Fall break--week 1

The kids get 3 weeks off of school for fall break. It has been really nice not keeping to the regular school schedule running here and there and all the afternoon activities and homework, but we have still managed to stay pretty busy, while thankfully keeping some days free to stay home and clean/organize/relax.

The first day of break we went to workout group and let the kids run around and have fun in the church building while I worked out, then headed to the park to meet up with some friends. Rachel and some friends decided to go on a bike ride instead of playing at the park. They took a little longer getting back than planned, so finally my mom came to get Sammy and Ben and Megan who were so ready to go home. When Rachel and friends returned we headed home and Annie brought a couple friends home from the park with us to play. One of the kids' favorite parts of fall break is the TV ban during the week is lifted so they usually get to watch a movie or a couple shows at some point during the day.

Rachel got to go over to her friend Alexandria's house along with a few other friends from 5th grade. They went to separate middle schools, so they had a good time getting the crew back together a little.

Tuesday and Wednesday turned out to be very rainy days so the horse camp Jared and Eloise were going to for the week was canceled. We were planning to have Sammy and Ben bouncing back and forth between our house and Grandma's, so it wasn't a big deal to add a couple more to the fray. My kids cleaned and sorted through clothes to give away the ones that are too small or they don't wear and to get out pants and long sleeves that have been packed away for months in case it ever gets cold in the next couple months.
Around lunchtime we all headed to the library and found a plethora of good books.

 Megan is getting better at reading and Sammy was happy to have her read to him (with some help).

The next day we all went to see Aladdin and it was really good. I think. The parts I saw anyway. ;)  I lost count of how many times I had to leave to take a kid to the bathroom. 

Thursday Eloise and Jared were back at horse camp and Grandma was at her temple shift, so we just chilled at our house. The kids had a good time playing together and got out all sorts of toys and games. 

Thursday night was a stake sports night. Rachel had told me when I asked her if she wanted to go that she didn't. Then when a friend called to ask for a ride she changed her mind. Then another friend and another friend needed a ride so we made a mad dash to pick up everyone and got there about 15 minutes late. They had a good time playing volleyball.

Friday I headed off on our Laurel High Adventure (the last one, apparently, since "Laurels" don't exist in the church anymore). It was a rainy morning so we had to keep postponing our departure time since our first activity was rappelling and rappelling in the rain is not safe, because of the slippery rocks. We finally got off around 1pm and had a real good time. My mom and Savannah took charge of my kids until Jacob got home to take over.

We camped at Catalina State Park then headed to the Biosphere 2 the next morning.

It was a cool tour and pretty interesting to see all the science experiments they are working on there. And to see all the infrastructure it takes to try and replicate God's creations.

After lunch we headed over to the zipline place in Oracle.

It was pretty fun.

Compared to other years' it was a lot shorter and closer, but at least it allowed more girls to be able to come that wouldn't have been able to come if it was a 2 night thing farther away from home. There was some good bonding. And to be honest, I was glad to get home after one night camping. Sleeping outdoors is not my favorite part of camping, because I don't actually sleep.

Amazing kids (Mom brag)

The first quarter of school has come to a close and Fall Break is here. YAY!! This month I was reminded again and again of how great my kids are. Their teachers love them and sing their praises. They are hard workers, smart, and care about others.

Rachel has been doing cross country this quarter, practicing after school in 100+ degree heat. I am impressed every time I see all the red, sweaty faces smiling.

She had foot pain that she went to physical therapy for since the end of the last school year, and into the beginning of this year. She was tough and built up the muscles enough that her feet no longer point out to almost 9:00 and 3:00 when her knees point forward, but are more at 11 and 1:00 now, a lot closer to normal (and if she would do more of her PT exercises they might straighten out even more). She ran through it all, and made some great friendships.
Saturday she went to cheer on her teammates that had made it to the championships, so was there when they won first place as a team.

It was fun to see all their hard work pay off as they had their chance to celebrate together. Then last night Rachel's friend Eliza hosted a Late Night (like a sleepover, but without the sleeping part, getting picked up at 11:30pm) with Adrianne and Alana to celebrate the end of cross country. All their healthy eating and exercise was over, so they pigged out on junk food.

Parent-teacher conferences were a few weeks ago and it was like going from one list of compliments to another.

 Megan is a great kindergartner. She knows all her letters and sounds and sight words and is doing a good job at sounding out words. She's good at counting and a plays nicely with others and likes to help out and follow directions. Megan loves her homework and is excited to do it every day.

