We discovered while singing a hymn at church that James does not like certain words.

A Boy and his Bugs

Nathan is our animal lover. Any animal. Including insects.

I have never seen a little boy as into bugs and dirt as Nathan. Yes, that is a real monarch butterfly he caught sitting on the toy caterpillar. He is very good at catching butterflies, roaches, ants, etc. He is afraid of ants now after he sat on an fire ant hill last week and ended up with about 30 ant bites on his arm and hand.

He is ALWAYS digging in the dirt. Anywhere we go he will find even the smallest patch of dirt or sand and dig away. We have to have very strict rules at our house to keep him from digging up my flowers.

The plus side, he loves to help me with the gardening. He'll sit next to me to pull weeds or put in new plants. And he has his own watering which he dutifully uses everyday with me. I love having that time together. And I am grateful he has such a love for our earth and all it's creations. Except the roaches.

4 Months

Height: barely 24 inches
Weight: 14 lbs. 7 oz.
Head Circumference: 17 inches

Our baby is short and chunky. I know...a chunky Yeates baby. The doctor said don't bother giving him solids and ceral for about 6 weeks. He is flourishing on his current diet. Who'd have thought? It took me three tries, but I finally got it right!

In other development, he is right on schedule!

Guess Who's In Love With His Mama!

All he needs to do is hear my voice to break out in grins. I love it!!

Guess What We Learned Last Night at 2:45 am

Vomit from the top of a six foot bunk bed makes an interesting spray pattern on your carpet.

We also learned that none of the children in your family will sleep whilst you are scrubbing carpets at 2:45 am.

Fun times.

Soccer Man

Kenny has really improved in soccer. We have one more game in the season. Yesterday he kicked two goals, but the goalie got them right before they went in. It is nice to see him having fun and so excited about playing on a team. He LOVES game days!

Sometimes he needs a little encouragement at practice to really get into it. The other day he was running around the field aimlessly pretending to be a shark. I told him the soccer ball was his prey and he needed to swim/run after it. Sounds silly, but it worked!
It was raining during the first half of the game today so we gave Kenny a new fierce hairdo!

An Experiment

I'm trying the new Office 2007 blog post feature. It allows you to type and save your post in MS Word and will automatically post it to your blog. So if this doesn't show up, it didn't work.

We have had lots of fun lately arguing with contractors, dealing with mortgage companies that are holding our insurance money from TWIA, and trying to live life. I have things to post about, but time is a HUGE issue! I am actually at work right (ssshhh, don't tell anyone). My kids are using Bingo dotters to make a fish that they will have to write about later. I haven't told them about the writing part yet…they hate to write. As a whole, my class started the year with poor fine motor skills. So naturally, I make them fine motor practice all the time. Not to be mean, they just need it.

I had a nice Mother's day. I got some new clothes and my husband made dinner, affectionately known as Korean Crap, for everyone. It was a nice, quite day. Just the way I like it.

 

Ta-Da!

It's not quite done. The shutters need a bit of work, the garage and front door are not painted yet, and we are still waiting to get the new gutters. But you can get the general idea.

No more Smurf house! No one will be able to navigate in our area using the "bright blue house on the corner" as a landmark. ANd notice my dad and brother Mike took out the ugly Sego palm in the front yard.

Giggles

We've been trying to figure out what makes James giggly (He's so serious compared to his brothers), and we think we've finally found it!

Storm

Before...

During....

Wait, is that pink wood siding?
Pink!?!
Wow, someone actually improved things by making it into the smurf house.

You're going to have to wait for the after picture because things are not quite done yet, but it looks totally different.

But, you don't have to do much to make a blue house look different. Or a pink house.

There have been many snags along the road. My dad wrote this about one of the hard but inspiring things that have happened to us recently.

My daughter and her family suffered pretty extensive external damage to their house in Hurricane Ike. After many hassles with insurance companies and their mortgage company, finally, 7 months after the storm, they were going to get their roof and siding repaired. As the old siding was removed, it was discovered that the sheeting underneath had rotted and also had to be replaced. Their roofing and siding contractor didn’t know what to do. My daughter and her husband were really upset…one more thing to go wrong.

I hooked them up with a man in the ward, Jaime, who had lost his job but had been a contractor before. He got together a crew, and on a Friday, removed all of the second story siding, leaving only studs and insulation. The weekend was supposed to be beautiful, and the replacement siding was to go up Saturday.

