Mid-summer

 Last Sunday was Father's Day. All Jacob wanted was "Dinosaur Poop Cookies" aka no-bake cookies, so we made him a batch. 

We also got him a new computer monitor like he's talked about wanting a few times. Actually we got us all a bigger TV that fits in our new entertainment center, and moved our old TV to be the computer monitor. Jacob was out of town the week before for work, so he came home to our updated screen. He also got a puzzle with pictures from our San Diego trip. Happy Father's Day! You're the best dad and deserve all the cookies! :) 

The kids have been really into a show on Disney Plus called Gravity Falls lately. Rachel has gotten to be an expert at drawing the Gravity Falls characters and all the kids enjoy the Gravity Falls books they check out from the library. Apparently there are lots of things to decipher and discover, so they read them over and over again.

Last week all the kids except Rachel went to cooking camp. Megan's was in the morning while the other kids were at swimming, then the others would go to cooking camp after lunch. They had a different focus each day: breakfast, snack, lunch, dinner, and dessert. All were great and the kids look forward to using their new skills to cook some tasty stuff over the next few weeks. 

Megan and her donuts: 

The older kids made cinnamon donuts, which were also very tasty.

This was the cutest thing of the whole week:

Beach Party Jell-O. Megan loved it so much she's making them for her birthday party this week.

Since she loves donuts and pandas, we combined them into a donut panda pool party. 

The plan is for the cake to have donuts around the edge decorated to look like pandas.

Rachel was invited to tag along on a baptism trip to the temple on Thursday--the best way to go to the temple is with friends. They stopped at Eegees on the way home and really enjoyed the outing. 

So much so that they got back together that afternoon and hung out at Sara's house until late into the night. Two days later Rachel got to go back to the temple with the YW. Lucky duck.

Lucky for us, last week they announced our temple was opening for Phase 3! Yay! So Jacob and I have our first temple date in over a year to do sealings this Friday before the temple shuts down for 2 weeks for cleaning. Then we'll do an endowment session towards the end of July. It's so nice to have things moving along getting back to normal. 

First half of summer

 We kicked off summer by joining a swim team. Since the city pools aren't having swim team this summer, we found a county pool that is about 15 minutes away and joined that swim team. Annie opted out, but Rachel, Ryan, Megan, McKenzie and Peyton all joined. Megan did fine on the swim test the first day, but the more she swam the more nervous the steep decline to the deep end of the pool freaked her out, until she finally decided half way through the second day that she was done for the summer. Maybe next year when she can swim at Purple Heart Pool, where it never gets deeper than 7 feet. 

Rachel is officially vaccinated! She got her second shot a little over two weeks ago, felt just a little achy and yucky the day after, and is back up and at it. She was able to go maskless to church today for the first time since they ask that all non-vaccinated people wear masks. 

For FHE a couple of weeks ago Megan wanted to go to Candy World to get Thrifty ice cream. Mmmm. Ice cream.

That Monday and Tuesday Rachel also participated in a Volleyball Camp at Empire High School. She had a good time and a couple friends of hers happened to be there, too. I think they'll have fun together in Volleyball when the season starts when school is back in session next month. 

It was a busy few days getting everything ready for girls camp, since I'm the ward camp director. I was happy to have Cori Peterson as my assistant to help out. We decided that next time there is ward camp, there needs to be an official camp cook called. Dealing with the food was definitely a job in and of itself. It was a pretty impressive feat, however, that at Costco our total came to $200.00 even. We had to document it.

So Rachel and I left the rest of the family in Tucson and headed for Mt. Graham to camp at the Frost family's cabin. The women leaders slept in the cabin, but the YW had to set up their tents around the cabin. It was a learning experience for many.

After lunch and tent set up, some of the YW went to climb a big rock. It bade me nervous watching all the girls on precariously high perches, but no one was hurt, and all had lots of fun.

