Winner! Winner!

He is the WINNER of Potelco Credit Union's Christmas coloring contest.  He colored a cute little package green and I added some glitter...... and we have a WINNER!  The lady who selected him said it reminded her of the GRINCH.  Mr. Mack's spoils of Winning included a coloring kit.  I should add that these cool crayon things with a plastic shell made by CRAYOLA  looked cool but that was it..... soo messy. Oh, and don't forget Chapstick.  Kinda a crazy combo but He loved it!

I don't want to be a Sunbean!

I think I realize in November that these two would be Sunbeams.  Cooper was way excited!  Mack not so much.  In the car or doing work around the house we would burst into song, " Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam....."  Almost immediately Mack would Yell " I don't want to be a Sunbean!"  I would try to talk him into it and usually he would cry.  My game plan was to keep singing it and see if I could break him.  A couple of days before the big day I began singing and Immediately I was stopped again.  Mack then said to me " Is Jesus going to be there (meaning at church on Sunday)"  I couldn't help but to laugh and turns out Jesus was on my side because He went and LOVED it.  Their primary teachers couldn't be better and already have won the love of me and my sons.

I will be forever Grateful to these two sisters.  A great marker to me of a genuine teacher is the excitement the child brings back home  or to the parent after class.  These two Sisters rise above and A couple Sunday's ago when they came to find me in the Relief Society room .... The excitement from their little bodies with the treasures they acquired that day made my heart sing.  It was the excitement I thought we had lost in the other ward..... BUT it was there .....Right there in our New Ward it was never lost we just had to find it.   

Do We Have A Birthday Here?

These two have had the best weekend.  Spoiled and Rotten to no end!  We enjoyed a great winter evening with family swimming at Heise.  Our families played and enjoyed each others company.  I was so grateful for their efforts to make the trip and share the evening with us.  The kids played so hard in the pool that not to far on the road home I called back to the kids to see who had a neighbor already asleep.  The car was sound.  So Sound that we brought them into the house and not one wiggle stirred them awake.
The Twins picked out a BOISE STEAK aka: Boise State basketball jersey set  that goes perfectly with the season of JAZZ basketball we are in. 
It is hard to believe how quickly time passes and how hard life seemed when they were new is a distant memory and even fading and oft times fear the future of teenagers already. 
I will never forget the tremendous support and help with our parents in visiting those little guys in the NICU and making sure someone was there each day.  Last night as I visited with the Twins about their BIRTH day they asked something about them coming home to ours house (as they both would say) and it was then that I remembered again how hard it was to leave them in the hospital and again how hard it was to leave Mr. Mack behind when Cooper came home.  
So grateful for these little guys.  They have quirks that bring joy into our home that we would miss if they hadn't come together.  They pretend to be twins, they often remind each other that they are best friends, Mack is struggling with eating vegetables right now, Cooper denies the fact that he only 4, They both have girlfriends way beyond their years Miss Emily and Miss Celeste, They love to wrestle and can dribble a basketball pretty dang good for a 4 year old, They wave huge waves each morning to  the bus driver, and Love to take baths.

{to you and yours.....}

Merry Christmas!

{The Best Day Evero}

Charles Francis Adams, the grandson of the second president of the United States, was a successful lawyer, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and the U. S. Ambassador to Brittain.  Amid his responsibilities, he had little time to spare.  He did, however, keep a diary.  One day he wrote, "Went fishing with my son today------- a day wasted!"
On that same date, Charles's son, Brooks Adams, had printed in his own diary, "Went fishing with my father today ------- the most wonderful day of my life!"

We decided to take the kids to town on Friday and walk at their pace through the toy stores to see what was out there this year for Christmas.  I have no clue what they would want and thought this would be a fun day to do something they die to do everytime we walk into a store or go to town.  So off to town we went.  First stop.... TARGET .  We did o.k. and got a few things off of our have to list and moved onto our second store TOYS R US.  Well, our enthusiasm started dying and our patience as the kids pushed every button on every toy known to man and our third stop was..... to get GROCERIES. 
Now this stop was pure fun !   Everyone started treating everyone else a little jerky.... I even swore ;) (Surprise!) and screamed at the kids as they were getting into the car ( the whole parking lot heard) ..... We then took the kids to Dairy Queen of all places.  The commercials are so enticing at night time and I had to try it.  The ride home came with warnings and timeouts to be done upon our arrival at home AFTER the groceries were unloaded of course.  So, we get home we are all grabbing bags from the car and even Mack and Cooper are trying to find a bag that suits their size.  In one of my several trips for more I pass Cooper and with the same skip of enthusiasm he had at DisneyLand He Says "This was the Best Day Eveo"  ..... He doesn't really pronounce his R's that well...... That comment right there slapped me right in the face.  I quickly thought of this story given in our Relief Society lesson the week before.  Never do I want to be the parent that thinks of the day WASTED!