As my wife and I settled in for a quiet evening at home that Friday, we heard the rain. We jumped up and I grabbed my staple gun and the ward list on the way out and threw the list in her lap as we drove to my daughter’s house. She called about three people on the way over. There, my son-in-law was trying to put plastic on the back side of the house. My daughter was crying and trying to help as much as she could. What else could go wrong?

It was not raining too hard yet. It seemed just minutes before a man and his son from the ward arrived with a big sheet of plastic we had actually given him when we cleaned out our garage. We raced to complete the back side of the house. Jaime arrived and took off for Home Depot to get more plastic. We used what little bit was left to cover part of the end, just as the wind shifted and started raining from that side. A couple more men arrived that we hadn’t called, bringing tarps, and we started to piece those together. Jaime arrived with more plastic. He had had to barge his way in to Home Depot as they were closing to get it.

The end of the house was too tall for our ladders. We had to get up on the roof to get under the rafters to staple. There was lightening all around and it was raining harder. Lightning struck in the field a short distance away when I ordered everyone off the roof. We were drenched and soaked with cold. Then a sister in the ward arrived with a huge ladder. She had called around the ward to find out who had a tall ladder, driving around with her kids through high water to get it. We used it to finish the end.

Jaime had already laid out plastic across the front. Just as we finished the end, the wind shifted and it began to rain like it can only rain in Texas, a 3-inches-per-half-hour rain. It appeared our efforts were lost, and Hurricane Ike, in an indirect way, was going to claim another destroyed home. We know from experience with gutting such homes, the terrible havoc that water can wreak.

But Jaime knew just what to do. He threw up that huge ladder we had just received in the middle of the front of the house, grabbed the plastic and ran up the ladder to hold it in place under the eaves. We saw what he did and ran up the two shorter ladders on the ends with plastic in hand and held it in place over our heads as high as we could reach for almost 20 minutes while the wind tried to rip it from our hands. Those below tried to keep the plastic from blowing away. My arms burned with the strain of trying to hold it in place. We were all soaked and cold to the bone.

Finally, it subsided and we were able to start stapling. Some insulation had to be replaced, but the house had been saved.

What a heroic effort by my fellow Priesthood brethren, to come at a moments call to help someone in distress! One left his family at a restaurant to answer the call. There is nothing like the church and its dedicated members in all the world. What a privilege it is to be a part of it!

But here is the back story……when that good sister called around the ward to get a ladder, she called the Clark family. Their parents weren’t home, but Hayden, our Deacon’s Quorum President said “Yes, we have a really big ladder”. He called his Dad three times to ask if it was OK. On the third time his Dad answered and told him not to worry about it, the ladder was too big to handle (and it was a huge construction grade ladder).

He answered, “But Dad, Sister Mareth needs it. I’ll get the neighbors.” and hung up. He went and got the neighbors to help him load it on her SUV in the middle of the storm. Now that’s initiative!! That’s leadership!! That’s the power of an inspired Aaronic Priesthood holder who understands service. My family will always be grateful to him for his boldness. His Dad teared up with pride on Sunday when he told me what had happened, grateful for his son’s inspired disobedience.

You don’t know when you will be the answer to someone’s prayer. We would not have saved the house without that ladder. President Clark (Hayden) did what he needed to do… didn’t even back down from his Dad’s discouraging words. I promise you that if you stay close to the Lord, you will be the answer to many prayers and be the source of comfort and strength to many of our Father’s children in stormy times. On your missions, this will happen to you time and again, and will be a source of great joy for you throughout your life. God loves you and will answer your prayers and those of others through you. Be ready for those promptings.

As you can read, we have had a lot to be thankful for.

Just A Thought

Can't eat pork, Swine flu...

Can't eat chicken,Bird flu.

Can't eat Beef, Mad cow....

Can't eat eggs, Salmonella.

Can't eat fish, heavy metal poisons in their waters.

Can't eat fruits and veggies, insecticides and herbicides.

Hmmmmmmmmm!!!!!

I believe that leaves Chocolate and ice cream!!!!!!!!

Remember - - - 'STRESSED' spelled backwards! is 'DESSERTS'

Little Artist

Kenny was recently honored with the Superintendent's Art Award. His picture was chosen to hang at the school district office for a month and then in the hall outside the mayor's office for a month. We are so proud of him. He has always been good at drawing and picture composition. Sorry the photo is a bit fuzzy, but we are going to frame the original with his ribbon and certificate, so ya'll can see it at our house.

The title is Blue.

Cutie!