* When my older brother was a baby, my mom was on a walk with her best friend. Between their talking and laughing, she heard a little girl's voice say, "It's my turn, Momma," and that's how she knew there was another baby soon joining the family. Whenever we watch our old home movies and I say my famous line, "I like Christmas because you get presents even," My mom says, "That's the voice I heard! That little, gravelly voice you had." She says I was the only kids who kept calling her, "Momma," even after I was a baby.
* When she went to the hospital to have me, she knew that I would be a girl, so she brought pink blankets and pink clothes. The nurses all thought she was crazy and told her that I would probably end up being a boy. I wasn't old enough to remember, but I'm sure she didn't gloat too much when the pink clothes fit me just right.
* When we were living in Utah, and I was probably about three or four, my mom was sewing and I kept getting too close to the sewing machine. She told me numerous times to stay back, or I would get hurt. I ended up getting my hair wound all around the side. It hurt, and they had to cut that hair off. I wish I would have learned then to always listen to the advice of my mother. I would have avoided so many mistakes.
*When I was five, we were visiting my grandma, I got into a car wreck, all by myself. We were getting ready to go somewhere, and I was impatient to get going, so I kept asking my mom if I could sit in the car. She kept saying, "No," but I did it anyway. Not knowing what I was doing, I put the car into neutral, and it started rolling down the hill my grandma lived on. When I jumped out of the car, I scraped my head on the road, which pulled and rolled all the skin off the side of my head. It was a mess. My mom was the one who rode in the neighbors car with me, holding a towel to my bleeding head, to get down the mountain to the ambulance, and she was the one who held my hand while the doctor unrolled all the skin and stitched it back in place.
*My mom made the best Halloween costumes. I always felt sorry for the kids who would show up to the school Halloween parade in store bought, plastic costumes.
*My mom sewed my baptism dress. I remember feeling so special that she would do that for me, and feeling so beautiful on the day of my baptism.
*When I was a teenager, Philip and I decided to tip toe around the house, bouncing up and down real fast, yelling some sort of "HOooOODoOOLaLoOo!" nonsense. My mom joined in, and we did that for about a half hour. It was great.
*During my senior year of high school, I did Running Start through Columbia Basin College, where I took classes there instead of the high school. Because of that, I had an easy schedule and a lot of free time. My mom and I would go on errands together while everyone else was in school, and sometimes we would stop for a hamburger.
*My mom wrote to me faithfully while I was in college, and she was always available when I would call home.
*My mom took me to the temple for my first time. I wasn't nervous, because she was there to help me.
*My mom taught me to be a good mother. It's because of her that I try to speak to my children with love, even when I'm anrgy. She's the one who taught me how to teach my children about Heavenly Father and Jesus and how to love and take care of each other.
*Now, I call my mom every day. Usually it's around breakfast time, but sometimes I end up calling her a few times through out the day for random reasons. She never seems to be bothered that I call so often.
*Sometimes, when I run errands, my mom comes along to sit with the kids in the car, so I don't have to take them back and forth out of their car seats. She sings songs with them and keeps them entertained while I run in real fast to take care of things. There's been a couple times when a three minute errand has turned into a thirty minute errand, and she hasn't complained once.
* My mom has six kids and sixteen grandchildren, and she divides her time up between us all. She makes us all feel so loved and important, and she's always there for us, for whatever we may need.
Happy Mother's Day, Momma
Here's what our campsite looked like the first morning. We got in around 8:00 on Monday evening, set up camp before it got dark and started raining, and went to bed. It was surprisingly warm, but I still made the kids put on socks under their pajamas, and Brian made fun of me for that. The kids slept great. We put them on an air mattress in the main room, and Brian and I slept in the front entry area. (I got the tent for Brian as a Graduation/Father's Day present, because we want to do a ton of camping this summer and we've outgrown our two man dome tent. This new tent is huge!)
The kids enjoyed their hot cocoa.
Even though it was cold and rainy, the beach was so fun.
My boys
A sand angel. This is only the beginning of Alyssa getting dirty. She had a fabulous time!
Brian dug a hole with our little red plastic shovel. It's a two-kid hole, and it actually went a lot deeper than it looks. Ethan and Marcus just got wedged in the top. Maybe it's not quite a two-kid hole.
I don't know why he lost his pants...Maybe because they were heavy from being wet?
Alyssa loved flying kites.
Brian found these rocks on the beach. "I found this one, and then I found the yellow one next. I put them in my hand, and not too much later, I found their baby." (It might be hard to tell from the picture, but the little one is a perfect blending of the two big ones.) Brian's favorite thing to do on the beach is look for shells and rocks. He can comb the sand for hours and be completely happy.
He is so dang cute. Once again, this picture doesn't clearly show the depth of The Hole. We took this after it had been filled in a bit after we used it to store our kites.
This is the face of a Cheetos and Oreo cookie lunch.
Isn't this beautiful? There was a sand bar about twenty feet out. Brian went wading over to it, and after a little bit we heard, "Whoo! This goes a lot deeper than I thought it would."
This is the entrance to the fort we built to keep out of the rain. Alyssa started the whole project, and about fifteen minutes into it, it stopped raining, and we had beautiful blue skies for the rest of the trip. The girl by Alyssa is Emma, whose family had the site across from ours. They had so much fun together. Her dad sent us some better pictures of them together, but they're on Brian's laptop.
And here's the front side, facing the ocean. Brian made sure we had windows to be able to watch the waves.
They found stick guns, and couldn't help but shoot each other. Guys. The gun Ethan has is made out of drift wood, and it really looked so much like a gun - perfectly proportioned. I tried to find it when we were leaving, but a couple other boys had played with it after Ethan, and it was nowhere to be seen.
Brian and Marcus built a sand castle together. Marcus kept giggling every time Brian turned over and lifted the bucket.
Here's Alyssa dancing around the sand castle.
And Ethan playing in the waves.
Marcus falling asleep.
And this is what out campsite looked liked after we officially "moved in."
