Boy turns 7.

I have allowed myself to enjoy the fact that my children are getting older.  In fact, having Danny turn 7 was a wonderful milestone for us all.  For some reason 7 seems like more of a turning point into 'big kid' than any age has yet.  It may be that my youngest is now a big kid without me having any reservations that my kids are growing too fast.  They are growing fast, and it is fascinating.

The cooler beginnings of summer made the lush outdoor decor match the indoor green strings that we all woke to as a celebration of Danny's day.  Did you know they make blow up balloons now with LED lights in them?  It seems a bit extreme, but too cool to pass up buying.  So we had glowing camo-green balloons around the house for days.  What a waste of technology in the end when we just popped them and threw them away.  Disposable birthday LED.  Couldn't we do more with innovation than make glowing birthday decor?

Part of the consciousness of turning into a 'big kid' is knowing that others should/will give you presents for your upcoming birthday; and you can now watch the calendar and become a steady alert system to ensure that no one forgets.  Although it is not my favorite to be told I need to buy someone a gift, I will admit that Danny's birthday seems to creep up on me every year and I had not put the requisite planning into a meaningful gift to have the time to buy it cheap on eBay.  He should have gotten a Hogwarts lego set,  the boy is meticulous about building things from directions and patient enough that he needs a big project.  Legos are expensive because they haven't gone out of vogue for decades (good job Lego marketing division).  We ended up getting a supplementary set to Danny's giant garage sale Kinex set.  What he really needs is more instruction books for Kinex, if anyone has those lying around.  He is not yet into the innovative stage of just building complex things on your own. 

But I digress, the big attraction was a new bike.  Danny knew it was coming because we had to take him to a bike shop to get him sized so as to properly buy a bike off Craigslist. The bikes he test drove at the shop were fancy - gear shifters, Shimano brakes and everything.  The used trade ins were $100+  oh no!  This kid grows 3-11 inches a year and shoes, bikes, shirts, anything sized will be grown past too soon with no younger brother to pass it on to.  I think he was disappointed a bit when he saw the Huffy bike we got him (new from Walmart, Indiana has some serious problems with pricing things on Craigslist).  I tried to build the excitement a bit more with a good scavenger hunt- which was Danny's suggestion.  Yep.  He told me where we should hide his presents, how he would like to find them via a good set of clues, and which gifts his sisters should get him.  He was sweet about it, not completely arrogant.  But let's be real - 6, 7, 8,....and I don't know how much longer this will go, but these ages are increasingly more ego-centric.  So he got a good hunt and a semi-good bike in the end. And I put a clue in the place he thought he would find it (the attic) and hid the real bike in the food storage room!

Dinner was after Church - which you may notice Danny has decided to gel his hair for now (big kid stuff).  He had requested a birthday breakfast; his favorite foods are German pancakes and "fluffy clouds" which is a hot cereal made with Cream of Wheat and egg whites.  For dinner we did a Sunday barbecue and ended it all with a wizarding cake.

I was super frustrated that I hadn't bought black licorice to make the glasses the cake, so I made due with some old sunglasses that we demolished all in the name of a Harry Potter face birthday cake.  I put the 7 candles along the scar line so the 'burned.' 

 Magical wand sparks around the cake for the 'blowing out,' which of course they just blew themselves out and Danny's spark-back candles decided they would follow suit and not come back to life.  That, or Danny really did a good job blowing them out.

That's my boy.  He's long.  He's eating a lot already.  He is kind hearted and a  bit emotional in this stage.  He doesn't like practicing the piano.  He is not excited about anything that involves reading, but if you read it to him he will have all sorts of hypothetical conversations about any topic.  He considers himself an expert on most sports and will teach you how to 'do it right.'  He still comes in every morning to give me morning cuddles, which conveniently coincide with when Josh leaves for work and when he would like me to make breakfast; although Danny is almost proficient at making his own scrambled eggs.  We love every bit of this boy.

Autumn comes with the traditional

There are certain events that indicate Fall in Indiana for our family, and it seems they all came and passed this month.  We had Grammie visiting for the welcoming festivities of fall: apple picking.  Our friend's tree that we pillaged for fee last year was on an off year so we had to go to a 'commercial' local apple orchard to pick.  The name of this orchard gave us many laughs: "Tree Technology."  Yep, that's new technology - getting small kids with baskets on a stick to pick apples.Josh, the kids, Grammie and Aunt Jill picked 5 bushels of apples that we processed within that week to have plenty of applesauce and apple pie slices all through the winter.  The kids are always involved with smooshing the apples through the Victorio Strainer or twisting the peeler/corer/slicer, which makes the process move swiftly.

