Fall Break

We are 2/3 of the way through the kids' fall break. The first few days I put the kids to work to clean out their rooms and clothes and got a big stack of stuff to donate. Rachel complained, "I thought Fall Break would be more fun and relaxing. Like I'd get to sit around and read books all day." We got around to that eventually. :)

We kicked off Fall Break with a movie night on our big projector screen. Annie has been wanting to invite just her friends over for a while, and it was her turn to choose the movie for movie night, so we let her choose friends to invite over, too. Luckily her friends' families had kids of other ages, so the other kids got one or two of their friends to come, too.

Monday morning we went out to Dunkin' Donuts. Rachel has been earning beans for practicing piano and she had earned 50 beans, which is enough to buy a trip to Dunkin' Donuts. It was a good way to kick off Fall Break.

Annie has been begging to go to Open Gym at the gymnastics place for weeks, but it is during school. And it is just for kids 5 and under, so this break is her last chance to go before she turns 6. 

 She had a good time, as did Ryan and Megan. They spend most of their time in the foam pit. Rachel had a Grandma date since she couldn't go to open gym. She was a little jealous of the other kids, but had a fun time watching a movie with Grandma.

Ryan had kicked many holes in his door when he was in his big tantrum phase when he was 3 (and a little into age 4). He wanted a new door so bad, but the deal was that he had to go several months without a tantrum where we had to lock him in his room before we would get him a new door. He finally accomplished that (he's been much better the last 5 or 6 months or so), so we bought a door and painted it. He wanted to paint it green, so the inside of his door is green. The outside is white to match the other doors in the loft.
I had the brilliant idea to hang the door myself. I had watched the door installer hang like 5 doors at our old house when they had to be replaced, and had an idea of what had to be done (cut off a little from the bottom, and use a dremel to cut out the divots for the hinges). It took a LONG time to get it good enough. Then I went to hang it and it was too wide, so I had to cut the side, then do the hinges all over again. Then sand down the corner so it would close smoothly. Eventually I got it done well enough, but 4-5 hours is much longer than I had planned to spend on it.
Anyway, while I was out in the garage working the saw and router the guy who lives diagonal from us apparently had some health issue and 2 ambulances and a fire truck showed up. The kids were excited to see them and the firefighter that was left outside to keep an eye on the truck invited the kids to climb in.

 It was a little awkward when I looked up from taking this picture to see the neighbor being wheeled out to the ambulance. I waved, like "thanks for calling these guys out here so my kids could have fun," then got the kids and headed back home to let him suffer in private in the back of the ambulance.

We went to the zoo for our first real outing of fall break.

 Fun was had, animals were seen.

 The first weekend of October we were happy to enjoy General Conference. As per our new tradition that we started in April, we went on a bike ride/picnic in between Saturday's conference sessions. It was pretty nice weather and the kids went farther than we ever have gone before.

 During conference the kids did a pretty good job listening and coloring their packets I had printed out for them.

 Sunday afternoon they started to lose interest (apparently sitting for 8 hours is asking a bit much). Rachel built this awesome tower.

 The other kids spent a lot of the session playing outside, though Annie was so into taking notes when the apostles were talking that she made sure to come check intermittently and whenever an apostle was talking she would listen long enough to find something to write down in her notebook.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday Rachel and Annie were able to attend a Fall Break camp put on by a couple teenage sisters that used to be in our stake, whose dad works with Jacob. The first hour was gymnastics, the second hour was arts and crafts.

 The girls had a blast and are hoping they do it again for Spring Break.

Wednesday afternoon we went to the International Wildlife Museum. Grandma Knight was able to come with us, too.

 In all the years we've lived here I've never been there. It was pretty cool.

 They had some cool displays of predators taking down, or stalking their prey. This was one of my favorites.

 You really can go snipe hunting. The bird to Rachel's left at head height is a snipe.

 Ahh! The jaguar is eating his finger!

 Megan wouldn't go near the alligator until Grandma carried her.

 This was one of my favorite rooms. It had so many animals, and some were HUGE. Those bears were amazing.

 Ryan liked the giraffe.

 Rachel in giraffe jail:

 The alligator is eating me. And Annie sits there calmly, not even caring that I'm being eaten alive. ;)

 There goes Rachel, being eaten alive, too.

 Rachel realized that this mountain sheep was just the right height for her to have horns.

 Of course Annie and Ryan had to follow suit.

