Little boys and their Bibles are soon parted....especially when they go to one church for Awanas and another for Sunday School.
Ezra has been looking for his for about two weeks and he's getting desperate. My rule is if you don't care enough to know where your Bible is, you can't take your D.S. on any car rides.
So the stakes are high, but unfortunately as his sign indicates, the reward is not.
My new favorite read is Anna Botsford Comstock, Handbook of Nature Study. Written in 1911 for the teacher, it is simple in its approach of teaching children to leave the class room and experience the joy of observing nature. It is incredibly complex in its details of the common plants and animals found everywhere around us.
After a morning of our regular school work, inspired by Mrs. Comstock, we threw down the books and left to gather wild flowers down by the river to plant in shady little spots in our yard. Armed with plant identification books and trowels we spent a wonderful afternoon.
I've given up my fashion snobbery when it comes to the boys clothes, actually purchasing and tolerating them wearing shirts with super-heroes, shoes with lights and jogging pants. Shudder.
And my preference for boys hair leans to the high and tight side, which made it difficult to allow Elijah to grow his Justin Bieber locks. But I did.
Yesterday he came to me and asked if I would cut his hair short. I was JUMPING FOR JOY inside but kept a slightly disinterested look on my face and said, "Sure I guess." I was afraid he might change his mind if he knew it was the highlight of my day. (Surely something couldn't be good if your mom likes it that much.)
He can't flip his hair now and he's had to put up with me repeatedly telling him how handsome he looks.
It takes so little to make me happy.
Today was Jake's 28th birthday and the first he's spent with us in a few years.
Jake came to our family as an 8 year old and was the first boy to invade our all girl/sister family. I was out of my element. After living with us for a few weeks I complained to James that he had gone through 3 outfits in one day because he kept getting dirty. A boy - dirty? I was so ridiculous.
Life has continued to be interesting with Jake. Interesting being a code word for hard, sweet, annoying, heart breaking and wonderful. He isn't equipped to live as an adult on his own and we are finding our way to giving him the dignity to live a productive life within the family. He has proven to be a loyal son, protective big brother and caring uncle.
We have your back Jacob - happy birthday!
When I take my granddaughter Layla to the park she always goes for the swings. She's 6 now and doesn't call out "push me", as she has mastered the leg pumping thrill of going high up, all on her own. She's fearless and I have to pretend I'm scared for her. Really...I'm proud of her. Going too fast, too high and loving it. My daughter's daughter - keeping the reckless gene alive!
I always wanted to have a cousin that I was close to. Someone to be with at all the family get- togethers who didn't want to sit and listen to the adults talk or watch them eat and eat and eat. Someone like me. I had a cousin, Karen, who was killed in a car accident when I was a young and I miss her to this day.
My grand kids are blessed to have oodles of cousins which is inevitable when you have a total of 17 aunts/uncles. They have sleepovers, share strollers and are growing up with friends for life.
Lucky.
My kids play outside at night. I should be ashamed but I'm beyond that now. I used to be the mom whose kids would never even ask to go outside at night. Are you serious? What about baths and picking up bedrooms and sitting down quietly for the evening to maybe read a book?
That was then. But this family has taken me down. Making them sit quietly is an 11 on a scale of 10 being impossible. They hover at the door in the evening and slip out between the cracks or something. Next thing I know they're outside at the basketball hoop or running through the backyard playing secret assassin which I hope sounds worse than it is.
And all that night time fun is like one of those silent dog whistles that calls the other kids in the neighborhood to slip away from the nice plans their mom's had for them.
I know I should make them come in earlier and have them take their baths.
But it's so nice and quiet in here.
Little boys and their Bibles are soon parted....especially when they go to one church for Awanas and another for Sunday School. 
