Life...ah, life.

Forgive me...I don't know how to turn this photo, but it is very cute. Just turn your head to the side a bit...there you go.....
As you can see, this a very random post due to how long it has been. Here we have a picture of dad with son #1 and dad with son #2. Yes, Jaron broke his arm when Mommy (yours truly) was playing chase with him in the house and he fell off the back side of the couch. His cast has since been removed but his arm still looks a bit like a piece of macaroni. The doctor assured me that it would grow straight, but I massage it every night.
As for life, we are currently in a condo, Jaron just finished his semester at ASU West with A's and B's, which is impressive seeing that he works full time now. We live a mile away from campus currently, but we have been trying for several months to buy a house without success (have you ever had two boys and no backyard? Ahhh!), so please pray for us in that regard. You wouldn't believe how much red tape there is now. It is nearly impossible to get a reasonably-priced house at all in AZ these days, unless you are an investor and you pay cash. So complicated, but I don't feel like explaining why (just trust me).

As of my last post we have paid off Jaron's drywall business in its entirety, Jaron got a job (and he likes it! Yay!) working full-time for a fire sprinkler engineer, and Jaron graduated with his Associates degree from Eastern AZ College just last month. It took us six years to get that degree. That diploma meant a lot more to us than a piece of paper, or even what he learned during the years he went to school there. It meant triumph; it represented something that, at one time, we thought we could never have the opportunity to have. When we were living in that trailer and deep in business debt, we wondered if we would ever be able to dig our way out. School at that time was out of the question. There was no time (he had to work) and no money (he wasn't making any). We thought that the opportunity to finish school would be forever lost to us. But we hoped, and we prayed, and we made some tough choices, and then we worked and hoped and prayed some more. And miracle of miracles, we paid the price, lived like paupers, family helped us and gave us cheap places to live while we got on our feet, and here we are now: I am at home with my kids, Jaron has a job with benefits and he is working towards a Bachelors degree, and although life isn't everything we had ever hoped at this point, we try to remain grateful for what we have right now and are for what our trials have taught us.

Here are some tid bits about the kiddos that may make you smile:

Jaron sings the main theme from Beethoven’s 5^th Symphony regularly. (Bah bah bah bah, bah bah bah bah, bah bah bah bah!) Pretty impressive. Today Stephen was picking up the tune and “bopping” in the pool alongside him.

Stephen gets really frustrated with me sometimes when I don’t respond to his needs right away. He will start out with, “Mooooommmeeee…. Mooooommmeeee……. MooooommmeeeeMooooommmeeee……….MOM!” He said “popcorn” this week.

Jaron likes to grab things away from Stephen lately, so they end up loosing toys when they get me involved in their fights. Jaron also gets pretty frustrated with Stephen when he is trying to get him to play with him and Stephen grunts his typical response, “Uh, uh.” (He is rather disagreeable lately)

“Stephen do it!”

“Uh, uh.”

“Stephen, play with me!”

“Uh, uh.”

“STEPHEN!”

“Uh…”

POW!

(siren cry)

Me: Jaron, you can’t control Stephen. You just do what you want to do and maybe he will want to play with you too.

Jaron: But I want to control Stephen.

Hmmm…sounds like someone I know.

Yesterday I asked Jaron after he watched Cinderella, “Jaron, are you a pince?” He replied, “No-oh! I’m a kid!”

Jaron is very protective of his brother and pulls him away from the edges of pools, the parking lot, etc., much to Stephen’s dismay. I have to reassure Jaron that Stephen is alright, and that I am watching him, but it is sweet that he is so concerned and willing to help me. One of the lines I hear most around the house is “Mom, look at Stephen!” Several times, on my not-so-good days, I have retorted with, “I don’t want to look at Stephen! Can you just stop him!?”…dreading what I will find. Sometimes Jaron does stop him. I will hear squealing and walk in to find Jaron pulling Stephen by the arm away from whatever damage he was trying to commit. Stephen broke several of my glass animals…some of them my favorites…last week. Unfortunately, I also got upset with Jaron for being a stander-by. Maybe that is why he often makes an effort to be the “ Stephen police” now. Stephen likes to run away from the table after meals without washing his hands. He likes to get into trouble, generally speaking. Last week my Mom was watching Stephen and she said that he kept trying to turn off her computer when she was working. She finally snapped at him and he got that trembling pouty-face look, like he does when he is really sorry, and buried his head in the couch. I know that I should be sad for him when he does this but it is so dang cute I have to fight myself not to smile.