The Place!

I love it! I hope that our house is the place kids want to come hang out. If tonight is any indication of the future, it just might be! These are the kids at my house right now. (I made them gather for a photo op. They were nice about it!)Aren't they cute?

So why am I blogging while I have a bunch of kids at my house? Well, because the computer is right in the middle of the action and I am checking them as they run in and run out! It's been so HOT here lately that I'm just glad they are able to go run around out side. The big boys are just playing video games... Is there any way to get boys to go out and move???

Anyway, fun night!

Brock123

I titled this entry Brock123 because that is my awesome kid's name on an undisclosed website he frequents!

I had to let you all enjoy my baby's first school project!!!
It's an "about me" poster, and while I know it isn't original or full of creative thought, it may still be the most awesome project I have ever seen! He wanted to label everything on his own and did pretty good!

Just wanted to share the sunshine with you...

Tonight he prayed that I would put him back in gymnastics quicker... I love him!

In the week

I love the beach and I love beach pictures. Last Saturday we went to the beach with the YMYW of our ward for their beach trip. We had a great day! These aren't the best picts in the world, but there's some cute stuff.

I have "earth" kids who LOVE being in the muck of it all. Baillie was singing a song about mud baths.


This is a Scott special. This was the perfect beach for it too. There was ankle deep water forever!


Ok, I know this pict was blurry, but it was so funny! I was taking picts of everything. Took one of Scott then he noticed and "beefed" up for the second picture!




This is Bricky watching all the big boys skim board (notice the one to the right in the back) and he wanted to... He is pondering it with his little boogy board...


So that was a great day. I wish I was a better picture taker! I need more practice probably. Speaking of that, Brodric thinks he is a photographer. He has been taking pictures of everything! Most of them I delete, but not this one. It was actually pretty cool, thought I'd share.



The big deal of the week this week was the kindergarten class. This year in order to save money the AV Unified Schools has made K an all day thing. And in the process of saving money they have gone from 20 students to one teacher to 31+! It is a horrible thing and I don't like it at all! I was in the K class most of Wednesday and a chunk of Thursday this week to help out the teacher. It is mayhem! There is no relief if a teacher has to deal with a problem or go to the bathroom, or help a kid with a bloody nose or anything. There is no help for the teacher at all. They rely on unpaid parents who may or may not be in the class at a particular time. It's not a good situation! Bricky's teacher has been teaching 20+ years and yet she is about to pull her hair out! It is sad and not really fair to anyone. I called AVUSD and talked to the Asst. Superintendant about this problem. She had all kinds of good answers and excuses, some had to do with the California Legslutature not approving a budget yet and some had to do with the teachers union "choosing" this. But none of them were good answers. So I got no where. I could get ugly about the problem, but it wouldn't do any good. I'm going to keep my eye on it. Melanie has been looking into a charter school in a different school district and that my be an option! Sad but true...

Now it's noon on Saturday and I haven't gotten a thing done. Scott is out with the Stake Priest/Laurel water skiing activity. Lucky him... I gonna get up and do something!

41 and I think I got it...

So do you make your bed every day? Just wondering...

I don't, haven't, didn't, never did! But now that I have a bed with pillows I am happy to report that I make my bed every day. It only took me 41 years to perfect the art of bed making! I'm good at it. Clara Baillie likes to help me and Scott even gets in on the action!

Have I told you lately that I like my bed?

Cheesy entry, I know, but... Why are you still reading?

Has anyone seen my blog?

...cause I sure haven't!!!
I've sure watched a lot of the olympics though and I think Dara Torres is my new idol! Michael Phelps is neat too, but that 41 year old is the real champ! What did we do when the olympics came on before DVR's were invented? How did we ever have time to watch?
Oooooo, I'll try to blog more this week. You'll all be so happy, I'm sure.

Where to start...

Dear Diary, we had a good week.

This blog feels like that sometimes, just a diary entry... but I'm gonna post anyway. It was a good week!

Highlights from the week.

First week of school--- went great, everyone's happy!

Court of honor --- We have an amazing boy and he got the most merit badges of any boy in the ward at scout camp. 6 badges in one week, and two of them are requireds and aren't small ones either!

(Just a cute pict of Carter with our first edible watermelon!)


Back to Piano lessons! The kids are excited to be back to that routein. I am too. They really like it. Kendahl decided to take voice lessons from the same teacher instead of piano, so that will be fun for her.

