September

Yes, Rachel made a HUGE mess with sidewalk chalk. Did you know that when you crush it up you can paint your whole body with it?

 Then when you walk through the house you leave your mark everywhere you go. She was sent straight to the tub.

Taking the picture of Rachel brought out the camera hog in Megan. :) "Take my picture!" is what I hear anytime she sees me holding my phone in a way that might possibly be taking a picture.

 Rachel has been working on learning to french braid. I think this was the first one she did all on her own. She's getting better.

 Another silly Megan picture. (And another time she got to go out to lunch with me when I was out running errands. Shhh. Don't tell the others; they'll be jealous.)

 I tried a fishtail braid on Rachel. Easier than I thought it would be. With Rachel's (and Annie's) hair getting so long there is lots of cool stuff we could do with it if they would do it, or let me do it once it a while

 At Walmart Megan thought the huge creepy guy was pretty cool and wanted a picture.

These pictures tell nothing of what we've been doing this month.

I guess we've just been doing the regular routine: school, band, math club, piano, karate, gymnastics, dance class, church and YW stuff. And Jacob and I managed a bike riding date with Rachel babysitting (while watching a movie, so really the movie was babysitting, too), with Grandma and Grandpa Knight on call a few blocks away if she needed anything. The light at the end of the tunnel is getting closer where we will actually be able to have a built in babysitter. Right now we're sticking to short stints in the daytime, but soon enough we'll be able to leave Rachel in charge for longer and longer and go on a date whenever we want to.

August

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.

Wrapping up summer

We had a few last things to do before school got back in session mid-July. We went to a reptile showcase at Bookman's. They had some snakes, and a huge lizard the kids got to pet, and some other things, including cockroaches.

 Rachel wrapped up synchronized swimming with a potluck party,

 then the synchro show the next day.

 Purple Heart Pool won 2nd place in the city swimming to "Popular" from Wicked. They did a great job.

 We squeezed in a movie night with the Young Women at my house as a reward for some major progress on Personal Progress over the summer break.

 The kids are enjoying having Grandma and Grandpa close by, though we don't take advantage of their proximity as much as I thought we would. Life I guess is just busy and we get in our routines. But the kids do like walking home from Grandma's house after Sunday dinner and other times, even when it's 100+ degrees outside. I snapped a few pictures of them and their cousins walking to our house from the comfort of my air conditioned car. :)

 The kids were happy to start back to school when it came down to it. The two last weeks of summer were brutal as far as sibling fighting goes. They were ready for a break from each other.

 Megan is doing preschool 3 days a week with Mrs. Janeth, which she loves (except for right before it starts some mornings). Rachel is in 5th, Annie in 2nd, and Ryan in 1st. They all love their teachers and they're doing wonderful in school this year.

 Once the kids were off to school, Megan and I headed to workout group, then I came home and thought, "I bet I can paint the bathroom before the kids get home from school.

I didn't quite make it, but shortly after they got home I was done. I did the walls green and the cabinet white. Later that week I painted the shelf and towel rack white to match. I like it a lot. But my shoulder didn't. Painting caused some tendonitis in my shoulder that is just now, two months later, finally starting to feel better.

Megan's birthday, Sharon, and the 4th

We brought some of Utah to us, since we couldn't go there in the form of Sharon. She happened to come on a super fun-filled week. Monday is the cheap admission day at the Children's Museum of Tucson, and the kids had listed that as one of the things they wanted to do before summer ended, so off we went.

 Of course Ryan loves all things mechanical and loud. A motorcycle seems to fit the bill.

 Annie made electricity:

 Megan's favorite part of the museum was probably the grocery store room. Luckily we were able to snag a grocery cart as a girl was just getting ready to abandon it. There were so many kids in there, the grocery carts were in high demand.

 The next morning I noticed some skeletonizer caterpillars on my grapes, so we rushed off to Civano Nursery (which is a cool place to go even if you don't need anything for your garden). We saw a pretty butterfly.

 And we pet the goats, tried to catch the bunny, and looked at the chickens from afar.

 Then I left the kids to play in the sandbox/boat while I went to ask questions about trees and tomatoes.

 I got what I needed and we headed home just as it was starting to get hot.

Megan's major request for her birthday was to go to Jump, an indoor inflatable gym. They were closed for the 4th, so we went the day before for some fun.

 The kids seem to spend more than half the time on the game projected on this floor screen. It happens every time we go. It's so funny. We go for the inflatables, then spend the time on the video game. It is pretty cool, though.

The jumping pillow is a big hit, too, though.

All around, really, it's a pretty good deal. The kids had a great time and got all their energy out.  We went home and Sharon had their undivided attention reading books to them for a while.

 That night Jacob wasn't feeling fabulous, so we left him at home and headed out to Vail to watch the fireworks show they put on on the 3rd of July. It was a great show, and we hit the traffic just right and were home in 15 minutes after it ended.

 The next morning we woke up and headed to church for our ward's annual 4th of July pancake breakfast and parade. There were a ton of people.

 A good time was had by all. I didn't even get a picture of the candy cannon, but that was probably the biggest hit of the morning. "If a piece of candy is on fire, DON'T PICK IT UP!" was the watch-cry of the day.

That afternoon we headed down to Sierra Vista to check out The Cove, an indoor acquatic center with a couple cool slides, a big pool that was NOT 85 degrees, no matter what they say, and a smaller heated pool. Once we found the warm pool it was hard to want to go in the other pool. But the slides were pretty cool. After swimming there for a while we headed back home for some kabobs on the barbie and Megan's birthday party.

 The other kids were, of course, more than happy to help her open her presents.

 She was pretty excited to get a new baby doll from our awesome neighbor, Shannon.

She wanted rainbow cupcakes. I should have gotten a picture of our awesome job at making the actual cupcakes layered in different colors, and the icing on top swirled, along with rainbow sprinkles. Rainbows all around.

 Megan got some blankets from Grandma Campbell that she promptly put to use for her little baby dolls, including the new one she got.

 And she was excited to get all decked out in her birthday clothes. She had already been wearing her skirt and shirt all day, but her new socks matched perfectly, and she got some star necklaces that matched the whole star motif as well.

  The next morning everyone was sad to see Sharon go, but glad she had been able to come and write many poems, and play many games, and read many books while she was here.

 Aunts coming is always great, but then when they leave it's no fun. Maybe they should all just move here permanently. ;)

A friend in the ward invited us over to swim on Thursday afternoon. The kids had a great time, and Megan was all about showing off her swimming skills.
After a while I was done being in the pool, so I put Megan in a Puddle Jumper so I didn't have to worry so much when she was climbing on the floaties and such.

 We brought Amber and Jesse home with us since their mom was going to help someone clean. Megan was happy to put on her new clothes after her bath and thought she looked so cute.

 She was right.

Ryan and Jesse had a great time together. I came out from getting Megan dressed to find that Ryan had passed along his ninja outfit to Jesse to wear, complete with black underwear for the head. 😂 I texted a picture to his mom so she could laugh along.
They eventually quit with the ninja stuff and got to more important stuff like making a car or airplane out of the box.

 It was a good way to spend the afternoon and get their minds off of missing Aunt Sharon.