Eagle Project Finished!!

 BEFORE

 

AFTER

Jeff cleaning up paint off of the carpet...ooops!

Ready to use.

Gone are the two ENORMOUS pieces of equipment that were dangerous.  In fact, the day before the boys dismantled one of them, a kid was using it and the cable snapped and smashed his fingers!

Jeffrey putting the final touches on the paws.

Now for the final push to finish the PAPERWORK!!

Maple Mountain Prom 2012

The high school Prom was last night and what a night it was.  First, Amanda and her great friend Celin got asked to go by two of the best kids around.  They are so funny and they just have the best time with them, always.  This is a perfect arrangement because they are just really good friends so there is NO pressure and  No weirdness.  They were able to just have a blast!  

After looking, and looking and looking for a dress to wear, Amanda's last stop was at this home in Mapleton where this lady rents dresses out.  Her entire basement has been turned into a boutique, complete with dressing rooms and all the dresses you could imagine.  What she does is, people bring their dresses to rent out and if someone chooses your dress, you get 20% of the cost.  Brilliant!!  Especially in Utah where there seems to be a need for a dress all the time.  Needless to say, we took a couple of our dresses there to be rented out.  Might as well earn some cash of those things.

Amanda found this purple dress to wear and she loved it.  It fit and didn't need any alterations which was good news for me.  It only cost us $75.00 which included having it cleaned.  What a steal.

Amanda, Drew, Channing and Celin

Smart girls!  They wore Vans that matched their dresses

Getting tied of photos...

Off to dinner and dancing at Sundance in Channing's sweet ride!

 Part 2 of this night:

Jeffrey had been at a water polo tournament all day Friday and Saturday so he never asked anyone to go to the Prom.  He ended up getting home around 7pm and while he was sitting around he asked, "so what are we going to do tonight?"  He walked right into it.

I happened to know that Amanda's other good friend wasn't going to Prom and that she probably would have liked to.  Oh, the plan started to come together in my head and soon Sarah was on board too. 

I've been working on getting Jeffrey to be a little more bold, less shy and more of a leader.  So I asked what he would think about asking Grace to go to Prom.  Just like that!  No planning!  No time to do anything but show up at the dance.  He was hesitant at first, not because of Grace, but because he's very cautious about stuff like this and he hates feeling dumb!  He not a risk taker, which I appreciate, but this called for huge amounts of spontaneity.   It took Grace a large dose of it too. 

Once he said yes, Sarah and I jumped into action.  Sarah had Chris ironing the clothes while we scrambled for flowers.  A friend of mine has a beautiful yard with all sorts of flowers so we drove over and she was kind enough to cut an assortment of things that we whipped into a corsage.  Dave offered up Duck Tape, which we used and wrapped it with ribbon.  Dave also coughed up the $$ for the entrance fee,  Chris and Sarah delivered them to the Sundance Resort and all was well.

Sarah and Jeff right before he got to Grace's door

Our last minute corsage.  Not bad

Another smart girl, notice the converse shoes?

Eagle and Ducks...

We are finally to the part in Jeffrey's life where we/he is finally working in his Eagle Project!!  Did I say finally?  

Our Bishop is the principle at an 82 year old middle school which is in dire need of a face lift.  So, when Jeffrey was looking around for a project, Bishop offered up his school weight room for a face lift.  We jumped at the opportunity.  

This poor thing was beat to death!  It was formerly a storage room but had been turned into the weight room.  It was dark, dirty, and most of the weight machine benches were torn etc.  It's actually a very large room (about 25 ft x 18ft).  The plan was to paint all of the walls white and then paint a blue stripe around the upper part, replace the torn fabric on the benches, and remove a large piece of machinery that was no longer safe to use.

It was a ton of work but we had some great helpers.  We still need to go back one more time and paint a paw print on one of the walls.  Here are some photos:

Bishop and boys before we began

Of course the HAD to have a competition!

Day ONE crew...

Day TWO crew...

