Before and After

School year 2007-2008 has ended (a week and a half ago on June 20th). I take pictures of the kids the first day of school and the last. Wow! They have grown up so much! It is amazing. Especially the teeth! :) We had a great year. The kids did great and are learning and growing so much.

July 2007

June 2008

Wow Carter changed tons this year! He got glasses in October, lost multiple teeth, played flag football and soccer for the first time. We loved his teacher Mrs. Stevens.

-Favorite Subject- Math
-Best Friend- Cale
-Funnest thing you did or learned at school- Math Boxes
-What do you want to be when you grow up- Police Officer (Last year he wanted to be a trash man so he could "smell the stink."
-Favorite Food- Spaghetti
-Favorite School Lunch- Big Daddy's Pizza

July 2007

June 2008

How funny! Kennedi is wearing the same shirt. Kennedi changed lots too! She also got glasses, lost multiple teeth and started gymnastics. She is a great little gymnast and loves it. Mrs. Huston was a great teacher for her this past year.

-Favorite Subject- Math Homework
-Best Friend- Jayne and Amanda
-Funnest thing you did or learned at school- Biographies (She got to dress up as Betsy Ross and do a "living biography" on her.)
-What do you want to do when you grow up- "I just want to be a Mom actually"
-Favorite Food- Brownies
-Favorite School Lunch- Orange Chicken

July 2007

June 2008

Brayden thought it was his best yet. I hope he keeps thinking that every year. His teacher, Mrs. Parikh was awesome. She really made him try harder and do his best. He is still enjoying Flag Football and Basketball. And as you can see he grew out his hair a lot! (I am not loving it, but am trying to be patient)

-Favorite Subject- Math (He really loves it and is really good at catching on to new concepts)
-Best Friend- Nick, Danny, Will
-Funnest thing you did or learned at school- Going to Ameritowne (they learned how to have checking accounts, and had a "job" in the town. He was the town accountant- He decided he didn't want to be that when he grows up!)
-What do you want to be when you grow up- A chef or in the NBA
-Favorite Food- Chick-Fil-A chicken sandwich
-Favorite School Lunch- Orange Chicken

Cub Scout Day Camp Extravaganza

It is done and gone! I survived my two volunteer mornings in the heat and being surrounded by hundreds of boys ages 8-10. It actually went better than I thought it would. I got to be with some great adults from the ward and the boys were pretty darn good. It is a good thing that it is Brayden's last year, because he is pretty bored with most of it. Luckily they get to do archery all 3 days and what boy doesn't like that? And we got a little more bonding time. Not much but a little, which is better than nada. It is dang hard to keep track of 18 boys when EVERY SINGLE BOY is wearing the same dang red shirt. And to top it off, most of them had the same hat on,(Brayden was too cool to wear it, so he wore a baseball hat). So from behind every boy looked the same. ( I should have taken a picture of that!)

Now to get Brayden ready tonight for his overnighter 11 year old scout camp early tomorrow morning! He is going to be exhausted! Luckily I get to stay home from this one! :)

"Camp Fire"

Yippee for scouting. Last night we got to build a fire so we could get done with Brayden's Arrow of Light requirements. I so never wanted to be a scout mom, but here I am. We needed to build a fire before Friday so we decided, heck, why not build out in our pile of dirt! We didn't know where else to go. We probably broke laws and codes all over the place, but it really turned out fun! We need to go camping. The smoke smelled so good (when it wasn't going straight into our eyes and mouth). The kids were very cautious and had fun roasting marshmallows and burning old corn stalks. We haven't gone camping in forever since it always seemed like we had a kid at a "hard" age for camping, but I think this will be our year! Our summer has already filled up so quick, so it looks like we will go in August. It was fun to see Taft and the kids bond over the fire and marshmallows.

