Young Gun

So that's why they call him "The Kid"!

In the Gutter!

Last night was our Cub Scouts' Rain Gutter Regatta.  Dylan and Derek have worked very hard on their "hydroplane" boats, designed to be the fastest in the water!  And they were!

Unfortunately, they had to go against each other in the very first bracket, where Derek just beat Dylan out.

Dylan christened his ship "The Eye of Rah" and she was a seaworthy vessel to be sure.  Dylan won most of his races, but his lungs began to give out, and in the end he just couldn't seem to get enough wind in his sails.

Derek is obviously more long winded (and that's not just a lot of hot air!) 

He blew his stately ship, "Red China", right into the championship round. 

On your mark! Get set!  BLOW!

To the finish - for the win!  

All of those cubs did a great job.  They all had great boats and some mighty lung power!

Captain Dylan and "The Eye of Rah" came in 3rd place!  You Rahk, Dylan!

And Captain Derek's "Red China" proved to be the world's superpower! 

Those boys can take me sailing anytime!

Mother's Day

I had a really nice mother's day.  My guys took good care of me.

Dennis made our favorite waffles, a Sunday morning tradition, but made it extra nice with some blackberries, just for mother's day.

Then the boys shared their gifts with me.  Dylan wrote me a poem...

and made me a card, cut some flowers for me, and (I am SO excited!)  finally finished the sculpture of our family he started back  when he was sick.  I absolutely LOVE them!!!  What a talented wonderful kid!  I will cherish them forever!!!

Caleb made me a poster of me making waffles,... or maybe it is him making the waffles.  Hmmm.  I wonder where he got his inspiration?  I love it Caleb.  And I love waffles.  And I love you!

Derek also wrote me a wonderful poem, and a card that unfolds to reveal a flower growing.  The card said "My love for you keeps growing and growing and growing."  I love Derek too, who happens to keep growing and growing and growing even more than his flower - but not more than my love for him!

Alex used his computer skills to make me a terrific card on the computer, which I will always cherish.  But then, not to be outdone, he also made me a GIANT card out of a poster board that he decorated with pictures of me that he found and printed off.  I love it!

Nathan gave me the essay that I posted earlier, and you know how I love that.

Dennis gave me some potted tulips that were beautiful, but, since they are potted, they look pretty pathetic now.  I can't keep anything in a pot alive, and all I can say is that I am very glad kids don't grow in pots.

He also got me Photoshop, which I am VERY excited about!  Now I have to learn my new camera AND my new software.  Kind of overwhelming, in an exciting kind of way.

After Church, and an absolutely sinful Aspen Mills Mother's Day brownie, we drove up to Yucca Valley to visit Dennis' Mom.  It was so good for us all to be with her.  She is still having a tough time with Dennis' Dad's passing, of course.  We all love her so much.

These are only some of her grandchildren.

A face only a mother can love.

Then we went back to our house to spend the rest of Mother's day with my mom and sister.  As is tradition, the guys did all the cooking.  We had kabobs, rice, frogs eye salad, and dessert.  It was so funny because when dinner was ready, the kabobs were all meat.  No veggies at all.  I had bought the veggies, but as guys, it never even occurred to them that they needed veggies with the meal, and had never thought to look for any in the fridge.  Typical.  So I pulled out the cherry tomatoes and mushrooms, the only veggies that would work raw, and just ate them whole with our dinner.  The meat was terrific, so it made up for it all.  Thanks guys.  Any meal I don't have to make is extra tasty to me!

Mom was pretty excited about the Liz Lemon Swindle print that I got for her in Utah, signed by the artist herself.  
Lukie loves me... or he loves cookies.  Probably both.

It was a great mother's day, but kind of exhausting too.  I hope you all had a great Mother's Day!

Hello, It's Me Again.

I know I have been away from the blog for quite a while, but my proverbial plate has been full to overflowing these past few weeks, and my poor little blogs have been completely neglected.  Today I gave my presentation (well, four presentations actually) at our stake women's conference, and I am so RELIEVED to be done with it (I think I'll share some of it on my other post, so check it out in a few days.  Good stuff.)  But now that a majority of the "biggies" have been crossed off my list (they are never ALL crossed off, are they?) I promise to put my attention right back into my little slice of cyber heaven, and do solemnly swear to get back to posting forthwith!

Promise.

(Thanks for not giving up on me.)

Nate's Essay

Last month Nathan entered an essay contest to find the top 25 moms of the Coachella Valley.  Unfortunately, his essay didn't win, but he did a great job, and in honor of Mother's Day, he wanted me to post his submission.  What a great kid!  I am very grateful for his sweet words.

