I felt like Fraulein Maria...

Well, we sure had a fun time on Saturday! We had seven kids for the day, and boy was it busy. My friend Rienna was in a pinch and so we offered to take her 5 kids for the day. So between all the kids we had seven. Perrin, Kylara, Caedmon, Lael, Arwen, Zack, and Nathan. Wow. We had a great time though, despite the state of the house afterwards! :) The kids had a great time, and the older ones especially liked playing Gamecube. The little ones felt so left out without having a controller, so Pete dug out the Playstation and the younger 3 played pretend video games. It was so funny watching them play - we started the nintendo after lunch so everyone was quiet and staring at the TV, all sitting in a line with their controllers. Then we went outside for the rest of the afternoon and Pete had an awesome time horsing around with the older kids. Arwen took quite a shine to Zack's tricycle and she rode it up and down the street while I walked with her - she's quite a chatterbox when you get her by herself, and she was hilarious to talk to! She asked me why I didn't have any girl babies, and I told her that Jesus chose to give me 2 boys and no girls. She said, "I'm gonna have a girl baby when I'm big." I asked her if she would like any boys, and she said no. There was a long pause in the conversation and then she asked me, "Mrs. Heinbuch, why do people get dead?" I told her that if someone loves Jesus, Jesus wants them to come home to heaven. She said "Oh.... I'll go to girl heaven." I asked if there was a boy heaven and she said, "No. Heaven is only for girls."



We had such a fun time with the Nagel kids - they were so well behaved and fun to talk to. Perrin is the oldest boy, and he reminds me so much of my brother Josh when he was that age. My grandma often tells the story of when she and grandpa were driving up to the lake with Josh in the back seat. Josh talked the whole 2 hours. It rained, and Josh got louder. Then it hailed, and he got louder again. Well, Perrin gave us an up-to-the-second play-by-play of every event, especially the MarioParty game we were playing... "Hey Yoshi, it's your turn, press A. Okay, how many did you get? Oh, 6 spaces. What will you land on? Oh, a blue space. That means you get three coins. Now it's time for a mini-game. Which game will it be. Oh, what's that one? How do you play?" It was pretty much non-stop - I laughed to myself the entire time.

Sharing is not fun.

My Nathan is such a funny little boy. When he and Zack are taking turns with their favorite things to play with, it's interesting to watch how they deal with the emotion of losing their toy. The favorite these days is a home depot hard hat with a mining light on it that we got them for Christmas. Well, whoever grabs it first in the morning rips the light off the hard hat (it's got a big elastic that goes around it), and they turn the light on. Then they run to everyone in the room and tell them to say "aaaah" while shining the light in their mouths. It's so cute. When I tell Zack that it's Nathan's turn with the light, he politely gives it up and goes to play with something else or read books with mommy. Well, when it's Nathan's time to give back the light, he very nicely gives it to Zack. Once the toy has left his hands, however, he stomps and cries and then falls on the floor face down. I try so hard to be sympathetic, but it's so hard not to laugh when he does a complete emotional 180.

Just a tad emotional...

When we sang my favorite hymn this morning in church and I cried yet again, I decided I would look it up online to see if there was maybe a history on how this song came to be. Most hymns were written by people who had just gone through trials or had experienced God in such a way that they could only express their emotion musically. This is from the history of my favorite hymn "The Love of God" by Fred­er­ick Leh­man.

"the lines had been found pen­ciled on the wall of a pa­tient’s room in an in­sane asy­lum af­ter he had been car­ried to his grave, the gen­er­al opin­ion was that this in­mate had writ­ten the epic in mo­ments of san­ity."

Wow. Here's my favorite verse:

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

Chorus:
The love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song.

That means that if we tried to write down how much God loves us and all the water on earth was ink, and the sky was paper, and every piece of wheat and grass was a pen, and every person on earth was a writer, that we would drain the ocean of ink and we couldn't fit all of that writing on the sky because it wouldn't be enough paper. I can't even write it without feeling amazed.

