Father & Sons, and then Mother & Sons

Friday night was our Ward's Father and Sons camping trip. They always go out to a campsite about a 90 minute drive up highway 87 on the way to Payson. It requires driving down many dirt roads and even through a dried out riverbed that has lots of large rocks which makes me nervous for our vehicle, but I'm happy to report that the van made it there and back without any problems (I'm sure it helped that we recently bought brand new tires). We didn't realize the camp out was happening until Friday morning so it was a bit of a scramble for Jon to get home from school/work and get things packed and ready to go. Since we didn't know, the boys didn't know, so they were very pleasantly surprised when they came home from school and I told them to get ready. Shazer used his Subway gift card and they all took the sandwiches for dinner. Nice and easy. They did the usual roasting of marshmallows and Shazer brought his bow and arrow and the boys took turns shooting it. There wasn't a big turn out because it wasn't well announced but of the other boys that were there, two were Shazer's friends so they had a good time.

Shazer, Jonathan, and Aydin (Shazer's best friend)

Shazer with his wooden sword that he bought at the Renaissance festival

Shazer with his bow and arrow

The bishop gave everyone candy bars after dinner and told a cute story as they all sat around the campfire eating marshmallows and candy bars and then he invited everyone to take turns telling stories. Shazer shared a story that he'd recently written and submitted for a Reading Rainbow contest about aliens and dinosaurs. Then true to form, Shule told a "real doozie"of a story according to Jon. The boys stayed up late while at home the girls went to bed early.

Eating Subway by campfire light

Shule telling a "doozie"

I was able to get the girls fed, bathed, and to sleep by 6:30 (thanks to Sally missing her usual afternoon nap). I haven't had that many hours to myself in years. I took a nice long shower, watched some television without distraction, played a little Dr. Mario, and read some articles for fun rather than for school. I was tempted to stay up late doing more things but decided getting to bed early was a sweet decadence too.
Brother Hopkins fixed all the guys breakfast and the bishop announced that they all took a vote and decided that Shule's story was the best so he got an extra Snickers bar. The boys played a little more but they had to get home before noon so they could go to see another Childsplay production with me.

This time it was The Never Ending Story, which was my favorite movie as a kid. The set and costumes were fantastic and the play was a lot of fun. There were just a couple of minor annoyances this time. First was the audience. These productions are done for children but really aren't for small children, that's why we don't take the girls. The lady sitting behind me brought a very young girl, probably Sally's age and the girl was talking loudly throughout the entire play, asking her mom what was happening and saying she was scared at parts. The girl was adorable but it got really annoying. I'm sure she must have been distracting to the performers because we were sitting in the third row from the stage. They do have a soundproof box to take young children into to watch the play if they're having a hard time and I almost told the woman about it but I just didn't want to make even more noise. Then sitting to my right there was another young girl who was about three or four who was with a large family and who's parents were about four or five seats over. She did great through the first act but her parents must have given her some kind of candy during intermission because during the entire second act she had some kind of wrapper that she was fidgeting with and it drove me crazy. I wanted to say something to her but she was so young and I was a total stranger and I didn't want to scare her. Ugh! Then, finally, I always thought the actor who plays Bastion in the movie was a bit lame but he actually did a much better job than the guy who was playing the part in the play- not very good. There were some cool puppets and effects, though, and overall it was still fun to do something special and different with my boys.

As we went to leave for church on Sunday Jon asked me to drive because he couldn't locate his wallet. I didn't think much about it until after church when I noticed Jon looking for his wallet and still not being able to find it. We looked everywhere for more than an hour. Jon's last memory of having his wallet was when he was packing up the tent and he had grabbed it, the keys, and the camera out of a pocket in the tent. We started to get nervous that it had fallen out of his pocket at the camp grounds. We prayed to find the wallet. He checked the car and then checked it again. Finally, he said "Maybe I should check the tent" and I said that was ridiculous if he could clearly remember taking the wallet out of the tent. We looked around the house some more and finally he dumped the tent out on the living room floor and ruffled through it to find the wallet in the same pocket he'd thought he'd taken it out of. Phew! :)

for more pictures go here

April Birthdays and Easter

This month has been a very busy one with three birthdays (Mom's 60th, Shazer's 9th, and Dad's 56th), Easter, school assignments/tests, and other fun stuff. So I've been too busy doing to blog, but I now have a break for a week before my classes resume and there's not a whole lot of extra goings on so I have some time to catch up on the blogs and spring cleaning.

