mother's day expo

max does not like change.  he likes wearing his shoes and socks because that's what he's used to, thank you very much.  a couple weeks ago we had great weather, nice and warm--shorts and sandals weather.  no matter how many times i asked him, no matter how hot and pink his cheeks got while playing outside, come hell or high water, he was not going to put those sandals on!  i threw them on one morning, thinking he'd just head outside and start running around when he saw all the other kids running around.  nope.  he laid on the kitchen floor, screaming as though i were cutting off his toes, one by one.  i took them off, thinking that would cure the screaming, but he kept on going.  david happened to stop in and in an attempt to help, grabbed max's sandals and tried to get him to wear them.  max took one look at david coming toward him with the dreaded sandals and started screeching again, army crawling away from him, and in a desperate attempt to escape david's clutches, lunged for the dishwasher as a safe "home base".  after david left i put max's shoes and socks on him and told him to go outside and play.  he then spent the next 30 minutes crying because he didn't want to go outside.

last week we had storms and cool weather blow in.  it rained every day with storms blowing in and out the first few days and sunshine shining in between storms.  the boys ran outside after the storms to splash in the puddles.  all the boys, minus max, were wearing sandals.  i saw max splashing and casually yelled out to him to come put on his sandals so he could splash and not get socks wet.  he looked up at me and yelled, "yeah!" and came running up for his sandals.  i was expecting him to start screaming as soon as i put them on his feet, but he just sat there, giggling when i imitated his sandals tickling his toes.  he ran back out, shouting, "tj, look!  nine handals on!"  the boys happily splashed the rest of the afternoon, until the next storm blew in.  

the colored stucco is on and we have the garage doors!  we think we are waiting on the cabinets.  we got a call a couple weeks ago that they were going to start building the cabinets, and they were wondering which layout we wanted.  we were expecting they would be installed this weekend, but the walls are still bare.  at least we know they are being built.

david wanted to walk around the spanish fork mother's day expo yesterday in hopes of finding something i'd like to get for mother's day.  i told him i knew exactly what was going to be there, and i hate aimlessly walking around looking at things i'm not going to buy.  he suggested we make a scavenger hunt for the boys, to make it a little more fun.  i printed out pictures of stuff we'd likely find there, and when the boys saw something, they had to put a sticker on that picture.  once they filled up the page, they would get a surprise.  when their pictures were covered in stickers, pace was adamant about getting a surprise, he didn't want to pick something out.  so he and david went back to the car to wait while max and i walked around.  max loves the dapper tie look for church, so he picked out a new tie.  i finally found the perfect gift i thought pace would love: a blue geode necklace that looked like a waterfall.  his eyes lit up when he saw me walking toward the car, and he expectantly held out his cupped hands for his surprise.  after opening the box and curiously looking at the necklace, he said, "mom, i love this box!  it's so shiny!  it'll make a perfect solar panel for my axiom space ship!"  love, love, love these boys!