Unfortunately, after we got back to camp Rachel started to feel sick. She had complained of shoulder/neck pain and a headache that morning, but I figured it was from volleyball camp, and gave her some ibuprofen. Apparently that masked the fever, which came back in full force that afternoon. Because one of her YW leaders had tested positive for COVID the week before, I was very nervous about her somehow having caught it, even though she had never gotten within 6 feet of the leader at the activity they were both at the day before testing positive. Because she was already feeling pretty bad, and I was worried about COVID, I drove her home and she ended up missing the rest of camp (but was COVID negative, thank goodness!). I was so bummed to be at camp without Rachel. I just kept thinking of how much she would have enjoyed each of the activities. But that's life, sometimes. 

Here are all the YW at camp when we went to the lake. 

Rachel is represented in all the t-shirts they're wearing, since she designed the shirts. She used her digital art skills to combine a boat, like on Moana, with the logo for the youth theme for the year. It turned out really great.

Last week we discovered this app that converts pictures into cartoon versions. Here is our family, cartoon-ized: 

Annie had a few coupons for Peter Piper she's had since school was wrapping up. Last week we finally got to go for pizza and to blow some tokens earning tickets. 

My first token I won 300 tickets out of pure luck. I shared them among the kids after they used all their tokens and they were able to get a few pieces of candy each. They had fun learning about how gambling doesn't pay off. :) 

Sister Spear invited us over to swim in her pool on Friday. Her dogs had lots of fun, enjoying the attention from all the kids. One of her dogs, Malibu, loves swimming and playing fetch with her frisbee, so she'd jump right in to the pool and swim to the frisbee. The other dog, Leo, would bring his ball and drop it in the pool for a kid to throw on the grass for him to fetch, since he does not like swimming. 

Rachel is pet sitting for them for almost 2 weeks, and we've been given permission to swim in their pool as much as we want while they're gone. The kids are looking forward to it.

Our neighbors, Joanne and Eileen gave us their Wii when they were cleaning out stuff in conjunction with remodeling their house. Since we got our new entertainment center last month, we upgraded our TV to fit better for Father's Day, moving our old TV over to be used as a new computer monitor. So, in conjunction with setting up the new TV, we also set up the Wii. 

We just have sports games, but the kids had a fun time getting to know a few of the games: archery, golf, and wakeboarding. 

In trying to give the kids more practice and freedom self-regulating and making their own choices, I've given them a 2 hour screen time limit per day this summer and they get to decide when/how to use their time. I think it is having its desired effect, because they are turning off the TV on their own, and negotiating for who wants to watch what, when. We'll see how it goes now that another screen activity has been added to the options. 

Wrapping things up

 The pandemic school year is over! Hallelujah! We made it through the most changing and unpredictable school year ever. 

As the year wound down the kids wrapped up projects at school they had been working on. Annie had a bridge project she had been working on all semester in ELP and they finally tested them. She and her friend, Leah, worked together on the group portion of the project, but unfortunately their bridge design didn't win. Their company was called LA Bridges and their slogan was "Making bridges from LA to New York!" Annie's individual design did great, however, and she got a $5 gift card to Target. Good job, Annie!

In ELP Ryan has been working on his toy invention. He created a foos-maze, combining a foosball table with a maze. It turned out really cool looking. 

He presented it to his class and created an advertisement for his toy.

Back home the kids put their engineering prowess to work creating Shmebu-block. 

They later improved the design and made it look like a gnome with a really cool mustache. They creature had a full digestive system. They would feed it a block, then it would drop down the "throat" until it hit a shelf they would pull out to let the block continue through the digestive system. They had something like 6 or 8 stopping points and were happy to walk you through them all. "This is the esophogas, then the stomach, the small intestines, etc." It was pretty impressive and funny.

The kids had coupons they had been saving up and started cashing in as the school year drew to a close. Ryan and Megan both had a lot of "bring a stuffy to school" coupons they took advantage of. 

Ryan was bummed when he couldn't find his dog, Biscuit's, helmet that he created at the beginning of the year, so I made him a new one. Of course a week later we cleaned out the backpack table where the kids deposit all their school stuff and miraculously found Biscuit's original helmet.

Ms. Bradshaw retired this year after 40 years. A few months ago I started working to collect a pictures and well wishes from current and former students of hers and compiled them into a book. Ms. Duncan helped out getting pictures and stuff from current students and invited us to bring it to her retirement party. Ms. Bradshaw loved it.

