School started

 The first day of school, I was watching Alexis Schauers, daughter of Aaron and Amy Schauers, because her mom was having a baby! She is a 4 year old bucket of fun. We played barbies, jumped on the tramp, visited the neighbor boy who is also 4, ate snacks, played with the gerbil, folded laundry, drew chalk pictures outside, and painted nails twice! Her sister Ava Luann was born successfully that evening, but she was delivered up at the U of U hospital so I haven't met her yet but can't wait to see her! Aunt Wendy picked up Lexi and took her to see her sister.

 

So that is partly why I didn't take any pictures on the first day of school. That, and Savanna is in Jr High now and leaves at 7:30 in the morning when the other two are rubbing sleep from their eyes. Also I was having stress about the sudden knowledge that a bus was servicing our area now, which no one seemed to be notified about, (is this for real or what?) and carpool was dissolving. The problem other than it was not publicized to anyone, was that to qualify to ride the bus you have to live 1.5 miles away from the school, and we live 1.4 miles away. But most of the people I do carpool with do qualify, so me and my immediate neighbors on the other side of the 1.5 land line were doing research and petitioning to be able to use the bus as well. It all ended up working out fine, there was plenty or extra room for us non-qualifies on the bus, and the department of transportation and the bus driver were willing to allow my kids to come aboard. But it did cause a little extra hecticness that first morning figuring it all out. I took a picture of Fiora and Weston on their first bus ride the second day of school. Its a novelty now, today the third day of school they left 20 minutes earlier than necessary to make sure and get on the bus this morning! 

Fiora so far likes her advanced learning class, she has been keeping up with homework and likes the friends she is making in that class. She also likes her teacher who Savanna has been determined to make her believe is scary and strict and mean because she teaches ALL.

Savanna was very excited for jr high during the summer, but when we went to "back to school night" she became a little disenchanted. The school was bigger, the student body was bigger, there were no individual teachers to give her special one on one attention, she had 8 classes to keep track of and remember where they were, no recess, more rules, and lots of self conscious peers looking at her. This is the beginning of the big leagues! She did ok the first day, she seemed excited about drama class and got her lengthy math homework done after school. But the second day was one frustration after another, she got tripped and fell down and bruised her elbow, her orchestra teacher is "mean and scary and strict" and she had no friends in her classes, she felt overwhelmed at the thought of doing all the homework required and didn't finish the homework given her that day so she'll be backed up already. She pleaded with me to take her out of orchestra, but I feigned that she is stuck until at least 8th grade so she will have to quit then (and hopefully she will change her mind by then). I don't think she will be able to keep her private lessons though unfortunately. She spends all her time in the morning primping and getting ready, there has been no practicing at all this week. She will settle into a groove, I'm sure there will be good days and bad for all my kids, but they are smart and strong and will figure it out, or fail and learn something in the process. :)

Wrapping up before School started

Weston had his last class of "easy" gymnastics last week.  He has started the team prep class that is 3 hours long 3 times a week and has some nice callouses and very sore pectoral/shoulder/lat muscles to prove it. The pictures are of his "Flip Flop Classic" on August 17th, which wasn't a competitive meet but rather a fun meet for the rec classes and he only competed against himself, getting a blue, red, or white ribbon for every event. He did great on every event but the vault, somehow he freakishly missed his vault, which I've seen him do perfectly several times, grrr. I had to ask myself--if I get that frustrated over a "fun meet" I wonder what kind of a wreck I'll be when he is actually competing on a team! He is a tough little man. His coach gave him a recycled trophy because he got blues on every event but one, and he put his own name on it and proudly displays it on his dresser.

Miss Fiora has been a ray of sunshine this summer. She doesn't go find friends to play with hardly at all, she prefers to stay at home reading her books and playing her computer games. She has a really good friend named Jaquelyn who she invited over for a late night a few times, but mostly she was content to hang out with mom or weston or sav, whoever was home. She practiced her typing diligently every day of the summer at my urging, and is proud to report (or maybe ashamed to admit) that it paid off because at school yesterday she typed at a 23 WPM speed, and at the beginning of the summer she was only 15 WPM.  I took her on a mommy daughter date at Texas Road House and we enjoyed sharing the ribs and an onion!

My brother Justin's wife Kali graduated from the nursing program this summer and we went to her graduation.  We are so proud of her for persevering and finishing that program despite having two babies in the middle of it all!

