Updates

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted anything.  I'm sorry to announce that "Doomsday" never did happen.  It was a communication error between Mike and I (but mostly Mike) that lead to a spur of the moment discussion about Santa on the way home one Sunday night.  I know I just told it at dessert Sunday 4 days ago but I no longer remember the details.  If you want an accurate account, you'll have to ask Mike.  If you want a mostly accurate account, ask Jake, he was the first person I told.  If you just want the gist of it, then ask anyone that was at Mom's on Sunday.  Suffice it to say, he handled it very well and is ok with it all.  I told him today, jokingly, "I hope the Easter Bunny brings you something good in your basket this year."
He gets a silly grin on his face and says "I can't believe that you STILL believe in him even after you told me that he wasn't real!"  Yeah, I'm kind of fickle like that.

Josh decided that he wanted to do baseball this year so he and Mike have been practicing throwing, catching and batting almost every day.  Josh loves to bat.  He's not a big fan of throwing and catching but he's getting better at it.

 I love his right hand in this one.

He caught all of those balls!  Gideon loves playing too, even though it's mostly a monkey in the middle game for him.  Poor guy.  He does get to see some action though when Mike hits it into the field behind our house.  There is a barb wire fence there so we just let Gideon fetch those balls for us.  It works out pretty good.  One night Josh asked me if I was going to go out with them while he hit.  He was almost begging me to go out.  I started to feel pretty good that he wanted me to go and play with them so badly until he said "Please Mom?  We need someone to get the balls when I miss them."  Great, thanks. 

There was a gem and rock show in our town this past weekend and Josh really wanted to go.  We went last year and he had some of his own money and was able to buy a grab bag of rocks and also this huge red "diamond" which is not real, but he thinks it is.  Anyway, when he asked if we could go, I said yes, but then asked him if he had any money.  He said no and I told him that he wouldn't be able to buy anything then.  He quickly agreed and said that it was ok and that he still wanted to go.  I had my doubts to how he would really feel once he saw all the gems and rocks but I made up my mind that I was not going to buy him anything or 'spot' him any money.  I feel strongly that he needs to only buy what he has the money to afford at the time.  Good practice for when he grows up.
So we get to the rock show and as we're walking in, I remind him that I'm not buying him anything.  That's when the water works started.  "But mom! Last year you bought me the grab bag and I thought you were going to do it again this year."
"No, last year you had your own money and bought the bag yourself."
He didn't believe it and tried to keep arguing about it but I wouldn't budge.  "I'm not going to buy you anything" I told him, "but if you want to earn some money, I'd be more than happy to give you some chores and then bring you back tomorrow when you have money to spend."  He whined and cried about it for a while before he let me talk him into walking around to see how much things cost so he could figure out how much money he needed to earn.  The grab bag was $1 and it was so hard not to just buy it for him and have him pay me back later.  He finally decided on a shark tooth and a grab bag and something else.  The total was $6.  We went home and I gave him a list of options.  One of the options was to run around the block for a quarter.  He asked if a friend could do it with him and I said that was fine.  He ran next door and got his friend Wes and they started going around the block.  During that time they figured out they would need to go around the block 24 times.
After the first block, Josh asked if I could make them a snow cone after they've gone around 10 times.  I said that would be fine.  By the time they came around the second time, Josh asked if I could make them the snow cones right now, because it was so hot.  Brother.  He made it around a total of 4 times before he decided that he wanted to finish earning his money the next morning because he really wanted to play the Wii right then instead.  He never did finish earning anymore money and didn't bring the rock show up again.