Listen, children, to a story....

The other night I was lying on the top bunk with Brigham trying to sing the boys to sleep. I haven't done that in a long time and I miss it. Here are the lyrics to the song I was singing, one of my favorites that I learned at camp:

One Tin Soldier

Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago,
'Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley-folk below.

On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath the stone,
And the valley-people swore
They'd have it for their very own.

Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after....
One tin soldier rides away.

So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill,
Asking for the buried treasure,
Tons of gold for which they'd kill.

Came an answer from the kingdom,
"With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of our mountain,
All the riches buried there."

Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after....
One tin soldier rides away.

Now the valley cried with anger,
"Mount your horses! Draw your sword!"
And they killed the mountain-people,
So they won their just reward.

Now they stood beside the treasure,
On the mountain, dark and red.
Turned the stone and looked beneath it...
"Peace on Earth" was all it said.

Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgement day,
On the bloody morning after....
One tin soldier rides away.

So I think the boys actually listened to the words for the first time, because after I was done they started asking me questions about the story. That's when Brigham said this:

"Why didn't the mountain people just lift up the stone so the valley people would know it was a lame treasure and not kill them?"

When did the word lame enter my six-year-old's vocabulary? And what are your favorite bedtime songs? Some of mine: Return to Pooh Corner, Rainbow Connection (Cindy Lynn- what is a "sunderate spell"?:), Mr. Moon, Father and Son, Go Tell Aunt Rhody...

The sun was shining, birds were chirping and the sweet smell of gasoline was in the air...

*

...I actually do love the smell of gasoline. It may be my favorite smell, right up there with dishwasher detergent. Especially liquid Cascade- our neighbors gave us half a bottle when they got a new fancy dishwasher and sometimes I give it a little sniff just because. I know. But back to the point of my post: Our ninth anniversary, which was yesterday, and went like this:

2:00- I have some time in the afternoon to either clean the bathroom or go to the store and buy Eric a humorous anniversary card and write a sweet note in it telling him how much I love him. Tough decision, but I go with the bathroom because I know it's what he would choose- he just loooooves a clean bathroom. I think I may have some issues, because I'm incapable of cleaning the bathroom and then not announcing to him "I CLEANED THE BATHROOM TODAY!!!".

3:00- I take a shower, shave my legs and even put on mascara!

5:00- Eric leaves to pick up our WONDERFUL babysitter, Gabby, after a very lengthy discussion on whether or not it's appropriate for Dads to drive around with cute young babysitters in the car. Our consensus: he picks up, I drop off.

6:15- We arrive at the restaurant 15 minutes late for our reservation to find that we're one of two couples in the entire place. Eric eats a very alarming quantity of goat cheese. I'm disappointed with my shrimp and grits. We decide to get dessert elsewhere.

7:30- We get in the car and discover that we have run out of gas. This happens to us all. the. time. In fact it happened last week in South Carolina! It's okay though, because it's such a nice night and we can never think of enough things to do to fill up our dates so that we don't get home before the kids are in bed. So we walk to the nearest gas station, about a mile away and Eric holds my hand even though it's sweaty, as it always is, and he really hates that. He only breaks away to wipe the sweat off on his shirt once.

8:00- Phone call from Gabby- Marley won't go to sleep. I tell her to wrap her in her purple blanket and bounce her on the bouncy ball. Then I say to Eric, "You didn't tell her about the purple blanket!?" and he says, "I thought YOU told her about the purple blanket!" The purple blanket is very important.

8:30- We arrive at our favorite dessert cafe and decide that to mark the occasion we'll order three desserts- coconut cake, chocolate layer cake and a chocolate eclair. Yum!

9:30- We arrive home to find that the purple blanket worked it's magic and all three kids are fast asleep.

Nine years.
Three babies.
Two cities.
Three degrees.
Three apartments.
One house.
Five cars.
One dog.
Eight chickens.


*Back in the early days...some time after our first anniversary.

Good end to a bad day

I sat on my friend's toilet tonight and cried and cried while she gave her son a bath. Tears rolled down and I could not stop them, didn't even try. I cried because the world can be a scary place, and sometimes your best friend might move to California and not be there for you to cry on her toilet while she gives her son a bath. All I can say is this: I really, really hope Heaven is a place where you never have to say goodbye to the people you love. Also that there are no mean dogs and no women with perfect thighs in Heaven. That would just ruin it for me.

After my good cry, I felt a little better and we drove home to find that the chicken who had gone A.W.O.L. this afternoon had returned to the garage. I fed sweet potatoes to Marley and snipped the dreadlocks that had formed behind the dog's ears because it's been so long since I've brushed him. Little Eric said a prayer and thanked Heavenly Father that the chicken could come home. I ate a pop tart. And now everyone's asleep and it's just me, the dog and Treasure Island waiting for me on my nightstand. And that was my day.

