Mother's Day

This year I was lucky enough to have my Mum up for Mother's day.
She's awesome. 
The older I get, the more I wish I'd listened to her, and the more I want to be like her.
So patient, so positive, so diligent, so willing to sacrifice, so firm in her testimony, so sure of her values, so much love for her children.
She doesn't do anything grand, just quietly goes about doing the right thing.
My kids adore her.
She's the only other person that Vili will go to happily.



She probably won't like that picture, but it totally illustrates her. She sits and reads to them for hours.

The day before Mother's day my boys took me out to eat.  It was sooooooooooooo nice not to cook!  I had probably the best chicken burger and fries ever, even better then Cheesecake factory, and that's saying alot!









I love being a mother to these little people. It's the most rewarding thing I have ever done, and there is no other way I'd rather spend my time then being their Mum.

I'm so glad there's a day when we can specifically appreciate our mothers, and recieve a little appreciation ourselves!

And then there were 2 - Part 2

So the day after John's graduation we had a family dinner in his honor.
And I made him a cake.
Once again my creative abilities didn't live up to my creative imagination = it didn't quite turn out the way I wanted it to.  I take my hat off (no pun intended) to anyone who does cake decorating, it is so much harder then it looks!!!
But at least they could tell what it was meant to be.
Plus, it was made out of cadbury chocolate, so I don't think they would have cared what it looked like, coz it tasted good.


Yay for you John.



After seeing the cake and discovering the solid chocolate graduation cap, my oldest brother announced that next month the mayor would be awarding him his official master builders certificate, and that he now required a cake just like it!  Being a builder, I think I have something else up my sleeves for him.....

Something old, something new

Our old camera was discovered and revived recently, which I'm really happy about because my big mumma camera doesn't do video.
On it we found an old video of Malachi when he was about 14 months old.  It's crazy to see how much he's changed, and how much he hasn't.  He still does the same thing with his legs, kicking like crazy, and does that same angry face too.  I miss his little golden curls.





There was also a video of Malachi about 20 months old, dancing with his buddy Rhythm.



And then there's a new video of little Vili following daddy around.  He has really started to move it.

There were 3 in the bed...

Vili still sleeps in our bed.
Every night.
He always starts in his bed, but when he wakes up I'm way too tired to feed him and put him back, or rock him back to sleep, so he just comes and sleeps with me.
I don't blame him.  Why would you wanna sleep all alone in your cold crib when you could snuggle close with your Mumma all night?!
I know that some people have very strong opinions about co-sleeping, think its dangerous etc (I've decided that if that was the case then mankind would have died off coz that's how we've slept for thousands of years.).
Sometime I wish he would stay in his bed.
But most time I love it.
Because I can't even begin to list all the special little moments we've had with him in there in our bed with us, moments we would have missed out on if he was in his bed crying himself to sleep.
And I treasure those little moments.

Like last night, he was moaning and groaning and I thought it was his teeth hurting him, until he sits up and lets rip a few loud ones - he just had gas..  Then he looks to his Daddy and grinned the biggest grin, as if to say "Did you hear me Dad? That was awesome!" And then the two of them rolled around and laughed about his little man noises.  It was precious.



I love my little boy.
He'll be 1 next month.
Crazy.

And then there were 2

Today the "Brunton Family Uni Graduates" club welcomed its newest member (I'm the president, and only other member lol) - John! He graduated from Waikato University with a Bachelor of Arts in Japanese and Physical Science.  He's still studying at the moment doing his teaching diploma, with the goal of teaching Japanese and PE at high school.  John served his mission in Japan, so what a blessing to be able to use that language to help him graduate.








It actually was a really odd ceremony to watch, so different from what I'm used to at BYUH - people with giant beards, blue mohawks (i kid you not!), no signs, no inflatable rings, no Apostle speaker, no leis (other then the ones we made for John), it was almost un-celebratory, made me kinda sad. But their gowns were way cooler then ours.











Probably the best part of the day was coming back to find this.....





Nothing says "Congratulations" like a fine!

T minus 19

(I actually have no idea what that whole t-minus thing is, but im sure rocket people say it....right???)

In 19 weeks, I'm going to run a half marathon.

Not a full marathon.

Calm down.

Just a half marathon.

21km.

13 miles.

My sister in law and I are doing it together, inspired by my brother, her husband.

Training has begun.

It's hard.

I die.

But I'm gunna do it.

Thinking about it now, it sounds a little insane, who the heck pays money to run that far? 
It's as crazy as paying money to give birth in the states - insane-o!

Mostly it'll be a mental battle, putting mind over matter, developing self disciple, something I seriously struggle with.

But here goes.

T minus 19 weeks......

Joseph

So this week we have started looking after Joseph.  His family are refugees from Colombia.  He speaks mostly spanish, a little english, and he is just an awesome kid.  His mum is going to school to learn english, so he's going to be coming to play with us for a few hours every day.  Although I'm glad we can help Luz out, the real reason for him coming is so that the money can help to pay for Malachi to go to a Montesorri Preschool, starting June.  In NZ preschool, and all school, is free.  But ever since I visiteda  Montesorri school, I've been impressed that it's the place Malachi could really thrive.  I could go on forever about it, but I'll just say that I'm hoping it will help him develop a self-directed motivation to learn that will set him up for life. And Joseph is going to help fund that.



So he'll be part of many of our posts, in all our pictures I guess.  Malachi had loved having him come, someone big enough to play soccer with.  His family aren't members so I'm hoping we can teach them a little about eternal families too, coz who doesn't wanna know about that?!!