 We've been to the library a couple of times, the kids have gotten to watch more TV than they usually get to, and we've been in pajamas for a good portion of most mornings. Overall, it's been a good break so far.

 One more week to go.

September update

So, here we are in October. Between my calling at church working Young Women's, and preschool/kindergarten schedules, volunteering at school, helping with the Teacher Appreciation committee, and whatever else has been going on I have felt super busy the last few months. Looking back through pictures there's not all that much to show for it, so it must be mostly regular old day-to-day stuff keeping things crazy. 

I this year with one in kindergarten and one in preschool, and the youngest still on a nap schedule I feel like my mornings are completely shot. I had gotten used to having a good 2 hour block twice a week where I could get stuff done child-free while Ryan and Annie were at preschool and Megan was napping. Now on preschool days we get Rachel and Annie on the bus, an hour later take Ryan to preschool, an hour later put Megan down for her nap, an hour later meet Annie getting off the bus, an hour later, Ryan gets home from preschool. I can squeeze in mopping occasionally, or a quick shot at working on a project I don't want the kids to see (birthday present for Annie I've been working on), but I've had to just switch out of my mindset from last year of saving projects for when no kids would interrupt because that just doesn't happen. 

Is it bad that I'm already counting down until next July when Ryan will be in kinder all morning and Megan will be in preschool twice a week? Less than 10 months to go! Apparently I'm not one of those "Oh, my baby is growing up too fast!" kind of moms. I still love them, even if I am excited to send them off to school. It's great for them AND for me! :) 

Anyway, I did manage to get one project done that has been waiting since April. The kids have poked holes in the leather seats of our dining chairs, so they needed to be recovered. I found this fabric at Hancock's going out of business sale and got a huge bolt for like $4. It was a steal.

 Covering them was pretty darn easy, which is good because even with a ton of scotch guard the bench is starting to get stains all over and I'm going to have to redo it in the not too distant future, I imagine. But I do like how they turned out.

Grandpa Knight saved their printer that quit working for Ryan to take apart. It's like he knows this kid. You know the Dilbert comic, "The Knack." That's totally Ryan.

 Ryan loved finding the motors and everything and they managed to hook up the wires from one of the motors to a battery and he could see the gears turn and everything. Totally made his day.

We went to this awesome thrift store to look for a bench and Halloween costumes. Ryan fell in love with a Buzz Lightyear costume and Megan wanted to try one one, too.

 Megan didn't last long, so I didn't get her one because I didn't think she'd wear it, but when we got home with Ryan wearing his she asked "where's mine?" Oops. Should have gotten it. She'll be a puppy for Halloween instead and will love it, I'm sure.

These wigs were pretty darn awesome.

 We ended up getting a bunch of stuff there because the place is going out of business and everything was 75% off, so most of the stuff was $1, or at most $2.

 Me:

 Annie thought we should surprise Rachel when she got home from school.

 Here's an awesome picture for everyone to enjoy:

 I changed out the floater/filler thingy (I'm pretty sure that's the technical term) all by myself. I'm feeling pretty handy these days. :)

Ryan's racing goggles:

 He's super fast on any bike he gets on, so apparently these come in handy. He loves bike rides and would go on one every day if I would make the time. We do go several times a week, however. And he rides in the back yard all the time.

Megan has hit that awesome stage of 2-year-olds where she has figured out how to make people laugh. She is a ham. One of her recent favorites is to put a bucket on her head and tell everyone in a robot voice: "I am an astronaut. I am an astronaut." It's hilarious.

 Grandma and Grandpa Campbell came down Labor Day weekend. Annie had been asking just the week before when they would come visit and when we told her they'd be her for Thanksgiving she said, "That's too far away!" Then all of a sudden they had plans to come to Arizona and they got to come stay for a couple days. It was great.

 Lots of games were played.

 Occasionally there are moments when everyone is happy to be siblings and there is peace in the house. Rachel took it upon herself to read new library books to everyone for a while.

 I got to go with the youth to the Gila Valley Temple to do baptisms for the dead. While I was gone Jacob and the kids had lots of fun without me and built a couple awesome forts. When I came home, this is what I found:

They weren't all that happy when we took it down because I had a meeting at our house the next day

One of Ryan's favorite activities is jumping onto the beanbag chairs. He is forbidden from jumping onto the landing on the stairs because they end up crashing into the bars on the railings, but Megan came up with this brilliant idea one morning and Ryan was more than happy to join in with even fancier moves.