So this fire went well for the theme of the week for Brayden. He said he is going to be a "scout nerd" because he has Cub Scout Day Camp on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 9-3 and then on Friday morning he goes to an overnighter for 11 year old scout camp. So a "scout nerd" he will surely be. That is a lot of scouting! His birthday is in a place where he is able to do both of these camps. I like it because it keeps him busy for part of the time that they are on summer break for their 2 whole weeks. :) Go Scout Nerd!

RaNDoM

The Olympic Trials have started. Good stuff on the TV that is actually okay for the kids to watch! It is fun to have something that is great for the whole family. I remember watching the Olympics as a kid and wanting to be like the athletes. Too bad I am not athletic unless you count badminton, and that was back in the day, and I actually wasn't that great, but I could play decent. I love the date that the Olympics start. 8-8-08. I have a thing for cool numbers. I wish one of my kids had a cool birthdate. I guess I didn't plan that well enough. :)

I found a new laundry soap that makes me happy. It has been great the last two night climbing in my yummy smelling sheets, it actually puts a smile on my face. If yummy smells make you happy too, try Gain Joyful Expressions, Apple Mango Tango. This scent might take over my love of Tide Simple Pleasures, Vanilla and Lavender. Sometimes strong smells give me headaches but these don't, yippee!

Ellie embarrasses me when I take her to the store. She was smiling and talking to another boy that was probably around 5 years old. He was with his Grandma. Ellie proceeds to ask about his "Dad" that he is with. Dang. The grandma has short hair and wasn't overly feminine, but she doesn't want to hear that she looks like a man! And at this same store she saw a black man. She then proceeds to say he is a scary guy. Blah! So not fun! I try to quietly tell her, that he is not, but she won't listen. I hope he didn't hear her, or if he did, I hope he laughed it off. I don't know why she would think that, not cool. Maybe it is because we live in a pretty white part of town and she doesn't get diversity enough. But then again when she sees guys riding their motorcycles with helmets, she points and says, "there's a bad guy!" Crazy almost 3 year old!

Where Should I Start?

I haven't blogged for such a long time that I don't even know where to start. Things happened, we did some stuff and had some fun. :) Now I am all caught up! Ha! Well here goes..

Fieldtrip-

Let me start with Brayden's fieldtrip. I finally went on a fieldtrip again! Wowzers! I don't think I have been on a fieldtrip with Brayden since Kindergarten. How sad is that? Fieldtrips take so long that I feel guilty asking people to watch the kids. Kat was oh so kind to watch Ellie while I had fun at the Botanic Gardens with Brayden and 4 other classmates of his. The gardens at this time of the year are BEAUTIFUL. I took pictures but they just don't do it justice. I love love love flowers and they have so many there that I wish I could take them all home and plant them in my yard. But I would probably just kill them. Anyway, it was nice to spend time with Brayden and see him with his class and how they all act together. They are getting old. It is scary. I need to remember to go on his fieldtrips when he is in 6th grade. I only have one more year left with him in Elementary School. He acted so excited for me to go. I need to be better.

Riding on the Bus together. (I don't miss the bus part!)

Crazy 5th Graders

Father's Day-
The kids all had cute homemade cards and presents for Taft. They just love to give something on Mother's and Father's Day. They get so excited. I asked Taft what he wanted for dinner and he went with the classic dinner of roast, carrots and potatoes. Dang, the roast was a little chewier than it should have been, but at least it tasted good! It is hard to try to get it all ready before church when church starts at 9! But I survived it. I made the classic chocolate trifle (it is so so so rich, but yummy). Taft got some new BBQ tools and a cool shirt and I got an old picture of him and his Dad printed so he could put it in his office. I am thankful that Taft is the Dad of our family.

