End of school craziness!

The first day of summer vacation seems like the perfect day to pay tribute to the crazy month of May and it's end of school extravaganzas. With four kids in school now our schedule was crazy but we had fun honoring our kids and celebrating their accomplishments. 

First off was Laine, she was honored at awards night! We were super happy for her and though we have no pictures I do have a picture of her "award- winning" pancakes, turns out the hours we have spent watching the Food Network as a family has taught her a few things.

I was lucky enough to get to attend Matt's first field trip! We took a visit to Wheeler Farm where Matt and his friends enjoyed the morning running around feeding ducks, checking out the animals and taking a hay ride! 

Eve participated in a school play where she stole the show as the funniest girl on stage. She just blossomed and came out of her shell, even the kids in James' class thought she was the best part. S

Matt decided that he was ready to graduate from preschool, I'm not sure if I was ready for that one though. He had a part where he spoke about the pledge then got to hold the flag while they said the pledge- he was super excited about that. 

James had an afternoon of singing patriotic songs....

...he was not happy that he had to sing or that grandmas and mom were there to support him. 

One highlight of our last week is that I won free meals at our favorite burger joint for a week.  

Everyone got a good burger and time with mom we had a lot of fun celebrating their accomplishments and planning what we were going to do with our summer vacation!

We have a teenager!!!

It has been over a week but I have been putting off posting this, maybe because I am still in denial that I have a teenager in my house. 

What can I say about Laine...Laine is one of the kindest, compassionate, helpful people I know. I don't know of a better bigger sister, she takes time with the smallest of her siblings to help with whatever they want. Abby loves her and gets more excited when Laine comes home than whenever anyone else does. She is becoming a master chef, and has been cooking one meal a week for almost a year now. We love listening to her play the piano, it is fun to watch her master complicated pieces. She also is witty and her dry sense of humor cracks us up. We are just grateful that this girl is part of our family. 

Easter 2016

It was a busy spring break. Not only did we go to Comic Con  but we also got to celebrate Easter with family. 

We started the week before Easter and celebrated with our Bellamy Family, we had a traditional Easter dinner (with one too many pans of funeral potatoes) and the traditional egg hunt. 

Look what I found! 

Eve trying to figure out where her parents hid the eggs
this year

Bellamy cousins! 

The next morning the kids woke up to find their baskets. They were all quickly found and everyone seemed happy. They had informed their parents this year that they now all only eat "good" chocolate. Meaning, they perfer to eat the Lindt or Ghiradelli stuff. So they were all super happy that those choices found their way into their baskets this year along with some new Disney Infinity characters.

"Hey, did any of you leave this little pink thing here"

"No takers, I guess I will claim it." 

We tried creating our own dyes this year with food coloring. The kids loved creating their own colors and I loved the way that they turned out.

The kids all got to pick out new church clothes for Easter, not a moment too soon because we had dresses that were getting too small, pants that had holes in the knees, and ties that were unraveling.
They each got to pick what they would wear, well not Abby. We got Abby's dress over a year ago.  And each of the outfits shows who they are, I love it.

Sisters

Brothers

These boys can't not goof off for more than one minute

So happy Easter from us to you!

February Happenings

For being the shortest month of the year February has been crazy busy. I guess I should be happy that it is only 29 days this year and not any longer, I'm not sure we could pack any more fun than we already have. 

There was a lot of sickness in the house this month, I think all of us had something during any given week. When Abby was sick that meant snuggles for the rest of us. 

We attempted to visit the Provo City Center temple open house. I was so excited for this and had gotten tickets weeks in advance. We made the trek down to Provo through inversion laden skies and felt a bit bad about adding to the problem but super excited to get to see this building together. I should have figured there would be problems when our assigned parking garage was full, we found street parking and made our way to the staring point- only to find there was a two hour wait with tickets. Knowing that we could not wait the two hours we called it good and just walked around the outside and took a few pictures. 

To make up for not getting to see the temple we got ice cream instead. The kids seemed okay with that trade off. 

The older kids' mom was in town over President's Day weekend and they went off on skiing adventures with her. While they did that Matt and Abby got to see Marvel Universe Live! Matt thought it was the best thing ever and continues to talk about it. Abby was not impressed but did manage to get a nap in between explosions and strobe lights. 

Matt's preschool is a co-op so I have opportunities to go and help in his class. I have been in their weekly for the last six weeks or so and was able to catch a picture of this not so happy boy. He wasn't happy with his George Washington hair, he was also unimpressed that Washington did not have a middle name. 

Matt also got to come with me to a cub scout meeting, while waiting for me to leave he and his buddy found something fun to do-

Probably our biggest news of the month is Laine now is sporting braces. She was a trooper earlier in the month when she had four molars pulled in the same day. She did enjoy the ice cream, pudding, and soup diet she got to live on for a few days. 

She was also happy that she could get green elastics put on her braces to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. She was also happy with the ice cream dinner that she got that night. 

Back to school

Since I was a kid I have thrived on routine. We attribute this to the flip chart schedule my mom put me on as a small child (it was awesome and epic and I believe still up in the her attic). Because of this love of routine I have always enjoyed the start of school, I am also a big fan of office supplies and shopping for office supplies. This is one of my favorite times of year and the kids seemed excited about it too. 

This year we had a big change in the back to school routine, we added in another school. For the past two years it has been one drop off and pick up. But we have added a seventh grader this year....

Laine started at Olympus Junior High this year. She is getting big fast, she was in first grade when Christian and I got married. She was nervous about starting junior high but also excited. She made a few friends in her first couple of days and was super excited that one of her new friends was also named Laine, something that she has never encountered before. 

Eve was so excited to start fifth grade that she was bouncing while I took her picture, it was hard to capture a good one. 