Not bad for 60!

April started with a big 60th birthday celebration for my mom. She had her big brother, Greg (who she hasn't seen for about 5 years), fly in to visit from Pennsylvania. Tammy, Jimmy & Jonny all flew in to the Phoenix airport, they spent the night here and then we all drove down to Tucson. Mom said it was her best birthday ever, having all her family around and her brother who was reminding her of her dad. Uncle Greg treated us all to dinner at the Golden Corral for my mom's birthday dinner, which was perfect for such a big and diverse group. Afterward, we hung out at Mom & Dad's and Mom had us play a strange twist on the white elephant game. Instead of us bringing white elephant gifts, Mom bought a gift for everyone and wrapped them all. And instead of them being funky, weird things that no one would want, the gifts were things like; chocolate covered pretzels with a gift card for $25 to Red Lobster, $25 gift card to Toys R Us, the A&E's North & South DVD, See's Candies Easter Baskets, and various other gift cards to Subway and Baja Fresh. Mom said that she wanted to give everyone else gifts on her birthday to let us know how much she loves and appreciates us. She had the person who knew her the longest have the first choice of gifts (which was Greg) and then we took turns in descending order and the usual white elephant rules for stealing and such applied. It was totally fun and our little Thwaits family made out pretty good because the kids were allowed to play, too. We got the $25 gift card to Toys R Us, one for Subway, the North & South DVD (which I'd been wanting to get for a long time and Jon picked it for me because I had already stole the Toys R Us card from Uncle Greg, which I don't think he minded) and a See's Easter basket. Thanks Mom- you rock! It was a pretty full house with everyone visiting so we did something we've never done before in Tucson- we took our kids and stayed the night at a hotel- it was nice to be able to keep our kids from bothering anyone else's sleep.

Mom and Dad with the kids

Mom and Dad with the grandkids

The next day we gave Mom her birthday gift. Jon had tuned Lyz Dorathy's piano before Christmas and we arranged to swap services and have her take some nice family photos for my mom. Everyone wore black and white and went to my mom's best friend's, Kandee Myers, house who had invited us all over for a nice Saturday brunch for her birthday. After the pictures and brunch, we went back to Mom's and played games. Then for dinner I had made a big chicken enchilada casserole and Tammy bought a big ice cream cake from Cold Stone Creamery (my mom's favorite ice cream place). Mom was happy to not have to cook the whole weekend. After dinner we drove back home to Tempe and Tammy & Frankie drove Jimmy & Jonny home to Santa Monica. They were able to hang out at the beach for a day and then Tammy drove back here and had lunch with us, then flew back to Denver. Uncle Greg stayed and visited with Mom until Monday. She especially enjoyed her visit with him, which is really nice because he's her only sibling and both of their parents have died. We really enjoyed seeing Greg, too, he told some hilarious stories and was a lot of fun. There are always lots of laughs when the Henderson kids get together :)


