Screeching Banshee

This is Day 2 of our current move.  Some of the worst days of my life have been moving days.  I am most grateful that the military moves us now.  It's a large part of why I have been so enthusiastic about being an army family.  No DITY (do it yourself) moves for us!  So today there was just a bit of humor to lighten things up.  Pancho, Dean's bird that he's had for 15 years and got as a hatchling, has a few, let's say, eccentricities. He happened to be sitting on his perch in our room.  He is terribly afraid of large items that come into the room with people seemingly attached to them, such as a rolling computer chair that someone is pushing from behind, or a hand truck/ dolly.  The movers walked in with the hand truck to retrieve a large dresser and Pancho freaked out, screaming like a Banshee, as they came through the door.  If you've never heard a Macaw screeching, be grateful.  They are deafening.  Pancho flapped his clipped wings all the way across the room, which the movers ran out of quick as a flash.  Dean had to remove Pancho from the room for them to be willing to go back in.  He had to bite his tongue to not laugh his head off.  This picture is from Dean's convalescence several months back.  Pancho loved hanging out with him all day, Hunter loved playing games on his phone, and Tristan is always happy to be included.

Funny also is how movers often under estimate the weight of our dining table and piano.  The table is solid marble, and pretty big.  I mentioned to the main dude that it was very heavy, and a few times queried him about how much weight he estimated that we had so far on the truck, as we are limited and have been worried about surpassing the limit.  He kind of blew me off and guessed "oh maybe a few hundred pounds" for each of those items.  Later he told Dean that the piano and table probably added up to a ton, once the table was crated.

The computer will be packed up tomorrow for our "express shipment", so I'll be mostly off line for a while.  We'll be headed to NM late next week for a little pre-Korea visit with the families.  I have been most amazed by people's generosity in serving us here.  A couple of dear friends have been taking the younger boys for the entire day, two days now!  That is no small feat!  I can't begin to express how much I appreciate it.  When we moved from Albuquerque to Astoria, OR, Jernon Kelly took Hunter and Kyler and kept them all day, overnight, and much of the next day until we were ready to leave.  I was floored.  That move we did ourselves and was the most abominable of all moves.  I am humbled by the spirit of service all these ladies have, and hope to be more like them.  Hunter is still in school, which continues until June 10.  He'll miss the last few days.  Today was "Fun Day", or what we would have called "Field Day".  He had a lot of fun, of course.

Fatty Lipkid

Kyler recently took a fall on his bike.  His story was that Hunter covered his eyes, causing him to crash and burn.  Hunter was sitting on the lawn, nowhere near Kyler's eyes.  They always blame each other for their doings and misfortunes, and even Baby Tristan has been accused by now.  His plight was pitiful though, and we let him administer the bandaids himself.  He had a fat, wounded lip for a couple of days.  His bosom buddy Kadance had a very similar tumble on his bike a couple of days later, and knocked a tooth out.  Ouch! 

In other Kyler news, I've been thinking for some time that he needed a chore of his very own.  Hunter has been doing a lot of chores since we moved here, and has been pretty good about it.  He needs to be reminded of them all, but that's not a big deal.  I despise sweeping, and Kyler creates most of what needs to be swept around here, namely on the dining room floor, and seeing that he is capable of it, I declared that it was now his job to sweep up the dining room floor every day after dinner.  The first few days there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth and demands that Hunter do it.  But, a marvelous thing has happened.  He generally does it now without complaining.  I do have to remind him, and it's often the next morning, but he usually says "OK", and does it!  Yay!  I think he is becoming a bit more cooperative in general.  I'll take baby steps!

the Talk

I've been filling in playing the piano for primary (children's Sunday School) for a couple of weeks, so I happened to be in there today when the primary president asked Hunter if he had his talk ready, to which he nodded, so she had him sit up front with the other participants.  I was certainly not aware of any talk, and you can guess who writes such talks around here.  I snuck over to the primary president and looked over her shoulder to see the day's topic.  It was repentance.  So, I went back to the piano and quickly looked in the Children's Songbook (the available resource I had to work with) under that topic, and found a song called Repentance.  Soon the primary president told Hunter it was his turn, and he said "I don't have a talk", so I ran over and helped him. 

I had him introduce the topic, which he did very well on his own, basically saying that "If we repent we can live in Heaven..."  Then I opened the songbook to the Repentance song, and told him to READ it.  He proceeded to start singing it.  He doesn't know that song, and neither do I.  I again told him to READ it, but he just kept singing away. I tried another time or two, then finally gave up and he finally got through it.  So I proceeded to tell him what to say, and he started singing that too.  ARRGH!  I finally got him to knock that off and just TALK.  I had him throw in an example of how he can repent after he fights with his brother, yada yada.  Then, thankfully, if was over.  I mentioned the scenario to Dean, and he said "oh yeah, the primary president told me last week that he had a talk, and Hunter had a paper saying so..."  That's pretty much the story of my life.

By the way, Happy Mother's Day!  The boys were very excited to wake me up and give me the presents that they bought me with their own money.  Daddy took them to the store and they each picked out a pair of  earrings.  I wore one of them to church.  He said he had to guide them in that direction, as they wanted to buy me a TV - must be because they broke ours and are going without, as I'm in no hurry to replace it!  Hunter had a handful of gifts he had made at school as well.  They were very sweet and excited to give them all to me.  Dean made me an omelet and toast, which they all served to me in bed.  It was wonderful!  

o-photo

I took my little man to Sears today to get portraits done.  He is adorable, of course, and I want to savor his adorable-ness.  I sat and waited for our turn while the folks before us checked out.  Their baby was also about ten months old.  Their total came to more than $300.  None of their credit cards had enough available credit for the full amount, so they had to spread it over two or three cards.  I am always stunned when the people who cannot afford such luxuries are the (only?) ones who spend that kind of money on them.  I "could" afford to do that, but wouldn't dream of it for all the obvious reasons.  Included in their package were "fine art prints" and "more pictures than we have wall space for; we'll need a bigger house just for the pictures", said the mother.

I am all for people spending money that they have, but the reason for our recent economic collapse is because of scenarios such as this (along with people not having any savings, not to mention planning ahead for retirement, college for the kids, etc.).  I recall an episode of Roseanne where Dan got a job selling hot tubs.  He quit the job after his first sale because the buyer made very little money, but insisted that he "deserved" one, and would buy one from someone else if not from him.  Dan couldn't live with himself selling overpriced hot tubs that people obviously don't need, to people who really can't afford them.   By the way, my mom was scandalized by Roseanne, but she rarely reads this blog anyway, he he.  She did say more than once while I was growing up that "A fool and his money are soon parted."

I politely declined all the enhancements, packages, collections, excessive poses, etc. and spent a total of $17, and got what I needed to preserve our memory of this precious baby at this age.  Oh, and I used a coupon.  So in a couple of months I wonder if these folks will be back to buy $300 more of portraits...