Work really slowed down for me during the summer so I had some extra time to do "housekeeping" with my job. I created a workbook for my child client cases, its much better to have a "curriculum" of sorts when doing therapy with kids for a myriad of reasons. All my clients have treatment plans, but adults take the session where they want to, children look at you and do what their told to do. So its nice to have an outline prepared in advance instead of wondering whenever a kids comes in "what do I do with them today?" I also had time to audit files and create a new treatment plan template that works with the DSM5 that came out this year. My bosses gave me a basket of carmel/candy covered apples, thanking me for my extra work. That made my day, and I gave them right to my kids, ha ha.
Otherwise the last week of summer was spent being lazy, knowing that lots of work was impending for us all just around the corner! Fiora and Savanna spent the night down in Gunnison the last weekend with cousin Baily and enjoyed some Gpa Neil and Gma Bonnie time.

Karli came back!

 My sister Karli returned with honor from the Arizona Tuscon mission on August 7th. Her family was VERY happy to see her and she had a big orange fan club at the airport ready to greet her back home. Orange is her favorite color (Weston was very cross with me that I forgot to tell him to wear orange. Everyone wanted a piece of Karli!  The kids did a body run on her when she exited the escalator, we are happy to have a member of our family back safe from her mission.  She even had a limo waiting to take her home thanks to Gabe being the manager at the mortuary, ha ha. She did a great job. Now we just have to wait another year or so to welcome back Krystal Joy.

Don't end summer

I don't think I'm ready for the hectic life of having school start again, but then again it will be nice to have some other way besides pleading, begging, mean mom to motivate the kids to be wise with their time.  We are enjoying summer while it lasts.  I've added a few pictures from our Pioneer day barbecue, my dad played frisbee golf with the kids and they had a blast.  Also a cute picture of Knightly and Penny.
The Saturday after Pioneer day Jared took me Fiora and Weston to the canyon to ride four wheelers.  We rode for about an hour and a half to a lodge where we had lunch. Jared even splurged and let the kids get hot chocolate because they had a good attitude about the rocky ride. It was a beautiful ride nonetheless. It was nice to go 4 wheeling again.
Last Thursday Weston and Fiora went with me again to the snow cone shack for another bike ride down and up our big hills, Savanna was done with that idea and stayed home.  I bought Wes and Fi the "big kahuna" snow cone and they couldn't finish it, but it was cool to get once, and a loooot of sugar, they both felt pretty sick coming back up the hill.  We probably wont try that again.
Savanna has been doing a lot of babysitting this summer which is good so she can earn some money and stay busy. It has been hard to keep her busy, and her idle hands really are the devils workshop. I will evermore describe this 2013 summer as "Savanna's Moody Summer."   I know she is going to be really slammed once school starts so I'm biding my time and letting her have her lazy break. And I remind myself that my compassion and patience are growing leaps and bounds dealing with her negativity. Weston gives me lots of hugs when he sees me struggling with Savanna. I told him once that I'm so glad he still likes me, and he asked "Why wouldn't I like you?" and I said "Maybe you will know when you are 12 or 13, but for now thank you for thinking I'm the best mom ever."
The kids slept over at Heidi and Gabe Carpenters last weekend and we had dinner with them when we dropped them off. It was fun to spend time with them and they have a lovely new home. We are happy for them, my kids love Heidi she is a fun aunt.
Work for me has REALLY slowed down, so I have more time on my hands for cooking and cleaning and such. I made a nice healthy dinner all this week and last, and today we had a dinner so pretty I took a picture, cobb salad. My kids are homebodies, even when I am home and encouraging them to go out and play with friends they just adhere to the house. I've had to put some limits on electronics.
Jared's work is super busy, but he is trying to balance work and personal life. He has found some time to work on some family history which is great. Jared took Savanna to the temple to do baptisms for the first time. She was very patient with the 2 hour wait. Jared was so handsome baptizing her and others there at the temple, I was glad I came to observe that ordinance. Jared was in charge of the ward neighborhood bbq and pool party saturday and he spent a good part of his weekend preparing for it.  It went really well and we had the yummiest smoked pulled pork I've ever had!  Jared hasn't been able to do much fishing lately, but maybe when fall comes and work slows down for him he can hit the river.