As long as we were there with all the teachers celebrating, we were happy to grab a picture with Megan's kindergarten teachers, Mrs. Parks and Mrs. Hager since she never got a picture with them last year because of covid. 

Mrs. Goodall has been a wonderful advanced math teacher and we were sad to hear that she won't be coming back next year, but happy to grab a picture with her. She has been so amazing with the kids.

We got a new monkey bar set finally. We ordered it in March, or maybe the beginning of April, so we were happy to finally have it arrive. Then the assembly instructions were pretty much non-existent and had one poor picture, so after a very frustrating time and a trip to Ace I finally got everything to fit together correctly. 

The kids were a bit disappointed that it doesn't have swings, but other than that they love it. They create obstacles courses and time each other to see who can complete it fastest. Megan has already gotten better at doing a pull over. (Which reminds me, just a few weeks ago she passed all the skills for her beginners gymnastics class and is able to advance to the intermediate gymnastics class. Unfortunately there's no openings in the class that fits our schedule best, so we're on a waiting list and she's just continuing with her old class for now.)

Marie moved out and into Todd and Savannah's house for the summer. Todd and Savannah left the last day of school and headed to Georgia, but the day before that, they helped us load up a Uhaul with all the bulky furniture and move it into their garage so Marie can house sit while they're gone. We felt like tetris masters, fitting it all in just right.

The last day of school Megan came out crying. She has loved Mrs. Kampleman and will miss her next year. Add to that the fact that her best friends are in a different class next year, and she was pretty bummed. I'm glad she had a good 1st grade year, as crazy as it was. Here's a picture of her class on the day Mrs. Kampleman brought her dog to school.

I asked her to snap a picture with Megan since I couldn't go in to the school to take pictures with their teachers. I really have missed being able to volunteer and be in the kids' classrooms and get to know their teachers. I'm looking forward to getting back to a more normal school year next year.

I actually asked all the teachers to get a picture of them with my kid. Here's Annie and Ms. Montagu. Ms. Montagu student taught in Rachel's 3rd grade class, so I was looking forward to working with her again. Alas, it didn't work out this year, and next year she's going back to 3rd grade, so I'll miss her again, since Ryan won't have her. It's pretty crazy that Annie is a 5th grader now. The top of the food chain. 

And here's Ryan and Ms. Duncan. This marks the end of 3 years of Ms. Duncan having one of my kids. She's moving to 5th grade so we thought Annie would have her again, but they added another 5th grade ELP cluster teacher besides Ms. Duncan, so Annie will have Mrs. Chamberlain next year. 

Ms. Duncan has been so good with Ryan. She's patient and organized and great at keeping him on track even when he's doing things he doesn't love (ie. writing). 

We love Ms. Duncan. Ryan is happy to have Derek in his class again next year (though I have to say, I hope Ms. Cady knows what she's getting into... those two are smarty pants, but also very goofy when they get together).

As the year was wrapping up the PTA board was looking for people willing to take over for them since their 2 year tenure was coming to an end. They found 3 people willing to serve, and needed a 4th so I agreed to be secretary. So like it or not, I'll be on campus a lot next year, both volunteering, and helping with PTA stuff. I'm hoping the after school activities and fundraisers are low key, but we'll see how it goes. 

For the last day of school I told the kids they could each invite 2-3 friends over for a party. Megan was extra bummed that none of her friends could come. Luckily instead she got two one-on-one playdates in the week following, one with Peyton, and one with Ali, and we have plans for more playdates over the summer. 

Annie's friends, Leah and Ava came, and Ryan's friends Donovan and Derek both came, and brought their little brothers at my invitation since their moms both work at the school and I figured they'd have more fun here while their moms wrapped things up at school. And they did. The slip 'n slide burned our luscious grass a bit, but they kids all had a good time and enjoyed some Eegees and popcorn. 

The kids watched Chicken Little, but most of the kids apparently don't have a long movie attention span, so just Annie and Rachel were glued to it for the whole show. Todd and Savannah's kids stopped by to say goodbye (and for Annie to give them each a bag of candy for the drive), then headed out to Georgia. 

The boys drifted back outside to play with the water and the monkey bars. The monkey bars were definitely a hit with the little monkeys.