When the apples are on, we also know it is time to honor the man who gave us all this lovely harvest: Johnny Appleseed.  Fort Wayne claims the burial of Johnny.  We have a gravesite, although I am not certain, with many other claimants on to Johnny's burial, if the site is not just a relic containing maybe teeth or other random bones.  Ether way, all the community gathers for the fantastic festival in his park and celebrate the handiwork of many who still create without technology (ha, tree technology orchard).  Each year we heard the kids past the vendors to the settler's area and learn some new skills.  This year's skills were:  clay wheel pottery, woodworking (mostly for Josh who still dreams that he will have a wood shop some day), wood carving, copper smithing, and tinkering. 

This fella gave the kids a bit of a science lesson by carving back the stick and then pulling out the worms that were the cause of the great maple to fall.  Josh admired the lacquering.

Because it was the very end of the day the tinkers let the kids play with all sorts of machines and gave them lots of tin trinkets to play with.  They gave the kids a math lesson as to why you need to know geomotrey. 

 Another fall time favorite - the annual Fort4Fit race.  This year we worked with the kids through the end of the summer to run 25 miles, all building up to the Kids Marathon for Fort4Fit.  The kids had gotten the racing bug when we did the Spartan Race in the spring and were mostly willing to do the training.  We were amazed by how well they did on the actual race night!  With Jill, we had one adult per child to run with the kids during the mile long course.  Viv ran hard with Jill, Faith stayed consistent and long strided with her dad, and I ran with Danny.  I was most impressed with Danny.  Throughout the summer he was the least enthused about continuous running; often stopping with side aches.  However, for the race, Danny kept a steady jog the whole time.  We talked about Captain America, of course, to pass the second half mile and he made it the whole way without walking!  All three were so happy to have their medals!  It is so nice to have this family friendly race so close to our home, it is really too easy to do I would be ashamed if we had not involved the kids in their own race.

Start time was 7:30am this year instead of 8am.

The next morning I woke up and walked up to the race start for the 10K race.  Some friends joined me for the start.  To my happy surprise, Jill rode her bike up and became my support through the whole race.  I certainly wasn't in my favored shape for the race, but I made some goals and kept them, only missing my goal finish by one minute (should have followed Jill's advice and had faster turnover the last half mile rather than trying to lengthen my stride, lesson learned).

Josh and the kids made it up for the finish so they could steal my post-race snacks and then go to the library.  It is a fun race because it ends in the Parkview baseball stadium and they have the racers on the jumbo-tron and announce their names so the family can be more participatory in the end.

A new fall tradition for us, thanks to Jill, will be going to a college football game.  We are still learning to enjoy the event, so it was super nice to head over to a small university in town, St. Francis, and watch our good friend and old babysitter Jason "Big Guy" Gardner play as defensive center.  Danny was intent not he game.  Faith brought a book, which suits her personality after watching some of the game she was happy to read.  Viv spent most of her time watching the cheerleaders evidently to figure outs why they had blue and black pom-poms (which she finally figured out about the 3rd quarter and announced to the rest of of that it was to match the team colors on the football uniforms).  It was a very good thing to broaden the horizons of the kids to some of the best parts of fall sporting events.  Jill and I also took them to watch IPFW men and women's soccer.

Danny boy is older

Last night as I lay in bed recounting the day to Josh, I realized yet again how cool Danny is.  He has an awesome sense of humor and keen timing.  He had heard a phrase I used earlier in the day and played it back perfectly that night as only a brother could.

We were nestling restlessly into our beds, doing our best and restructuring our sleep schedule the week before school starts and the stall tactics were epic.  Faith remembered that she needed some lotion for the sadly dry spots all over her body left from an ambush attack of random harmless hives.  Of course, once the lotion was on the extremely dry skin, it burned like searing fire.  She began to squirm and moan and thrash on her top bunk of the bed.  I was exasperated and had no retort, but Danny did!  "What, are you giving birth or something up there?"  He asks with an evident under-chuckle in his tone.  Perfect timing!  He can perfectly diffuse a situation.

Comedic timing and situation bomb-control are a couple of Danny's many talents.  I love this boy.  He is Golden.  Yes, he passed yet another milestone while on our family vacation.  He is six years old.  That's my baby boy, and he has grown!  Just everything about him makes me love him to his constant "forgetting" that I gave him a night time kiss just so I will come back and give him a zerbert on his fleshy cheeks to his determination to become an astronaut.

