Leaves, Christmas, Randomness, and things I let The Boy do that I probably shouldn't!

I know that you probably always have the sound off when you come to our blog because I have this strange obsession with inundating you with the awesome of Classical Music. Well, as I alluded to on Facebook, one of the reasons this post is so late in coming is because I changed the music that you will hear to be more in line with the season. Say Hello to 61 of my favorite Christmas Carols!!! Rather than dealing with those annoying commercials on Pandora, you can just leave our website up and it will play all day!!! Also, if you happen to get to listen to The Boars Head, it is my favorite Christmas Carol this year!!! Now back to your regularly...um irregularly scheduled blog update!

100 Stickers!!!!

   So the Boy is highly motivated by sticker charts, it worked great for potty training, and it cleaned up his school behavior, so we got to thinking, maybe we can teach the Boy to do all of those little things everyday that we would like him to do without us forcing him to do them. (Just a quick aside to parents, teachers, and anyone who has responsibility over minions: You cannot expect them to exhibit a behavior that you have not taught them to do. If you want your child to brush their teeth a certain way, you just can't tell them to "Go brush your teeth," or they will go do whatever they think that means. Ladies, have you ever asked you man to do something, and then we did it in a way that is nowhere near what you wanted? Well, we probably had no clue what you really wanted so we did what we thought it sounded like you wanted. Anyway, we are all really just like dogs, we need to be trained, and we respond well to rewards...not so well to newspaper.)

   

 We also like to use the sticker chart as an excuse to get the boy toys. Now our financial situation kind of stinks, and the boy was earning rewards to fast, so we decided that he was going to have to really work this time. He has 10 tasks that he has to do everyday, if he does them he gets a sticker, if we have to help him or make him, or ask him more than twice, no sticker. His tasks are: Get out of Bed (I bet you are thinking that your spouse could use that on their sticker chart), Eat Breakfast, Brush his Teeth, Earn all Smiley Faces at School (that is his school behavior chart), Eat his dinner, Take a bath (he doesn't do that every night), Put on his PJ's, Family Scripture Study, Brush his Teeth, and Say his prayers. (Yes, we know that Brushing his teeth is on there twice. See that comment up there about getting a child to brush his teeth correctly? We will be moving to the rolled up newspaper soon.)

   If he earns 10 stickers in a column he gets to have ice cream with Papa - which isn't really a reward because lets be honest, he has ice cream with Papa all the time. When he gets all 10 columns done he gets his real reward. He usually has this picked out right from the beginning, and so he has been talking about Ramone from Cars for quite a while. We actually went and bought Ramone last Monday, and all the boy had to do in order to earn him was get all smiley faces on Tuesday - the last day before Thanksgiving break...and he blew it. (Let's hope that he doesn't grow up to be a kicker.) He has a problem with Nap Time at school. He doesn't want to take a nap, which is fine, he doesn't have to sleep, but he has to quietly look at a book or do something that doesn't disrupt the other children who do sleep. Owen doesn't do quiet. This is the boy who frequently will walk into the room and proclaim, "It's Time to Get AWESOME!!!!" He was pretty upset that he didn't get Ramone (He didn't earn it, he doesn't get it. I know that I am the meanest parent ever (I'm the same guy who potty trained the boy by putting him back in a baby diaper) and I am sure he will need counseling later in life.) but he went back to school on Monday highly motivated, and even informed me that I needed to make a new sticker chart because he was going to get his last sticker. 

   When I went to pick Owen up after school, I had a suspicion that he probably was going to get all smilies, so I brought Ramone with me.  Sure enough, Owen came running out the door proclaiming that he got all smilies and he was going to get Ramone when we got home. I asked him, "What if I told you that Ramone wasn't at home anymore," to which he replied, "That would be lying." So I pulled Ramone out of where I had been hiding it, and the Boy squealed! Owen usually does not get too vocal with his excitement, he is the kind of boy that freaks out physically when he is excited - you know jumps all over you and acts like a hyperactive chihuahua - so maybe it was because he was in his seat, but he squealed with excitement. Now he just wishes that it was Friday so he could take Ramone for show and tell. And we did start a new chart - we took out Putting on PJ's because he does that without a fuss, and replaced it with Putting all of his toys away. He wants to earn all 10 stickers today, so we will see how he does. Oh, and he already has his next reward picked out...he wants Flo from Cars.

I just realized that was an incredibly long block of writing without any pictures, so lets get on to something that lends itself better to pictures: 

Leaves! 

