My little drummer boy

Click here for video.

In case you missed it...

Here's a better link to Atticus and the Avengers. James got the Hawkeye doll from a crane machine. He has a knack for those things...

Garden! Yeah, so it doesn't look like much NOW...

 Petit gris melons, Mortgage Lifter tomatoes, and Amish Paste tomatoes

 Atticus gave me a variety of flowers to plant for Mothers' Day.

 Garden boxes (and seriously pruned roses): front box has strawberries, nasturtiums (another gift from Atticus/preschool), arugula, and spinach. Back box is all bush beans.

 Basil and more flowers; parsley

Cilantro and flowers; thyme and flowers. I think the orange ones are my favorite of the bunch.

Mothers' Day Outing

I celebrated Mothers' Day with my mom on Saturday. My sister Erin and I took her out to lunch and to see the Avengers. Good times... So Sunday was celebrated just with us Bennetts.

Our church schedule moved to the afternoon, so after sleeping in and breakfast and some gospel study/VeggieTales time, we still had three hours to kill before we needed to be at church. I didn't have the heart to put on another video or read another conference talk, so I suggested we go for a drive up to the Temple Quarry. 

The weather was gorgeous, and with most other Mormons in morning church, we were practically the only ones there. I love this picture of Atticus. I was trying to get a sweet father-son-walking photo, but Atticus had to pose. 

 He was really excited to climb on the rocks.

It was a good start to Mothers' Day. Church wasn't overly sappy, and the men provided ice cream sundaes as our gift. The Primary sang songs I'd never heard, but Atticus looked cute doing it. A friend took a picture to prove to his friend how small our Primary is, and if he ever sends me a copy, I'll post it.

[Completely unrelated note: Our building is being renovated, so we are temporarily using the historic 10th ward chapel, built in 1853. It's a gorgeous Scandinavian-style chapel with intricate woodwork and stained glass and a pipe organ. President Hinckley attended church here as a boy. Our chorister is a 75-year-old black woman from Chicago who likes to wear Indian-style outfits. I told her after the meeting that watching her leading the music in that pioneer chapel wearing a bright yellow kurti and pants, I was struck by the fact that she is also a pioneer, a new kind of pioneer. Everything comes full circle, and it was totally awesome (for lack of a better word) to witness.]

After church James grilled pork chops (with his signature soy-garlic marinade), which we ate with artichokes and salad, both with a lemon-mustard vinaigrette. SO YUMMY! I also made my favorite super-rich brownies, which we ate while watching the latest Sherlock.

A very good day.

More nerdiness

Star Wars is another Atticus obsession this week. He's read the picture books and knows all the characters, but this week we finally watched the movie (Episode IV).

Atticus this morning: Mama, what does "hoo-pah" mean?
Me: Hoo-pah?
Atticus: It's what Darth Vader says when he's breathing.

Yesterday, while looking at the picture book of Annikin from Episode III:
Atticus: Does Annikin take a shower?
Me: Um, probably. I hadn't thought about it.
Atticus: What does he do with his robot hand? Does it get wet?

Such imponderables. I love my little nerdling. :)

My son is a nerd genius.

I don't know how to embed video, and James only uploaded it to Facebook, so see if you can get it from my wall.

Turn that frown upside down

So I woke up this morning feeling worn out. Not sure why. I'd had weird dreams, which never helps, and somewhere between sorting laundry and listening to Atticus pout because he couldn't get his pee back from the sewer, I felt myself start to collapse inside. I'm not going to make it today.

So I got on my knees and prayed, Father, be my strength today, because I just don't have any. Then I had this conversation with myself:

So I put on my gym clothes and got Atticus and his friend to school on time, then hit the gym. I decided I'd skip the step class and just do 30 minutes on the elliptical, if that--getting there was an accomplishment, so I didn't need to go full-bore. But after I got there and on the machine, I started feeling pretty good. I pushed myself up to higher resistance on the machine, and afterward I felt good enough to do weights, squats, and abs. I felt great when I left. 

Came home, made a healthy kale-berry-whey smoothie, put in some laundry and took a shower. Complete turnaround. I wouldn't say that today was hyper productive, but I washed AND PUT AWAY four loads of laundry, had a healthy lunch, did the dishes, and paid the bills. So I also had a couple bowls of ice cream and we had pb&j for dinner, but oh well. Can't expect greatness every day...

Today could have gone a very different way, and I'm grateful to my Heavenly Father that it didn't. It's a lot easier to "just do it" with His help.