grandma and Grandpa to buy her a CD player for her room so she can listen to books and music at bedtime like the boys.
She wanted a pink cake with pink frosting and candies on top-- but then the only thing she would eat was the candy and ice cream. She decided she doesn't like cake. Go figure. It took 3 tries to get all 3 candles, but she got them.

We went to Chuck E. Cheese today with her cousins to celebrate since we were still battling the flu on her actual birthday. She had a blast spending all her money and bought several bracelets and little trinkets with her tickets. It's amazing how much fun the kids can have with 100 tokens for $10, plus the free birthday ones and the bonus ones for the brushing their teeth chart from the website. We were there for over 3 hours!

Easter

I'm finally catching up with posting Easter pictures. Better late than never, right? And yes, those are Halloween buckets the boys are holding. They said the baskets I had were too girly, so I let them hunt for Easter eggs with Jack-o-lanterns. They thought they had the best buckets there.


On Sat before Easter, we went to the city Easter Egg hunt, then to a bar-b-q with some friends and an Easter egg hunt there. Then on Sunday, the kids woke up and hunted for their Easter bags. My family's tradition is to hide the Easter surprises really hard! So it took them awhile to find them. Another Easter tradition that was started when the boys were small was that the super good kids get fruit, the mostly good kids just get candy. But with Easter so early this year, fresh fruit was expensive, so their Easter baskets contained cans of pineapple and mandarin oranges, along with some candy, new church pants and ties for the boys, and a new outfit for J. Here they are modeling their ties!

Stephen didn't get a new tie, but he actually smiled and posed for the camera, so I thought I'd add this good-looking photo of him for Easter too!

Hit the Gold Mine!!!

I just got back from my trip to Spokane with my dad. It was wonderful. I came home with more genealogy stuff on the Halverson/Severson line than I ever imagined existed. My great-great grandfather was Serverin Halverson and he had 13 children. And we couldn't seem to find descendants for any of them and we couldn't find information about their spouses. Then I found a 2nd cousin of my dad's online about 3 weeks ago who is really into genealogy and she invited us up to see what she had.

Thursday we flew to Spokane, drove out and saw the Spokane temple, then met Liz and her sister Nancy and spent about 5 hours looking through the pictures and documents and information they had and comparing stories. Liz copied a ton of pictures and documents onto my flash drive and filled in a ton of gaps. I love finding a picture and/or story about one of my ancestors. It makes them so much more real.

Friday we drove out to Richland and did a session at the Columbia River temple-- which was beautiful inside and out, then we drove back up to Eltopia, where my dad's uncle lives. He is in his 80's. We had a wonderful visit with him and his wife, then 4 of their 5 kids came over for dinner. It was fun to meet and put faces to names I've heard stories about for years. We were also able to get a bunch of pictures identified. (My grandpa is one of 3 brothers, and the other 2 have passed away several years ago, so this was our last chance to get some of these labeled.)

Then today, we drove back to Spokane to meet one of my dad's great uncles, Richard, and my third cousin, Charlene, and Liz and Nancy again. I got copies of pictures of some of Severin's children that I didn't know existed. Along with a copy of a 37 page document showing all of the known descendants from Severin's father Halvor along with a great deal of documentation.

There were so many perfect little miracles that worked into this trip and the people we met and the information. It just happened to be spring break for Liz, so she could meet us, plane tickets were cheap, she lived close enough to Earl that we could go see him too. And then Thursday night after we'd spent the day talking to Liz and Nancy, Nancy got a very unexpected phone call from Charlene-- they hadn't talked in over a year or so, but she just felt like she should call and when she found out we had been there wanted to try to meet us before our plane flew out. We had booked the last flight of the day, even though at the time we set that up, we had no plans for Sat. In fact, we didn't have anything for Saturday until Friday.

We will probably be able to do the temple work for at least 30 more people from the information we got on this trip, likely more because now I have starting points. I am so excited and can't wait to go through all the files and pictures that I brought back.