So that's most of September, I guess. We had parent-teacher conferences and both Annie and Rachel are excelling in school. Annie can pretty much meet all the standards for the whole year, and it's just the end of the first quarter. She's making friends and is well behaved. Rachel is a great leader at school and is really enjoying 3rd grade, advanced math and ELP (the gifted program). Rachel passed all her 1st quarter benchmark tests with flying colors, including her 4th grade math, which she does as part of advanced math.

And now it's fall break. One week down, two more to go. We're having lots of fun cleaning out closets, washing walls, etc. ;) Oh, and we have some fun outings we've done, and more planned. More on that in a separate post to come.

August catch up

I guess these pictures are from August-ish. They've been sitting here in draft form forgotten. Let's see what we were doing in August...

We finally got around to taking Megan to Bookman's (used book store) to use her birthday gift certificate there. They have a Mother Teresa statue there that apparently just calls out to children to have them sit in her lap.

And the stuffed animal bins.

Ryan lost both of his shoes and his wallet in there. We found 2 out of 3 pretty quickly, but it took us 5-10 minutes to find the other shoe. I was about ready to give up and leave without it when we spotted it on the other side of the bin, under the table. Megan did end up getting a few books she liked. She started to think it was always her birthday. "Happy dir-day fo me!" she'd say whenever she got something special. Like these books.

And this dress that came in the mail.

Her Aunt Lisa made it for her over a year ago and she wore it once before she started crawling, and once she was walking I pulled it out for her to wear, but while it was hanging on a doorknob waiting to be ironed some (unknown) kid found scizzors and decided to snip BOTH sleeves!! One little snip in each side. Ugh! And Lisa had done it when she was at BYU-I with the fancy machines there, so there was fancy stitching for all the hems. I got extra fabric from her that she thankfully still had, and my cousin, Julie, who is a master seamstress agreed to fix it up for me. She matched the fancy stitching exactly and it looks good as new. Now the dress can be Megan's special heirloom dress to pass along to her own daughter one day. Anyway, when the dress showed up in the mail and I told Megan it was a pretty dress just for her she replied, "Happy dir-day to me!" Her birthday was 2 months previous at that point.  Year-round birthday celebration! ;)

Annie started back to gymnastics recently which has Ryan wanting to do gymnastics. It's way cheaper to just take them to open gym, so I try to take Ryan and Megan to open gym a couple times a month and they have a blast. The spend most of the time jumping into the foam pit.

With school in session we don't get to go to Grandma's house nearly as often as the kids would like. Especially Megan. She asks several times every day to go to Grandma's house. Then when it's time to leave she tells me to go. "I stay wif Grandma."

It is the coolest place around.

Monsoon season always gives us awesome sunsets. Here's one I caught. Of course the pictures don't even come close to what it looked like in real life.

Megan, our cantaloupe piggie. She sat there staring us down as she snarfed down the entire container, as if daring us to try and take some from her.

We've had a pretty good monsoon season this year. Many good storms. This one had our backyard several inches underwater. We were starting to worry that if it kept raining we'd have water coming into our house, but luckily it died off soon after. The water by the stools is a good 4+ inches deep.

The Tucson temple is coming right along. In June/July Moroni was put on top, so we decided to take a drive up to see how it looked on the kids' first day off of school the first week of August.

It's pretty much finished on the outside. Now it's just a matter of getting everything inside done. We're waiting anxiously to for word on when it'll open. Sometime next year is the very vague estimate they give to the reporters.

Rachel is on a gymnastics craze, spending all her time at home being a monkey or doing handstands, cartwheels, and front walkovers.

I suggested that she go back to gymnastics class and she said no thank you. She doesn't like how they dictate what she has to learn and practice. She just wants to work on what she likes and ignore the other stuff. Fine with me. :)

Jacob has taken an interest in astronomical photography. He got a tripod for his birthday and took it outside to try it out and found that the light pollution in the city was pretty bad. The picture turned out orange. With a little color correcting it turned out like this:

I think he plans on getting some good practice when we go camping away from the city over fall break.

We welcomed a new member into our family in August. This beast of an air conditioner is taller than the youngest 3 members of our family.

It replaced a unit shorter than Megan. We have high hopes of a big drop in our power bill since the old unit was not even close to being energy efficient. And now with two newish AC units (the other is 2 years old), we should be covered for 10+ years. A Tucson summer with a broken AC is not my favorite. But I am very thankful for two units, so at least we could spend time in the cool part of the house when half the house was baking. (At least until the other unit got overworked and couldn't keep up on that one really hot day.)