Poor Scott has been so excited to make something with our eggplant. We gave a couple away, let a couple of them go bad, and now he had two nice looking ones and he wanted to be awesome and cook! He decided to make eggplant pizza! We got a cool recipe off the internet and he was on his way... But... this is how it turned out.

Before we could even think about pizza, he was broiling the eggplant and forgot to check them! Black eggplant! Backup plan was OF COURSE the zuccini and tomatoe pizza with garlic, olive oil, parmesean and motzrella cheeses. It was AWESOME!!!!


We enjoyed watching the opening ceremonies of the olympics this week and have been able to catch a few events. The olympics are awesome! It makes Brodric feel the need to exercize and he has been doing all kids of crazy moves along with pushups, handstands and various other types of "working out".



So there you have it! On to another week. Highlights to come later! Hold your breath!

And then there were none...

Today was the first day of school!!! We are first time empty nesters... Well, since Scott is at work, it would put me in that category anyway, for the moment.

The troops seemed more nervous than usual this year. We haven't ever had the jitters like we did this year. Each of the kids had their own stuff going on. Kendahl is a sophomore and I think she knew what to expect this year (last year she was just too naive to know) but because she knew, it made her especially anxious.


Scott is tired because we got him out of bed to take Kendahl and he decided he would hurry and get ready and just go to work. He still looks alseep.


Carter had insomnia and for the first time in YEARS actually asked if he could come sleep with me. He was just so tired he didn't know what to do and just cried quietly and stayed awake for hours in my bed. (Strange I know for a 12 year old), but he was SOOOO sweet! At some point he did fall asleep. In the morning he simply said, "thanks mom".



Baillie (known at school again this year as Clara) came out of her bed about 9:30 pm and asked for a blessing. We were worried about her class because she wasn't with the group from last year and we hadn't heard anything positive about her teacher. But she cheerfully went this morning without any problems. At the end of the day she came home all smiles so it's all good I guess.



Brodric was the champ of them all. He didn't show any signs of fear. but he wasn't too happy to get up early this morning. When I went to wake him up 45 min. before we had to leave he said, "I'm not done sleeping yet", like that would be explanation enough. But he did get up and got there. He didn't show any signs of nerves till we actually went to his class. He was acting super shy and wouldn't let me take his picture, at least not without a struggle! Brodric is now a full day kindergartner, (even though he only went for 2 hours today)! He said he liked it and before we got very far in the car at the end of the day he had asked me three times if we were going the whole day tomorrow. He is excited!




So at the end of the school day everyone was in a good mood! That's awesome huh?! No one complained and I think everyone is looking forward to the new scheduled days ahead. School keeps us in a good groove!

As for me, I am going back to work. I am going to work at least 15 hours a week, MWF (woo hoo) and I am going to spend Tuesdays at the elementary school volunteering in both the kids classes. Every other Thursday will be with my grandma and on the other Thursdays I told Carter I could probably come over to his school. He was glad about that... I thought that was weird since he is in 7th grade, what boy wants their mom at school? But, it made me feel wanted.

It should be a great year this year! I hope anyway...

Hornworms, Squash bugs and wild watermelon; Oh MY!

I found the first tomato horned worm today out in the garden… Did you know that when you step on horned worms, green goo squishes out? It’s pretty gross! I gotta find the magic spray to kill them now! I’ll be hunting them daily, I’m sure!

The squash bugs have exhausted me… I have spent countless minutes out in the garden vacuuming them into the shopvac. It hasn’t worked! Well it did, it just didn’t get them all. I gave up last week and now there are tons! If you don’t get them in the early stages, they grow and multiply and replenish… It’s yucky.

Wild watermelon you ask? Well, I had to move the side fence of the garden cause the watermelon was growing out the fence and attaching it’s self onto the bike rack. So I moved the bike rack and killed 3 little baby watermelon in the process because they couldn’t fit through the bars of the bike rack. So sad, but it had to be done. Now we can get back to the side of the tomatoes to pick them and hopefully new little watermelon will grow on the vine. I had no idea the watermelon and cantaloupe would do so well! I only planted a few little plants! It’s crazy.

But the coolest thing coming from the garden is the CORN! We had two families over last night to eat and swim and we fed them all freshly picked corn from the garden!! And it was YUMMY!! Probably 17 ears of corn!!!!!! Ya, I know, who knew? Who knew it would actually turn out? I sure didn’t. Last week I tried an ear and it was mushy and really starchy so I thought we were doomed. But not so, we did good.