What a day.

This day started off somewhat normal...I got the kids off to school, did family reading with Camry, took Claira to her little preschool, got my car washed, packed some boxes, picked up Claira and played and read with her for a while, then I'm getting ready to pick up Camry when I get a call from Walt who is down here working on our yard. He says, "Well, do you have any butterfly bandaids?" I'm like, "No, I have princess bandaids but that is about it. Why?" He says, "Well, I sort of hit my head with an axe." What!?!?!? So I hurry over there and take him what I have and he has a big fat slice right in the middle of his forehead. He has a big bloody rag and there's blood everywhere and I'm telling him that he needs to go to the doctor and the guy working on the house was telling him to go to the doctor but of course he didn't want to go and just slapped on a band-aid and went back to work. Anyway, to make a long story short he did end up going to the hospital and he got ELEVEN stitches and had a cat scan because he chipped his skull! Seriously who does that?!?! There are many things to be thankful for in that. He had his hat on which softened the blow. He hit the hardest part of his head...had he hit it lower it would have been his face and would have been terrible or he could have hit it up above where it is softer. Bottom line is that it could have been much worse than it was.

But then you think he'd had enough bad luck in one day, right? Well, no, because he got a ticket while parked at the ER because he parked on the street instead of the parking lot because there were a bunch of protesters in the way, and then from the hospital, he as driving to the transmission shop because he could tell that his car was not good and then it just broke down! Right in the middle of downtown walnut creek about a mile away from his car shop. Seriously reminds me of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day! I went to pick him up and decided we needed some happiness in our lives and got some take out chinese for dinner. We ended up calling my home teacher and he helped Walt get his car to the shop. He had to drive his car backwards (because it would only go in reverse!) on main roads to get to the shop but he made it. They even ran into some cops but they didn't cite him because of his sob story of his horrible day. What a day! We decided it was best for him to go to sleep and just start over tomorrow. Let's hope there's no groundhog day situation and his bad luck has run out!

On another note, today is a great day because it marks the 15 year anniversary of the day I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I love this day. Hands down best decision of my life that has influenced many of my later decisions that has resulted in one happy girl! I mean, seriously, I just feel so blessed. I have these four wonderful kids that I get to take care of everyday. I have a phenomenal husband who is always coming up with new ways to make me happy. My sisters are always there for me and give me such great support. Than's family accepts me as their own. I have so many dear friends that at times I can't seem to keep in as good of contact as I would like but they love me anyway. I have this wonderful knowledge of divine nature that I am a daughter of my Heavenly Father that loves me. I know of His plan of HAPPINESS. I have the peace that comes from my faith and knowledge that families really are FOREVER and that death is not the end. I can pray and read the scriptures and be guided by the Holy Ghost to help me make decisions and help keep me on the right path and get some inspiration on how to keep these four kids of mine happy and balanced and reach their full potential and not screw them up that bad. I'm just lucky and as cliche as it sounds I wonder why I get to be this blessed when there are people that have so many more problems than me.

My sister and I got just our two babies together while she was here and I was thinking about my busy life and how I feel like I'm just running most of the time to just be almost caught up on things we have to do and was feeling sad that I didn't have all the time I used to have to just sit and watch Gentry play with toys and people will tell me, Oh, she's so independent and I make some joke about how she has to be because she's the fourth child....anyway, I was just thinking about how I just don't want to take the little things for granted. I love my blog for this reason that it makes me focus on little things that I don't want to forget but then I get so busy that I don't document those little things so today, I took some pictures of what we were doing right in the moment. Gentry was sleeping so this is what she was doing the other night. Than would call this my 'exploratory' parenting style where I just let her make a mess and not care. He just can't do that.

Gentry has been an eating fool these days. She just screeches at me until I give her more and I think, "Didn't I just feed you?" Maybe it's a growth spurt. And she's already learned how fun it is to feed penny which Penny totally appreciates. So I can watch her play with toys more I pulled out our little bin of baby toys that I have kept in the toy room all year and I just left it in the front room and I remember why I don't do that....Toys get everywhere! She just wants to pull them out, play with them for thirty seconds, then move on to the next. But, it makes me feel happy when I can sit and watch her, you know, while we are doing homework and getting sippy cups of milk and finding cleats and reading stories and making dinner and cleaning up messes. :)

When I took those pictures of Gentry, Claira says, "Hey mom, take a picture of me eating big cheese!" Okay, whatever you say.

Claira has been a lot of fun lately. She wants to do whatever Camry is doing and since Camry is obsessed with learning to read, Claira is too. She is sooooo proud of all of her artwork that she brings home from preschool and wants to make sure to show Pacen and Camry when they get home. I have a look that I give to them to make sure that they make a big deal about it, too and they're usually pretty good about it. And see, those are the toys of which I speak! All over, I tell ya.

And Camry might just be the most happy kindergartener ever. It is seriously like night and day with her and Pacen. When Pacen was a kindergartener, I really just think he wasn't ready. But it was a fight to read and then he'd cry and he wouldn't want to practice his writing and it would take me an hour to do homework with him. But with Camry, she just comes home and is like, Mom, we need to do my reading. And she's drawing cute little drawings for her beloved teacher, Mrs. Cerutti who can do no wrong and is the coolest person ever! Today was her first stay day and you would have thought she was going to disneyland she was so excited. I think she is what I was like in school. She wants to do everything right and her handwriting is so neat! Her teacher told me they were working on spaces in between words and with every word that she wrote, she put her two fingers right in place so that she had a big enough space and was just so happy. Man, Mom would be so proud!

And then there is this boy who is going so great in school this year. I love it. He's doing his homework better, on his own. He has this reading chart where he just has to write how long he read and what and one day he didn't read. He asks me, "Well, what do I put for Thursday?" And I was like, "You put nothing because you didn't read." And then he starts freaking out because his teacher will get mad that he didn't read, etc, but it was a good teaching moment for him that he has to be on the ball a little more and do his homework or there will be a consequence. And since that day, he has read faithfully and sometimes without me even saying which is a really big deal for him. And I'm hoping and kind of feel like he's even liking reading a little more lately. He's just getting so old! Seven is big. I've been feeling pressure to make sure that he is ready to make the decision to be baptized by the time he turns eight and I don't even think he ever thought he could not choose to be baptized but we were talking about it at FHE the other night all about testimonies and how each of them have to gain their own and really know for themselves that the church was true and I could see his wheels turning a little bit and I love that. I want him to be a thinker and especially with that, I want him to try to figure things out for himself. When we were talking about it, Camry was like, "But Mom, we already have testimonies." Like what I was talking about was just ridiculous and redundant. Kids are so funny. This is a busy time, but it's also the best time. It's what I've been looking forward to my whole life and I'm doing it. We are raising our family and I'm a total soccer mom with the van and the cute little girls with bows in their hair and baby on my hip. It's how we roll and I'm really loving it.