Riding cross country in a car of girls finally got to him when Viv requested, yet again, to listen to Taylor Swift.  I can't blame the guy.  He certainly did not get as much music air time for his playlist as the girls (read Viv and her music obsession) even though everyone agrees that the song "Happy" is definitely amazing for changing one's mood.

Danny quietly concentrates on most of his projects with a very clear design in his head of what it will be.  Notice the mountain forming with only a streak of red up the middle.

"It's Pompeii!" he told me.  "Where did you learn about Pompeii?"  I ask.  "From the National Geographic and the book we recently read in the Magic Tree House.  You can see the lava tube inside the mountain before it explodes." 

Since we were in WA on Grmpa Dan Button's 60th birthday and Josh was with us, we celebrated then the two Dan's birthday with family and food, the Button way.  Grandpa and Danny traded back scratches for gifts.

Again, the humor! We went to a fry specialty shop in Boise and Danny loved the blueberry ketchup.  He loved it so much he decided he ought to have a blueberry nose.  

On Danny's actual birthday on the 14th we had "The best birthday ever!" with his Ricks cousins.  We went to the perennial favorite of mini-golf and then shared a round of laser tag with all his boy cousins.  For his first time around, Danny was the sharp shooter for the kids in his age range.  He divulged to me how he had strategized by following certain older cousins in direct routes and going back to the recharge station before he was out of lives.  I was so proud of him.  Tactically minded at six years old.  Josh and I are planning on grooming him for West Point.

Another amazing gift: patience.  The boy his my namaste.  He is peaceful and calm and really enjoys just throwing a pole in the water and observing what is going on.  He also is a hard worker.  Danny's favorite times a the cabin were just following Grampie around and doing various man chores, learn to shoot pool, or sit next to the river.  Neither of them talk much, but they sure enjoyed each others' company, which warmed my heart.

When we visited Mesa Falls Danny was my buddy observing all the little nuances of geography and waterfalls.  He noticed the rainbows in the water and the formation of rocks.  He looked for wildlife and found his favorite souvenir of the trip: a guide to all the fish of the Mountain West.  He had to sleep with it and couldn't hardly put it down to close his eyes.

The boy is still super excited about fighter planes.  

Crowning moment of the trip: Danny asked to jump off the Fun Farm bridge.  No small matter for a small person.  With full trust in me, he climbed over the outer edge, more confident than his father.  We counted to 3 and went for it.  I was a bit concerned as he popped up out of the water after a 20ft drop, until I saw his face - absolute joy!!!  He had his first adrenaline rush of his life and loved it!  "That was BAWESOME" (better than awesome)

Needs more

On February 1st Danny hit his cheek, hard, on the side of his metal bed slide, hard.  He was in obvious pain and tears streamed down his rounded little cheeks.  As he cuddled in my lap, the heaving sobs subsided a moment for him to say "I wish my cheeks were bigger."  I was surprised into a giggle.  That was not the response I had anticipated.

Usually children rain down pledges of vengeance on inanimate objects that animate themselves to inflict pain on the unsuspecting little people (walls and doors have the most vicious tempers and will burst upon them regularly).

No, Danny's wish at this moment was for augmented cheeks.  My gleefully kissable boy wanted even more fleshy pillows on the side of his face.  "Why"  I asked, wondering what childlike logic had brought upon the wish.  "Because then I would have just bounced off the side of the slide instead of getting hurt."  His sniffles turned to snickers.  "And how large would your cheeks need to be to give you this buoyant bouncing effect?"  I asked, wondering if the logic would fail when put to the test.  Now fully recovered, Danny pounced to his feet, pulled his shirt tight around the middle and pushed out the perfectly protruding little belly he could to its maximum capacity "As big as my belly!"

*badump ching*

The Golden Boy

While on a date with friends Friday night we were talking about Danny.  My good friend was extolling how sweet and wonderful he is to her husband.  My friend had only known Danny for a few months and met him in person a handful of times.  We agreed with every possible positive thing she said. Danny really is the perfect boy.  "He's our favorite," I said without hesitation.  "Oh, but you wouldn't say that any place else," remarked the disbelieving husband.  "We might modify it a bit in front of the kids.  But really, he is the perfect boy and has never given us reason to dislike anything about him," was my reply.

On Friday last Danny was overwhelmed with being sick (a cold and reactive airway issues), less than 10 hours of sleep on average each night through the week, and too few mommy cuddles, so as he had a melt down over carrying his lunchbox to the car and begged to stay with Mama for the day, a knowing glance between Josh and I made it final.  Danny got a Mama day of resting and cuddles.  