The next weekend my parents came up to Tempe for Shazer's birthday. He turned nine this year (he was a 2000 baby, which makes figuring out how old he is super easy). We just had a little family party for him this year. When I was growing up my parents had a rule that we could have a big birthday party with friends every other year on the even birthdays, ie. 2,4,6,8, 10yrs... It helped them cut the costs of having expensive parties for 6 kids every year. Of course, Tammy was the exception to that rule. She was a super party girl and if she didn't have a big party to celebrate her birthday every year then she would get really depressed, so we ended up doing a "surprise" party for her on the odd years. Anyway, we've adopted that same tradition with our kids. It turns out that our kids are evenly spaced so that this year we won't have any big parties but then next year every birthday will be a big party, we probably could have worked that out better, but oh well. Actually, I'm not big on having a big party for little toddlers/little kids, so no big parties for the girls yet.
We also have another birthday tradition from my family that we do for the morning of the child's birthday. Parents (and/or older siblings) blow up balloons the night before (after the birthday kid has gone to bed) and then sneak in the child's room and decorate their room so that as soon as the child wakes up in the morning they see the decorations first thing and feel like it's a special day. Sometimes we'll just do a lot of multi-colored balloons and other times we'll do a theme. My all time favorite was when Tammy turned sixteen and Frankie and I decorated her room with a bunch of caution tape and posters we'd made of traffic signs and even a butterscotch we'd "borrowed"(we did return it after her birthday). Frankie and I had so much fun doing it and it turned out awesome! This year I did a Japanese theme because Shazer's been so into anime and karate lately. I filled his room with red and white (the colors of Japan's flag) balloons and streamers and hung various anime and dragon (he was born in the year of the dragon) pictures I got from the internet. It looked really cool and he totally appreciated it. Shazer had his best friend, Aydin, come over to play during the day and he got to choose what kind of "birthday dinner" and cake he wanted. He chose sushi, which we actually ended up having for lunch because he wanted to be able to make it while his friend was here. Mom, Dad, and Brittany arrived in the late afternoon and we had a yummy store bought cheesecake sampler that he picked out for his birthday cake. He got some fun DS and Wii games that he'd been wanting and some nice art supplies from Tammy.

Easter morning

Sunday was both Easter and my dad's 56th birthday. We (I mean the Easter bunny) hid the kid's baskets and they were so busy wishing Pop-pop a happy birthday in the morning they didn't even remember to look for baskets. When they were reminded that it was Easter Sally and Shazer found their baskets first. We (I mean the Easter bunny) try to make the difficulty in finding the baskets correspond to their ages, the older the child the more difficult it is to find the basket. It took Shule and Brittany a ridiculously long time to locate their baskets, they seriously need to work on their searching skills. My parents went to church with us and we had a really nice day thinking about the atonement and resurrection. In Primary, one of the leaders who was raised Jewish discussed the relevance and tradition of the Passover and shared samples of the different symbolic foods they eat and talked about what they represent. Jon was shocked to see Shazer pop a big slice of horseradish in his mouth even after being forewarned. Shazer was equally shocked and horrified as soon as his taste buds registered what he'd done. Pretty funny! My dad had a nice, quiet birthday with us. Jon cooked him steak on the grill and I bought him a yummy Boston creme cake with strawberries on top. We just about overdosed on sweets with all the birthday cakes and Easter candy! Definitely time to ease up on the sweets! For more photos check here.

Sally helping Dad blow out his candles

Sally eating and making a mess of her chocolate bunny
(at least it was after church, and I washed her dress right away to keep it from staining)

The Host: A Novel by Stephenie Meyer

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I really enjoyed reading this sci-fi romance. I'm not typically into books about aliens and stuff like that but this one had a very interesting premise and some unexpected twists. I liked the romantic notion that not just your mind/soul love but also that your body has a kind of memory that loves, too. I'm not explaining it well. For example, if a mother were to have her mind taken over or inhabited by another being her body would still ache to hold her child in it's arms. Does that make sense? Read the book and you'll understand what I mean. Even though it was a hefty size (619 pages), Meyers' style is so flowing and easy I was done with it before I knew it. I kind of think that she could have condensed the whole Twilight series into one book like this and it would have been better. She uses familiar settings like Tucson, Mesa, and Picacho Peak which is fun for us natives, as well. Definitely a page turner and the ending was nice and tidy, which always satisfies.


View all my reviews.

Renaissance Festival

I mentioned in my Easter Egg Hunt post that Jon took the boys later that day to the Renaissance Festival and that I would share more about that later. Jon just posted on his blog about it so I refer you to his blog once again to get the update and see some fun pics and even a little video :)
http://pianointune.blogspot.com/

April Fools

I got my boys this afternoon- when they got home from school I told them that I had boxed up all their legos and given them to D.I. because I was sick of having to step on legos to get to their closet and them not cleaning up after themselves and always complaining about cleaning their room. They both freaked out and rushed to their room and threw open the door to see the evidence... HA! HA! April Fools! ...I am still considering the possibility, though, and that's why it was so convincing.