Pete the Patronizer

Sometimes Pete likes to bug Zack because it can be so easy... Well, yesterday, Pete was bugging him more than usual to get a rise out of him. I said "Pete, don't patronize him!". Zack turned to Pete and said, "Yeah, daddy, don't paint your eyes!"

Rocky IX - revenge of the crabby babies...

Well, everything seemed wonderful on Saturday morning when we left for Rocky Mountain House. Going to my in-laws place for the weekend to visit with them and to see some family friends. We were so excited to go! But not as excited as we were to leave... We tried to pack a week of visiting into two days, and boy was it tiring. It was easy for Pete and I to handle it, but it's so hard on Zack and especially Nathan. As crazy as he is, Nathan likes his own bed; his own blankets, his stuffed puppies, his comfortable room. So when he was told to go to sleep in dad's book room with Zack right next to him and a party upstairs, he decided it was not cool. I think he probably slept for about 5 hours Saturday night (which doesn't sound that bad, but when you compare it to the 14 hours he normally gets...) and the rest of the time he cried. Sunday, Nathan probably napped for a half hour then cried for 45 minutes... So after being overtired and disobedient and crabby and sad, Zack took my hands on sunday after supper and said, "Mommy, go a car to Zack's bed?" So we got their jammies on and headed home. This is what Nathan looked like after being in the car for less than 5 minutes. He was exhausted.

Pete's first unicycle injury...

Pete was a boy who did flirt,

With danger - he hadn't been hurt.

His uni did fly

Up high in the sky,

But poor Pete was left in the dirt.

Last Christmas I bought Pete an offroad mountain unicycle, and he's been riding it in a big way. He's doing jumps and stairs and bridges, you should see how crazy he is! I'm so glad he wears a helmet. Well, a few days ago he decided it would be an awesome idea to jump some blocks by our house and he hurt his foot. His friend Kyle (who also has a uni) drove him to emergency, and after about 6 x-rays they discovered that Pete had chipped the bone on the outside of his foot. It's always funny to find the lighter side of these kinds of injuries, and it was hilarious that while the doctor was looking at his foot, Pete was wearing his shirt that says, "I do all my own stunts." Hmmm....

Diary of a Smitten Mommy

I have never been so smitten by anything as much as my two little boys. They are just so cute and funny, not to mention hilarious! Their personalities are so different, and that's what makes them even more loveable. Zack is so neat and tidy - everything is in a line, it's sorted and controlled. Nathan is the destroyer - he doesn't care what things look like, he just wants to have as much fun as possible.

Zack is such a caring boy. He puts his arm around people when he talks to them and makes them feel so special. We were out for supper the other night, and the waitress crouched down beside him to take our order. Zack quickly put his hand on her back and said, "Zack like cheeseburger and fries and ketchup please." Then he rubbed her back while she took the rest of our orders. He was telling Pete something yesterday and gently put his hands on either side of Pete's face and said, "Look at me, daddy." He comes up to me and sighs a big sigh and says "I just love you mommy." It's so cute.

Nathan is finally just learning to talk. He is so busy that he doesn't have time to learn words, but now he's realizing it would be easier to get what he wants that way. He loves to copy what Zack says and does, even when Zack is crying or having a tantrum! Nathan will just fall on the floor and pretend to cry - then he laughs hysterically. We had taught Zack sign language, and so he says I love you in sign language and voice, and then we hear Nathan say "Ooooooooo" (for 'you') and he puts out his little thumb and forefinger. I love it. Nathan's smile lights up the world - his whole face smiles and that dimple on his cheek is the icing on the cake. He's such a ham. If you ask him to make a funny face, he just scrunches his face up and smiles extra big.

My Amazing Little Boys

Zack and Nathan, my two favorite boys.

They love to play and make some noise.

You can tell they love to play and share,

You can hear them laughing everywhere!