Dear Liam,

You've had a rough last couple of days. You've done some things wrong and we are working on making them right again. As I was making you write an apology note to the person that you wrong, you started to cry. I took you in my arms and while holding your little sobbing body asked why you were crying. You replied "I'm scared."

I cried. I held you close to my chest a sobbed along with you. One day, as a parent you'll understand how hard that was. I wanted to take away your pain. To shrug it off and say, "you don't have to." To make you smile, and take away your discomfort, fear, and remorse. But I knew I couldn't. I knew that you had to go through the pain, fear and remorse to grow and learn and be better. So I just held you as tight as I could and we both cried.

Afterwords I picked you up and sent you on your way, alone, scared, but with a brave face and a resolve to do what was right. I promised you that you would feel better afterwords. And after you left I cried some more.

You came home and with solemn relief replied, "I did it, Mom." You were happy. Humbled, but happy. We made a plan so that the wrong wouldn't be done again. You had me write out a list of "can do" and "can't do." That was very smart. And as I sit here writing this I can't help but cry again because of the relief that I feel that you did it and are happy again.

I think I've been able to touch a little bit of what God feels, today. Liam, you're going to make mistakes again. No matter how much I try to lie to myself and pretend that you won't, you will. I have. Your dad has. And to make things right again is hard. Many times I've prayed and plead, "I'm scared."

I have no doubt that our Father in Heaven has at times wished that all of my anguish and fear could just magically be taken away. That's he's cried with me at times, but knows that the only way for us to grow and be better is go through the pain and discomfort until the process is over.

At times you will make a mistake that can not simply be solved by an apology letter. But this is where Heavenly Father is so much cooler than I ever could be. He sent Jesus Christ to suffer and pay for our sins and mistakes, and if we'll just do all that we can to make it better, he'll do the rest.

You are so loved Liam. By your Heavenly Father. By your family. And especially by me. As you grow up and make more mistakes, remember that feeling of relief that you felt when you told me "I did it, Mom." And know that even though sometimes things look dark and bleek and that you'll never be forgiven, light and relief are waiting if you'll just ask.

I'm so proud of you. I couldn't have asked for anyone better. I love you, Liam.

Love Mom

1/2 way there

Can I take this opportunity to brag for a minute?

1.My husband is awesome. Possibly the coolest guy I know. He's doing fantastic in school and is getting rockin'-sockin'-robots on his grades! A few months ago he got accepted to University of Iowa (one of the top schools in the nation). It's still pending on if he is going or not (pending on residency. Can you believe we've lived here 2 years and they don't want to give us residency?), but it's still a huge accomplishment. I'm ridiculously proud.

2. We are half way done with school. Wahoo! I love Iowa, but sometimes (especially right now, when we have a trip planned and are so close to going to Utah) I just want to go home. I miss my family. I miss those darn little nieces and nephew I can hear in the background when I call home. But we are half way. Half way.

3. I'm so proud of Tony. (I know. Again? Right?) He's made this huge step (school) in his life when some people would think they are too old or have too many kids, or whatever. He is doing it. We are doing it. We sacrifice a lot. But we are doing it, and we are happy.

4. (Nothing to do with school) I started a new exercise program (insanity). It's killing me...but I love it. And my feet hurt. Not like, 'oh, I've been walking or standing on my feet too long', but like the muscles in my feet hurt...like "building new muscle" sore. Ever had anything like that before? The rest of my body hurts too, I've just never had my feet muscles be sore before. I told Tony I'm going to have extremely attractive and toned feet when I'm done. I think he liked that...

Spring

Few more pictures from my phone.

Easter Egg Coloring

Fox with two giant malted milk balls shoved in his cheeks. He was one happy child.

My baby. We've bonded.

Riding bikes on a Saturday afternoon

or running on a Saturday afternoon. :)

It's been a pretty awesome Spring so far.

Complete Randomly

I just put on a whole bunch of pictures from my phone on to the computer. They are ridiculously random, but I love them. :)

Fox with scraggly hair and a bowl on his head

Liam in Chicago ready to eat (December)

Our itty bitty Christmas tree on our van. Still makes me giggle

At the dinosaur dig at the Children's museum in Chicago

Emma holding up her catch (also Children museum-December)

Fox with a toilet seat stuck on his head :)

Don't worry it's clean...hopefully ;) I haven't had a potty-training kid for about 2 years. Still don't. Maybe after our trip to Utah. Maybe.

Easter

Our Easter was pretty low key this year. I had a meeting at 7:30 in the morning and then church starts at 9, so we told the kids the Easter bunny wasn't coming until after church. But it was still fantastic! The kids had fun with their Easter baskets and an easter egg hunt.

Tony had fun too. Look at that excitement!

Fox trying to get sticky bunnies off the wall

My new easter dress. It's super pretty and I love it!

This is how Liam looks when he's had too much candy.

The kids got a few toys and candies. I think I spent a total of $22 for Easter, yahoo...but the kids could care less. Liam got a kite, Fox got a bucket and shovel, and Emma got a hulu hoop. She was so dang cute trying to do it that we had to get it on film. It reminded me of my little sister, Sierra. Whenever she would sing "It's a small world" she would stand in one place and wiggle her bum. Emma is following in her footsteps ;)

Pay no attention to the mess. We went biking the night before, so all of the kids bikes are out. And Tony took care of the kids this morning while I was at my meeting...need I say more? :)

Easter Egg Hunt

We did an Easter Egg hunt with some of our friends this year. It was super fun! The kids loved it! Here are pictures.

This is the way Fox looked basically the whole weekend. Some type of candy always shoved in his mouth. :)

Pro-school: Christopher Columbus and meteors

Hello, this is my world map rug that I got from Big Lots. Isn't it awesome? I love it. I also got a Buzz Lightyear that has all of the planets and where they are from the sun on it. They are fantastic!

Anywho, okay, we learned about Christopher Columbus on Tuesday. We watched these video's

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZEEbQ3hWmU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/kids/history-kids/christopher-columbus-kids/

Which are both fantastic!

Here is our timeline we are making. We talked mostly Christopher Columbus, but also discussed the Vikings who most likely came before Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci who is most likely the person America is named after. (He discovered that the America's were a "new land" and not the Indies as Columbus had thought) There are a lot of "most likely" back in the day...;)

And then we did crafts. And my table ended up like this. And I'm thinking, 'why did I want to do this again?'

But they did make some pretty dang cute Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria's out of egg cartons. Directions here.

And then this is where I sway from my Pro-school plan...

Wednesday morning Liam asked me, "Mom, why do things start on fire when they come into the earth?" I said, "I don't know. Let's look it up." So we did. And we did our Wednesday pro-school about it. We read about the science behind why things burn up when they come into our atmosphere on the internet. Here. Here. and Here.

One of the reason meteors and such burn up is because of friction from air molecules. To understand this, we went outside got a stick and rubbed it as hard and as fast on the cement as we could. Then we quickly picked it up and felt how hot it got. It works.

I also made the mistake of finding an animated "meteor enters earth atmosphere" video on YouTube and didn't watch it before I showed the kids. It, of course, had the meteor hit the earth...which may have freaked my kids out a little bit....

Then I had them write about what we learned. Emma wrote new three words we learned about (with my help). And Liam wrote this. Translation below.

"If a meteor fell and was still in space, atmosphere would be around the earth."

"So the meteor starts on fire, then the meteor crashes into earth. The End."

Darn YouTube clip.