Love This Kid

Already my second son has entered the year of preparing for the priesthood.  Wow.

Brandon is an incredible person.
He is friendly and easy to get along with.  He will play with anyone, girls, boys, all ages.
He has a lot of faith.  He has already learned to take his problems to the Lord. 
He owns his mistakes, and is not afraid to talk to us about questionable situations.
He is wonderfully cheerful, funny, creative and artistic.
He cares more about people than things.  This was true for him even as a toddler.  He was always willing to give up his toy to Nathan in order to keep peace or keep the game going. 
He is a hard worker, and enjoys doing physical labor.  He likes to get up and get his chores done first thing.
He has handsome blue eyes and a charming smile.

Today he turned 11.
We started the celebration yesterday since Dallin had the day off.
We had bagels and mangoes for breakfast. (His 2 favorite foods)
He got to work on finishing some Webelos projects with Dallin.
We all went to the mall and ate at Subway in the food court.  We did some window shopping and stopped at the treehouse playland for the little kids to enjoy. 
We've been on the lookout for some youth sized ties for awhile, so we stepped into the tie store.  They had a whole wall of youth-sized ties.  Guess which one he picked?
Solid lime green satin. 
Another thing I like about him is that he likes what he likes and he doesn't need others to agree with it.  He likes things that are different, interesting, unusual.  He loves trying new things.
We spent some time in the Thomas Kinkade gallery.
We stopped at the Krispy Kreme donut factory on our way home to redeem some Valentines we got from a cousin. 
I love factories.  I could sit and watch that machine make donuts for hours. 
It was my first sugary treat in weeks, and it was too sweet! Do you think they'd let me try one without glaze next time? 
Then we stopped at WalMart because he really wanted a new scooter for his present and the ones at the mall were the wrong color (red and blue).  He said he wanted Black or Green.  I was disappointed when the only ones they had a t Walmart were hot pink. 
He was thrilled.  "NOBODY I know has this color!"
So today I bought my son a lime green tie and a hot pink scooter. 
He also got a bag of beef jerkey and Ruby bought him a bag of Doritos. 
He went to Nathan's tournament game with Nathan and Dallin. 

Today he got to go to school on his birthday, which was very fun.
We had burritos for dinner which he ate on the red plate.
For dessert: Fruit pizza on a home made graham cracker crust.  Yum!

Happy Birthday, Brandon!


Besides my awesome kid, I am thankful today for some other things.
I'm thankful that I didn't feel as awful as I thought I would when I woke up.  Getting the kids off to school wasn't so bad.  (Yes, I'm on round 2.  I hope that means the plague is almost over.)
When I got home, I was able to study for awhile while my 2 little ones played nicely together. 
Simon played quietly while Sarajoy napped and I actually got some sleep.
My visiting teacher came and got them for me after that, so I had a couple of hours uninterupted.
Dallin was able to get off work early and bring the kids home.
He and the kids made dinner.
He and the kids did the dishes. 
Thank You.