There were 2 in the bed and the little one said..... ROLLOVER

For the second night in a row a little man has come crawling to my bed to wiggle himself either right in the middle or have me roll to the middle so that he can occupy the outside spaces of the bed.  In either situation it is UNCOMFORTABLE!  Last night I wrote a better blog post about it though, as I was either getting kick up and down and startling myself that it was me falling out of bed, ..... realizing that this little man is quickly approaching 4!  and I can't remember my other children getting the luxury of sleeping this way.  Our family dynamics changed when the older two felt small.  Their Momma huge with twins and having even dad in the bed felt like there were to many occupants;) .  After that our feeding routine for the twins had us up every three hours, so sleeping in that room was next to impossible.  They have however, crawled in and slept on the floor but really they have only done that when they are sick and it is more for me than them. 
I Love watching them sleep.  When I have a decent computer once again.... I 'd like to show evidence of just how they either look identical to their DAD or how crazy all over their bed they are. 
**Mack is my only stomach sleeper.....(Just like his MOM).

{Mack's Broken Wing}

So in another attempt to get this posted..... Here he is all cute and broken.  The cast looking all cute for that one day.  I had the best of intentions to keep it clean and nice, covered with tube socks to keep the sand and grit out but with the randomness of a child that theory was laid to rest.  I even made a couple of the tube socks sneaky snakes but with the warm weather, a hot cast, and a hot sock over the hand wasn't the answer either. 
So, How did the little guy buckle fracture his arm and end up wearing a cast until November?  We were invited to a Family Home Evening with the Peterson's.  It was so fun to be in their company again and feeling of their spirit and watching them model a Family Home Evening lesson that captivated the kids.  I was in awe of the great hold simple everyday objects gave to the lesson.  It was fun,  and it was filled with the excitement of the children in trying to answer the questions in order complete a Field Goal.  To top it off was a challenge to complete a temple structure out of sugar cubes.  Each sugar cube could be laid for  a service given or /and  missionary experience had. 
After the lesson the kids had a moment to play outside and spend time laughing on the fun outside toys.  But for some reason when in the swing Mack decided to experiment and let go of the swing mid air and land with a buckle fracture to the arm.  The X-Ray showed  a possible fracture through the ulna too but we will x-ray it again in November.  Brother Peterson brought Mack inside and we tried serving treats to end the night but Mack would not quit crying.  Not even for a root beer float and he loves RootBeer.  He cried for another hour as we got the kids in bed and then woke up around midnight. 
When I went to his room and saw him raise his arm, I knew it was broken.  This was how the rest of the night went.  Everytime his arm moved so began the crying.  With a sleepless night, Drew stayed home to help figure out what we were going to do with him. 
He was put in a soft cast for the first couple of days and then changed to a hard cast.  He would never removed the soft cast for ice.  He liked it all snug and close to his body.  Once he got the hard cast he was good most of the time.  Soaking in the moments of sympathy and signatures got us past the moments when he cried because it hurt.  Cooper was shocked for a while by the attention and grabbed onto the soft cast with tape wrapped around it but just like any other band-aid was shortly ripped off because it hurt.  Burton made me laugh because he said if he were to break his arm it would have to be his left arm because he writes and does everything with his right arm. Hmmm! if only we got a choice.


Yesterday, the boys and I went to visit Terry Bolinder and Jeter.  Jeter is the dog, and Terry and I get a kick out of how the boys pronounce Jeter.  If I could spell how they say it it is like JETEO.  Anyway, Terry laughs at it everytime.  They love to throw balls at Jeter.  Jeter retrieves them and brings them all back very slimy.  But yesterday before we left Terry asked if he could sign Macks cast.  I thought it was so cute.  Mack's blue cast was very dirty so I went to cal - stores to buy some wrap, hoping to find his favorite color orange, but when I asked the sales girl to help me locate it she asked the size of animal it needed to fit.  With a short pause I said, a little 3-year old boy but bigger than a cat.  Luckily, the small horse size was a match:)