We have 16 oak trees in our yard (it used to be 17 but we cut one down...I've complained a lot about that experience, so if you have been following us you probably know that.) That means 16 oak trees dump their leaves in my yard every year, plus I am pretty sure some of my neighbor's trees dump theirs as well. Last year we filled over 130 bags of leaves and had probably that many again, except that Snowmaggedon came. The good thing about that is that the snow knocked out our fence, which led to a conversation with the gentleman who lives behind us, which led to permission to drag our leaves through his property to the forest on the other side! I had been out a couple of times trying to get ahead of the leaves as they fall, but then we had a good wind come through and dumped most of the leaves so I was getting out my rake when I heard the greatest noise ever coming from my neighbor Nan's house. Nan had gone out and bought a leaf blower!!! 

Nan is just about the greatest neighbor ever. She helped talk us into buying this house in the first place: we were here looking at it for a second time and she came out to beg us to move in, I guess the last people weren't the best. (When you have people sleeping in the shed, run a mariachi band in your back yard, and use the upstairs as a brothel, the neighbors tend to not like you.) In addition to just being an awesome neighbor, Nan lets me use her lawnmower, so when she came over to talk to me I knew that she was going to let me borrow her leaf blower as well. It isn't the most powerful, and I found that there is a little bit of a learning curve when dealing with leaves and wind, but in the end, I have a giant pile of leaves waiting for me to load them onto a tarp for the trip to the woods.

 I would like to mention that this nice sunny picture was taken on the same day that the North-West part of the country was getting snowed on!

 The front yard was easy compared to what awaited me in the back yard.

 What the Hell? A washer and dryer fell out of my tree!!!!

(Oh wait, nope, those are the broken ones that came with the house that I took out of the shed and now I don't know what to do with them so I am just leaving them in the middle of my yard like the white trash I am!!)

 Just a picture of me slowly moving my pile of leaves across the yard...kind of boring, not sure why I put it in, but it is here...

Things got a lot more interesting once Owen and his best friend Dean came out to play! 

(I really need to have a talk with Dean's dad because that follow through has some serious potential, that boy might be a natural!)

 The leaf blower is a little on the loud side (it is electric so it isn't like those gas powered backpack ones that the have at the University...if only I could get my hands on one of those...) but the allure of a gigantic leaf pile strengthened the boy's courage and they came out to play!

 Where did they go? Remember how I said that there was a learning curve with the leaf blower? Well, I learned some fun things, such as how to get a giant pile of leaves resting on a cushion of air until one expert flick send the entire pile flying forward, covering everything in their path! (You can see the leftover leaves there on the right to get an idea of how big the leaf wall was that came at them.)

This must have been a fun game because I buried them for probably 30 minutes without them getting tired of it!

The giant pile of leaves did lead to a tremendously terrifying experience for me later in the week. I had been out working on the Christmas Lights while Beki went to the store. (By the way, Beki is doing fine, she is still a little weak, but she is not dead and is back at school.) The Boy had been playing outside with me, but he wanted to go inside and play on the computer, so I told him that if he wanted to go in, I would clean up outside and then come in and make dinner. It took me about 30 minutes to get everything in order, and I was a little surprised when I came in and Owen was not at the computer. I figured that he must be in his room playing with his trains...not there. Maybe he was in the bathroom...not there. My house is a box, so after checking upstairs, there was no other place that he could be inside. Now I am known for loosing things around the house, and I am awful at finding things, but how on earth had I lost the Boy? I thought maybe he came back out while I wasn't watching and he was playing in the street. (Now before you get any ideas about calling social services, we live at the end of a cul-de-sac, so the kids play in the street. Besides, it won't do you any good, I've been trying to get a hold of Social Services for a week and a half and they never answer.) I went up and down the street and even checked with the neighbors...no Owen. 

    At this point I am thinking, "Awesome...well it took me 4 years longer than I thought it would for me to loose him," and then I got to thinking about the leaf pile. Maybe the Boy was tromping through the leaves and he just kept going out through the neighbors yard and  into the forest. I went out back to the leaf pile and while I could see signs that he had been back there, he was nowhere in sight. I figured that I would go look through the forest first before I decided to call search and rescue, and while I was on my way past the leaf pile, a little grey spot caught my eye. The Boy was perfectly still, completely buried in leaves, and all that was showing was the very top of his hat. "Great, he's dead, probably trampled by rabid deer." (We do have a lot of deer that wander through our yard, not sure if they are rabid or not.) Well it turns out that he was not dead, but that he had been playing in the leaves, and had burrowed down and become so comfortable that he decided to take a nap. When I picked him up he was cross and informed me, "Papa! I'm sleeping!" Beki was curious why the boy was sleeping in his outside coat and completely covered in leaves when she got home, and after I told her my terrifying tale of terror, she responded exactly as I would have in her shoes, "Did you take pictures?" I regretfully admit that in my euphoric joy of finding my son still alive, I totally forgot to take pictures of him asleep in the leaf pile. Rest assured that if he pulls this stunt again, I will be properly armed for your amusement!

