No Time For Flash Cards

I found this preschool website (http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/) that I absolutely adore. It has fun craft & book ideas along with ways to teach young children.

Here are the brothers working on a craft together. I didn't take a picture of the final product and I've since thrown it away - duh! Andrew and Josh both love to make crafts, something I'm looking forward to doing more of - now that the weather is cooler.

Friends

This was taken after we'd just walked home from school (well, I walked while the boys were pushed in the jogger). It was a fun day full of apple picking and playing barefoot in the green grass.

Andrew, Xidis, Isaiah & Joshy being goofs.

All Growed Up

Andrew started Kindergarten this week!

Here is the handsomest, most adorable Kindergartener I've ever seen.

On the first day of school, Josh asked for Andrew the entire three hours. He was so excited when it was finally time to pick brother up.

At parent night, I asked Andrew's teacher where she got her Monarch caterpillars - I was thinking she'd tell me the website to purchase them from - no, she said she searches in fields of Milk Weed to find them! She is the perfect fit for my obsessed-with-all-creeping-things boy.

His teacher also plays the piano and sings to them everyday. She is pretty much Mary Poppins. When Andrew gets home from school, I ask him what things he did and he usually responds, "I don't know" or "I can't remember." But throughout the day, he'll give me little tidbits of information. He is excited to go back to school tomorrow - so I'm taking that as a sign that he's loving it. I get to volunteer in his class every other week, and I'm so excited I can't even stand it!

Moose Canyon

We were able to drive up to Silver Lake near the Brighton ski resort a few times this Fall. The drive is beautiful, especially when the leaves change. There is a boardwalk that circles the lake, a great place for little munchkins to expend some energy on a Sunday afternoon - and the views are breathtaking. On one of our trips, we were able to see not one, but THREE moose! Andrew now calls Big Cottonwood "Moose Canyon."

Boy Moose

Girl Moose

Conked Out

It doesn't happen often, but I'm grateful when it does.

We're all about the fun

July was a bummer month for us, so we've been trying to make up for it by squeezing as much fun in before Andrew starts kindergarten (kindergarten!). Andrew said he wanted to try bowling.

Bowling? Ok!

I bribed Andrew with a game of bowling if he would do his very best at his Kindergarten assessment. We grabbed lunch at Taco Bell and headed to the bowling alley - we were the only people there...

This last picture cracks me up. Andrew was sitting there because I put him in time out for being a brat. As he was moping, I pulled out the camera and said, "smile!" He humored me with the above smile and then reverted back to brat mode immediately after.

Fast Forward. Pause. Rewind.

A friend of mine wrote an essay that captured motherhood perfectly when she talked about wanting to "capture all the joy" that comes from raising children, but just. can't. wait. until bedtime. She wrote, "How could I want to fast-forward, pause, and rewind all in the same breath?"

Motherhood is crazy and I'll be the first to admit that I don't do it perfectly. Randy came home today, looked around at our messy house, and before he could say anything, I interrupted with, "I raised children today." I went to Enrichment tonight (I didn't want to go, but Randy made me) and I was telling a friend that my house was a complete disaster - she didn't believe me because she was just there a few hours before. When we came home, I gave her the grand tour of my house - I showed her each room to prove to her that our home is not always in the immaculate condition that I'd like it to be. I try, and many days are a success....but some days....I fail.

Joshy is my little monster child of late. He is impossible at nap and bed time. I sat outside his bedroom today and carted him back to his bed every time he got out of it. He laughed and thought it was the funnest game ever. After 30 minutes of this, I wanted to beat him. I prayed for alternatives to NOT BEAT HIM. An impression came. I took Josh into my arms and cradled him like a little baby. With his little body curled into a ball in my arms, I lay down in his tiny bed. He fell asleep almost instantly. I let him sleep for another ten minutes or so before I dared to leave. 40 minutes of "get it done" time wasted. Or...40 minutes of time to enjoy motherhood. I am so lucky.


I had to document my sleeping, naughty child...

Butterflies

We ordered Painted Lady Caterpillars and watched them hatch into butterflies. I was amazed it actually worked and we didn't kill them!

One of the butterflies followed our neighbor Joe into his minivan - he (or she) got to take a trip to the zoo!

Good Reads

Recently, I was referred to this article written by Pat Holland....amazing.





I also listened to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, absolutely loved it. I miss it.

Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House

We took the boys to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House (that's a mouthful!). It was a really neat experience and the boys did really well considering there was a line and it was blasting hot outside. We used the brochure they gave us - it had pictures of each of the rooms -and we made it into a scavenger hunt. We also counted how many pictures of Jesus we could find - we saw 17. It was a fun experience for me because I was able to explain some of the things we do in the temple to Andrew and I think he was able to understand because he was able to see the things I was talking about.

Movies in the Park

We went to two outdoor movies (right outside our townhouse) this summer - we saw "Monsters vs. Aliens" and "Up." The boys loved it, of course. I love this picture of Josh, it looks like he's overdosed on cotton candy & popcorn.

Life goes on....

It's hard for me to contain good news, thus, many have known from early on that we were expecting baby #3 - I am 9 weeks along.

Well, I guess when you share the good news, you've gotta share the bad. An ultrasound confirmed that the baby didn't make it and didn't really get a chance to even form. My body still thinks it's pregnant (my hcg levels are very high), and isn't doing much about it, so now we will wait and see what we need to do from here. It's sad and a big bummer.

I understand now why people wait to tell others - I wasn't expecting the flood of emotions that come when I talk about it. I'm really OK, I've got plenty of blessings to focus on right now, but I really just can't talk about it with anyone yet. I've got two perfect, healthy babies to give me faith that we can try again in the future.

On a happy note, I wanted to share an experience I had last week as we were moving. Yes, we moved. Moving is no fun, but I don't think things could have gone any smoother. We literally moved across the street, we rented a moving van which turned out to not be as crazy as Randy thought it would be, and I was absolutely amazed and humbled by the many hands that were there to help us. Thanks to you all that helped with the move and brought us dinners. And thanks to Randy's parents for watching the boys for a few days.

Anyway, back to the cool story....The move went great, except for one hitch....I lost my wallet. It literally disappeared into thin air. We bought a mattress for Andrew from an ad on KSL (don't worry, it was very clean and kept in plastic) and Randy and I went to pick it up after we were moved in. I pulled my wallet out to pay for the mattress and that was the last time I saw my wallet. We made phone calls and retraced our steps, but the wallet was gone. The only thing I could think of was that I set the wallet down on our car when I helped put the bed rails in, and then we drove off with it still on the car. I quickly reported to my bank and got everything closed and moved on with life.

The next day was Sunday and we went to church. Randy was in the stake clerk's office doing his clerk stuff when the desk phone rang. He answered and spoke with a woman that had found a wallet in her driveway, found the temple recommend that was inside the wallet, and found the Stake information that was on the temple recommend, which traced her to the phone that Randy happened to answer. Randy wanted to surprise me, so he oh-so-slyly slipped out of church to pick up the wallet. Little does he know that the RS president knows all and caught wind of what he was doing even before he returned :-). He was kind of bummed that I wasn't surprised, but when he told me how the wallet was found and how it got back to him, I was in tears. God truly loves me.

4th of July

Grandpa Jerry (my dad) & Grandma Lori were able to visit from Arizona on 4th of July weekend. We don't get to see them very often so it was so good to spend a few days with them. We went to This Is The Place...

Grandpa helping Andrew stamp designs into a leather "beehive"

Train ride

Joshy being cute

Daddy being cute

We had a BBQ in our backyard and then we watched fireworks from one of the Medical Towers (Sparklers? I don't see any sparklers. Especially not on university property.)

The Big 5

My kids haven't discovered that they can have "friend birthday parties" so we got away with another year of celebrating at Grandma & Grandpa's house...

This year's request...a ghost cake

Thumbs up on the cake

Every boy needs his own Transformer, right?

Joshy didn't get left out

Index fingers up on the gift

And I'm not a total scrooge, we did have some cupcakes with our neighborhood friends earlier that week...

In the End, Totally Worth It

There was many a time this school year that I wished I had put Andrew in preschool - I must admit. Now that I have a bit of hindsight, doing a homeschool co-op was the best thing for our sweet little monkey. He thrived this year. How lucky I am that I got to be a part of it. His teachers were loving and taught him so many wonderful things.

BFF's: Isaiah, Fiel, Kaylie, Andrew

Thanks to Annette, Becky & Mandy - for loving my little boy.

Annette made the cute grad hats & diploma. Becky did the photography. Mandy orchestrated the "ceremony." Thanks for making this such a wonderful day!