Baptism

Josh was baptized on Saturday, Sept 29th.  He was so excited.  He had been talking about this for weeks and we had already done FHE about it and even practiced the whole immersion thing.  He loves to have people over for BBQ's and parties so he planned out the menu and made sure that I knew exactly what he wanted.  I was ok with it though.  You can't get much easier than nachos with brownies and ice cream for dessert.  I thought it was super funny though that he made sure I knew he wanted brownies and ice cream, but when he went to get his dessert, he didn't want any brownies.  Strange.
Continuing on....the morning of his baptism he was pretty nervous and I assured him that everything would be ok and that he could practice with Mike before the actual event.  Unfortunately everything kind of just happened and he didn't get to practice before we arrived at the church but he then said that it was ok, so we went with it.  The baptism was great.  It was so good to see all of my family there (minus those who thought driving cross country was a little much for a 1/2 hr event.)

Brad and Misty gave him a baptism book to write down his feelings and thoughts about the day.  He didn't get much down but I'll share what's there.

When I was baptized by immersion, I felt scared because everyone in my family was in front of me and I wasn't ready because I didn't practice.  Also felt happy.

The water felt hot.

When I was washed clean from all my sins, I felt happy and hot.

When the priesthood holders laid their hands upon my head to give me the gift of the Holy Ghost, I felt weird. Why? Because it was just so heavy to have their hands on me and to be sitting in that big circle.

After the confirmation was complete and I had received the gift of the Holy Ghost, I felt happy.

He also wrote down his testimony:

SEP and Other News

I just got back from Josh's SEP and it was....ok.  Mrs. W. had all the kids fill out their own report  card, so to speak, and rate themselves on how they were doing in different areas of the class.  She said that Josh's has been the most accurate so far.  I guess that's a good thing.  He gave himself mostly 2's and 3's out of 4.  In spelling he's getting an 81%, writing 80%, math 93%, reading 69%, language arts 84% and homework 100%. 

She said that he's a little bit behind on reading which is weird because she had told me that he was on grade level at the beginning of the year.  I told her that and she looked through her records and said that it showed he was behind.  Oh well, not that it really matters.  It just means that I felt really good about his reading for a month and a half, no big deal.  Part of the reason that he's low in reading is because he doesn't always read what's on the page.  If it says "what is..." he'll say "what's".  It's frustrating because it doesn't change the meaning but he still gets marked down because that's not what's written.  Mrs. W also said that he's doing a better job listening but he's still struggling.  She mentioned that sometimes she'll be in front of the class talking and he'll be lost in his own world with his hands as guns shooting things.  I completely understand. Overall though, she's happy with where he's at and says that he's a great kid who gets along well with others and is kind. 

Now onto the weather....
Josh was so excited to see it hailing outside today.

In other news...
Josh started Wrestling yesterday!  I know, I know.  Gross, right?  2 of Mike's younger brothers  wrestled in HS and I refused to go watch them.  I just could not stomach watching guys roll around on a mat with nothing but a very revealing singlet on.  Blah.  So when one of Josh's cousins tried out wrestling a few years ago I was thrilled that Josh had NO desire to join him.  I was also excited when that said cousin only did one year of it and then decided he didn't like it.  I was sure I was in the clear.  Unfortunately, the stinking school sent home a flier announcing wrestling and Josh begged me to sign him up.  I deferred to Mike, hoping he would see how ridiculous of a request this was and say no, thereby making him the bad guy and me the innocent mom.  But...he said yes.   Darn him!  This is Josh after his very first practice yesterday.

Carving Pumpkins and Randomness

First the randomness.

The other day I asked Josh to please bring the recycling bin back up to the house after the garbage man had come.  It was a windy day and after a while Josh came back in and said "I can't do it.  The wind is too heavy, the recycling bin fell on me."

Josh was trying to tell me how long it took to do something and he said "It probably took 1 min less than 1/2 an hour."

The other day we were in the car and my legs were hurting (stupid RSL).  I kept changing positions until Mike asked what was wrong.  "My legs are killing me" I said.
Josh, thinking I was talking about my legs being asleep, chimed in saying "I know what you mean.  It's like their snores are all poky."
I laughed because I thought that was a great way to describe  how your legs feel when they're asleep but since that wasn't what was going on I said "No, my legs are just retarded."
To which Josh replies, "Don't you mean tired?"

Carving Pumpkins
Last week Josh went on a field trip to a corn maze.  He had a great time.  The first thing he asked me when he got home though was "Who are you going to vote for?"  Where did that come from?  Evidently at the maze you could either pick to go through Obama or Romney.  I told him who I was going to vote for and he said that's who he was voting for too.  Good kid.  Anyway, at the end they were all able to pick out a pumpkin to take home.  Josh had started prepping me the day before saying that he was going to bring home a surprise from his field trip but that he wouldn't tell me what it was.  I didn't have the heart to tell him that I'd been on enough of those field trips to know that he'd be bringing home a pumpkin.  He even carried it all the way home in his backpack so that I couldn't accidentally catch a glimpse of it.  It was pretty cute.

As soon as he got it home he wanted to carve it.  Normally I would have put it off and thought of a million and one things that we needed to do instead of this but after looking at the hopeful look on his face, I helped him get everything ready so he could carve it.  It wasn't really that bad, it's just the thought of it that seems hard.  Last time we did this, he didn't like touching all the 'guts' so this time I told him that there was no way I was doing it by myself and if he wasn't going to help, then we weren't going to carve the pumpkin.  He agreed to help and we were soon finished cleaning it all out.  I had him draw on the pumpkin where he wanted everything to go and how he wanted it to look and then I figured I'd have to do the carving.   But he got the carving knife out and with barely any assistance from me, carved his very first pumpkin all by himself.

I forgot to get a picture of his actually Jack-o-lantern until it had already turned all moldy but here it is anyway.