Mother of Six Sons

By Nathan VanBuskirk

Guess who is six feet tall, uses nunchucks, and can break a thick board with her hand?  My mom!    When my mom was a little girl she always wanted babies and loved to play with her baby dolls.  She couldn’t wait to be a mom.  Only her dolls were always girl baby dolls.  Boy, was she surprised when she had all boys, six boys to be exact.  My name is Nathan and I am the second of 6 sons.  I am almost 12, and my brothers are 13, 9, 9, 5 and almost 3.  Yes, there are twins in our family.  My mom is a girly girl, in every way.  She loves pink, and has a pink “girl” room just for her.  She loves everything pretty and flowery.  But having all boys made her do crazy things she never would have done, like learn martial arts so we could all do it together as a family. Now she is one belt away from a black belt!  That’s what kind of mom she is.

                  A few months ago one of my brothers was very sick in the hospital with an infection.  The hospital was far away, and my mom would stay there with him for weeks without descent meals, a good place to sleep, or even showers.  She would not leave his side.  We really missed her when she was gone.  So many people had to help us with rides, food, and everything.  It took lots of people to do what my mom does for us every day.

                  My mom is one of the most talented people you could ever meet.  She is so creative.  She teaches rubber stamping, and loves to make cards and gifts for people.  My mom is also a watercolor artist, and has won three times at the Fine Arts show at the Riverside County Fair.  She is also good at singing, writing, swimming and blogging.  She uses her creative talents to help us with our school projects, and she throws the most awesome birthday parties.  For my last birthday my mom planned an Iron Chef party. We split into two teams and had to shop, cook, and present our meals to the judges.  It was so fun and I wish I could go back to that day.

                  On top of that, my mom still does piles and piles of laundry and cooks healthy delicious meals.  She teaches us how to work, and she teaches us our faith.  It is not easy cleaning up after all of us.  I feel sorry for her having to live in a house with so many boys.  I know it isn’t easy sometimes.  But I know she loves us and her motto is “family comes first.”  That’s why, even though she is a girly girl, she does martial arts.  Because when you have a family of boys, that’s what you do.  That is why my mom is one of the top moms in the valley.

I feel so honored!  

Happy Mother's Day to you, dear ladies!

Day of Service

Last Saturday my whole day was devoted to serving others.

At 8 a.m., Alex, Nate, and I showed up at the church for the big "Mormon Helping Hands service project.  There were SO MANY members of our stake there in the parking lot putting on the yellow vests and t-shirts while waiting for their assignments.  They split us into at least ten different assignments to serve in various places in the community.  Some went to help at schools, other went and did some service for Habitat for Humanity.  I don't know where else we were used, but I know we did a lot for a lot of good folks.

Our group consisted of us, Alysa and Carson Whitlock, Polo and Sierra Doria, Ron and Ronnie Cox, the Bruners, the Broadheads and two sons, the Prestons, the Johnstons, and Bro. Jackson.  Who am I forgetting?  Anyways, it was a great group with a lot of youth.

Here is a picture of Nate, Carson, and Alex, ready to start working.  My boys were so excited.  They LOVE serving others and doing stuff like this.  All week before they kept saying, "Can't wait 'til Saturday when our Hands are gonna be Helping!"  and "These hands are my Mormom Helping Hands."  Cute boys.
Our assignment was at the Coachella Valley Rescue Mission in Indio.  We had no idea what the work would involve, but we did know that the Mission had very recently had a devastating fire that had destroyed most of the mission.  It was very sad, and my boys had been very concerned for these folks since they heard about the fire when it happened and have been anxious to do something for them.  They were so happy to happen to get the chance to go help there.  What we found there was that everything had been fixed up and rebuilt.  It all looked very nice, and everything was new and freshly painted.  Obviously, other folks with helping hands had been there before us.  The only evidence of the fire was this telephone pole just a few feet from the new building where we were to work.  It was sobering to look at.

They explained to us that our job was to organize the huge garage-sized food storage building.  It had  been recently built, and industrial shelves put up.  But the food donations had been so fast and generous, that the people there couldn't get it organized before it was just packed with food donations.  As a result, the place was a huge mess, and nobody could find anything in there.  Additionally, the industrial shelving had metal grate shelves with large openings that cans were not stable on, and would often fall through- making stacking cans almost impossible.  They asked us to remove everything, line the shelves with cardboard, then put all the food back in a nice, organized manner.  That was a BIG pantry, and the task seemed daunting, even with so many of us.