My sister called me and tried to fool me but it didn't work. She's had some pretty convincing, wild stories in the past, but this year I think her heart was just not as into it. Better luck next year, Tammy ;) She did get Mom, though- something about messed up plans for this weekend's birthday celebration and of course Mom is so perfect for immediately freaking out about everything :)

Mom reminded me that last year I had called her on April Fool's Day and told her that Jon had gotten a scholarship and she totally didn't believe me because other people had already tried fooling her that day- but it was true- he had been awarded a $10,000 scholarship for excellence in engineering. Yesterday we got another letter informing him that this time he's receiving the Honeywell Award for Engineering Excellence. We won't know exactly how much that will be until after the ceremony on April 13th. We're guessing it won't be as much as last year's but we're still crossing our fingers ;)

The Primary's Easter Egg Hunt

Shule found these bunny ears in the toy box just before we left for the hunt- all the kids tried them on but we decided they looked best on Sophie (actually, Sally looked pretty cute but she wouldn't keep them on. In fact, Shule & Shazer also looked pretty cute, but same problem :)

This past Saturday our ward decided to combine the annual Primary Easter Egg Hunt with the ward party, so they did a nice brunch/hunt at the Bartlett's home. The Bartletts are an older couple in the ward who have a nice enough house that is probably worth at least a million dollars (even in the currently troubled market) because it's on an acre of land right smack in the middle of Tempe/Ahwatukee/Chandler- it's on Rural road (which was originally aptly named probably 50 or so years ago but urban sprawl has been the name of the game since then). They live in this peculiar neighborhood where every house is on at least one acre, some on two, (some of the houses are really nice- either having been renovated or rebuilt/replacing original humble dwellings, while others are just average older homes) surrounded by developments of million dollar homes that are on a fourth or less of the land. Most of the people who live on the street own horses, sheep, cows, chickens or some other type of farm type animal. The Relief Society president lives in one of these houses and has two cows and on occasion takes care of a friend's horse or two. She also hosts the Thursday playgroup at her house and the kids love seeing the cows and playing in her huge yard complete with playhouse/jungle gym, trampoline, and swimming pool. This is the neighborhood where the ward has the annual Halloween tractor trick-or-treating.
Anyway, back to the Bartletts.
They have the perfect space for a Primary Easter egg hunt because they had huge separate yards. The senior primary could have a more difficult search among the citrus trees, while junior primary had an easier time in the garden, and the under 3- nursery kids could look for eggs laying out in plain sight in a huge, flat, fenced-in yard. Thus, avoiding the tears and frustration that inevitably occur when older kids race in and grab all the eggs before the younger ones even realize what "hunting" is all about.
The food was good, the kids had fun and it was over in less than an hour- which was perfect for every one's attention span and because Jon was taking the boys to the Renaissance festival and wanted to get an early start (I'll post some pics and even a little video about that soon). The Bartletts even shared a bag of their lemons with us so we could make fresh lemonade (not quite as much as my friend Clarisa will be making, though ;) check out her blog: gailey sunbeams to see what I mean).

Even with us pointing straight at that purple egg she still didn't see it until she accidentally brushed up against it and it fell to the ground. So funny.

I only got one picture of Shule and it was of his back side running way off in the distance- that kid was highly motivated to find those eggs. Here Shazer learned the lesson: never yell out "hey there are some in that ditch" when there is another kid closer to the ditch than you are.

Shazer still inspecting trees long after the hunt is over.

This picture is for you, Tammy, who gets on my case for never posting pictures of myself. I'm usually the one behind the camera- I like it that way. As you can see, I've done away with the fuchsia streak for now, and I'm just going with all brown. I'd love to do a blue streak but it's tricky and way too much upkeep. I'm also letting my hair grow out for a while, until I get sick of it again ;)