We spent the day relaxing, which is so perfectly easy to do with Danny.  He is chill with waiting around while I do the chores.  He helps as asked and is curious about how my day goes.  With his help my morning chores were done quickly and we set out on a few projects together.  We have been wanting to do better about teaching the kids proper properties of finances so Danny and I crafted up some money banks.  The project was so delightful with him.  For a five year old, he is remarkably restrained and collected in his thoughts.  He observes intently and only asks questions if they are not readily apparent.  His childlike nature still gets excited about little discoveries.  Best of all, he is the most supportive and encouraging companion.  Throughout the project he kept telling me how well I was doing and how wonderful it was turing in out. I don't exaggerate, he really is this great.

We built upon the money grouping principles he had been learning at school to separate his money into tithing (charity), savings, and spending.  Another testament to Danny's goodness is his monetary worth.  This boy earns more money than the girls combined!  He cares to earn money and loves to save it.  He really is his father's son in that regard.  Part of the process of teaching banking in groups is that there is not often an equal amount of the unit there.  I left the option to Danny as to what he would like to do with his 'remainder' money.  Without hesitation he snatched the coins up and said "I want to put it in tithing to show God I love Him!"  This boy is golden.

Later we got to our purpose of catching up on sleep.  Danny has always been my most cuddly baby and I still love laying next to him for he will melt right into you comfortably and slow your heart rate down with his smooth breathing as he instantly falls into sleep.  He is such a calm sleeper the cats will come to him instantly to cuddle and sleep as well.  This day Danny was actually holding Toggs by the paw while they napped.  Chris was trying to groom them all three with intermittently grooming Danny's exposed arm and Toggs' head and his own hind quarters.

Danny is certainly a boy for whom I give daily thanks.  Even on his worst moments, he is angelic.  He and Viv are in a stage of getting frustrated with each other, which distresses Danny.  After hearing them start to flare up in the other room, Danny will come running to me exasperated with an air of despair as he describes how he wants things to work out differently.  Even when he gets frustrated with Josh he shows exemplary restraint.  At dinner a few nights back Josh was demanding something of Danny that was not to his liking.  Danny took a few steps back from the table and stood taking deep breaths.  His concentrated face and clenched fists were enough to tell me what was going on.  Josh had to ask.  In response Danny said "I am controlling my anger."  Oh what a blessed skill!

Moments, good or bad, are joyous with our golden boy.  God was gracious in giving us our miracle boy.  I don't know how all the mechanics worked out for him to come so easily to our family, but I cannot give thanks enough for the role he plays in it.  

Cheering us on

I feel as though I am not a very consistent person, but I have consistent desires to be one of those people.  Writing falls under that category; I feel as if I loose the vibe than I am too far behind to catch up.  However, recent events have taught me to appreciate even the less inspired entries in the life of the Button Family.

To begin, I feel as though there is great need to send out some more joy and rejoicing!!

Applause for Blogger!
Now this blog contains some of the most precious things to me - pictures.  Within the last month our Mac had a pretty severe heart attack, or stroke, whichever mainstay body organ you would equate the hard drive of a computer.  It died.  We saw some warning signs, but did not take it to the doctor before they called the time.  Within that oh so dead hard drive are ALL our photos.  I know, backup and so forth, and we tried, just not often enough and this was before the invention of iCloud.  Now, all I want for Christmas is my pictures back, which may be possible in a clean room environment by some highly trained specialist, and to me, it is worth it.  Thank heavens I have been putting at least some snippets of life here, with photo evidence.

Hooray for Housewives!
I have had a bit of a showdown with my feminist teacher in my Women's Literacies course.  Some conversations were unpleasant, but I was bold in a way I felt I must (and feel very relieved to have heard echoed sentiments in the 183rd semi-annual general conference) and in a small way, triumphant.  Through persistence I have found a way to make sure feminist theory not overshadow the authentic feminine voice and have determinedly shown a true representation would be more humble and reflective of the sensibilities that make women excellent housewives!  I have felt so inspired that I have decided to formulate a whole years work on the subject, in the form of a master's thesis.  Ah! Finally to be inspired by a cause that speaks so clearly to who I am and what I stand for in an academic community that has been misrepresenting authenticity!  High point: my professor admitted to the class that if any woman were to suscribe to a feminist view point they must admit that feminism, as a body of theory and movements associated with it, has made some pretty harsh mistakes which still hold the name under a wicked lens. Own up to it, and then you are able to really understand what the third wave movement is all about.  And yes, I consider myself a feminist activist, and I will more than likely explain more about that as research continues.

