Working Colorado Visitor

Warren came into town last Friday. He took the week off of work to get a ton of projects done on the house:

-replaced all the electrical outlets and installed new tamper-proof outlets

-replaced all the light switche

-helped Jordan turn a food storage room into an office

-took Cedrik to the dump-brought Cedrik home, left only trash

-installed my "pantry" shelf in the garage

-answered about 6,000 questions from the boys

-helped Jordan demo and remodel the tub and tile in our bathroom

-plumbed said bathroom

-cut all the leftover wood into scrap wood for our wood burning stove

-replaced the front door knob and dead bolt

-swept my kitchen floor

Jordan could not have done it without his help. We are so grateful he has so much talent and that he shares it with us!

We've moved

And we've all been sick in the 72 hours since we've moved. But we love our home.

The Light Bulb Went On

Jordan doesn't swear. Ever. But he does spell swear words, sometimes leaving out a letter so it isn't totally swearing.

That's why the boys spell when they get angry. And"h.i.t."? Oh, that's just one letter short of the word he most often spells. Cedrik spelled the whole word this morning and that's when it clicked for me. So, now he knows not to spell that word. :/

Silliness

The boys love to spell words when they are mad.

This week the bluray wasn't working fast enough for Freddie so he said, "You're an H.I.T. TV!!"

Whenever Freddie gets in trouble and gets a flick or spanking or just reprimanded, he says, "THAT'S NOT NICE TO PEOPLE!"

Cedrik and Freddie were eating oatmeal and Cedrik looked at Freddie and said "I am really strong. Look Fred." Then he took a bite of his oatmeal and said "see how strong I am?"

Freddie's First Human Drawing

It's Jordan.

Quick Halloween Trip to Utah

We ran down to Utah for Halloween. Julie and Nate came up on Friday and it was so fun to have everyone together. They are such a funny, cute couple.

The boys were cats and Jordan really went all out with their make-up.  Cedrik and Freddie loved trick or treating and by the end I think they were saying thank you.

Freddie asked several times if it was time to go back to grandma's. I think he was 1. Tired and 2. Wanting to eat candy.

When we got back they ate a couple of pieces. Then grandpa "watched" them in another room. But I think to keep them all under control, he gave them even more candy. Freddie complained of a hurt stomach, so I don't know how much they actually consumed. :/

After, arm wrestling happened. Cedrik loved beating all of the dad's, and Chari. He is WAY strong! Eventually they went to bed and slept in until 7. I thought for sure it would have been until later.

The next morning we went for breakfast with Steve at a farm. It seriously was a farm and they made this little restaurant on the second floor of a big shed/barn. It was actually really cute inside and the eggs and meat (at least the lamb) came from the farm. Kind of cool to eat local food in Logan Utah. They swam in Jara's hot tub until it was time to go get lunch and drive home. It poured rain the last hour. And I do mean poured.

One really messy day

Family home evening: carving pumpkins

For family home evening last week we carved pumpkins. We've been having problems with the boys telling the truth when they do something wrong. So, I found a good story about honesty and we talked about that. I think it sunk in, because tonight he reminded me of the story.

I thought that letting them hammer nail holes in the pumpkin would be fun. It kind of was, but we should have used bigger nails, or a power drill.

The first two pictures are from the Halloween recital. I was Twiggy-esque. 

Sa ta na ma

Knights

Our knight week was a big success.

We learned about their armor and when I was searching for something random in the dollar store I found knight armor. I should have bought the helmets at the same time-for some reason I didn't.  When I went back for them, they were gone. :(

I had just seen an article in one of the boys'magazines about putting on the whole armor of God. So we talked about that. I tried hard to focus on the positive aspects of knights. That they protected people. And that they didn't want to fight, but they did if they needed to. Of course we had sword fights. And, in that article was a picture of a boy who had his bike helmet on, which had been turned into a knights helmet. I tried, key word is tried, to do the same. They still loved it.

We also built and used a catapult. They thought that was awesome. They had to show their Dad how to shoot it, and they still shot farther than he did.

King Jordan dubbed them knights. We read The Knight at Dawn; it was read on one sitting. We learned about crests and they got to make their own. Luckily, I have a picture of the Zielke family crest, so we looked at that.  Cedrik learned how to do the letter p, and wrote our last name. He felt so proud. Freddie can now match his colors on his own-he feels so proud.  It was a fun week.