My 33rd Birthday-
It was a good one. I took the job of making it good myself. :) I got me a babysitter (well actually I had my favorite twins) and I went and got me a pedicure and a haircut. Man, I need more pedicures! Those are luscious! And I hadn't gotten my hair cut for 6 months, so it was time! I met Sharleen for lunch and I stuffed myself at good ol' Red Robin. Gotta love their fries with ranch and the Teriyaki Chicken Burger! Brooke and Brittany were sweet and wouldn't let me pay them for watching Ellie. Such nice girls! Taft and I had gone out the Saturday before for my birthday dinner. I wanted to try something new, so we went to Ali Baba's Mediterranean and Lebanese Grill. I loved it! Chicken Shwarma is good even with a really weird name. We got some ice cream with the kids and called my Birthday good. I got to go out the next night for dinner with my Primary Presidency and get stuffed again and then out again the night after that for dessert with more friends. How nice is that! I felt a little spoiled.

I borrowed this pic from Gina's Blog :) Thanks Gina!

Wacky Wednesday-
Ellie went to her first day of "preschool"!!! It is actually called Wacky Wednesdays at St. Luke's where she will go to preschool. She will officially start preschool in September. She was really excited to go and had a great time. When I went to pick her up she ran to me and said, "I had so much fun!" It was wonderful to have 2 1/2 hours to myself, even if I was just running errands and going to Carter's end of the school year party. It will be a beautiful thing in just a few short months on Tuesdays and Thursdays for 4 hours each day. Just me, myself, and I! Hooray!

On our way to "preschool"

Happy at Wacky Wednesdays

Well that is plenty long! And probably boring for anyone else but myself. But I have to record this stuff somewhere. More to come later.

Not Much to Say

I don't feel like I have much to talk about lately. Things are winding down with school. Only 1 1/2 weeks left! But less than a month away until the kids start their new school year. Year round school is weird. I feel like we should be on summer break. I don't know why I feel so strongly about it this year because we have only done year round since Brayden started school.

Next week will be busy, busy, busy. Each kid has a different end of the year party that I should show my face at. And they are all on a different day too. Kennedi has a "Living History Museum" where she is dressing up like Betsy Ross and doing a little presentation. (Betsy had 16 siblings, whoa!) It is my birthday, my dads birthday and Father's Day all rolled up in one week. Ellie gets to go to her first kind of like preschool day next Wednesday. And so on and so on. Hopefully it will all be fun!

Well that's all I have to say about that.

My Baby Boy is Lucky 7!

Happy Birthday Dear Carter, Happy Birthday to you!

This year I have tried to start a new tradition for the kids. When it is their birthday I go get them out of school and take them to lunch. Today Carter picked to go to Rubio's. I was excited to go there since neither of us have ever been there before. And it was yummy. A much better alternative than his other choices which were McDonalds and Taco Bell. 40 minutes wasn't long enough for us, but it was fun and I think he was happy to have a little one on one time. I know I was!

My kids also get to choose what they have for dinner and without fail Carter asked for pizza. I think the kids think that is their only choice for their birthday dinner! I tell them I could make something yummy or we could do something else, but they always pick pizza. Weird. So we headed to Cici's with our other family and spent a little time eating and chatting. We went home and blew out the candles on the oh so fun donut cake and opened presents. This age is still pretty easy to please. Carter had wanted this giant magnifying glass so he got it. He read his book tonight with it too. Funny. He also got some legos, a hat, a phlat ball and we fixed up Brayden's old bike so it was snazzy and new for Carter. Easy to please! Just what I like. He did want more presents to open though. I should just wrap up candy bars so they have "more" to open.



Carter is such a fun boy. He is growing up so fast. He is our little slow poke and so easy going. I hope he stays easy going, but I wouldn't mind if he would crank it up a notch with the slow poke living though! :) I am so happy he is a part of our family. Happy Birthday Car Car.

Holy Moly's

Ellie is funny. She is always switching words around and using them in the wrong way. On our walks to school she looks for "holy moly's" or "holy poly's" on the trails and she usually sees lots of them. In the backyard she digs around the grass and dirt and finds more. I don't think she is very nice to them since she tries to open them when they are in a ball. Poor little bugs. Someday she will call them roly poly's or potato bugs like the rest of us, but for now we know what she is talking about and I think it is cute.