Everyone got started right away loading cans into crates and lugging them outside.

Here is Nate helping in the back of the big truck that they were using as a staging area.

Alex was working with me in the same aisle.  Here is is sorting through a big pile of various food boxes.

I am so proud to work along side my wonderful, hardworking kid.

As I was organizing the PB and J, I'd catch glimpses of Polo over in the other aisle doing his thing.
Alysa, Nonie, and Ronni worked in our aisle as well.  Everyone just got going and  worked so hard.
Here we are with our helping hands!  We worked non-stop from about 8:30 to 12:30!  It was heavy, back breaking work!  We would designate one shelf for cereal, clear that shelf of everything on it, then go hunt everywhere for every random box of cereal, then find that one shelf wasn't enough, then have to clear a few more shelves near by for the rest of the cereal, then move on to the pancake mix, etc.  We kept having to shuffle the shelves around.  Then when we got the stuff on the shelves all organized, we started opening the stacks of boxes of food that were on the floor, and we had to find room for all of it, shuffling and reshuffling the shelves.

Someone would call out  "I got some yams here.  Anybody doing yams?"  "Yep, over here.  You want this barbecue sauce?"  "Over here!" "Where do matzo balls go?" "I can put them here by the crackers"  "Last call for cereal!"  ""Do you have room for a few gallons of black pepper over there?" "Oh great, another whole box of condiments!" and etc.  It was really crazy, but it was amazing how we didn't need to make a plan or organize our efforts.  Yet, it was all prety efficient. We all just picked a spot and started working.  And when one of us would finish one shelf, we'd just move on to the next.  When we needed cardboard, we just called for one, and it was cut and ready.  Nobody stopped.  Nobody just sat.  We just worked.  It was great fun!

Another amazing thing was that at least a third of the food there had come from the church.  So many boxes and bags were marked "Not for resale.  Salt Lake City, UT."  Later, Mom told me that the Church had sent the mission 2 huge truckloads of food and supplies, even mattresses, when they heard the mission had had a fire.  I was so impressed and grateful to belong to that church.  It reaffirmed my testimony that the LDS church really is Jesus Christ's own church.  So if we had to work so hard to organize so much food, it was really our own fault.  No wonder they invited us to come organize all that food - we gave it to them!

When we were done, everything looked great.  It was very satisfying!  The task had been so daunting!  I thought of my tiny pantry at home, that has been needing to be cleaned out for a long time.  I had put it off for so long because I thought that task was overwhelming.  After this huge project, my pantry seems like a piece of cake, (if only I had a team of 20 volunteers to help me!)

 

The results were pretty amazing, though I didn't quite capture the difference in this picture. When we were done everything was in its place and the aisles we clear - no boxes!

We were exhausted!  I took my boys out to lunch at our favorite local Mexican place.  It tasted so good to me, but I was so tired, and I still had to go work at the LDS prom way over in Highland in a few hours.  I told my boys I was too tired, and just wouldn't go to the dance.  They told me I needed to go, and I told them I knew that, but I had to tell myself that I wasn't going, because it made me feel better.

A few hours later Dennis and I were all dressed up and driving over an hour away to the dance.

It was pretty spectacular - a New York theme complete with lighted skylines, street signs, taxis, traffic lights, the Brooklyn Bridge spanning the entire stage, and even a Statue of Liberty right in the middle of the dance floor!

There were a lot of leaders there to cook and serve the dinner.  It was a madhouse behind the scenes.  My job was server, and of course, I had those tables in the furthest corner of the cultural from the kitchen, and I was in heels.  It was a lot of work!

But the folks in the kitchen worked even harder!  Dad had been there since morning cooking on Bro. Fox's crew.  There was so much hustle and bustle and bodies in that kitchen.  It was really insane!

Dennis did double duty helping in the kitchen, then bringing out trays of food for me to deliver to the tables.

When the dinner portion of the evening was all done, we got a chance to eat ourselves before hitting the road home again.  We got home around 10 pm, and I was completely wiped out!

What a day of service!  We all really had a good time, though, and I am so glad we all had the opportunity to participate.

Just Beachy!

On Saturday, we finished off our spring break with a romp at the beach with the Keechlers.  The water was a bit too chilly for me, so I played with my camera instead.  The sun was a bit bright, but it was still fun to practice.

I love this picture!

The BIG Kahuna (and I mean big!)

Alex found ten bucks worth of sand dollars, if only they were actual dollars!

So long spring break!