10-10-10, I Have A 10 Year Old

Carson turned 10 yesterday. It's kind of weird to think that my first born is already 10, but I am not at all sad about it. The older he gets, the more I learn to appreciate his unique personality and the young man he is becoming.

Carson is such a joy to be around. I was thinking about this the other day....he is NEVER moody. He is ALWAYS happy. If I get after him for doing (or not doing) something, he doesn't hold a grudge. If one of his brothers needs something, he jumps to help without me asking. When I remind him he has chores to be done, he immediately stops whatever he is doing and heads off to finish the task at hand. I love taking him to the grocery store with me because he's an excellent grocery cart driver and he's fun to hang out with. Lately I've been suprised at his comedic timing, he genuinely makes me laugh and not just because he's being "a cute little kid".

And guess what else? He still thinks Mom is cool and fun to hang out with! I know this will end one day so I'm not taking it for granted at all!

For his birthday, we told him he could invite two friends to go to the Aquarium. It was a blast! I haven't been there since the penguins arrived, they were crazy hyper and so much fun to watch! Not surprisingly, Carson spent 80% of the time at the "Bio-Facts Station" learning about tiny sea creatures and touching them. I kept trying to get the kids to touch the Sting Ray's in the huge tank behind them, but they were learning cool stuff like one of the crabs has blue blood. The employee who works at this station should earn "Employee of the Month" because he patiently sat there and answered/entertained all the questions these 9 and 10 year olds fired at him for close to an hour. I just kept laughing and walking back to the penguin tank! Did I mention how cool they were?




It was pretty interesting, as you can see by the look on Cameron's face.


One of the coolest fish: I think it was called four-eyed fish...their eyes sat on the surface of the water. Sam took this obscure picture and I heart it!


Despite Parker having a complete melt-down halfway through the Aquarium (it's hard to understand why Carson was getting all the attention), the trip was a complete success. Cameron must have mentioned "Nemo" at least 684 times while we were there.

Afterwards, we headed back to our house and had pizza and brownies and ice cream. That's right, we loaded the kids up on calories, just so they could then burn them by running through our house afterwards with an awesome game of tag. It was seriously so much fun! I was laughing at how hard they were laughing. I'm telling you, this getting older business suits me just fine!






Happy Birthday Carson, you are now in the Webelos program for scouts. Say a little prayer for me that I can figure out the Webelos book! Shoot, that reminds me, I better go buy one tomorrow!

Speaking of buying things...
Remember our huge tree that blew over in the last windstorm? Well, everything has been cleaned up, except the gaping hole where the tree used to be and about a thousand roots. One root in particular is giving us lots of fits. It's huge, snakes its way on the surface of the ground, and is such a pain to mow the grass around it. We thought if we tied a rope and/or chain around it and had somebody use a truck or something, we could just rip it right out.

Sam called our neighbor, Andrew, and asked if he could help. He has a Jeep with an 8,000 pound winch on the front. Long story short, the rope was in place, the Jeep was positioned, the winch began to perform like it was supposed to. The root started to shudder, shake, and lift when suddenly, **POP**! Uh-oh, that sound came from the Jeep. We look over to Andrew, who looked under the Jeep and discovered a broken axel! Ahhhh, dang (said in the best "Larry the Cable Guy" voice). That stupid root was so strong that it was pulling the Jeep forward, so Andrew put it in Reverse and applied the brakes. At that point, something had to give. The root, or the axel. I'm sad to say the root won the fight and now I need to buy Andrew a new axel. I know there's a religious lesson I can learn here...something about having strong roots, but I'm not in the mood to formulate it right now!

So, next Saturday we are renting a stump grinder and grinding the stupid root into the ground. That'll show 'em!