Hats of for Dental Insurance!
We did our before-school-check-ups on the kids' teeth.  After our last multiple procedure visits in AZ for Faith and Danny we had decided to pay dental insurance - and hooray we did!  Faith had swallowed her crown and Danny's two front teeth were rotting at the roots.  Again, Viv gets high honors for having the world's wonder enamel with no needed dental attention beyond a bit of plaque.  End result, three removed teeth.  Faith had the rotted crownless tooth removed and Danny, well, we shall say that hearing the 'original' version of "all I want for Christmas" is delightful.

Last time with front teeth for years to come.

Two small treasures at one big price.

Small and strange perks of Indiana, what fun!

In the small quiet town where Josh practices medicine, the world's largest historic car auction happens yearly!  I think all the citizens of the town also own historic cars, for not only are there lots full of cars for auction prices, every house in town has a beautiful car sitting out in the front yard with a for sale sign.  I can't wait until we have money....I have my eye set on a few beautiful models.  It is a car lovers dream, and here we are in the middle of it!

And three cheers for finding what you don't need!

This is the house that Josh and I had envisioned as our forever home.  In the country with a wrap around porch.  Bonus for being in the correct location.  Naturally, when I saw a for sale sign in the front yard I convinced Josh that it would be worth our while to go walk through it, just to make sure that we didn't miss our opportunity.  Turns out the house is dreamy.  We did our research, and in so doing found an even dreamier home.  We tried to hurriedly get our ducks in a row to put an offer on our dream home, that was for real and for sale.  Turns out, ducks don't like being rushed or herded.  Although we did eventually round up enough of the appropriate ducks, our dream house had already floated out of our reach.  This house is still there.  We see it daily.  But we now know what ducks are ready and which are not and are happy to just stay in our own little pond and keep dreaming.  Dreams are useful, but it makes the most financial sense to live in what you can afford right now.

The sunflowers were incredible and made the house so quaint.

Our neighbor put up the picket fence and I like how nice it makes our home look.

As of Sept. 2nd we had put in a lot of work into this home, and it shows.

Backyard particularly has transformed with grass, fencing, 

and the almost finished garden.

Golden Boy

I am blessed to be greeted by happy kiddos every morning.  I may not be a morning person, yet I am alright with getting up early to make breakfast and fix lunches with my little darlings because they are so pleasant.  This morning was just delicious.  Thanks to my Golden Boy I had a frosting moment:

I had asked my happy son if he could go and wake up his sister.  He did so cheerily that his sister was not at all upset with being awake.  A moment later he came in and told me with a shoulder shrug, "I made Viv's bed for her since she woke up a little later today."

What a Golden Boy.  Without any prompting he just knows how to serve and does so because it is very much who he is.  Aw, I miss him during the day.  I told his teachers that I suppose I could share him with them since they appreciate how Golden he is also.

Danny also makes breakfast for us sometimes.

Celebrations- our boy is 5

June 14th our boy, the youngest in the family as it stands, turned 5!  I don't often refer to Danny as the baby of the family because he is our Boy, but something does click in my head to have the youngest getting older.  I saw it coming.  All his talking and being grown up has certainly painted it on the walls. I love every minute of new discoveries with Danny.  He is still super cuddly and service centered.  Yet, he is more and more boy each day.  His daddy spoiled him with a new guitar so they could share a hobby, one of many of course, together as men.

We have the gift opening first thing in the morning so Daddy can share it with us.  Plus, we were going camping that evening and didn't want to not have gifts.  Camping was one of those wonderful gifts that we all get to share together.  We loved sharing it together, thanks to Danny for being born on such a nice day of the year to celebrate.

Happy Birthday gifts early for our boy!

His own guitar! He loves making music for us all.

This was the initial excitement of arriving at the campsite!

Their first memories of putting up a tent.  It had been so long since last setting up the tent one of the elastics had deteriorated.  The kids did not mind at all, the whole process was a party.

Our campsite at Pokagon had a play structure which was just a preshow to a fun weekend.

It was fun creating memories of their own on this first camping trip they will remember for themselves.

In lieu of a birthday cake Danny settled for authentic smores and blowing out flaming mallows instead of candles.  

They caught a few crappie on Friday but Danny cast perfectly to get a bluegill on Saturday morning.

Most of Saturday was spent on the beach of Lake James playing and playing.

Danny bought a two-scoop birthday cake ice cream cone which he enjoyed mostly independently.