Jon's birthday

(Ok, I'm blogging all out of order, but I'm trying to catch up!)

Jon turned 12 yesterday. On Thursday, Jon got a present from Grandma and Grandpa, since we were already at their house. They got him a video mp3 player that he had been wanting.
On Friday, he had his birthday party. The original plan was three friends, laser tag, pizza, and a sleepover. But then the day before, one of the three friends called and asked to bring a friend. There was no kind and tactful way to say that he couldn't come, so we said okay. (This is not a friend that Jon knows beyond having seen him once or twice.) But we didn't want to pay $7 per person for 15 minutes of laser tag, twice, for five kids, so we changed the plan to Nerf guns at the church. They played for two hours and had a BLAST. Then they had pizza for dinner at our house. By the time 'sleepover' started, only one friend was left, which was okay because it's his best friend.
On Sunday, he had his interview with the bishop to become a deacon. He was also cheered out of Primary.

Yesterday he opted to have lasagna for his birthday dinner. He opened presents from us and from Mormor and Morfar. Then he spent the rest of the evening drawing circles, using a compass to draw bisecting lines and creating a triangle on the circles, and cutting the circles out.
Big math assignment.

Happy birthday Jon!

Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving--it is so good to have a day focused on being grateful for what we have! I know every day we should be grateful, but sometimes ya just get busy.

Anyway, we spent the day at the Worltons, and every Worlton was there except Mike and his family. The younger kids watched movies and played pinball downstairs, while the adults and teens hung out upstairs. A great day.

Bento lunch

I've been trying something new this week. I came across bento on the Internet, and was fascinated by the concept. Bento is the Japanese word for a boxed lunch, but it's not the boxed lunch you are picturing! They have very unique containers for these lunches, and the contents are works of art.

The reason this caught my attention is because there are 'rules' for how these lunches are made, and all of them would improve our eating habits, especially Greg's. First off, it's supposed to be 3 parts carbs, 2 parts veggies and 1 part protein. (Another method says 4carb, 3 veggie, 2protein and 1 sweet treat/fruit.) So I can tell my boys that it has to have veggies in it.

Second, it's supposed to contain at least 5 colors. I think there are 5 specific colors, but I've chosen to go with any 5 colors. So it can't consist of a sandwich with peanut butter and jelly. (Or in Greg's case, often, just the bread)

Third, it's supposed to be 'kawaii' (cute). Now, cute doesn't rank high, necessarily, with my boys. I'm not going to invest much in Hello Kitty stuff, for example. But the little picks used for spearing veggies? Too cute!! The little sauce bottles? Adorable!! Presentation is a big part of bento, and I'm not going to get into the artistic ones, but I can definitely jazz up the ones I make.

We have done bento three days this week. The boys look forward to it each day. But the big deal? Greg has tried:

• cucumber
• sugar snap peas
• bell peppers
• craisins
  
• roma tomato
  
• turkey salad
• starfruit

and he didn't hate any of them. He wasn't willing to eat more than a bite of the sugar snap pea and tomato yesterday, but today he ate an entire sugar snap pea and a slice of tomato. Of course, they were dipped in ranch; baby steps are good.

I'm finding that it's a good thing for me too. I'm getting more variety in my meals, and since everything is supposed to fit in a bento box, I've got instant portion control. It has made lunch fun! It's a bit time consuming--I'm spending about 30 minutes making lunch--but there is definitely a payoff.Greg's Monday's lunch, from left to right (and top to bottom): fruit salad of kiwi, orange and craisins, carrots and ranch dip, 3 pretzels, 2 vanilla wafers, 2/3 of a sandwich made with 3 slices of whole wheat bread, turkey lunchmeat, muenster cheese, mayo, pickle relish, and a slice of romaine (which Greg took off), speared with toothpicks (the two dark blobs are part of cocktail toothpicks)
Today's lunch: leftover lasagna, veggies with ranch dip (cukes, yellow bell pepper, snow peas, and Roma tomatoes), wheat Town House crackers with a cube of cheese, fruits (blueberries, grapes and starfruit). The two smaller ones also have shumai, which are yummy Japanese pork dumplings, and teriyaki sauce for dip. Greg can't have those because he's allergic to soy. Tim and Nate's bentos look better than Greg's, because I couldn't fill Greg's. It's perhaps a bit big for him. But I don't have any smaller ones!

I just picked up the silicon baking cups yesterday. These are so colorful, and they do a great job of keeping different food items separated.

Alex

Yesterday was the 14th anniversary of Alex's death. It's hard to believe that it has been that long! It's true that time heals all wounds. That is not to say that I don't miss Alex, but honestly, I don't cry any more. He was a blessing to us, and we were privileged to be his parents during our lifetime. We'll be his parents forever. The Lord has been good to us.

Tim had a big weekend!

On Friday, we went to Tim's end-of-season soccer party. I didn't bring the camera, so I didn't take any pictures. Today I was browsing through the photos and discovered that I only took ONE photo of Tim playing soccer this season. I took so many last season! Here's the one picture that I took: The girl in the picture is Gracie, who happens to be the granddaughter of a church member. (Her grandmother is not a member, though, so Gracie attends church with her grandmother.) Anyway, Gracie and Tim became good friends during soccer. We've teased Tim quite a bit about his girlfriend! She's a very beautiful little five-year-old.

