Interesting tidbit of info

I think I might have heard this before but I am not sure. Did you know that MTV was created to be like sesame street? Go-Go-Go!!!

Mission Call

My brother-in-law received his mission call today. Amazingly he is called to Mongolia!!! I am not kidding. When he was calling everyone he told them that he is going to outer-Mongolia. He leaves in just a month and a half. He will be gone before we know it. I will keep you updated on how it goes!

Wild Child

I guess I always thought Henry would have the first "no-no", for lack of a better word, that would be bad enough that no punishment would be needed. Instead tonight after we put the kids to bed after about forty-five minutes we heard a huge thud coming from the kids rooms. I went up there and Libby had apparently been hanging from the curtains and they just couldn't hold her weight anymore. I think she was standing on her bed hanging when it happened and she ended up on the floor. She was crying because the rod hit her on the head. She even said at one point that she was twisting around. I think the bonk on the head and the fright of having it give out on her was punishment enough. Her conclusion from it all was, "You don't hang on the curtains because they will bonk you on the head." A very good conclusion if you ask me! Lesson learned.

Good stuff I have been learning

I keep trying to tell people about some of the awesome stuff that I am learning in my Creating a Learning Environment class that I am taking this summer, so I am just going to blog it. And Monica if you read this, it goes along with the conversation that we had while you guys were here.

First of all there are three voices that people can use while talking to another person. Child, Parent or adult.
CHILD: defensive, emotional, victim, whining, strongly negative, demanding, playful, spontaneous, and the one I am the most guilty of is sarcasm. Sarcasm is perceived as an attack 98% of the time. OOPS!
PARENT: Authoritative, judgmental, evaluative, win/loose mentality, demanding, sometimes threatening, wants to be in charge and take care of others on their terms.
ADULT: non judgmental, free of negative, win/win attitude, factual, often question format, reasons & problem solves, agrees to disagree.

Somethings that they would say:
CHILD: (me, me, me)
Quit picking on me
You don't love/like me
It's all your fault
You made me do it
Don't blame me

PARENT:
You should/shouldn't do that
It's wrong/right to do
That's stupid
You are good/bad
Why can't you be more like _____
Wants to pass judgment

ADULT:
In what ways could this be resolved?
what facts will be used to determine this decision?
I am comfortable/uncomfortable with ________
For me to be comfortable I need the following to occur:
We agree to disagree
The adult voice doesn't have to win or be right

Now the other thing is the different kinds of behaviours. Keep in mind that we are talking about the classroom, but I think that if you use these with your kids as soon as possible they will do better in school because you will have trained them how to react in different situations?
Passive. I loose you win. (-/+) If I make fun of myself and even better do it before you do it won't hurt as much. As long as everyone else is happy I'm ok.
Aggressive. (+/-) pretty much explains itself.
Passive/Aggressive. She described it as a form of Aggressive. (+/-) Won't engage, won't do anything, may roll their eyes. (Sorry mom!) This is the behavior that can take over a classroom!! YIKES
Assertive. (+/+) Agree to Disagree (Sound familiar?) I statements

Make sure that you are careful about using assertive behaviors with Authority, it can come off as aggressive. Assertive means I can listen. And with all of this Body language trumps all!!! Since learning all of this I have tried to be more assertive, Mike has noticed a big difference. Like when he asks me where I want to go for dinner, I tell him what I am thinking of and then we work from there. I used to say, "I don't know." When in all actuality I knew perfectly where I wanted to go but didn't want to tell him. I wanted him to figure it out. That is a combo of the Parent/Child voice and me being passive/aggressive. Make sense?

I think I figured it out

An update for those of you that I have told about the doll that mysteriously showed up on our front porch. I think it came from the neighbors across the street. They are doing some major house cleaning and they more recently left a bag of star wars toys for Henry. He told me about the bag of toys so I am guessing about the doll.

a couple pictures

I think these are my favorite pictures that I got the other night. Isn't it a bad thing when the photographer looks very confused and his wife is also very confused? And don't my guys look so darn cute? (My two in particular)

Don't expect much

Well I am trying this out so that I can have a place to talk about the cute/fun things that happen so maybe I won't focus on the negative so much. And maybe you guys can more easily keep up with our chaos!! Also I hope to be able to share pictures that I take at all sorts of things! Hope you all enjoy.
Some other blogs you can check out are: Corrine's and Monica's