When Ms. Duncan came to pick up Donovan she brought a lot of left over donuts from their class breakfast, so the kids ate donuts for dinner that night. But since they were gluten donuts, they had to eat them outside. :) 

And just like that, the 2020-2021 school year has come to an end. (Of course that sentence makes it sound like this wasn't the longest school year in history which is beyond inaccurate.)

Low key May

As far as Mays go, this May has been pretty tame. Things are beginning to get back to normal, but not quite in full swing, so all the end of the year stuff is pretty low key. 

The kids started in person piano lessons this month for the first time in over a year, so it's kind of weird having to actually drive them to lessons and pick them up, rather than just logging on to Facetime for a lesson. Megan was waiting for in person lessons to restart her piano lessons, so he is super pumped to be able to do piano lessons now. 

Jacob is good at doing object lessons or using technology in a way that pulls the kids into our Come Follow Me lessons.  A few weeks ago he did a lesson on watching for the signs of Christ's coming by having the kids make some cookies and watch for signs that they were ready. 

With AZM2 testing over and done with, the kids are doing more project based learning, which is always a fun part of the end of the school year. Annie made a treehouse:

Annie and Ryan both are working on Taco Trucks in their class last year. We did taco trucks in our home school last year, so they already have a preview of that project.

We decided to clean our A/C ducts since we haven't done it since shortly after we moved into this house 8 years ago. We had them also clean out our dryer vent, which turned into such an ordeal. Apparently they did a lazy version the first time, so Friday when I went to do laundry it wouldn't dry at all. I called them and they said they'd come out Monday. I called a few times Monday when they didn't come when I expected them, and both times they assured me they'd call before they came and would for sure come out that day. Then they called and asked some questions about what was wrong and said they'd have someone come out first thing, but I couldn't stay unless they actually came at 8am, not just 8-9. They couldn't guarantee that, so he said they'd be there right at 12:00 when I got home. Alas, they didn't come until 2:30. The guy looked around trying to find where the vent exited, got a little tangled in our attic access and broke it a bit, then finally found the vent on the side of the house. He looked in it and said he didn't actually have the equipment to clean it out, so they'd need to come the next day. Why come without equipment to do the job? Ugh. It was a pain in the neck. So the next day I waited again, and they finally came, worked for 3-4 hours and got the vent unclogged. This is inside:

They had twice as much dryer lint outside. I guess it's a good thing we got it cleaned out, but I still can't believe that they told me they had gotten it done with all that lint still in the vent. 

Ryan continues to love basketball. He has his last game coming up this Saturday. 

For FHE last week we carved soap. It turned out to be pretty messy, getting soap shavings all over the place, but every one had a good time with varying degrees of success.

Rachel made a duck, Megan and Annie, I think, made hearts, Jacob, Megan, and I made cats, Jacob made a flower, Ryan made a spear, Annie made a necklace medallion, and I'm not sure whose sword that was.

Last week the FDA approved the Pfizer vaccine for kids 12-15, so as soon as appointments opened I got one for Rachel. She was a little bummed that by the time it's time for her second shot it'll be summer break, so she couldn't take a planned day off like Jacob did to sleep off the side effects from her body ramping up antibody production. So instead I scheduled her vaccine for school hours, so she at least got to miss a couple hours of school to make up for it. 

Now half of our family is vaccinated. (Technically Rachel isn't fully vaccinated yet, but at least she's on her way.) This week the CDC also came out with new guidelines saying it's ok for vaccinated people to be both indoors and outdoors with no masks on. Previous to that there were more strict guidelines, basically outdoors with no masks was ok, and indoors without masks was ok if there were only people that were also vaccinated or just one other unvaccinated household. With the new guidelines the church is now allowing those who are not vaccinated to come to church without masks on. They ask that all kids and adults who are not vaccinated to continue to wear masks. So today Jacob and I didn't wear a mask at church. It was a little weird to be surrounded by all those people and not have a mask on. There were many that I know are vaccinated that still wore masks. It'll take a while for people to feel comfortable without masks, I think. 

Yesterday after playing at Grandma's pool and trampoline, Megan and Ryan wanted to go with the Knights to check out the new splash pad at Clements. The water was a little cold (especially with the breeze blowing through) but they had fun.