Today Tim lost his first tooth! I think that makes him the winner in our family--the previous record was nearly 8 years old, set by Greg. So Tim holds the record as being the youngest when he lost his first tooth. Here are two pictures, the first one because his expression is so funny and the second because it shows his missing tooth.

More sickies!

This time it's Charles. He took an early train home, and spent the afternoon emptying out his stomach. I'm just hoping this doesn't spread through the family...

When I went looking for a bucket for Charles, I found one in the bottom of the pantry that had been used to hold cookies. But guess what I found in there--a rock-hard tortilla with some crab salad remains in it. That would be Greg's. I remember him not being willing to eat it (although it was seriously yummy), and I had told him that he needed to eat at least half of it. Nobody can sit at the table refusing to eat longer than Greg can, so we had all left the table. Greg told us that he had finished eating the whole thing. Charles even checked the trash can, while Greg 'innocently' said, "I didn't throw it away." Yeah, he didn't. He left it to attract bugs or mice, and to rot and stink up the whole house. He gets to do the dishes for a full week. Ben and Jon are happy.

Nate woke me up last night. He was crying. I got out of bed, stumbled down the hallway, entered his room, and said, "What are you crying for?" He said, "Nothing." And he stopped crying. That was it, no more crying, no more fussing. But heck, couldn't he have figured out he didn't have a reason to cry BEFORE I walked all the way down to his room??

I went to take a drink of water this morning, and discovered a spider crawling up the side of the cup. I do have a mild case of arachnophobia. I ran the cup into the kitchen and washed the spider off the cup. I ran the water for a while, but when I stopped the water, I discovered the spider trying to crawl up the side of the sink. So I ran the water again, but this time, I also ran the disposall. Tonight, Greg was doing the dishes, and suddenly screamed. There on the edge of the sink was that same dang spider! Ben took care of it once and for all. Apparently, Ben can do what even the disposall cannot.

And there you have it, the exciting things that happened today.

Funny boys

Last night Ben had an ortho appointment, and on the way home we took down the flags (the Boy Scout service project/fundraiser). As a result, we didn't get home until 6. So we decided it was a Taco Bell night. I took everyone's order -- they chose what they wanted from the Taco Bell website, and I wrote it down. Charles made the run for the border.

Since nobody actually set the table, we decided that Tim and Nate should split the job of clearing the table. Nate would throw away the wrappers and Tim would clear the few actual dishes that were on the table. Nate began tossing papers, but then announced, "I don't want to delete the order. I want to save it, for next time." He's a computer-savvy kid, but he sure hasn't figured out that some things are not computerized!

And another story. Tim's math lesson today involved learning about foot and yard. I asked him how many inches in a foot, and he knew that. When I asked how many inches in a yard, he said 32. I said, "Not quite." He said, "But our stick has 32 inches." (He is right, by the way.) I said, "Then it's not a yardstick." He said, "It's a yard-minus-four-inches stick." Greg chimed in without missing a beat, "It's 8/9 of a yardstick." And so it is.

We haven't left behind the croup stage of childhood

Nate had another croup attack last night. This time Charles slept through it. He must have been pretty tired. I know I am today.

I'm so tired that I can't think of anything to say, so I'm going to post the kids' Halloween picture. If I can figure out how. Hey, I can! That was easy!

Croup attacks

We are very familiar with croup in this family. I think every single one of the boys has now had croup at least once, from Alex right on down to Nate. Ben used to get it at least two or three times a year, and he had his last bout at age 6, I think. That's considered quite old to have croup.

Nate sounded awful during the day yesterday. His voice was half gone, and when he talked his voice had the sound of a croup bark. So I certainly wasn't surprised when he came into our room last night sometime around 2:30 am crying incoherently and struggling for breath. I immediately went into the bathroom and started running the shower. We sat in the steamy bathroom for a while, and then Charles came in fully dressed, ready to take over for Phase 2.

Charles took him out on the back porch for five minutes. The cold air seemed to help even better than the steam, but it really was too cold to be out there for very long. After that, we put Nate to bed in our room, on the crib mattress that we keep conveniently stored behind the drapes for just this purpose. We pulled out the cool mist humidifier, and before long, Nate was able to go to sleep.

I on the other hand spent the next hour listening to him wheeze and Charles snore.

Nate is still croupy this morning. I had to have Ben take him outside for a few minutes while I wrote the checks for the private lessons. He's now back in my bed, watching Boomerang. I can't even count the number of times I have spent sitting in a steamy bathroom. I clearly remember sitting on the front porch with Ben and later Jon in West Jordan. I remember sitting in the garage with at least one kid, because it was the dead of winter and we couldn't sit outside. Since Nate is now four years old, this may very well be my last time going through the croup routine. I hope so; this is not one of the childhood things I will miss!!

I'm blogging!

I have thought about blogging for a long time now, but being a bit of a perfectionist stopped me--I couldn't come up with the perfect name for my blog. Pretty silly, huh. So I finally decided to just pick one and get it over with. Worlton Words isn't the perfect name, because I'm not telling the story of all Worltons, but hey, we are Worltons and these will be our words.

I chose the pink blog template, because I am a female surrounded by males. With a husband and five sons, there isn't a lot of girly-girl stuff in my life. I figure this blog will be my female perspective on a male world, so it really ought to be pink!

There, I have written my first blog entry. I can check that off the list. :)