Eve has one of the best teachers ever hence her excitement. There are already plans for a spook alley, a climb up Mt. Timpanogos, and a pirate store. Eve was also excited that this year she can participate in FPS with her friends.  

James was starting third grade this year and while school shopping the only shirt he liked was this one...

He wore a Star Wars shirt last year too, so it must be a theme. James is still our quiet shy boy.  But he has a great memory and loves anything to do with science. He is so cute and was excited to start a new year. 

These two had quite an adventure the first day of school. They are bus riders and have been riding the same route for the past three years and were pretty good at it. Well the bus arrived after school and I watched kids pile off, unfortunately they were not my kids.  I went over to talk to the bus driver and sure enough the kids weren't on there. It being the first day of school the bus driver didn't remember them at all and at most of the stops she had been on the phone with district transportation trying to help a girl who had gotten on her bus accidentally.  One of my kids' school mates, who was on the bus, said he remembered seeing them that morning but not in the afternoon. By now I was freaking out a little (okay, a lot). The bus driver got the school on the phone and people started to look for them up there, then we were on the phone with transportation calling the other bus drivers for Morningside trying to see if they had any extra kids or if they remembered mine getting off the bus.While they were doing that I was on the phone with Christian, who was home with the three other kids, and my in-laws just in case the kids had missed the bus and decided to walk to their house.  After thirty minutes of no luck the district decided to involve their officers. While I waited for their call I started working the bus route backwards, as I was pulling into Olympus Junior High the officers called and started asking questions, I began answering them and then I saw two figures sitting on the curb. Sure enough it was my two kids had gotten off at the wrong stop and just sat waiting. Later when we asked them why they got off I heard, "because I thought it was Monday." (they used to get off at that stop on Mondays last year when taking kung fu) and "I got off because James got off".

So after several phone calls to the parties out searching for the kids, and to the secretary at the elementary school to let them know it was all okay, we laughed a bit and tried to let the kids know that in a few days they would see this as an adventure and have a great story to tell their kids one day about the first day of fifth and third grade.

Here's to hoping that the rest of the school year is less eventful!!!

No, no, no, and also, no.

I am not ready for this. Not even a little bit. My little baby girl, the one who crawls around, puts her hair up in a pineapple ponytail that goes straight up, the one who can barely toddle, the one who just started kindergarten, the one that just barely learned how to ride a bicycle, the one who is much too young to be a young lady - she's a young lady now.

Laine celebrated her twelfth birthday a couple weeks back. She decided she has outgrown parties where parents have any role, so we supplied pizza, candy, and brownies, along with a basement clear of siblings, and she took care of the rest. She had half a dozen of her best friends over, they watched Princess Bride and laughed so loudly I thought there would be a body count by the end of it.

So now she gets to run off half the summer to fun camps with the church Young Women's program, start Junior High this fall, and become a completely independent little woman who doesn't need her Dad at all.

Yup, not ready for this at all.

-Christian

Raising them right

Last spring Christian and I went to our first Comic Con event here in Salt Lake and then decided that we should take the kids this fall. Knowing how many people that were going to be there over the three days I went back and forth on this decision but September came and we were headed to the Salt Palace for the second Salt Lake Comic Con. 

First thing, I know many people complained about the lines to get tickets that first day. We were not one of them. It took us twenty minutes to find parking but we were able to walk right in, thanks preregistration.  I really liked being there on Thursday, inside lines were short and we were able to see everything we wanted to with minimal wait!

Our first stop was the free picture we got inside the Tardis. The kids thought that was a hoot. 

Matty spent most of the convention on on of our shoulders. So much better than bringing his stroller, we moved quicker and easier. It was also really cute.

 The kids were most excited to meet some of their favorite authors, They got to meet and talk to Brandon Mull (Fablehaven books), Jessica Day George (Tuesdays at the Tower), Shannon Hale (Princess Academy), Richard Paul Evans (Michael Vey) and Brandon Sanderson (Alcatraz Verses the Evil Librarians and countless others). They had fun learning about what it takes to write a book and some spoilers for upcoming books.

 We spent time over at the Kid Con area where Matty was very upset to find out that he could not open this Tardis, it really was almost the end of the world for him.

 The kids also did some super hero training, Matty took this very seriously and when aske what we wanted to be when he grows up he said, "the Doctor" notice not a doctor but The Doctor.

I laughed Saturday after we took this picture, we walked right up with no line. Saturday at 10 am the line was at least ten groups deep. Yay for Thursday at the con! 

We did finally find the big Tardis with the doors that opened so Matty was happy! 

There were also some weeping angels near by, we weren't too afraid though because we had - ice cream!

 My kids didn't want a lot of pictures with the cosplay people but Eve race across the floor to get pictures with this Anna and Elsa. She was super excited, I wonder if we can skip them at Disneyland next year...

The next day we were totally awesome parents and pulled our kids out a whole half an hour early from school and headed down to the con. We got to meet and speak with John Barrowman (Doctor Who) and even got to skip most the line because we had a small child (thanks Matt!) and then we went and talked with Paul McGann (Doctor Who). 

We also got to meet Eve Myles who is incredibly sweet and kind. She talked to us for a bit and even commented about Matty's tooth gap. She was just pleasant and completely awesome. 

Only two of my kids wanted a picture with the big snakes. They were super brave and I was surprised that they could even stand hold two giant snakes. 

Eve may not have stood for a picture with snakes but she was happy to stand with Gollum, 

Our last day there we spent most the time in panels as the floor was just crazy but our kids had a great time. Matty had such a good time that he doesn't want me to cut off his admission bracelet.  

Thanks Salt Lake Comic Con, we will be back!