1st Bee Sting

6/14/08
Mason was so happy playing in the sand with his trucks and shovels. He wanted to help his big brother with the shoveling, but he wasn't making a lot of progress with his little garden shovel. He decided instead to wear daddy's hat and read one of his favorite books, Brown Bear Brown Bear.



After reading he decided to go to the fort. I went out to the garage to find some plastic to lay down on the ground in the sandbox, and all of a sudden I hear Mason screaming!!! I run out there to find Lil O holding him saying "I think he got stung by a BEE!" I quickly took him and started looking all over. He was holding his finger and sreaming 'Bee Bite Me'. I was looking at his finger for a stinger and praying it was a bee and not a black widow! I got him into the kitchen and started making a baking soda paste to put on his finger. Then I noticed a mark under his right eye and it was already swelling! I couldn't see any stingers, so I am now asuming it was a wasp that stung his eye and he grabbed at it and it stung him again on his finger. We got the paste on both areas and I couldn't find any other areas he was complaining about. He was still pretty upset so we got him a popsicle and we sat on the couch with his favorite blanky to watch a movie. I prayed this would help distract him long enough for the paste to do it's job. It did! Once he was calm enough we took the paste off and below his eye was pretty swollen so we got a baggy full of ice for him. I knew he was feeling better when he opened up the baggie and started eating the ice. :)

Here is a picture of his eye, it's kinda hard to see though.



Poor little guy! It reminded me a lot of the times we had to doctor up Zachary when he was younger. Zachary is very, very afraid of bees to this day, in fact when he heard what happened to Mason he just shivered and ran to his room! I really don't like the wasps that fly around here. I know honey bees give us yummy honey, but what do those no good wasps do?!! I'm so happy Mason is feeling much better now.

Saturday Project

6/14/08
We have been waiting for weeks to start this project. We got some leftover sand from Rebecca and Justin Bledsoe about a month ago to put in our sandbox. The sand has been sitting in the back of Oscar's truck just waiting. Today was the day to complete the project! We first had to get the dirt/sand/rock mixture out of the sand box. Oscar backed his truck to the play yard and dumped the good sand onto a tarp. Now we were able to just shovel the old dirt into the back of his truck.

Here is Lil O and Zachary shoveling and scooping. Lil O worked soooooo hard all day shoveling and raking and scooping! I was amazed watching him.



Oscar had to pick up his Dad from the airport, take a nap, and then go into the office to take an application for a potential client.



By the time he got back we had all the sand loaded into the sandbox! Hurray!!!

Parker's Picnic

6/13/08
Last night we had a cub scout celebration party at our house. We had a jumpy obstacle course for the scouts to play on. Parker loved it so much he wanted to have his friends over to jump on it too. We invited McKenna Dribnak, Kelly and Brianna Dittrich to jump and have some lunch. They all had a great time. It was so hot their little faces were red within half hour of jumping and running. It was fun seeing them all smile and have fun.

Here they are enjoying their picnic lunch.



The girls thought they were pro tree climbers



The crew:



Parker and Mason:



Here is Kelly and McKenna both attempting to get on top of the obstacle course.



Parker giving Kelly a boost :)



Success!!



Mason and Brianna had enough of the jumping and decided playing in the dirt was better.

They all had so much fun. I can say I was exhausted just watching them. Right at the end of playing Kelly and McKenna bumped and McKenna got hurt. I hope you are feeling better McKenna.

Day At The Park

6/9/08

Our Ward is having a play day at a park each Monday throughout the summer. I think this is an awesome idea! Today was the first gathering at Kings Road Park, it was a great turnout! Here are some fun pictures of my boys having fun.

Mason: King of the Slide

Zachary:

Girls chasing the boys:

Parker and his buddy Cannon:

Playing Soccer:

The moms hangout:

We all had a great time. The boys were able to have a free lunch in the park. I'm not sure which organization is providing them, but they are at quite a few parks around the Nampa/Caldwell area. They had burritos with salsa, carrot sticks, rice crispy treats, chocolate milk, and apple juice. We look forward to next week.

Teaching Service

We wanted to teach our boys the value of hard work and giving service to others. We decided as a family that Grandma Williamson needed some help weeding around her yard. We thought it would take us a couple of nights work and it would look 10 times better. Little did we know!! We have been over there three seperate nights, and we still have a ton of work to do! Most of the weeds are taller than Mason and some Parker!! We really wanted to finish before she came back from Switzerland, but we soon realized that might not work. The weather wasn't cooperating much either which limited our amount of time we could spend there. Allergies were making Oscar miserable and I was sneezing like crazy with the build up of cotton around the weeds. We are still working on our project and we will finish it, just not as soon as we hoped. Here are some pictures so far.

Before:

After

Before:

After:

Before:

After 1 hour of working:

Mason's contribution to the work:

Photos courtsey of Lil O who was taking a 'break' :)

This has been a hard job, but it will look more beautiful when we are completly done. The front yard is done!!!

Congratulations Oscar and Zachary

6/4/08

Today was the last day of school!! Not only were the boys excited about this day because it was summer now, but they were going to be rewarded for all their hard work reading. They were so worked up they had a hard time sleeping the night before. Zachary was up every hour!

Oscar reached his own personal goal of 900 points just at the last minute!!! The goal his teacher set for him and the rest of the class was 150. He took his last test, answering the last question, one minute before the computers were being turned off. He was so excited and proud of himself. He was finally happy I was the 'mean mom' for about a month now. He was on cloud 9 all day. Not only did he win 1st place in 5th grade he was 1st in the school and he broke the school record of 742 points! He was very happy that he had won 1st place each year, his other personal goal he had made a few years ago.

Zachary's goal was 42 points and he earned 182 points. He won 1st place in the second grade and he was all smiles all day long. He was the first in the school to complete his classic and honors reading. He was most proud that he beat Oscar in completing the classics and honors first, even if it was only by one day. He also helped his whole class reach 100% first in the school.

If you are not familar with the AR (Accelerated Reader) program here is a summary. Each child is given a point goal at the beginning of the year. Children read books and then take a quiz on the computer to test their comprehension. For each test taken they receive a certain amount of points, the harder or longer the book the more points they are. After each child reaches their goal they are considered 100%. They then have a choice to read certain classic books in different genres. Once they complete that they can read honor books. Each one has its own incentive to complete. If you finish your classics you receive a $25 gift card from ToysRUs. If you finish your honors you received a $50 bill. These are awarded on the last day of school. Also to give you an idea of the amount of reading the boys did here are some stats for you. If you were to add up the points of the other kids in Oscar's class their combined total was around 400 points, there are 27 kids in his class. The other kids in Zachary's class all had different goals, they ranged from 10 to 35 points, once they reached their goal they stopped.

Congratulations Oscar and Zachary, mom and dad are so proud of you both.

Here are all the top readers in Parkridge. There were only 5 kids in the whole school who finished there classic reading. There were only 3 who finished their honor reading, Oscar, Zachary, and Joel Pett. Way to go!!

Daddy lounging during the assembly.

Mom and Mason. Mason was getting a little antsy towards the end, that was when Oscar and Zachary are getting their awards. All of a sudden Alyce Dribnak shows up and takes Mason from me! Wow where did she come from? Thanks a bunch Alyce!!

Here are the boys standing by the 100% AR wall. All the kids who earned 100% got their picture taken to put in this display. Oscar and Zachary are standing by their pictures.

Another year completed! Summer here we come! :)