The other day she was sitting on my lap. We were both wearing shorts. She said, "your legs are smokey!" Ha! I guess I better shave more! I think she meant to say they were pokey. Especially since she kept trying not to touch her legs onto mine anymore, ouch. Then today she touched them and said they were fuzzy. The other night Taft asked her what was on his legs and he pointed to his hairy legs, she said "Grass!" Man, this age is funny.

Garden of the Gods

Wowie! We have lived in good ol' Colorado for almost 6 years. The time has zipped by so fast, that I can hardly believe it has been that long! The first year we were here we went to Garden of the Gods. I can't believe we haven't back until tonight. It is great! It is beautiful. The kids loved it! So many big rock formations to climb on and the trails around the formations are awesome. We saw lots of blue jays, and rock climbers. It was great. We packed up some PB&J's and PB&H's, watermelon and gogurts. (A dinner for champions I tell ya!) We went with some of our favorite people, Todd, Kat and their cutie girls. Just another reminder of why we love living so close to them.

Ellie loved being free in the outdoors to run, skip, jump, sing, climb and dance. She even tried to get into a few pictures with another family of strangers. So after that she performed for them with her song and dance. She got to pet many dogs and just enjoyed life. I wish I had her zest of life and energy. Carter loved climbing and he wanted to pose for lots of pictures and I was happy to oblige. Kennedi loved being with her girly cousins and they had fun hiking around and being brave to climb. Brayden liked eating and climbing. That boy must be growing because his appetite sure has! But he is as skinny as ever. The kids weren't ready to leave but they have school tomorrow and it takes an hour to get home. The temperature was wonderful and it was great to enjoy the beauties of nature. I hope to go back soon!

4 miles and that is that

I ran 4 miles yesterday morning! WooHoo! I haven't ran 4 in a long time. It actually didn't feel like it was killing me either. I was a little nervous to run that far since I was feeling a cold coming on, but I was hoping the run would burn it off.

Nope. I was wrong.

Every hour that passed I felt sicker and sicker. I finally decided to take my temperature last night and it said103! No wonder I felt like crap. Ick. So I am wondering if I have the influenza. I am not feeling much better today.

You know I am really sick when I can't even finish the season finale of LOST! Hold on, wow! I just was so done for the day and couldn't stay awake another second longer. Luckily we have the best invention ever made and we can hopefully finish it tonight.

Watermelon, Rain, & BBQ equals Memorial Day

Brrrrr. Brrrrr. Brrrrr. So what is a gal to do when 21 people are getting together at my house for a BBQ and it rains? You squish them all into the house, silly! Totally not my plan. Dang. Oh well, it actually turned out okay. We just brought in the patio chairs and the kids ate in the "dining room" (I use that word loosely since normally there in no table or chairs in the dining room, ha!), and all of us adults squished in the kitchen and family room. Everyone was great sports about it and luckily it wasn't pouring so the guys didn't actually drown while grilling the meat. But the temp outside was only in the 50's and my hair was little crazy with the humidity. Luckily it is usually DRY since my hair is fluffy/ugly/kinky if there is moisture in the air. But back to the point. We had plenty of good food (thanks to everyone chipping in) and lots of good conversation. That is all you really need for a Memorial Day. Oh, that and lots of watermelon. :)

Hello, did I go a little crazy on the amount of watermelon we needed????

Ellie was in watermelon heaven

The day wrapped up nicely with full bellies and stronger friendships. The kids were happy and so were the parents. AHHHHH.... Now back to real life again, dang.