Thanksgiving was pretty low key around here. We had Thanksgiving Dinner thanks to my good friend Herbie and his wife Kris who felt that they wanted to help us out a little bit - this experience of being out of work has forced me to be more accepting of other people's help and charity, and there are so many people who are anxious and willing to help those in need. After Thanksgiving we got to participate in one of my favorite traditions:

Christmas Decorations!!

I am pretty good at holding off on Christmas until after Thanksgiving, probably because Thanksgiving is pretty important to me...I love food. (And apparently I love Costco's Pumpkin Pie - I haven't been a big pumpkin pie fan in the past, but I have eaten my share of this one!) But once dinner, napping and football are over it is time to bust out the Christmas Music and get to work on the tree. Now I will admit that things were a little too low key here this Thanksgiving, so my nap was way too long and I didn't get around to doing the Tree until the day after Thanksgiving...you know when the rest of you were out fighting the crowds and such?

 Yup, my tree comes in a box. My wife is allergic to the real ones, plus they cost more than my fake one did, and I use it every year. Most importantly, I don't have to drive any where to get my tree.

 I took this picture to set up a little before and after, but as I was taking it I couldn't help but wonder what had happened to the Boy...he had been right here helping me fluff the branches...

 I was attracted to some movement and silly noises coming from the Christmas Tree Box...

 For those of you who think that children don't know what is going on in the PG13 movies you watch, Owen informed me that this was the bed that turns him into a blue person...guess what movie we watched a couple of weeks ago? (He actually fell asleep halfway through, but for his bed-time story the next night he wanted to know what happened in the story with the blue people.)

 Once the tree is up it is time to find the rest of the decorations...

 Or the little electric train that is in the Christmas box. It was like Christmas morning for Owen. He was so excited to find a new train, especially one that moved on its own. He was set for the rest of the day.

 So my thing with Christmas Trees is that they need to look good in the light...

 And then captivate you in the night. The Angel on top changes colors...I could watch it all night, and sometimes do! Also, we put our Christmas Village under the tree since it is too big to fit on the entertainment center and mantle anymore.

 For Family Home Evening on Monday we made a countdown chain, no only to give us another decoration, but we are focusing on traditions, because we want Christmas to be more than presents.

 Who would have thought that thread would blow the mind of a 4 year old? He was fascinated by this thing that he could barely see that I was using to hang the chain up with.

 Owen went to see Mommy, but forgot that he was hooked to the chain, lucky for us it had 26 loops on it!

 I know this picture is a little blurry, but look at that concentration on his face. I'm telling you, he was having a hard time adjusting to a world where thread exists!

 Once his mind grasped the concept of thread he was a great helper measuring out the thread for me.

With how much he likes sticker charts, the chain should be a hit!

Randomness!!!

So I try to organize these posts by topic, but sometimes there are just random pictures that don't really fit into anything, they just are awesome.

 If I am not mistaken, I am using Owen as my "Comfy Pillow" (He really is going to need counseling...we should probably get him started on that early.)

 Sometimes he can look really sweet and cute...

 But don't be fooled, it is just a guise he uses to trick you into thinking you could take a family picture...then you'll get this:

 Spaz...that is all I can say.

 We did get a "good" one...after about 8 tries.

Sunday evening was Stake Choir Practice, and Dean's mom is the director, which means that Owen and Dean get to hang out and play. Both families plan ahead and the kids are in their PJ's, but Owen planned ahead too and brought two of his Superhero capes for them to wear. I miss the days of Superhero capes...I have a blanket around me now, all I need is a safety pin....

And our final section today will be:

Things I Let The Boy do That I Probably Shouldn't!

I was trying to think of a clever way to introduce these pictures, but I guess that they just go along with the other things that the Boy has done such as: Hammer in nails (And my iPod), Paint the walls, and helped fix the plumbing.

Yup...that is my 4 year old son standing on a six foot step-ladder hanging lights on the roof. I was working when suddenly there he was wanting to know what I was doing.

Now I hate ladders, but the Boy is not fazed by them. I asked them if he was scared to be up on the ladder, to which he was like, "Papa, I climb a ladder every day on my bed." Good Point.

 Since he was up there I put him to work. He put on every other light...all the way across. (It was once we got done with the ladder that he said that he wanted to go inside but instead went and slept in the leaves.)

This last set of pictures doesn't need any explanation. I must tell you that I am extremely proud of this accomplishment, and at the same time extremely terrified!

The only thing that is stopping him from having ice cream whenever he wants is the fact that he can't reach the cups. (And of course the fear of Mommy) He can get the ice cream and the scoop. At the same time the only thing that is stopping him from bringing ME ice cream whenever I want is the fact that he can't reach the cups...maybe I should teach him?

I know that I haven't ranted about anything in a while, but I feel a pretty good sized rant coming on in the next few days.