The end of the world...

Jason here. Brendan loves Minecraft ... the block game in which you mine things and build things and shoot zombies. Its fun. I play with him mainly because I like it and he likes and its something fun to do together. Brendan started this little world and for the past 6 months we have been dinking around with it and building stuff. We built a tree house that has trees growing out of it. Those trees had a waterfall coming off of it. Then we built a house entirely out of gold and diamond blocks (which were super hard to find by the way). We rounded up all the animals on the board and put them in a special pen with a glass wall so that we could appreciate our little farm animals. It took months to do! Everyday Brendan asks if we can play Minecraft and I usually oblige him. "15 minutes, okay ... that's it." Christine rolls her eyes at this because that 15 minutes usually turns into an hour. Well, today Brendan accidentally deleted the world that we had been working on. This happened right before sacrament meeting. All I could see was that Christine was talking to a very, very sad little boy. When I heard what happened my heart sank and I honestly did not know if the poor kid was going to be able to pull it together for the rest of the day. He loved, no, WE loved that little world. I know this sounds completely silly, to be this put out about a fake video game world, but you have to understand that in terms of Brendan and his Aspergers tendencies, and my attempts to go into his world, this game was huge. Brendan and I left the building and walked around for a bit. I heard him out and we talked about it. I told him how sad I was, but we also talked about building another world and starting over. He seemed cautiously optimistic about it and settled down some. He went back to meetings and had an OK day, but in Brendan terms, it was a marvelous recovery.

Hanging with the littles

Now that school is back full swing, I'm finding that I really enjoy hanging out with my two littlest. These are the moments in life that seem to go by the fastest, when they are small and everything is new to them. Paige is saying new words every day. Darby has a great imagination and her pretend games are fun to watch. It's just a magical time where every day is a big change as they grow up. Even if we don't go anywhere (though we often do as life is crazy right now) it's entertains just being with my littles.

Changes

A few changes have happened at our house and I realized that, due to the way our life is as a military family, we just rolled with it because I'm getting used to being more flexible. BUT I realized that I never documented any of it. So here goes.
1. Jason is now in and endodontics residency here at Fort Bragg. The hours he puts in studying are more than dental school. But he LOVES it. He tells me almost daily how much he enjoys what he's doing and the people he works with.
2. Jason was released as Stake YM secretary directly after returning home from Captain's Career Course and called to be the new Elder's Quorum president of our huge ward. I was serving as first counselor in the primary presidency so we became even busier and more involved church-wise.
3. The Primary presidency I was in was released but the new president chose to re-call me as a sort of transition liaison for the new presidency. I think it was a good move since the rest of the presidency has lived in our ward two months or less. We have 182 kids on the roll (nursery and primary) with about 90% active. Many of our classes have over 10 kids in them (one class has 17 and the nursery has almost 40). But we have dedicated teachers who work wonders. Now that the summer move out/move in season has ended I am hoping we will get some stability. Summers are just KILLER on consistency when three families move out and you get a new family almost every week, not to mention a new presidency.
4. Brendan entered second grade and Eva entered kindergarten. Well, you know this already but it bears mentioning since it is a big change. So far things can't have gone smoother with the kiddos schooling. I feel so blessed that Brendan has the teacher he has. I have been very impressed with her and we are on the same page about what he needs.
And that's it for now. More to come I'm sure. Life just keeps rolling on.

The Little Professor

Brendan taught our last Family Home Evening as part of an requirement to earn his religious knot in scouts. His den leader helped the boys each create an easy to follow lesson plan with pictures so they could teach their families. Let me just say that I saw how Brendan could be a future college professor. He demeanor was decidedly adult, he created follow up questions on the fly and told sisters that he "wasn't going to move on until they sat down and paid attention." It was very amusing to me. If you know Brendan, I am sure you can picture this whole scene. He may have gone over the top in his bossing around his sisters but everything else made me smile. What a little man!

Party Games at Prayer Time

This evening, after family scripture story time, we all knelt in a circle for family prayer. Paige started walking around the outside if the circle and tapping everyone's head. I realized that she was playing Duck, Duck, Goose! She'd say, "Guck," and tap a head and then repeat, proceeding around until she yelled, "GUCK!!" and then run out if the room giggling. It cracked us all up and I had a hard time saying the prayer as she finally sat in my lap, repeating her word for "duck" and then laughing. What a funny girl!

P.S. Notice that she is wearing a sleep sack to bed now. That is because this little turkey climbed out of her crib last week. At 19 months of age!!! I was not ready for that!

Happy Birthday to Jason!

Jason had a birthday yesterday. He doesn't like a fuss made over him so he requested Reuben sandwiches for lunch and apple pie with ice cream for dessert after family movie night, which would include watching The Princess Bride. Done.  Besides he had a church meeting and studying to do all day. We gave him his presents in the morning. He seemed to love his new polyester vintage ties.

The older girls made him birthday cards too. Then, we barely saw him again until 6pm when we did, indeed, watch his movie while having a pizza picnic in living room. Then we all sang Happy Birthday to him (which is pretty comical with a 3 year old joining in) and gave him kisses and snuggles. After the kids were down he and I stayed up late watching a TV show on Netflix.

He says it was a good birthday and I hope it was. We all love him so very much. Happy Birthday Daddy Jason!

Mini Me's Mini

Eva has been wanting a big doll for a while. She wants one that looks like her. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a short haired blue eyed doll with glasses. Anyway, I managed to win an American Girl custom doll on eBay for a good price. She is so happy with it.  Eva named her doll Jewel and carries her around after school as she plays. The deal is that I bought the doll and now she buys the clothes.

Darby wants a big doll now too. I promised her that I would buy her one when she was all potty trained. We have had some success in that area as well. She refuses diapers and wants trainers. She has also been dry 3 out of the 5 days so far this week. Darbs won't go #2 in the toilet yet but she will get there soon I think. I'll be excited to just be down to changing one little set of buns and then, not even one. What will it be like to not carry a diaper bag? It's been 8 years of that so far.

Speaking of Paigey, she's joined in on the love of dolls too. She plays tea party with Darby but she often sits in the doll chairs and refuses to move. Well, they do fit her. ;) She will cuddle with her sister's Disney dolls when she's not looking. I have already bought her one for Christmas. Shhhh! Don't tell.