Dear Reader in Japan...

We've had some hits on our blog from Japan this week.  We just want those readers to know that we have heard about the earthquake and tsunami and we sincerely hope that you, your family, and friends are okay! 

Love,
The Borden's

His Last Day Being 0

Jenny (one of my best friends since 4th grade) happens to have a baby boy who is now one of my kids' best friends..."THE HUDSON HORNET"!  Well, today was a special day, because we got to spend it with Hudson, and it was his LAST DAY BEING ZERO (years old)!

I would like to say that we did something TOTALLY AWESOME today, but we just hung out at the house and in the back yard.  When Hudson comes to our house, regular life (feeding time, nap time, and play time) seems a little more chaotic, and a little more fun.  My boys love it, and they like to act like Hudson's bigger brothers...yes, Emmett tries, too, even though he's ONLY 6 months older.  They both lean down when they speak to him, and use big eyes, and are extra dramatic.  This used to freak Hudson out when he was smaller, and I'd have to take him to a quieter place for a few minutes so he could feel like he was in a calm home again, but now he just laughs at my boys.

Hudson makes this funny noise that his parents call the helicopter sound.  It really just makes us all laugh, even if he's crying a little while he's making it.  When Mitch is around and Hudson makes that noise, he calls Baby Hudson a "Baby Wookie".  I just laugh harder, because it sounds exactly like that!

Some of my favorite moments with Hudson:

• When he was just a few months old, he was having a ROUGH morning, and I was changing his diaper and he was crying like it was the end of the world, and I said to him, "Hey, I'm taking good care of you.  You need to stop crying; you're okay!"  and he quit crying ON THE SPOT.  It was so cute.  I thought, "Well, if that's all it takes...." : )
• A few months ago, Tyson was saying silly things that made no sense and weren't actually funny to me, but Hudson was laughing his head off.  I guess there's this baby/toddler language that they both understand, because it was totally over my head
• A couple weeks ago, Hudson went to a Volleyball game with us.  I was worried the loud noise would upset him, but he was making little cheering sounds right along with us.  He was the happiest I'd seen him and stayed that way for the entire game.  It was so cute!

Hudson is a good little boy, and he's precious. 

We love him, and love having him come play with us. 

Happy Birthday tomorrow, little guy!!!!

The Lesson I Learned

(March 4th Journal)


Well, my nephew had a party tonight. It had an awesome, pirate theme. My boys adore Caden & were excited to have a fun time—and it turned out great (most of it, anyway).

Tyson was the only kid wearing an eye patch when I showed up, and he wore it practically the whole time, which cracks me up. After he got his totally awesome balloon pirate sword, he lifted the eye-patch up so he could run faster and jab better. All of a sudden, he had a melt-down on the playground, though, and began running to me in shambles. For a couple seconds I braced myself to take my usual “You’re just fine” approach to the situation until he told me another kid had thrown sand in his eyes. The closer he got to me, I could tell this melt-down was a merited one. Once he was in my arms I could see that the little tears by his eyes were actually filled with muddy sand. He was literally crying sand out of his eyes. I felt so bad for him, but I still kept my cool.
At the bathroom, I cupped my hands and filled them with water while he tried to open blink his eyes open in the water to wash out the sand. After doing this several times for each eye and thinking we were making progress, I pulled on his little face under his eye to see inside his lower eyelid. Much to my dismay, his eye was still lined with granules of sand. That finally ticked me off enough and I muttered something like, “I can’t believe that kid actually threw sand directly INTO your eyes. Who would do that?! That…little…jerk!” I knew I probably shouldn’t name call in front of Tyson like that, and I never have done that until tonight, but I was so mad that I justified by saying that kid deserved it…after all, what he did to my kid was RUDE! But I immediately started to regret what I said when I noticed Tyson reacting to the situation by stamping his little foot and thinking about what he was going to say about the kid, too. But my heart softened in the instant he exclaimed, “That…little….goof-ball!” I smiled and we kept washing out sand from his eyes. It really was awful and he kept crying out little granules of sand. I had to remind him over and over not to rub his eyes, and it broke my heart every time he’d blink and say, “That REALLY hurts!”
Well, it gets better. We finally got down to 2 largely visible grains (one in each eye). They could only be seen deep in the crevice of his lower eye-lid and the white of his eye. It wasn’t close enough to the edge for me to feel comfortable trying to get it out, so we went to Mitch for moral support and help. As we walked over to Mitch, Tyson once again caught me off-guard as he told the story: “Dad! That cute little kid over there with the band-aid on his head threw sand in my eyes, and it really hurts!”

