Back to School

Emily was pretty excited and a little nervous for her first day of Kindergarten. She is lucky to have a lot of friends from the neighborhood in her class. Her favorite thing about the first day was making apple cores out of rectangles and playing on the playground with her friends.
Rebecca started middle school this year. So far it has been pretty miserable for her - especially trying to get her old stiff locker open, but each day is getting better.
Jacob started 3rd grade and has a super-nice teacher who is also in our ward. He's been great at completing his homework so far... because he can't go to football practice unless he does :)
Daniel was too excited to go meet up with his friends on the first day that he ran out the door before I could catch a picture of him.
Jared & I came with Emily to say goodbye on her first day. That first day without her was soooo quiet at home!
And now with the kids back in school... I think I'm finally caught up on blogging with my string of posts today!

Wild and Sweet Alyssa

Daniel and Emily were pretty mild toddlers... they liked to play with toys in their rooms and were content for long periods of time. Alyssa.... not so much! I think she's trying to arrive at the Terrible Two's early. She loves electronic gadgets, tv buttons, phones, electrical cords, computer on and off switches, computer keyboards, dvd players and most anything that she shouldn't have. The pantry, the fridge and the garbage and the toilet are some of her favorite play places. The other day she climbed up into the (messy) pantry and created her own "sandbox" by dumping this can of powdered cool whip and spreading it all around. Her favorite thing to retrieve from the garbage is corn cobs. She loves to chew on them hoping to clean off any last kernel that someone else might have missed. This week Jared and I were in the kitchen with her. I took my eyes off of her for a second when I turned around she was on top of the kitchen table.


Fortunately she has a few favorite spots that are relatively safe. She has claimed this bench in my room as her own. If there is anything on it, she shoves it off so she can sit in her favorite spot.
She also loves standing on it so she can peer out the window.

She is also pretty attached to her babies and her favorite blankie.
What a sad face! Last month Alyssa broke out in this crazy rash all over her face, legs and arms after throwing up a few days before. The Dr. said it was just a virus, but it took about 2 weeks to clear completely. Fortunately she looked a lot worse than she felt most of the time. The science lover in me wishes that I had a picture of me as a baby when I was hospitalized with scalded staph syndrome as an infant, so I took this picture of her leg just in case she's curious like me some day.


Alyssa is seriously attached to Rebecca. She gets pretty upset when Rebecca heads to school and tries to chase after her if the door is left ajar. She's lucky to have such a nice big sister to babysit her.



All of my kids are blessed with a lot of hair. The kids had fun creating new styles with Alyssa's hair one day.

Birthdays

Emily had a pretty rotten birthday this year. She woke up with barf all over her bed on her birthday and had to postpone her party which she had been counting down the days to for almost a month. She had a princess party a few days later with a few friends w/ a princess pinata and (interesting, experimental) princess cake. She was pretty disappointed that her cake dress which I cooked in my cake bowl came out so small. We had to do some pretty creative dressmaking with foil, but the cake tasted the best ever(super moist for a box cake), even though I had to cook it for almost an hour!

Everyone wanted to see an instant replay of the pinata fun!



I felt so exhausted after the party, I told Dan we were just having a family party for him the next week so we could celebrate the first BYU Football game (and save me some stress).
He requested Texas Fudge Cake again. That's a favorite at hour house!

More Summer Fun

Okay, truthfully my kids wouldn't call this fun... but we had a piano practice contest over the summer for all of my students and at the Summer Ice Cream Party Finale Rebecca was the winner of the piano practice kit (fingernail clippers, m&ms, mike & ikes, finger builders and stacking crayons) for getting the most minutes of practice in over the summer & completing the most tasks on her ice cream party checklist. Now she and Daniel are in a fierce competition to get the most points on the Tonic Tutor website.
I peered out the window one day and spotted the boys relaxing on the play house porch like too retired men enjoying the afternoon. But usually... they are busy playing football together. It's nice to finally have something they are both interested in doing together.
All of the kids participated in the library summer reading program and won free passes to the water park and pizza place. They had fun at the library carnival on this train... but mostly they just came for the popcorn and snowcones:)
Jacob went to the zoo with his scout troop & also loved launching pop bottle rockets with his troop
Emily started her first sport - soccer. Jared is helping coach her team with his friend at work.

Summer Art

This summer the kids had a lot of fun with some spontaneous art projects. Rebecca wanted us to try monster art, so we divided our paper in thirds, then each drew a part of the monster (head, body, legs) and passed it on for someone else to complete





But the biggest project was a giant paper summer chain with clever artwork on each link. For a while it was stretched across all of our kitchen cabinets & walls with at least 300 links... until I got too grumpy about constant obstacles in my way while cooking:0) Now it lives in the girls room.

Splish! Splash!

Summer seemed so short this year, but it was nice and mild. One of the biggest accomplishments was helping our kids overcome their fear of the water this summer. A few years ago, the float tube they were on behind the boat at our family reunion overturned, and they have all been pretty scared of learning to swim since then. I did a session of swim lessons and they all begged for me to never sign them up again. So after watching a few you tube videos, Jared took them to the rec center a few times and they learned so much more than they ever learned at expensive swimming lessons.............and it was free! We had a great time at the Lava Hot Springs pool. Besides the excitement of going down the super steep slides, there was an incident where a man who obviously had too much to drink, jumped off the Olympic high dive, face planted into the water, got a concussion and had to be taken out of the water by the lifeguards on a stretcher. So they also witnessed firsthand that drinking alcohol is not the smartest thing to do.








Alyssa can't stand having water sprinkled anywhere near her, so while the kids enjoyed the slip-n-slide she just had fun in the tub instead.

Fun Flashbacks - Barrel Racing

This summer when we visited my parents the kids had a great time playing in the backyard with the "cool toys" my dad hooked us up with when we were kids. When I was in middle school I was barrel-racing on these barrels with my brother Matt. I was in the lead... but when he came up from behind to pass me, the edge of his barrel hit mine, I fell off backwards and broke my arm and had a great excuse to miss gym class for 6 weeks while I did homework in the locker room instead. Its weird to think that my kids are old enough to try the same stunts.
Despite my little accident... I've always been grateful for m dad's eye for creative toys. Even though we never went on fancy vacations or could afford to get the latest electronic toys, we had so much fun playing on barrels, old cable spools and giant tree stumps in my idealistic childhood. Now he's making it fun f0r my kids. He made this cool swing and attached it to some of the trees in the back. Too bad we don't live closer:(