Now for DUCK part of our lives...
For some reason, it's the cool thing for the high schoolers to have a baby duck.  There are several of them.  Amanda's friend Melissa has TWO of them.  The plan is to raise them until the get big and then give them to another friend who has a farm so that they can actually live like... a duck.  These things are so dang cute!!  She brought them over the other night and we just watched them run around the house.  They follow people when they walk around, sort of.  We put them in a laundry basket but they figured out how to jump through the holes and get out.  

 It's a jungle around here!!

Work

Today I am grateful to be able to work!   With the additions that are coming our way very soon, I figured that I needed to do some rearranging of beds in order to accommodate them.  Sarah and Chris will be joining our household for the summer while he takes an EMT course and works to save $$ for next fall and Sarah will give birth to our very first grand baby!  

As soon as the kids left the house for school this morning I got going.  I dismantled and hauled the day bed and mattress upstairs to Amanda's room, because when she leaves, this will become our "official" guest room.  I, of course had to DIG my way through her piles of messes to dismantle her bed first.  That's always fun!!  Once I got her bed out, I could then do some MUCH needed vacuuming (I found "Hot Cheetos" remains under her bed, go figure) and then re-assemble the day bed.  Then I cleared Jeffrey's bed out of his room so that Sarah and Chris can camp out in there.  Jeffrey is kind enough to give his room up for 4 months and will be sleeping out in the open area of the basement.  What a nice brother!!

I washed ALL of the bedding for most of the beds in the house, remade beds, made 2 batches of cupcakes for YW tomorrow night (we're doing an etiquette dinner with food from different cultures).  No, the cupcakes don't count as a different culture, they're just dessert.

My point is, that since my back surgery, I've not been able to work like I'm used to doing.  I've had to be very cautious about how I do EVERYTHING.   Today was no different but it felt really good to just dive into projects that I couldn't have done last year.

For my birthday yesterday I asked to kids to help me weed the front yard planters.  They did it without much fuss.  That's all I wanted from them and they did a great job.  It made me happy!  I'm really fairly easy to please.  I bought some plants and my goal for tomorrow is to get them in the ground.  

Work is good!  You don't realize that until you can't do it anymore.

Moms vs. The World

Today my sister in law posed a question on FB asking if anyone else out there was sick and tired of "good" TV shows that turn into morally corrupt shows.  She mentioned a part in a show where two boys kiss.  Then, my niece added something like, "two boys kissing shouldn't ruin a whole show."  I, of course, couldn't help but to chime in on this subject.  

See, the thing is, this niece has NO children to worry about, to protect, to teach or to love so on that level she has a completely different thought process than I do.  That said, I worry that she will one day "wake up" and be holding a baby of her own and will have slipped down that path of "tolerance" so far that she will no longer have the deep roots to stand against the storms or the world.   

Tolerance has become one of my least favorite words.  Why?  Because it only seems to go ONE WAY!  Or for some, it means "let's have a free for all" kind of society.  Live and let live kind of thing.  Every society that has EVER tried this has failed, miserably!  Can you say, Sodom and Gomorrah? The Romans?  But the really scary part is when that society has fallen, someone (usually an evil someone) comes in and enslaves the people under the pretense of "saving" them.  Can you say Hitler?  Stalin?  And if we're not careful, the USA.

For the last 5 or so years, I've felt an urgency to protect my kids, NOT shelter them, just protect them and give them the tools they will need to not only survive, but thrive in this crazy world.  

Another mom friend described herself like Xena, the warrior.  To give a mental picture of this, imagine my Xena the warrior, with her sword drawn in one hand and a shield in the other, with wild red hair (at least I have that part of the image) and her kids standing behind her.  This image has started to change the older my kids get.  Now, they are slowly stepping out from behind me and starting to join the "battle".  If I didn't know better, I would be terrified, but I am a "Mother who knows".   This is a reference to a talk by Julie B Beck that said:

Mothers who know:

•  Desire to bare children (Genesis 17:16)
•   Honor sacred ordinances and covenants (taking the sacrament and remembering the     Atonement)
•   Are nurturers (make a house a home)
•   Are leaders (lead by example)
•   Are always teachers (teach prayer, fasting, service, forgiveness, kindness, etc)
•   Do less (of the things that pull them away from family)
•   Stand strong and Immovable (protect and defend our children)

I wish I could say that I've followed these principle perfectly, but I haven't!  I can say, that when it came down to the really important stuff, I did my best and that's all I can do.