What a tender and precious moment in time. Who would have thought that this experience would leave me with a good feeling? No one in their right mind would initially think that something good would come from this 30-40 minute ordeal, but it did. If you think about it, it really was an ORDEAL. With all the time it took to rinse all the grains of sand out of his eyes, not only was my son in a crisis, but we missed the opening of all the birthday presents, and the singing. But, my kid did what I taught him to do…in fact, he did it better than I did. : ) He was forgiving. Just like Jesus taught us to be. He taught me a lesson: That cute, little goof-ball, with the band-aid on his head is as precious as gold to his mommy, too. In the end, it’s all okay. In the end, we’re all treasured as God’s children...each just as loveable, unique, and wanted as the next. And it helped our mood to get to eat a pirate cake, too.

…….I also learned…or remembered, rather, how important it is to have your child apologize when they do something wrong. It’s very possible that the sand-throwing-culprit’s mommy wasn’t even aware of what happened, and I hold no malice. But, I’m all the more grateful that when my son threw sand just a few days ago, that I saw it and made him apologize. It’s just an important practice and I hope to teach my kids to be conscious of the way other people’s feelings are affected by their actions and to make their wrongs right.

*Sigh*
It’s quite the life over there on the playground....no, really, quite the life--a real pirate showed up & I snapped a picture of him. I don't know where on earth he came from!

Opportunists

Tyson Loves nature shows. He calls any show about plants or animals "Planet Earth." THE OTHER DAY we were at granma and gwampa Tenney's house watching a "planet earth" about the pacific northwest. There are these birds that look a little bit like small penguins and dive super deep and basically fly underwater. The narrator talked about how they stay under a long time and work together to heard herrings into a tightly packed bunch. Then these birds swim/fly up from underneath the school of herrings and pick them off one at a time. The narrator said that while these birds work to feed on the school of fish, the gulls are opportunists. They can only dive about 3 feet and so they wait for the other diving birds to drive the herrings near the surface, then the gulls can pick them off from above. Tyson thought that was awesome and so he yelled, "DAD, DAD! The Opportunists are eating the fish!" It was awesome, he thought "opportunist" was the name of the gulls. This kid is so smart, and so cute when he almost gets something.

My favorite part of the show was when the humpback whale came out of nowhere and swallowed the entire school of herrings.

"Eagle Port of Honor"

I can't speak highly enough of both of my brothers!  Maybe someday, my little boys will grow up to be just like their Uncles "Tater" and "Bebes"!  Maybe someday I will get to show this picture on a slide show at Tyson & Emmett's "Eagle Port of Honor"...(that's what Tyson calls it, haha!).

 More than a year after Taylor did his Eagle Project, and within a year of Heber doing his project, they were able to work the paperwork out to have their Eagle Court of Honor at the same time.  We had it January 29th and it turned out awesome!

 You can't buy the glow that comes from hard work, dedication, and service. 
 Taylor is so handsome!!!

 You can't buy the genuine love that these boy scouts show EVERY DAY to their friends and family.  Heber is handsome & loveable, too.  ...Mitch...I can't believe you got in the shot like that, haha!

 Liberty the Eagle Ambassador came to visit.  It was awesome!  Tyson was amazed at her shiny "boogers" when we were up close.  Oh, goodness.  Boys will be boys, right?

 We feel the missing pang in our hearts every time we take a group shot of us without Erin!  We love you, Erin & know you would have loved to have been there!  We know you are bursting with pride for your brothers, too!

 Senator Allen came and spoke to us!  How we love our affectionately named "Aunt Civil Rights" or "Aunt Civil Defense"...pick your favorite...I just call her "Aunt Civil"! 

Also, I shant forget to mention that you need to look at all of Heber's merit badges...I have never seen so many!  He had a goal to earn all of the possible badges...I don't know if he's reached that goal, yet, but he's sure done an amazing job working towards that goal!

 Linda Abbott of the Gilbert Town Council came, too!  We appreciated her support for Taylor & for our family!

 My mom & dad were so happy that night!  They're even happier that the boys did all the work themselves--they truly EARNED their eagles!  (My dad & his trio, Three2U sang at the ceremony, too).

This picture was actually from the middle of last year, but I included it, because it meant a lot to me that Taylor invited me to be on his Eagle Board of Review.  What an honor that he called me!  I actually didn't get to be in his room because the rules are different than they used to be, but the fact that he asked me to come was enough.  I was so happy to be there when he "passed" his board of review for his Eagle.  He's a great kid, and I love him so much!  I get choked up just writing about it!

