What Mother’s Day means to me

It means my sweet kiddos and the fact that I was blessed with five little spirits to guide and help and be their mom.  In church today there was a quote from the podium.  “Life did not come with a manual it came with a mother”.  Although this phrase is particularly funny for me because I HATE reading manuals and try not to unless I absolutely have too:)  However it does profess that mother’s are supposed to be a guide book or a help for how to maneuver your way through life and your difficulties.  That I do feel like I do for my children.  Nothing brings me greater joy than helping them learn new skills or helping them discover a way to improve themselves.  So…… for each child I have included a picture and some things that I am currently helping them work on because I feel like they are really doing some great things!!

Kid number 1:  Carter (14) aka Bug, Buggie Wuggie, and Woog-Woog.  We are working on improving Carter’s Baseball skills.  After a long hiatus he has decided to pick up his glove again and try his hand at Baseball this season.  He has a pretty intense coach and some great players on his team, so it is challenging.  He improves every day.  We are also working on his Eagle Project with a lot of help from his Dad.  It is just in the planning stages and we are currently brain storming ideas and trying to come up with a plan to finish it up before we move back to the states next summer! 

 

Kid number 2:  Hanna (12) aka Hanna Banana Bazooka Jane, Nannies, and Sissie.  Hanna and I are currently working on Personal Progress together.  She is really the one who is pushing me along the path.  Two weeks ago our ward got split and I am now serving as the counselor over the Beehives in the Young Women’s Program.  Now Hanna and I will get to work on even more Young Women’s stuff together.  She asks me almost every Sunday to work on Personal Progress and if I have passed something off.  She’s kind of amazing!  We’re also working on learning how to curl her hair and do more styles herself. 

Kid number 3: Jake (9) aka Jake-Jake, Jakey boy, and Shakey.  Jake and I work on a lot of baseball together.  He likes to play catch with me and recently is learning how to be a pitcher.  We also practice batting quite a bit.  We are also in the middle of an experiment with his school work.  If he can get all A’s and only two B’s during fourth quarter then he will get to purchase “Mind Craft”.  If he doesn’t reach this goal well, then we get to enjoy his Nintendo DS all Summer in our room in time out!  We have a whole list of things he needs to do every day to reach this goal (like show mom all graded homework in his folder, do all parts of homework or get 3 star homework done, tell mom and dad when he has a test coming up, and never be one of the first 10 people in class to finish any test or assignment as going fast may deter finding little mistakes).  Cheer for Jake to do his best this quarter!!

Josh (7) aka Joshy.  Sweet Josh has been working on learning to ride his bike recently.  No easy task when we’ve had bad weather for several months!  He has a bit of a timid personality so not an easy thing to accomplish.  But now he’s riding like a super star back and forth on the little street behind our house.  He even can turn on both ends of the street without help now and is really excited to be big enough to ride by himself.  We are also working on baseball with him especially catching and batting. 

Cole (4.5)  aka Cole-E-O, Coleman, and little man.  This little spitfire keeps us hopping.  We love our Cole.  I have been working on anger management (again) with Cole.  He has a sticker chart on the fridge right now to earn a new Skylander’s guy (Mind Stump). He gets one warning a day for losing his temper with his brothers and hitting them.  If he does it again, then he doesn’t get his sticker that evening.  It’s a hard thing for him, but he’s really trying.  We are also having Scripture School every day around lunch time.  We sit and read one or two scripture reader chapters with the pictures every day.  He is learning the characters of the Book of Mormon right now and what decisions they made to make them righteous or not.  He loves it and is usually asking me to do it with him rather than me making him listen to it. 

Love these pictures and writing about each of my darling children.  I love being a MOM!! Oh yeah and I LOVE this guy to whom without……….   nothing I do up above would ever be possible: