In April I went to my annual homeschool mom’s retreat up in the mountains. It was beautiful and relaxing.  We enjoyed the cabin scenery,

Happily you have not heard from or about Scar Face in a long while, for which I am very grateful. I think his last exploit was shooting himself with an epi pen.  But Levi is determined to never live that name down and he has had a new batch of run ins with sharp objects and hard things.

Over the past few months he has added two new scars to his forehead which brings the total up to four, I believe.  Nothing too major, just scratches bad enough to leave their mark once the scab went away. Then a few weeks ago, after finally finishing my wing back chairs, I left a bag of upholstery supplies sitting on the stairs to take up later.  I forgot that I had left several of these nails in the bag.

They are a little over an inch in length

Levi’s body has a way of finding any and all sharp things that should not come in contact with one’s body and he stepped on the bag and……the nails.  Three nice puncture wounds in the foot.  Sigh.  I did feel horrible for being the cause of that one, but honestly, I think his foot would have found them even if I’d put them up high.

Then a few weeks later while at a birthday party he ran smack into their closed sliding glass door.  I thought that kind of thing only happened on tv.  But no.  Levi head + hard thing = contact.  I told the lady she could feel good about her cleaning job at least.  It was so clean he thought it wasn’t even there!  And just in case you are wondering, we have had his eye sight checked.

And last week he came in the house whimpering after running smack into a large garbage can on his bike with… you guessed it, his forehead.

We only have eight years to cure him of this before he gets behind the wheel of a car.  I don’t think that will be enough time.

We had a little miracle the week of spring break.  Most of you would not consider it a miracle.  No one’s life was miraculously saved (though I do have a new blog post to write about recent Levi accidents).  But it was a miracle nonetheless.

We had Family Home Evening that week all together.  Again, to you, that would seem like nothing out of the ordinary, but this is a risk we don’t often take anymore, preferring to split up the kids and do two separate FHE’s because when all our kids are together, they fight.  It is inevitable.  We have tried everything to fix that, but we finally decided to accept reality.  Since no one can learn or bond in that kind of setting, we split them up and it has helped a lot.  But last week we decided to do something special together for spring break and play Ticket to Ride, a very long, somewhat complicated board game.  And… “wonder of wonders, miracle miracle” there was no fighting.  The entire night.  We played for over two hours and everyone was happy, considerate and showed good sportsmanship.  We ate popcorn.  No one complained about getting less than someone else.  We stopped the game at one point to watch a big thunderstorm.  We pulled up all the blinds and sat in the dark together counting the seconds from lightning to thunder.  No one pushed or shoved to get a better look out the window. The older ones calmed the fears of the younger.  And then we went back to playing our game.  No one cried, there were no accusations of cheating.  It was perfect.  This is what it could be like??!

Every once in a while we get a moment like this in our family.  It doesn’t happen a whole lot because of the different personalities and issues we have, but it did two weeks ago and I had to write this one down.  I consider it a blessing from Heavenly Father.  A tender mercy for which I am very very grateful.  It almost makes up for the days like yesterday when we spend all weekend listening to our church leaders telling us to be nice to each other and then our kids spend the two hours following conference fighting over who should have to clean up the gigantic mess they made while listening to our church leaders tell us to be nice to each other.
Thank you, Elder Holland, for preparing me for the inevitable.

Reagan has a talent for writing.  I have been telling him this for years, but a teacher at school finally convinced him.  She thought his poetry was good enough to enter into a writing contest.  So he entered the following poem into the Idaho Scholastic Arts and Writing competition a few months ago.

Over the river,
Ripples to bring;
While dancing in lilies,
It seems to sing.

Whistles down canyons,
Howls in caves;
Then falls to the sea,
And makes the waves.

Floats ‘cross the mountains,
Shoots through the plains;
The violin plays,
No note it gains.

How ’tis like a song
Whipping through trees;
They go where they
The notes of the breeze.

He won an Honorable Mention!  Once we got to the awards ceremony, we realized it was more like 3rd place.  We’re super proud of him!

Cade participated in the National History Day competition last month.  He made a documentary about Apollo 13 for his project and won a 4th place ribbon for it at the two district competition!  It took months of work and he did it almost completely on his own.  Rock and I were happily surprised at how good it was for a first time documentarian.  You can watch his 10 minute documentary here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbKKoGjp688

Levi was in his first Pinewood Derby this month.  Like his brothers before him he made his first car into his favorite animal, the fox.  Meet “Fast Fox”.  
         

He won exactly one race, which is all a mother can hope for.  That way there are no tears when he doesn’t win fastest overall.  
           

And not to be out done by her brothers, Liberty lost her first tooth a few weeks ago, beating all her brothers for youngest tooth loser.

She ended up “losing” her lost tooth and was so distraught the tooth fairy might not be able to come that she took desperate measures.

Rock and I have finally decided where we are going to use our Christmas gift from his parents!  We are going to France and England!!!  He finally convinced me to go to Paris when he showed me the chateaux we can tour near there.

 

This year for Christmas Rock and I gave the kids experiences instead of toys.  I gave Liberty tickets to the Nutcracker ballet and the boys got tickets to the Piano Guys concert.  Liberty’s gift happened before Christmas, but the Piano Guys concert just happened this month.  So now I can blog about them all!

 
Part of the fun was getting all dressed up.

On February 6th, I took the boys to their concert.  Dream come true!  It was so fun to see their faces light up as they laughed at the crazy antics of their favorite musicians.  For those who have never seen a Piano Guys video, here are a few of our favorites:

http://thepianoguys.com/portfolio/cello-wars-star-wars-parody-lightsaber-duel/
http://thepianoguys.com/portfolio/rockelbels-canon-pachelbels-canon-in-d/
http://thepianoguys.com/portfolio/kung-fu-piano-cello-ascends/
http://thepianoguys.com/portfolio/mission-impossible-pianocelloviolin-ft-lindsey-stirling/

Poor Levi was the last kid to turn 8 years old in his primary class.  He had to wait until January 3rd 2016 to get baptized.  But his waiting is finally over.  Here’s a couple pictures from the special day.