Tautphaus Park Zoo

Today Braxton and I went to the zoo with Nana Davis. She took today off to watch Paige and Tyler. Nana thought it would be fun to all go to the zoo together. Aunt Korrie, Kaytlin and Gracie came too!













What a great idea Nana! Braxton loves to be with his cousins and I think all the kids had a great time. I, however, am exhausted after trying to keep track of 5 children under the age of 6 - the sad thing is, my mom and Korrie were there... so I wasn't even doing it alone (I'm a wimp)! Maybe it was just watching them with their endless amounts of energy!

It was a lot of fun watching the kids get excited about the animals. Braxton especially loved the monkeys, of course. We actually got to see quite a few animals moving around: the Serval (an African wildcat) was walking around, the Turtles and Flamingos with their babies...

I was also able to capture some super cute snapshots of the kids. Here are two of my favorites from today. The rest of the photos are on Snapfish, in the Braxton 2008 group room.

Braxton chewing on his cheese stick.

Gracie in the egg... doesn't she just look so sweet in this picture? This is my favorite photo of the day!

Camping in the Backyard

Can I just say again how much fun it is to be a mommy?

I love watching John and Braxton together.

They are so sweet - John has got to be the best daddy in the whole world! Last Friday, John set up the tent in our backyard. He thought it would be fun for a camp-out (I was thinking it was a good idea to check out the tent and make sure it was still in good condition since we will be using it this coming weekend).

Anyway - Braxton loved it! So much so, that at 11pm I brought him back into the house to sleep in his crib. He absolutely would not settle down! He kept looking for the dogs, and mauled them, and then he would bounce around on the air mattress.... He was in no mood for sleeping!

Braxton is already a little reader. He read quite a few books in the tent sitting on the air mattress.

I Love Being a Mom!

So during a conversation today at lunch, I realized just how much I love being a mom and how important it is to me to be a good one! My I mention that Braxton was an absolute angel at lunch! It was a two hour long lunch with my VT (visiting teaching) partner, Miriah, and one of the ladies we VT, Kari. Miriah and I like to take the ladies that we VT to lunch for their birthdays.
It was so much fun, and such good food at Jakers!


During the lunch, we were discussing each other's good qualities (one thing I love about these women, is they are so nice!). Miriah mentioned how much I seem to read educational books - like parenting or gospel related books. She said that she liked to "lazy read" - which apparently means reading books that are just purely for pleasure and you don't learn much from them - I like to read those too! Anyway, she was asking me about why I read so many of those types of books... and after thinking about it, I replied "My goal in this life is to be the best possible mom I can be. I don't want Braxton to be screwed up because of me!"

And it's the absolute truth. I love being a mom, and I love learning how I can be a better mom. I am by no means perfect, nor will I be, but I like to give it a good shot! Now, don't think that I take everything I read and turn it into gospel - I certainly do NOT do that, otherwise I'd be changing my game plan every second of every day! But, I do take things into consideration and try to do what is best for Braxton and for me.

One month for book club we read "Parenting with Love and Logic" It is one of the best books that I have found on parenting. It is amazing how much I learned about myself - how I would be parenting, and how I wanted to parent (which by the way are completely opposite!). I don't necessarily follow everything in the book, but I do remember a lot of things from it that have really helped me.

At book club, one of the seminar leaders came and talked to us about the "love and logic way." It was awesome! I also found out recently that my sister-in-law, Brenda, has starting using this method on her own children, and has had good success with it. And my other sister-in-law, Natalie went to a seminar for teachers, "Teaching with Love and Logic." It makes me feel good that people I know are using and enjoying it too!

After book club, I went to the library and checked out the book related to early childhood - the toddler years. It was awesome, and has helped me to deal with issues (such as Braxton hitting me) in a much better way than I could have thought of on my own. If you are interested in learning more about this, check out their website: http://www.loveandlogic.com/

These are the books that I have read.

The synopsis: "The tools in Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood will give you the building blocks you need to create children who grow up to be responsible, successful teens and adults."







The synopsis: "Raise children who are self-confident, motivated, and ready for the real world with this win-win approach to parenting. Your children will win because they’ll learn to solve their own problems while gaining the confidence they need to meet life’s challenges. And you’ll win because you’ll establish healthy control—without resorting to anger, threats, nagging or exhausting power struggles. Parenting with Love and Logic puts the fun back into parenting!"