Ryan is doing great with his reading, already hitting the goal for the end of the year reading speed, and writing just as well. He is thriving in advanced math, loving the chance to learn multiplication. His problem there is he is so excited that he knows the answer he can't hold it in and blurts it out, robbing the other kids of the chance to try for themselves. But they've got a plan in place and he's doing a lot better about waiting until he's called on to answer. In his regular class his teacher says he's great and motivated and thinks everything is a race. Which isn't as much of a problem for him as it sometimes is for kids who rush and get things wrong because he still gets the answers right when he is rushing. His main problem is his handwriting gets super messy when he gets too fast, so they're working on him slowing down so they can read what his amazing brain is coming up with. He is doing so much better with his homework this year (not fighting about doing it), and it is a breath of fresh air to have him willing to just sit down and get it done (faster than anyone else, when he can manage it, since he's all about racing, even on homework).

 Annie is a super helpful kid and does great staying on task and getting her work done. She is doing great in advanced math and ELP, which is the Extended Learning Program the district has for gifted students. Annie is excited to be participating in chorus and math club this year, but when given an opportunity to try out for Odyssey of the Mind, wisely declined even though she thought it would be fun. She didn't want to over schedule herself and have an after school activity every day. She's smart to keep some free time scheduled in. Annie does her homework without any reminders and is super responsible.

Rachel apparently can be quiet and withdrawn. I've never seen that side of her, but at her parent-teacher conferences, and when meeting another teacher at the open house a month or two ago, two different teachers commented on how quiet and serious she was. Though at the PTC the comment was that she was like that for the first month or so, and now she seems to be finding her groove and laughing and joking more. I guess adjusting to Middle School and a million new kids and new teachers and a new way of doing things could inspire anyone to sit back and observe before jumping in to the fray. But she's in the fray now. And she's killing it. She earned a 4.0 GPA and got the Principal's Award at the 1st quarter awards assembly, as well as the PRIDE award for having come prepared with supplies and homework to every single class every single day of the quarter. I'm real proud of her. I hardly ever see her do her homework because she gets it done at school. She figured out quickly that staying until 5:30pm for cross country practice left little time for her precious pastime of reading after dinner and chores and homework, so she stepped up her game and got her homework done faster so she can have time to read. 

(The awards ceremony was during Spirit Week on Dress like your favorite TV character day--Rachel dressed like Candace on Phineas and Ferb.)

Ryan and Megan have been participating in soccer club this quarter. It got a late start, probably to try and wait until the hottest of summer was past, so they only got in a few practices, then at the end of the quarter they had the tournament where they play two different games in the evening. It works great for beginner soccer players--practice right after school instead of the evening, and no Saturdays full of games. Just one time and done.

Megan was very happy with the experience and the 3 practices and 2 games were plenty. She's not interested in next quarter. Ryan, however is a monster on the field and is very aggressive and loved it and is looking forward to playing again next quarter.

Their first game they killed the other team, something like 12-1 (they don't keep score officially, but the kids sure know how many they've scored). The second team was a lot more aggressive, so they were better matched but our kids still won 5-2 or something like that.

All the running is great for Ryan who is a bundle of energy. He just started mileage club after school another day, too, so he'll run for an hour straight one day, go to karate that night, then have soccer the next day. It's so good for him. He loves anything that gets him moving and sweating.

So there's a little bragging about our amazing kids. It really is such a blessing to have kids that love to do what's right and are good students and little braniacs. We get frustrated sometimes with their occasional lack of common sense or self control or ability to pick up after themselves, but overall we won the kid lottery. 

August

In kindergarten Megan has Mrs. Hager for the first half of the day, then Mrs. Parks for the other half. Mrs. Hager sent me a text one day with these pictures and said "I love me some Megan!"

The monsoons this year have been very disappointing. Hardly any big storms. But we did get a decent double rainbow. The second rainbow didn't show up great in the picture, though.

Since Savannah got into U of A Law School, our kids have been super excited to have cousins move closer. And it turns out they moved super close. They ended up renting a house right across the street from my parents. Which means they go to the same school as my kids. I happened to be at the school when they came in to register, so I took them on a tour of the school.

Eloise is actually in Annie's class with her, which is pretty exciting for them to get to see each other all day every day.

Their PODs arrived on Friday in the middle of the day and instead of waiting for people to come help, we started unloading the little things, which then included the big things, and before we knew it, we were done unpacking in less than an hour.

