Brooklynn

Brooklynn is in the fifth grade this year.  To say I've been dreading this would be an understatement! The middle school years are widely viewed as horrific.  Friendship dramas. Body dramas. Attitude dramas. Everything...Drama!  We're about a month into the school year, and yes, it has been dramatic.  Also, it has been all kinds of awesome!  My middle schooler is totally rocking it!  So far, she's handled nasty rumors, hair disasters, face disasters, and academic pressure with a grace that I had no idea that she possessed.  I have been so proud of her the last month. She has confronted a girl who started a particularly nasty rumor about her head on, didn't get upset, and fixed the problem without adult interference.  She's took it on herself to research skin care and hair care and try things that have really worked(her hair looks fantastic!) She got a 93% on her first math test.  The highest grade she earned on a math test last year was a very low C. She's gotten A's on all of her spelling test thus far and has(all on her own) set a personal goal of making it on the honor role this year. She's been trying out new looks with makeup, hair, and clothes.  She has been digging a lot deeper into her faith.  Asking tough questions, and arriving at well thought out answers.  She loves her religion teacher this year.  So - here's to the middle school years. May they continue as they started!

AJ

AJ started Kindergarten this year.  My expectations of this year for AJ were that Kindergarten was going to be "easy peasy lemon squeezy" as AJ would say.  Yeah - not so much.  He loves his teacher, so that's a plus.  He says she's hilarious. "Mom - she does this thing where she says "interesting, very, very, interesting" in a funny voice.  She's the funniest teacher ever!"  Also, the lunchroom ladies are "the best cooks in the whole entire world", so that's awesome.   Everything else - horrible. I think that he went to school the first day thinking that they would do some trig, and read War and Peace all before lunch. In reality "all they do is COLOR"!   The other kids - horrible. He has one boy who's name he remembers on a regular basis that is pretty cool.  He says that he is "JUST LIKE ME"! "Mom - he even goes to the bathroom the same way as me" he said.  That freaked me out!  Turns out that just means he utilizes the stalls, not the urinals. Whew! There is also one little girl that is acceptable, although he can never seem to recall her name.  Everyone else - not so much.  They "try to get him in trouble" with their fighting games, they are in his personal space, or they are telling on him for being too rough or him being in their personal space.  School is too long.  They have to be sooo quiet.  There are entirely too many lines, whistles, rules, you name it.  So, here's to hoping we get the hang of it.

It's mosta summer

We have had a few warm days this spring and so the Beckman house is in full summer mode. This means shorts are worn everyday,regardless of the temp, we have a burning need to be outside at all times, regardless of the precipitation, and the toys have come out of hiding.  This year Aaron got out the tiny four wheeler out for AJ and he's having a blast. Aaron's getting a work out from running after him so he doesn't crash into anything. It's nonstop entertainment.

Easter 2014

Easter this year was fun. The easter bunny came and brought good things and hid eggs. I'm pretty sure Brook let AJ even find one of the 50.  We went to church and I lost a bet because I said that church would be over in an hour and 15 minutes and it went over. AJ only asked if it was over about 40 times though, so I didn't even mind having to get scooters for Aaron as a result. At least we didn't have a full on melt down like we have had other years!  Small miracles, right?  Now that the kids are older, we were able to sit down and actually talk to Grammy, so that was really nice.  Aaron called this Easter "diva Easter", because the girls tend to run the show. Between Brooklynn and Abby they have such strong little personalities, that there is some truth in that! This will probably only get worse as Emerson gets older, so I think it's probably one of many diva holidays to come... AJ and his cousins could care less who's in charge as long as dessert is involved, so I think that everything is going to work out just fine.

Pants are for Morning Time

When Brooklynn was three she constantly changed clothes. You could talk to her and then do something quick and turn back around and she'd be wearing something completely different. I began to think of it as her own little magic trick. Some of her choices were a bit over the top but they were always really cute. I have problems putting together 5 decent outfits in a week, she could do it in a half an hour. AJ, not so much. It takes him a minimum of twenty minutes to get dressed, and the combinations are not so flattering. We set out clothes at night and he'll come downstairs in something not only totally different than what we picked together, but something totally different than anyone would ever let their child out of the house in. He comes downstairs with his shirt on inside out. He comes downstairs with his jeans on backwards. Ninety five percent of the time he puts his shoes on the wrong feet. You would think that he could at least get it right half of time, but not so much. For some reason, he prefers dress socks, so he comes downstairs in athletic pants and dress socks. To make matters worse he thinks that his dress socks go over his pants, so he comes downstairs with his pants tucked into his socks. Every once in awhile he'll come downstairs completely tangled up to the point where you not only wonder how he got his shirt on that way, but wonder if maybe it would be better to just cut it off of him than try to untangle the mess that he made. Then, when we get home we have the opposite problem. We can be home for 5 minutes and we'll decide to run back into town. We call him back downstairs and I'll hear Aaron say "AJ, where are your pants?" AJ just rolls his eyes and says"Dad, pants are for morning time." And so it begins again.

Camera traps

Aaron's newest hobby is camera traps. It's like a game camera (just more expensive) that is motion activated camera that you leave somewhere to get wildlife pictures. It even has 3 flashes that need to be set correctly so you can get really good night shots. Just like all of Aaron's hobbies, he has found ways to include the entire family. So, once a week, we all trudge into whatever remote area where bobcats or mountain lions or whatever the prey of the week is and change batteries and memory cards and move cameras around. It's been a blast. Brooklynn and AJ both bring their cameras and we go on walks and take "epic journeys". AJ is so excited to be old enough to be included, and Brooklynn is as obsessed as Aaron on getting the perfect shot. Aaron is always online in forums looking for better prey and better ground and better lures. Last week he said that one of the guys on a forum got good mountain lions pics by using some perfume called channel or something. I asked him if he meant Chanel, and he said yeah something like that. Now this may make me a really bad person, and you can judge me if you want, but I told him that it sounded like a really great idea. I now have a brand new bottle of Chanel no 5 in my bathroom, and I would like to personally thank "black hill Dave's" wife for being an evil genius!

I Had a Dream

Brooklynn and Aaron think alike. They always have. It's scary. They don't even feel the need to verbalize their thoughts anymore. They just assume that they are thinking along the same lines and start scheming. I, however, exist on an entirely different wavelength. Here's a good example of that. Earlier this year I had a dream. It was one of those vivid dreams that you remember everything from and it sticks with you even after you wake up. In my dream, Brooklynn had just turned fourteen and wanted to buy a 23,000.00 tie dyed convertible to drive to school. I guess we had made a deal with her when she was ten that we would match what she earned in an account that went to the purchase of her first car. She had started a photography business in order to do just that. I kept telling her that she couldn't buy a 23,000.00 car as a fourteen year old and she kept saying "but I have 58,192.73 dollars in my account". I told Aaron and Brooklynn about my dream expecting them to laugh with me about what a nut job I was. They just looked at each other. They didn't even say anything. Now two months later Brooklynn has upgraded to a better camera, and taken hundreds of pictures. She's working hard to be a better photographer every day. Aaron has started a website and a Facebook page and is taking Brooklynn out everyday almost to help her to take pictures. I am biased I'm sure, but she's really talented, and I'm not ruling out a tie dyed convertible argument in my future.