Sharing a little MP3/love time together at the end of the day

Family that isn't really family & other random things

To put it simply, today was a great day. Primary went well. Presidency meeting was good (I love those ladies, they rock at what they do!) We got to go the Craig's house for some homemade ice cream (yum!), Annie painted the girls fingernails, and we got to talk to the adults that we don't get a lot of chances to normally talk too. Then we went to the park to say goodbye to a great family that is moving out of the ward. She has been the perfect visiting teaching partner in history... thanks Rachel! Tons of families showed up to the park to eat goodies and share goodbyes. It just struck me how many great people are in our ward. I already knew that, but being there tonight just made that feeling stronger. It just felt like a family tonight. I loved it. There were so many great people to have conversations with and the kids all had fun playing together or playing kickball. We have been in the ward for almost 4 years now and I think it is now starting to feel really comfortable. We have had the chance to see a lot of changes in the families in the ward, seeing the kids grow up, seeing new babies join families and new families joining the family. I don't know, I just really enjoyed myself. It didn't hurt that it was beautiful cool/warm weather. And when we left the sunset was gorgeous. My picture can't even capture it right, but here it is.

Other random things. We decided to try to pick out some more flowers/ground cover for the backyard and had fun going to the nursery to see all the beautiful plants and flowers. Sometimes I get overwhelmed with it all because I want it all fully grown in now and I want it to be perfect, so then I can't even choose what to get or what to do. But I got over it and hopefully what we planted will be great (even though I have to wait for it all to fill in under the trees.) Carter helped this time with the planting and he was a natural. It is fun to see him digging in the dirt and planting. We got dirty hands and it was great.

Ooh! My had looks old! Ack! :)

Brayden got a "new" bike. Woo hoo! He has totally outgrown his old bike (not too mention one of his brakes is busted) and I was dreading having to pay for a gear bike for him. He hasn't had gears before so it was about time! Luckily when we were driving home yesterday we noticed around the corner from our house they were selling a gear bike that was the perfect size for Brayden. Yippee! We pulled right over and said we would get it. (He did test drive it first!) He had been feeling jipped since Kennedi was given a cute gear bike a few months ago. Now Carter is the jipped one. He will just have to wait. So the kids had tons of fun going on lots of bike rides yesterday all around the neighborhood and trails. It is such much easier on all the hills around for them to be able to change into an easier gear. I love for them to be in the good ol' outdoors and enjoying time with each other. And how nice that I didn't have to pay full price for his "new" bike and not a penny for Kennedi's.




Good weekend so far! Now we get to all be together tomorrow for Memorial Day. BBQ's, here we come!

Flowers Make Me Happy

If I had all the money in the world I would have gobs of flowers growing around my yard. But seeing as I don't have all the money in the world, and the money I do have is earmarked for 20 different other projects, the small flower bed will have to do. Just a little flower bed makes me happy. Oh, how I love those cute little flowers. Ahhhh, spring and summer are so good to me.

The flower planting crew

Serious Business

Freeze.

I am thinking that now is about the best time to freeze my life just where it is. Brayden is almost 11 now and so close to the brink of "teenage" attitude that is it almost scary. I can almost feel the precious time ticking away each and every single day. He is so close to no longer listening to my advice and thinking that I might actually have good ideas. I am sad about it. I wonder if I have squandered away these last 10 precious years of his life. Have I taught him enough? Have I given him the tools to make it in this world? Have I helped him build a strong enough foundation that outside influences won't break him down? I don't think I have done enough. But what is enough? I think as a Mother, I will never think enough is enough. There is always more to do and to say. My children are healthy and are still at a fun stage (well 2 going on 3 wouldn't actually be called a fun stage, but it is funny a lot!). I do wish I could freeze time. I need more time. On the flip side I do wish a lot that Brayden was old enough to be the family babysitter. I would love more time to just leave the house with just my husband and not have to plan out all the details of getting a babysitter. But that time will come and it is coming faster and faster...

It has been fun to watch the kids go outside in the perfect Spring weather and play their version of baseball. Or to go in their room and play multiple games of their new favorite game of Monopoly. (That is if they can keep the destroying Ellie out of the room). It is rewarding to see your kids love and have fun together. I think that is why it hurts so much to see them when they are arguing and bugging each other too. I love my kids. They can change my emotions so quickly it is crazy. If they only knew what powers they hold over me. I hope they can be strong and stand up for what they believe. But first, we have got to get them to believe in all the right things...

I love that they love Monopoly, I loved it when I was a kid too!