Like a postcard of a Golden Retriever

I'm an evil, evil person. Despite having a husband who is an incredible, amazing father to our three children, I totally and completely bombed on Father's Day. To make things even worse he was sweet and mature about it and when I apologized that we hadn't done anything very special, other than give him a gift and hastily made cards from the boys, he only said, "that's okay- I wasn't expecting much!" This because we're away from home (at my Mom's for the week) and I have a stress fracture in my foot, which makes me extremely grumpy and self-absorbed. Not that that is any excuse! I realized this while reading the posts on several friends' blogs today about all the wonderful, thoughtful things they had done for their fathers and husbands. I'm horrible!! So, to make it up, we will have a father's day redo this Sunday when we get home, and it will include pie, I promise.

I was also going to make a list of Eric's finest moments as a father, to include the time when little Eric was a newborn and he rushed home between classes just to hold him for a few minutes, or the time he dove the entire lenth of the pool to rescue Eric from drowning, or just today, when I watched from the ocean as he bounced Marley to sleep in his arms and then made her a tent out of towels for her nap. But as I started to write I realized that his finest moments as a father are probably ones I will never know about: quiet conversations with the boys as they fall asleep in their sleeping bags on father-son campouts; nights singing Marley back to sleep in her crib; fellowships and awards forgone so that he could come home and eat dinner with our family instead. I know that he makes sacrifices for me and our children every day and I am so grateful for that. When Marley grows up I want her to marry a man JUST LIKE HER DADDY. I guess that's the best compliment I could give him, and I really do mean it. I love you sweetheart!!

Made me smile:)

Somewhere on the streets of Raleigh...

Wednesday nights at the track...

We recently discovered the Carolina Godiva track club which holds informal, family-friendly track meets at the UNC track each week. There are races for the kids and for all levels of runners. To my dismay, I found that no chocolate was involved:(. But it was lots of fun anyway, so that's where we've been spending our Wednesday nights this summer.

The first race of the night is the mile. The first week we went Eric won an easy victory in the fast heat with a time of 4:45. It turned out that the big guns just weren't there that night and he was put back in his place in subsequent weeks. Like this last week- check out this Kenyan dude!



And this just cracks me up: it's Eric in a nutshell. See that look on his face? He just HAD to try and beat the Kenyan, even if it killed him, and it nearly did...



The boys, of course, want to be out there just like their Dad...




Little Eric did the mile last week in 9:01 and the 1500 this week in 8:10. Barefoot, of course. Briggie did half of the mile and then decided to take a little rest that conveniently lasted until the race was over:).

Marley? She did the clothes on thing for a while...




but that got old...





I even got in on the action this week and ran the 1500 M, coming in dead last in my heat, which is always fun:). I gave the camera to Brigham at one point and this is what I found when I uploaded the pictures:






That last one is my favorite- if you enlarge it you can see that the woman is clearly aware of her picture being taken by some random child but she's trying not to be too obviously unnerved. Oh Briggie:). He may not be destined for the Olympics, but I think he has potential as a photographer...

Eric and Kate Plus Eight

Friday was the boys' last day of school, which is always sad for me- I don't like transitions. Brigham and Eric, for their part, didn't seem sad at all, just proud of all they had done in Kindergarten and first grade and excited for summer to begin. Part of that may have been due to the fact that we brought home a little souveneir from Eric's class: eight baby chicks. We're giving the backyard chickens thing a try- hopefully it will be fun and not too much work. If not, as Eric (big) says, we can always eat them.

Today after church we were looking over Brigham's report card and noticed something strange. They're graded on a scale from 1 to 4, 1 being bad and 4 being excellent. All year long, in almost every subject, Brigham has 3's:

Knows the front and back of the book- 3
Knows to read top to bottom- 3
Speaks in complete sentences- 3
Recognizes own name in print- 3

It was at this point that Eric and I started laughing. Knows the front and back of a book!? Recognizes his own name!? Maybe I'm one of those ultra-competitive moms with an inflated vision of her child, but I'm pretty sure that Brigham recognizes his own name perfectly, and can figure out which side is the front of a book- throw him a 4 or two!

So we're looking it over with him, trying to make it sound all great that he's a completely mediocre student, when he notices one 4 on the page and points to it saying, "Read that one Daddy!"

Days absent- 4

He did get an O for outstanding on Responds appropriately to adults. What does that even mean?

Here are the boys with their teachers. We were SO lucky to have wonderful teachers whom we loved, even if they did think our kids were mediocre...



And here are the octuplets....

Tiger assistant (he hangs out with Tiger a lot)


Sunshine


Rose


Sprinkles


Sunset


Tiger


Chickmonk


Duke