A couple of years ago, I taught a class to a bunch of kids about the media.  I covered music, TV, movies, pornography, and even regular magazines that you find in the stores.  I started off with a nice big bowl of popcorn and while I spoke, I ate.  I didn't share, I just ate.  Rude, I know! 

Then I asked if anyone wanted some and of course tons of them said yes.  So, I spit what I had in my mouth all over the other popcorn and then passed the bowl around.  As you might have guessed, they changed their minds.  I told them it was just a little bit of grossness in the bowl and that they could pick around it.  They still didn't want any part of it.

Then I explained that that's how the media works.  Just a "little bit of crude humor" or a "little bit of deviant lifestyle" won't hurt.  But then what happens is you become desensitized to it ALL.  Pretty soon you aren't phased at all when you see a violent act or graphic sex scene.  It turns what should be a sacred loving thing into nothing better than what animals do.

That's how satan works!  Little by little, he gets his foot in the door...if we let him.   Now that said, we should love everyone.  It's not up to us to be the judge, thank goodness!  But it is up to us to teach our kids right from wrong according to what Heavenly Father has said.

I called it!!

Dave returned home from Rhode Island yesterday and after all the hugs and kisses where given...he noticed the coffee table and said, "It looks like it's already been scuffed up.  What happened?" Hahahahaha!  When I explained that I had done that on purpose, his eyebrows went up and he asked, "Why?"  He then proceeded to to tease me (in that passive/aggressive way) about why I went through all that work just to rub it off again.  Oh well, he always says he doesn't understand "fashion" or anything creative.  I would agree with that!  But I still love him, nerd and all.

In other news:

Jeffrey has found a new passion in life.  He has discovered Water Polo!  I suppose it's only fitting considering that he has two older cousins that were players and now he has a brother in law who played/plays.  Frankly, I don't know how he doesn't DIE or DROWNED in the pool.  I would last about 10.3 seconds wading the pool and then I would quietly (or not) slip to the bottom of the pool and wait to be rescued (or not)!

The one thing I've noticed is that you can't judge a book by it's cover when it comes to water polo players.  I've seen some kids that are solid muscle, like they've been pumping iron for years, and they can't seem to last very long.  The swimming back and forth and wading in the pool kicks their butts and they huff and puff.  Then there's the kids that look like they just got out second grade and they swim circles around the "big" guys.  There's just no telling what kind of player they will be until they are in the water.

I've also noticed that there is one great equalizer when it comes to water polo.  How do I say this gently?  It doesn't matter if you are one of the most popular kids, nerdy kids, smart kids, not so smart kids, pudgy kids, fit kids, rich kids or poor kids.  When they put those caps on, they all look like, well, less than cool!!
Yes, the great equalizer.  I understand the purpose of them but good grief, they are funny looking. 

Here are a few pics of Jeffrey's game last week against Herriman.  I didn't get a picture of it, but he did an awesome backwards shot and made it!

Getting ready to play

Chasing the ball and getting chased...

One of many battles

Trying to keep the ball

Finished Table

I FINALLY finished stripping, sanding and re-painting our coffee table!  I really like it.  It is still in our garage because I can't lift it by myself, so when the kids get home, I'll have them move it into the house.
Here are some pics:

P.S:  I have a feeling that Dave will say something like, "It looks good but you missed some spots."  I PURPOSELY sanded the edges to "weather" it a bit, but I know my husband...and I love him!



Oh, and on another subject...

I COULDN'T RESIST! 

 (Costco is of the Devil)

Every baby boy needs a whale on their Bum!

I'm a sucker for Fire Trucks!

A hat with ears!  Tell me that's not cute!

I'm turning into an dork!!  I realize some may argue that I've always been one, but I'm just NOW becoming aware of it!  haha