Happy Anniversary

 Curtis has a group from his office that have an arsenal of guns and ammo.  They invited us to go out in the desert and shoot guns one Saturday morning.  It happened to be our 17th Wedding Anniversary.  I had never shot a gun before.  It was an interesting experience.  We are not into guns, but we are not against guns.  I don't think I realized the power those things had.  Not quite like the movies.  After our fun day of shooting a variety of handguns and semi-automatics, I have no desire to own a gun.  If I ever need one, I know who to call.

 

Out of the Mouth's of Babes

So the kids like to watch videos on YouTube.  I have mixed feelings about this.  Mostly just because there are no controls or ratings with what gets put up on youtube.  Occasionally I will overhear stuff I don't want the kids watching and immediately make them turn it off.  They try to be pretty good about it, but sometimes you don't know the video is bad until it is too late.  Trey has no clue what a bad word is, he just hears us talking about them. Trey will usually sit down and watch some YouTube videos (car wash ones are his favorite) and he will sit there and tell me "this one doesn't say bad words"  Most of the time the videos just sound loud and obnoxious, but they are still clean.  Dax and Derek are pretty good, that if they see Trey watching a video they know is "bad" they will tell him to turn it off.  We try to keep it clean, but we know some slip through.  The other day Trey was watching Derek play a video game, Derek did something cool and Trey said "That is BAD ASS"  oops.  We didn't want to laugh, but it was funny because he used it in perfect context and he had no idea it was bad.  We told him don't use that word.  He used it three more times throughout the morning because he honestly didn't know why or what was so bad.  He finally figured it out.  I apologize if anyone hears my three-year-old and his potty mouth.

Monday night I was putting Trey to bed.  Lately, he has been horrible about going to bed.  He keeps getting out of bed, he harasses his brothers, he comes into our bed, and we keep putting him back.  We spank him, and we make him sleep in the basement alone.  Yada Yada.

I just brushed his teeth, put him in bed and told him, don't get up, don't turn on the light, don't talk to your brothers,  STAY IN BED, then I said "I love you, but I don't want to see you anymore tonight"  then Trey smiled, and acting all innocent said "then don't look at me"  Stinker.  He still got up, but when you act that cute, you get to stay.

Ms. Angela, his preschool teacher, always tells me the funny things he says.  The other day she took the kids to the park.  When they came back they were talking about their favorite thing about the park, Trey was talking about some round thing he was running or jumping on, in his words...."I was running and running, then I was falling to my death, then I stopped and I was alive"  she just about died laughing.

Summer Summary

 Trey loves swimming lessons.  This is the end of the lesson where they get to play in the boat.  He is such a great little swimmer.

 Trey got on this Bowling kick.  I don't know how it started but he kept asking to go bowling.  We went a few times this summer because they have summer bowling programs, where it is free for kids to bowl, they just have to pay for shoes.  Once we pay for shoes, and myself it still seems to cost a fortune.  $30 for "free bowling"

 Once Dax and Derek went back to school, Trey still wanted to go bowling.  Here he is with his friend Soren Anderson. Soren's Mom told me that she just tells the Bowling alley that he is too small to fit any of the shoes.  I tried it this time I took both these little guys and what to do you know.  It actually was "Free Bowling"

 A Big Week.  Derek earned his Wolf on July 31.  His motivation was just to stick his face in the whip cream pie.  I'm just glad it's done.

 The very next night Dax got promoted to First Class Scout.  Wahoo.  You would think with all this scouting going on between me being Derek's Den Leader and they both getting awards and higher ranks that we were really a "Scouting Family"  not so much.  The boys enjoy it, and the parents just go with the flow.  We honestly don't know much about Scouting, but we are learning.

Some Birthday fun at Peter Piper Pizza with their Cousin Jacob.

Youth Speaker

Two weeks ago Dax was asked to be the Youth Speaker in church.  This would be his first time since turning 12 and  He was actually very excited when he was asked. I think most people try to avoid this as long as possible, especially the youth.   He likes to speak in public and carries himself with confidence and usually does a great job. After he noticed that the kids speaking in church were his age, he asked what you have to do to get asked.  Curtis let the Bishop know and within a couple weeks Dax was asked to be on the program. The topic he was asked to speak on was Keeping the Sabbath Day based on the guidelines from the "For the Strength of Youth" manual.  We gave him the info and gave him some guidelines on what to put in his talk etc.  He wrote the entire talk himself.
He is so confident when he speaks he didn't want to read his talk, he wanted to just use bullet points and actually get up and speak to the congregation.   He went over his talk with both Curtis and I we gave him some tips on how to improve it.  He seemed like he had it down.

Because life is ironic, Dax just so happened to be speaking about the Sabbath Day on a day that I was not keeping myself.   I had an old friend in town, who I had not seen since we were in 5th Grade.  She had been in town for the past week, but because of our schedules, the ONLY time we could meet was Sunday Morning. So we met for brunch. I was late to church, but I did make it in time to hear Dax speak.  Very Ironic.  I didn't tell Dax exactly what I was doing, because I feared he would throw me under the bus in his talk.

Dax gets up to speak with his usual confidence and the first thing he says is something like "Call me  Captain Obvious but  I am the youth Speaker"  We had warned Dax to not do too many jokes.  This was not the time or place for middle school jokes.  We were a little embarrassed, but he continued.  He gave a long youth speaker talk.  He gave a 12-minute talk with just a few bullet points Not too long in terms of a talk running on and on, but long as in youth speakers end really early. He continued to throw in his jokes, and he even told a story that I had shared with him halfway through the story, he looked at me and said " Am I telling it correctly mom?"  I nodded and he confirmed "she said yes" and he continues with his puns and antics.   We felt like Dax took his assignment as Youth Speaker as though it was "Open Mic Night" and he was on his comedy tour.

As soon as church ended people were sending us texts and posting on Facebook what a great job he did.  We were still in shock at what went on up there, not sure if these were sincere compliments.  We felt like we would just lay low for a couple of days then people would forget about it and move on.  . We continue to bump into people and they would always tell us what a great job he did.  Curtis had an interview with the Bishopric(Gavin McPhee) this last week and they mentioned it.  He said to Curtis "did you see what Dax did after his talk"  oh no he thought.  Gavin said as soon as he finished he turned around made a fist pulled it in and said "yes" as if he had just nailed it.  Gavin said that everyone on the stand was in stitches. Nobody does that after a talk in church.  Curtis told him we were too embarrassed by his comedy tour that we couldn't even look at him.

Today has been two weeks since his talk.  It should have easily been forgotten by now, but not so much.  People are still coming to Dax, and the parents and saying what a great job he did.  Now that Curtis and I have had time to take in this experience we know he did do a great job of standing up, speaking with confidence, and presenting himself,  what he needs to work on is his restraint and understanding what is and what is not appropriate.  Curtis said if he wasn't "his kid" up there, he would have loved it and thought "this kid needs to speak every week"  which someone did say to me.   I am glad he is showing signs of his speaking talent, next time we will give stricter speaking guidelines.  We are proud of him for having the courage to do what he did.