Back To School

Well it is official, I finally have the house to myself. All the kids are in school now ALL DAY. It has been a crazy week so far. Tiffany started 6th grade on Monday, Kaylee started 8th grade on Tuesday, and the boys all started today. (Ryan 4th, Jake 2nd, Kyle Kindergarten) It is a little sad in some ways to realize that all the kids are in school all day. I can't believe how fast life is going lately.

Everyone keeps asking me what I am going to do with all the time I am going to have to myself now and I really don't know the answer to that question. I think I will spend some time getting the house reorganized. We have lived here almost 2 years now and though I organized things pretty well when we moved in, some of that has been lost. So my first order of business will to be to reorganize and clean the house. It is my hope that if I can redefine the proper place for everything to be put away the kids will do that and the house will be easier to keep clean. I can hope right? Once I get that project done, I will think about what comes next.

So, Kyle was the only one who let me take his picture today. So here are a couple of pictures of our big boy on his first day of school. Here he is in front of the marque at the school. NOtice he is wearing his favorite color shorts (orange). He picked them out at the store and said, "mom you have to buy me these shorts! " I asked, "why?" he said "cuz their my favorite color" It was like duh mom why do you think?
These are some of Kyle's friends from church who are all also starting Kindergarten today.Here he is with his teacher (believe it or not). She is the tiniest little lady but so full of personality. He is going to have a great year!And here he is the first in line ready to go into the school. He was so excited!!! Well, I guess that is all for today. I will have to blog later about the visit I had with my sister last weekend.

Camping and Being released

We had a wonderful week last week. We spent Monday at Water World as a family. It was a great day to be there except for a short period of time in the early afternoon that we had a bit of wind and rain. Thankfully that didn't last long and we were able to enjoy the rest of the day. The water slides were a ton of fun and the kids had a blast riding the slides and playing in the wave pool.

I worked very hard on Tuesday and Wednesday to complete a slide show from girls camp. I attended 2.5 of 4 days at girl's camp this year and had a great time. Our Young Women are so amazing. The slide show included over 200 photos of our girls in their various activities. I loved putting the slide show together and it turned out really good. We had our camp awards night on Wednesday and had a great time reminiscing about camp.


On Thursday, Mike and I packed up the gear, trailer and the family and headed into the mountains for a camping trip. We camped with 6 other families and had a great time. The weather was wonderful and the campground was amazing. We camped at Dowdy Lake and everywhere you looked was a beautiful view. The kids played in the lake, went fishing, hunted for crawdads and just enjoyed being with their friends. For Mike and I it was a pretty relaxing camping trip. Now that the kids have gotten so big, they don't require quite so much attention and we let them run and play all day. On Friday me and all the other moms took a little walk around the lake. It was a simple little walk, but was very beautiful and so peaceful without any of the kids. Thursday night I made the BEST camping desert we have ever had. We made homemade ice cream in bags(which has become a tradition when we camp lately, thank you Mel) and I made dutch oven apple cobbler to go with it. It was sooooo good.


While camping we fished a ton, actually we cast out a ton, we never caught anything. Kyle loved casting out and reeling in his line. We saw so many fish jumping I don't know how we never caught anything, but we had a total blast trying anyway. Sadly, our camping trip came to an end and we headed home. Now the piles of laundry await and things need to be put away and I need to recapture my house. I got a good start on those things yesterday but have quite a bit more to do tomorrow.


Finally the last of my blog for today is to tell about my sadness over being released from my calling in church today. I have been serving in the Young Women's program for over 4 years. I have enjoyed serving in that capacity so much. I have worked with the girls ages 14-18 the whole time. I have sent numerous girls off to college, seen several girls get married, watched them grow and learn and mature in so many ways. I have also grown so very close to so many and have so enjoyed being a part of their lives. I have been confidant to some, a shoulder to cry on to others, given support when they needed it, offered encouragement when necessary, and I hope I have been a friend. I certainly consider them my friends and hope that they will all stay in touch. It is so hard for me to think about not being involved with them in this capacity anymore. It makes me sad and I have literally cried for a good part of the day. I know that the Lord will have some other postition for me to serve in and with time, I will grow to love those I serve there too, but it doesn't make this any easier right now. I love the Young Women's Program and feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to work with so many wonderful young women. I will miss them all so much!!!

Well, that is enough for now.

Late July

July was a busy month. I had the wonderful opportunity to go to Girls Camp with the Young Women in our ward. The theme was Everday Heroes and I learned a bit about the heroes that I work with in our ward. The young women in our ward offered so much service to one another. They worked hard when they had assignments and were commended for it. I was so proud of them. Our girls are amazing!!! I have been enjoying some time with the kids at the pool, though the weather this summer has n ot cooperated as well as I would have liked and we have had tons of rain this year. It has spoiled several of our pool days as well as other plans too. Oh well, there's not much we can do about the waether.

The boys all finished a second session of swimming lessons and all passed their second levels off this summer. Ryan completed level 5, Jake completed level 4 and Kyle completed level 2. Kyle went from being afraid of the water at the beginning of the summer to being a complete fish. He is swimming all over the pool with no floaties. He can dive to the bottom to retrieve his toys and he just loves it. Swimming lessons were well worth the money paid this year.

The boys are all looking forward to school starting next week and will have fun since it will be the three of them at the elementary school all day this year.

Tiffany finished up her season of softball. She had a great season. Her coach suggested that she try out for the Rage softball program here in town, but because of finances and the fact that they often play on SUndays we have decided not to do it. I hope she finds comfort in the fact that I am positive she would have made the team if she would have tried out. Now she is looking ahead to starting middle school and volleyball tryouts that are just over a week away.

Kaylee has had a crazy busy summer. She has done lots of babysitting and mowed the lawn for grandpa & grandma while they were on vacations, as well as our own lawn. So she has been able to make some money this summer. She has also spent a great deal of time with her friends and has enjoyed watching friends baseball games, playing in the river, walking all around town, spending the night at friend's home and so much more. I think she has had a fun summer.

As for Mike, he actually has had a couple of weeks at home. It has been really nice. He will be heading off again this week to Oklahoma for a couple of days. Since he is still in the preconstruction phases of the project, he hasn't had to travel quite as much. But the weekly travel will be starting up again all too soon.

Well, I think that pretty much catches us up to present.