These Boys

I found a great new game we just love playing--it's called Silly Sentences, and it divides puzzle pieces by nouns, articles, adjectives, prepositions, verbs, etc., and you arrange it into silly sentences.  The boys think this is the greatest thing on earth!  We've had some good laughs:  "The blue banana jumped over the hairy bed."  You get the idea.

Max had  VIP day at his preschool, and all the kids brought an "All About Me" page.  All About Max Coombs:  

Favorite Colors: green and blue

Favorite Snack: apples and peanut butter

What He Wants to Be When He Grows Up:  Park Ranger

Max loves his family!

When Pace saw Max's page, he wanted to make one, too.  All About Pace Coombs:

Favorite Game:  Marble Race

What He Wants to Be When He Grows Up:  Tornado Chaser

Favorite Foods:  Bananas, honey + biscuits, sugar toast

Favorite Colors:  red and blue

They are so cute to watch doing their chores.  When they do laundry on Saturdays, they separate lights and darks together, load up one load into the laundry basket, carry it together to the laundry room, load up the washer, and start it all themselves!  We're still working on folding...but let's be serious, for a 4 and 5-almost-6-year-old, they do a pretty amazing job!

Max was setting up "score-keeping shop", he wanted to keep track of Daddy's and Pace's points during a pillow fight/fire nation ninja fight.

Salt 2 Saint

The boys and I decided to drive down to St. George and meet Daddy at the finish line!  The two days David rode in the big Salt to Saint bike relay were cold, cold, cold, and rainy, rainy, rainy.  The boys and I drove through 200+ miles of that weather, and the whole time I just kept thinking of David and the team riding through it.  

The first thing we did when we got to St. George was check out Barnes and Noble and the café--and the boys found legos that they wanted to put together immediately.  Pace has turned into a little engineer!  He knows the lego boxes labeled "5-12" are for him to make, "Because they are for 5 year olds."--and he follows the directions and builds the whole thing by himself!  Max is right alongside Pace--figuring out how to turn the pieces around and get them to fit the right way.  Smart little boys!

It was sunny and warm in St. George when the team crossed the finish line!!

The boys and I carted down a table, decorations, homemade cinnamon rolls, hot chocolate, apple cider for the team.  It was a great morning hanging out and hearing the stories from the ride!

When David  hit the sack back at the hotel, the boys and I went on a great hike at the Red Cliffs Reserve.  We love that canyon!  They really got into posing crazy for a photo, and kept asking me to take photos of them.

Contributor!

I know this is a photo of Steve Young, retired football player.  But in the upper right hand corner, above Steve's head, it says, "Fall Pumpkin Recipes".  And that's where I step in.

Last fall, a friend sent me a Facebook message that LDS Living Magazine was having a pumpkin contest, and that I should enter.  i got to work creating pumpkin goodness: pastas, sauces, dips, burgers, bakes, pumpkin custard pie...all told, I submit 10 recipes to the magazine.  And then heard nothing.  I finally emailed them in January, asking what the results were.  They said they didn't receive enough submissions to go through with the contest, but they wanted to feature my recipes in their next fall's issue!  I was thrilled, to say the least.

I didn't tell anyone, in fear it really wouldn't happen.  But the kept in touch with me, asked for my photos to go with my recipes, and then sent me a draft copy so I could make sure it was all how it was supposed to be.  My recipes, my photos, in print!!  And they mailed me 5 extra copies, so I could mail them out the my fan base.  My mom got 3.  She asked me to sign them, too...(I didn't do that)

My favorite part?  Being listed in the table of contents as an "LDS Living Contributor".  The magazine came out not he one-year anniversary I've had my food blog up and running.  And I'm a contributor.  This is me smiling!

The Boys

Pace and Max were keeping score on some sort of game they were playing.  I snuck up behind them and took a photo of them talking and writing together--they're just so cute!

I'd never seen Max draw a person before, so I was a little skeptical when he brought home a picture of some people he'd drawn.  I thought maybe his teacher had drawn it...but now I have 3 proofs...Max is our little thinker, putting together all the pieces!

I also never have to fight Max doing Upstart (not yet, anyway)--he loves it, loves getting things right, and loves practicing.  I find pieces of paper all over the house with his practice name, numbers, handwriting, etc.  Max also currently pluralizes some words with an extra "es" (ghost-és, treat-és), and puts everything in the past tense with an extra "ed" (I fall-éd; I love-éd it)--I love hearing him talk! 

Pace was in charge of FHE the other night, and David helped him write out his order of events.  I love seeing Pace put everything together.

Boys Camp Out

It was pretty chilly so I sent the boys out with beanies and mittens and three layers to stay warm while sleeping!  

Family Home Evening

David is the Daddy of Fun.  Where I prepare Family Home Evening lessons full of principles and doctrine and scriptures, David always plans a game.  The boys loved fishing for scriptures about fish during this lesson.  I was a hard fish to catch sometimes.

Poor Rexy

 We noticed a couple changes in Rexy around July, I think.  Bumps along his ribcage, only eating a few crickets every so often instead of his normal voracious 10+ a day, sleeping more, drinking more.  Then he started acting really weak, nails started falling out, climbing the cage became compromised, and he fell a couple times.  After the last time he fell, his back right leg was at an odd angle and he wasn't using it.  We finally googled all the symptoms and learned he had a metabolic disorder caused by calcium deficiency.  This type of deficiency happens due to neglect over a long period of time.  And by neglect, I don't mean we weren't feeding Rexy calcium-dusted crickets, and weren't turning on his UV lights every day, because we were (chameleons won't absorb calcium without UV light).  But 1. The UV lights need to be changed every 4-6 months, and we bought everything used, so we should have changed the UV light right from the beginning.  So the UV light was old.  And 2. Rexy, turned out, was really Roxy.  We intentionally bought a male chameleon from the breeder because we did not want to deal with a female laying egg clutches--they will lay clutches whether or not they are fertilized eggs, and it's incredibly taxing on the female's body.  Well, the breeder didn't gender identify well enough, I guess, because two months after Rexy/Roxy started exhibiting these symptoms, we woke up to a cage full of eggs.  We realized the lights were only part of the equation.  The other part was her body had been sucking all the calcium it had to create this clutch of eggs.  We got a bucket of dirt for her, started giving her calcium drops, and we were really hoping to nurse her back to health, but after laying 50+ eggs, and refusing food or water for three days, poor Rexy was done.  David buried her out on West Mountain.