Times, they are a changing

Colten had his preschool graduation on Friday night. . . he was so proud as you can see in his picture in the header. He can't wait to go to kindergarten, and is only upset that it's half day so that he can't eat lunch at school next year. I hope we can keep this excitement over school up as I know it tends to fade quickly.
Jaden is in his last week of 2nd grade, and really it's just a fluff week. I get to go help out for field day tomorrow morning-that should be fun! He's excited to start summer vacation.
Speaking of summer vacation I am trying to figure out a nice comfortable schedule for summer. While I want to be relaxed, it'd be nice to have some structure to our summer days. Not to mention a plan for how to deal with the multitudes of friends who constantly want to play. I'm thinking of setting a fairly regular lunch time, followed by Ashtyn's nap, during which the boys need to read a book, or work on school review kinds of things for just a short while. That should at least keep the house quiet enough for Ashtyn to get a nap, and some "down" time for the boys. On warm days I expect that to be followed by swimming time. . . I do have the boys signed up for 4 weeks of swim classes, and Jaden for a week and a half of tennis lessons, so that will fill the time a bit too. Then we can just relax and enjoy our time together the rest of the day-and maybe clean the house at some point in there as well. 80)
Things are changing at the office as well. We are in the middle of training on a new computer system that will make it a paperless office. I've been going through the training as well so that I can help with data entry when we go live as all our patients have to be entered into the new system. . . It's a big project, but it'll be great once we are actually up and running.
The other change in our lives. . . Joshua's Grandma Martens passed away on Monday. She's been having health issues for awhile so it wasn't totally unexpected, but sad none-the-less. We had been planning on driving up to North Dakota in just 3 weeks for her 90th birthday party to see her again, and sadly we didn't get that chance to see her one more time. Jaden cried and cried when we told him, and his comment was "But Grandma and Grandpa Martens are a team, you can't have one without the other, it just doesn't work." We are driving up for the funeral tomorrow so it'll be a long weekend of driving and emotions, we appreciate your prayers as we tackle it all. Grandma Martens was a wonderful and sweet woman, and I can't wait to see her dancing with the angels.

Rain Gutter Regatta

Last night was the end of the year awards ceremony for Cub Scouts as well as an informal rain gutter regatta. Jaden made a batman boat for the race (notice a theme, it could just be that black spray paint was all that we have). Thought I'd share a few pictures from the evening. . .

To Wheat or not to Wheat. . .

Ok, I have now been wheat free for 3 1/2 weeks. I didn't think that I would last a day on a wheat free diet, so I'm thrilled that I've made it this long. But I have to admit I thought that it would get easier not harder to stay away from wheat. After the first couple of days figuring out what I could eat, it then seemed to get "easy" to stay away from wheat. But the last few days now I've been waking up at night after having dreams of eating bread, cakes, and cookies. I'm finding it harder and harder to stay away from it during the day. Gosh, I hope this stage passes quickly and I go back to just normal cravings for bread. I'm a bread lover so this hasn't been a small step-but at least I can still have chocolate!
You ask why did I give up wheat? Well I got reading on a website by Dr Mercola on healthy eating, etc. And he has this whole huge process to go through to get to be eating healthy. Well the first step of this process is giving up wheat. I guess 85% of the population is actually allergic to some level to wheat which then inhibits digestion of what we do need, among other issues. So even though I haven't ever had any known issues with eating wheat I decided it would be a good first step in eating healthier. And I have even had the added benefit of dropping just a couple of pounds doing so. The next step is to restrict sugar, cow milk, soy, and other grains. . . but I don't think that I am quite there yet to add those steps. I do hope to reach those steps at some point though. I can't imagine the vivid dreams of eating that I'll have then.

Mother's Day

Here is the poem the Jaden wrote for me for Mother's Day:

Mom
swing, walking, sleeping.
At my house,
In the backyard,
In my neighborhood.
My best cooking Mom of all
Love, Jaden

Colten made me chocolate covered strawberries at school, and then he and Ashtyn had chocolates for me yesterday morning as well. Ashtyn's big compliment of the day, "Mom, you are the best bottom wiper of all!" (As I wiped her after going potty)

I was questioning my effectiveness as a Mom watching my children's behavior yesterday morning as they faught, teased, whined, and pouted. . . but I still wouldn't exchange them for anything (and they did do much better after I made them all take a nap-even the older ones), and hopefully they wouldn't exchange me.

We did get the garden planted yesterday. The kids always get so excited about that. Hopefully it all comes in as well as it did last year. We're trying cantelope instead of watermelon this year, and added sunflowers to the garden as well as Jaden has decided he loves sunflower seeds. Otherwise we are expecting a good crop of strawberries (Ashtyn came to me upset the other day saying that our strawberry plants weren't strawberry plants anymore, but flower plants because they had so many flowers on them, and she wanted some new strawberry plants because she likes strawberries better than flowers), we discovered that parsley and mint are perenial plants and have a good supply of both of those already too. Then yesterday we planted peas, green beans and burgundy beans, carrots, pumpkins (although less than last year as they just took over), the cantelope and sunflowers. We left a spot for tomatoes which I like to start from an actual plant instead of seeds so I'll pick that up later this week. I enjoyed the garden more than I expected last year, and I hope that the kids get as many thrills out of it this year as last too.

So Honored

I am so honored to receive this . . . click here to link

And I got another great surprise yesterday when I won the MOPS door prize drawing for $300 worth of spa treatment. I was so excited!!!!!