August involved us getting into a regular routine with the new school year, staying busy, and having the weeks fly by.
Ryan progressed in his Kung Fu and earned a yellow with black stripe belt.
He's excited that he's got just one more stripe to earn before he moves on to green belt.
Ryan is really liking his martial arts and is the loudest kid in his
class when doing kiais (the grunt/shout) when punching and such. He has
taken it upon himself to teach his sisters the Short Form of the Tiger,
since he is now an expert at it.
Ryan was pretty excited that the whole family got to come to his belt ceremony, since in the past they've been so late in the evening that the kids are all in bed.
In Safeway shortly after school started, Megan was all excited to be able to get in this bus, since she can't get on the regular bus with the other kids.
For Activity Days, Rachel got to participate in a Recycled Rain-gutter Regatta (in a swimming pool, not rain-gutter).
Rachel built a boat that won first place. She got a pretty sweet trophy out of recycled materials.
Jacob was amused that I was finishing up the last of the ice cream in the big bucket, so snapped a picture.
Megan is my little buddy now for running errands. And she gets the bonuses that the other kids never got. When I had 3-4 kids along to Costco I never would have stopped for pizza afterwards; I would have been exhausted from wrangling them through the store and just gotten to the car and home as fast as I could.
Megan, however, gets the occasional lunch out, and even has gotten to come along on a Mommy/Daddy lunch date when we brought Jacob food at work. She thought it was so cool to go inside his work and eat in one of the kitchens in his building.
Rachel has been wearing fake glasses for several years now. At her last doctor's appointment she couldn't see many of the lines on the eye chart so we scheduled an eye appointment for her. She has a small prescription and was pretty excited to get real glasses.
People at school hardly noticed, though, because she's been wearing glasses off and on for so long already.
Megan, however, noticed and was super jealous. She picked out these glasses as her favorite at the eye store (not surprising, since light blue is her favorite color).
She looked so super cute I was tempted to get them for her. At home she kept running into the couch repeatedly (on purpose) saying, "I can't see! I need glasses!" We finally got out her money from her allowance and found that she had $8, which happened to be the perfect amount to order a pair of fake glasses from amazon.
The glasses have been big winners in Megan's book. Not quite as perfectly fitting as the others, but good enough.
Our ward has an annual family talent show that the kids have participated in the last few years. Annie in particular is always excited about it and planning things out weeks/months in advance. This year they decided to lip sync to "What Makes the Breakfast?" by Mike Phirman.
We had props of lots of the food mentioned for breakfast, and Rachel acted the part of the professor teaching about the sequences of where food comes from. Megan and Ryan got in at the end as the ghosts. It turned out pretty great and lots of people in the ward said how much they enjoyed it and that their kids now have listened to the song over and over.
Megan has started taking a ballet/tap class which she likes sometimes, and other times wishes there was more "real dancing" and less stretching.
But she does like watching videos of herself and always has a good time when she's in class.
Rachel and Annie started this puzzle a while back, and I helped some until the wolves got done, then the girls kind of gave up on it since the background was really hard, so I stepped up my game and got it done (with the girls pitching in again towards the end). It was nice and relaxing.
We had a couple bigger YW activities squeezed into the month of August, as well. We went to the temple as a YW group, commemorating the temple being open for one full year. It was good to be there together. And so nice to be able to go on a mutual day instead of having to plan an entire Saturday for it.
We also had a YW campout planned up on Mt. Lemmon. But the monsoons didn't cooperate, so we changed the plan and camped out in my back yard and the floor of my house. The girls got here and I sent them outside to put up tents. We were just about done with the second tent when the storm started in earnest, so we finished staking it down and headed inside. The girls bonded, played games, and talked a lot, and by the time bedtime had rolled around the thunder and lightning had stopped (but not the rain), so some of the girls went outside to sleep in the tents, while others opted for sleeping inside where it was nice and dry.
And I went upstairs to sleep in my own bed. Definitely the best sleep I've had on a YW campout. :)
The next morning the sun was out, so we headed up the mountain for the second half of our planned activities: rappelling. Most went, and everyone had a good time. I'm glad it all worked out. And glad my husband is willing to go along with it when I offer up my house for a YW takeover.
