Days Like Today

The past few days have been so weird and random, but just the kind that I will miss when the kids are older, the house is quiet, and I am no longer the center of their universe.

Today Luke asked me if he could have a picnic on the lawn. As I prepared the food, he told me he would get a blanket for us to sit on. He went upstairs and dragged downstairs and onto the lawn the brand-new quilt I just bought for Lauren's new room. Yup, the kind that I paid way too much for because I liked it so much. Within about 5 seconds, Lauren had spilt ketchup and water on it, dumped some chips out and stomped on them follwed by rubbing her greasy little paws all over it, with dirt and grass stains on the underside. Niiiiiiiiice. But my little Luke was so proud of himself for being such a good helper that I didn't have the heart to get after him for his blanket selection.

Yesterday he was helping me clean my bathroom and knocked over and broke a glass candle holder. Once again I didn't have the heart to scold him because he had been so vigorously scrubbing the countertop and mirror in hopes of getting paid his promised 50 cents for helping me.

The kids got a hold of my camera on Sunday morning. These are their self-portraits.

Then today as I was cleaning up our picnic lunch, Lauren decided she wanted some baby pickles that were in an unopened jar. She screeched a couple times from the pantry but when I didn't come, she decided it was time to take matters into her own hands since her mother was having obviously having obedience issues. So she slammed the pickle jar onto the floor, sat down, and helped herself to them. Luckily she didn't ingest any shards of glass or sit down on them. Apparently she got her creativity in problem solving from her dad and her impatience from me.

On a sweet note, for scripture study Dennis read the part in the Book of Mormon about Jesus blessing the children and angels surrounding them. We then had a long and impromptu discussion about angels and their role in our lives. I could almost see Camden's little mind racing, drawing conclusions and making applications of how angels could help him while playing basketball during recess and the awesomeness of their invisibility. It was as though we had just told him about the coolest superhero ever- way better than Iron Man, which says a lot. Luke on the other hand, sat completely still, listening with his eyes as big as apples and occassionally making surprising comments that showed he was really internalizing what we were saying.

I also went to Women's Conference with a couple friends this past weekend(more on that later). I got home to the sweetest note that Camden had written for me on the bathroom mirror. I really didn't want to erase it but decided to take a picture of it to make it last longer.