I hope my brothers continue on being great American citizens, and continue to apply all the lessons they've learned through scouting.  There is something to be said for getting this far--they have learned lessons that they would have learned in no other way.  Way to be boys!  I hope my boys grow up to be just like you!

We should all strive to be

PHYSICALLY STRONG, MENTALLY AWAKE, AND MORALLY STRAIGHT!

Time to Celebrate: Before/After Weight Loss

You're not going to believe this...maybe you will...when I get pregnant I pretty much blow up like a balloon.  I have no idea why & it's not really fair or fun...and trust me, no one on this planet is more acutely aware of how much weight I'm gaining than I am...when I had Tyson, at delivery I was 50 pounds heavier than before I was pregnant, and my goal with Emmett was to gain less than 50 pounds.  Well...that didn't happen...after the most difficult pregnancy I've ever experienced, I was a whopping 67 pounds heavier than before I got pregnant...that's a lot of weight for just 9 months.  A full 20 pounds of that was pure swelling that fell off within a week of having Emmett, but I was still left with a devestaing 47 pounds to lose.  I knew that since I lost my baby weight with Tyson, that I could do it again.  But let me tell you, it hasn't been easy.

 This is my before picture--Christmas Trees 2009...I didn't zoom in more, because I personally LOVE Stetson's face in this picture. LOL, and I didn't want you to get TOO close of a view of muah.



A year and 3 months later...  WOOT! 

Good-bye Baby weight!!!!

After blood (yes, blood--it happened hiking once),

MUCH sweat,

and yes...there have been tears along this path...

...here is my weight loss award acceptance speech:

I would like personally thank my husband, Mitchell, for being so supportive and watching the children at any hour of the day or night that I wanted/needed to exercize (and thanks to my mom for also helping with the kids & inspiring me to celebrate this milestone now instead of waiting a few more months until I lose x more pounds, because this has been a big accomplishment for me).  After many prayers for help, I believe that Heavenly Father answered my prayers in the form of the following motivating people with similar health goals:  my running partners including my DAD, and brothers Taylor and Heber, my "coach" & friend Ashley, and my friend Rachel, my Slim in 6 group: Kari, Pam, Carol, Ashley, Anjuli, my weight loss e-mail diatribe that included people already listed and Cherryl, too, all my friends from any of the Beach Body series--P90X & Insanity--I love you (wish I owned the DVD's, but thanks to Kari for sharing and motivating!).  I should also give a shout out to The Biggest Loser Workout Video, the fitness channel, the Spark People website, my sister's health blog, the gazelle machine given to me by my friend Meghan, Sue's treadmill, the most recent 10K race I participated in, and the heart rate monitor on loan from Ash.  And I mustn't forget to mention the website Operation Beautiful that helped me with my self-esteem along the way, Jodi's surplus of make-up that helps me feel pretty, and I need to thank the YW program for helping me to remember what true beauty really is. 
Seriously, you guys ARE THE BEST! 

*No thanks to the gym that fraudulently sold my membership to another company and cost me a lot of time and money fixing it...especially because it's the SAME gym whose child care center (in ONLY 1 VISIT, mind you) gave my children pink eye and the worst case of croupe that I've ever seen resulting in the depletion of our Emergency Fund at an ER visit to stop my baby's chest from convulsing and having spasms every breath he tried to take.   Also, no thanks for the 8 Weeks to a Better You program, in which I miserably lost my $20 and motivation, resulting in a few steps backwards (it was a nice idea, but it just didn't work for me).

Not All Emoticons are Created Equal

In the eternal scheme of things, I suppose this doesn't even matter. . . . . .
                        . . . . . but let me tell you about something that bugs me!

If your cell phone carrier gives you the option to create a signature at the end of your text messages, and when that signature lets you include an emoticon, your cell phone company needs to be smart enough to transport the emoticon correctly to ALL other cell phones, not just people who have the same make and model.  I'm so irritated. 

All I want is for my cute little heart before my name to transport correctly to my friends' phones.  Is that too much to ask? 

Apparently it is too much to ask, because all they see is <<**D-Jo>. 

That is SO LAME! 

And when my husband wants to send me a

kissy face emoticon, all I get to see is :X  

TOTALLY NOT COOL! 

Will someone please coordinate the emoticon languages to something universal that all the cell phones can read?  I CAN'T TAKE THE EMOTICON INJUSTICE ANYMORE!  : )