We've enjoyed having cousins close by. Though we don't see them all that often during the week. Well, I guess the kids do on the bus every day if nothing else.
We did have them over for a movie night.

The next day we had a priest/laurel activity going shooting.

We all had a lot of fun. And left just as the lightning was starting.

Playing Fuji Flush:

All the games Todd and his kids like to play are one of the highlights of having them close by for the kids. They love playing these fun games.

Rachel joined the Cross Country team this year. They practice and race in the heat of the afternoon. Like 100+ degrees. It's crazy to me, but Rachel is tough and pushes through and gets it done. This is at the cross country meet at Corona Foothills:

Todd and Savannah flew to Georgia for Savannah's brother's wedding and the kids stayed here, mostly with Grandma, but we took them while Grandma was at the temple. Since it was too hot outside to go play, we decided to take the kids to Burger King to play on the indoor playground there. And to get ice cream. We didn't think they'd be too happy about us all showing up, playing on their playground for an hour, then leaving without buying anything. :)

While the kids were at Grandma's, they got in lots of pool/play time.

At the end of August we had a youth temple trip. Since we had to meet at the church at 5pm we were a little sparse on attendance, especially with the YM, but it was still a pretty good trip to the temple.

For FHE one night we did musical chairs. It was a lot of fun (and traumatic for Megan whenever she would lose).

We finally did get a decent monsoon last week. I was picking the girls up from piano when it hit. One street no rain, the next street, pouring rain. We drove around a little longer before heading back to home.

Then when we got home, the kids went out to play in it.

There was even some hail.

We've been losing a lot of teeth around here. Megan lost both of her bottom middle teeth over the last couple of months. And Ryan lost a couple teeth. This is when his tooth was hanging on by a thread. It needed to come out. But he was unwilling to get it pulled. It came out that night when he got up to use the bedroom in the middle of the night.

Ryan got dressed in a jacket and skirt on the head. The thought I had taken a picture of him and I asked if he wanted me to. He said "only if you put it on the blog." :) I took that as a yes.

It's been a full and busy month of August, but mostly the regular old stuff: homework, school, after school activities, cousins, etc.

July

Once we got back to school, we started to get in a routine. Homework isn't great, but it's getting done. Chores are hit and miss.

I caught a moment of sibling love on camera. Love of Photo Booth, anyway.

This is what they were creating:

At mutual we had a real fun Iron Rod activity where the kids had to pass through lots of trials (climbing over/under/through tables, chairs and other obstacles) while trying to listen to the right voice, ignoring the loud obnoxious voices and the noodles hitting them. They had a lot of fun, and the leaders with the noodles had even more fun, I think. While they waited for their turn the rest of them played 9-square. It looked like a lot of fun.

Megan was super excited to be the first kid of the school year to have a teacher visit. She loves Mrs. Parks and had fun showing her all her toys and bedroom and playing with her for an hour.

We had a ward temple trip, which was very nice. Some youth, including Rachel, volunteered to help babysit at a church building somewhat nearby so the adults could all attend a session together. It was nice. Eliza helped watching the kids too. Here they are afterwards, waiting for seconds on ice cream sandwiches:

Sunday Scoops shenanigans:

We went to see Toy Story 4 when the kids had a day off of school. They wanted pictures with some of the movie displays:

The last Sunday of July there was a special meeting for 3 wards in our stake. It turns out a new ward was created from the 3 wards, which moved some of the kids' best friends out of our ward: the Reimanns, Allens, and Weinzingers. It was an emotional day to say the least. Except for Jill, who was my Laurel advisor and I saw every Sunday and Tuesday for mutual, over the last month I've probably seen them about as much as I normally would with play dates or movie nights. Rachel gets to see Lydia at school every day, and doesn't see Maryanne as much, but does see her at school sometimes. And Annie misses seeing Laura at Activity Days and on Sundays, but luckily her Knight cousins moved from Seattle the following week, so Eloise is her Activity Day buddy and she's filling in the gap. And we've had Laura over a couple of times and been over to Laura's house, too. So we're managing to keep those friendships going, at least for now.

The Tuesday following the announcement of the new ward we had one last mutual night with everyone there. We learned some household skills in a relay, and we went outside and did some service washing the windows of everyone in the parking lot.

The girls had a lot of fun and there was a lot less crying than I thought there would be. Everyone must have gotten it mostly out after the Sunday meeting. Change is hard sometimes. Especially for teenagers (or almost teenagers). Rachel cried late into the night that Sunday night.