End of School Activities

  Now that school is about to start again I figured I better post some pictures from the end of last school year.

 

Bonnie and Jared at their orchestra concert.  Their teacher was so pleased with both of them and how well they did that she let them bring their school-issued instruments home for the summer so they could continue to practice.

 Nate preparing to play with the advanced band.  His band teacher would let younger students play with the more advanced band if they came in after school and passed of several pieces.  Nate loved band and his teacher was fantastic.  He recommended Nate for the District Honor Jazz Band.  Nate tried out and made it into the band.  The Jazz Band consists of 17 junior-high-age students in the district.  Way to go Nate!

 Bonnie played flute in Band this year.  She did a great job.  Again, their band teacher, Mr. Ormsbee, has been phenomenal.  We are glad he is going to be there again this next year.

 Jared's class took a two-week "cruise" around the world.  The learned about several different countries along with their food, customs, and clothing.  This was when he returned to port on the last day of the cruise.

 

 Bonnie's class had a cake making contest.  Bonnie's team chose to make an island with a volcano.  Since Bonnie was chosen as team captain I was the lucky mom who got to bake the cake and design the volcano.  Thankfully I had a good suggestion to make the volcano out of chocolate rice krispy treats.  It worked out great for them.  They did a really good job.

 

 Right towards the end of the school year we had a piano recital.  The kids all did a great job.  I didn't do too bad either, but due to sick kids, Ben being in India, and me being extremely nervous, after the recital when our teacher told me I did good I broke down in tears.  Not my finest moment, but I recovered, all except for the red nose and eyes in this pictures. :)

The kids elementary school every day on the last day has a "Mock Rock". It's an activity where individuals, small groups, or whole classes participate in a lip sync.  Bonnie's class did "Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride".  This is Bonnie with her best friend Hana dressed up to be hula girls.

We had a very fun and very busy end of the school year.  While all this was going on, I went a little crazy in the head and decided to clean out, paint, and rearrange our three upstairs bedrooms.  I thought it would be fun to surprise Ben when he got home from his trip, and it was, but amidst sick kids and end of school activities this may not have been the best timing. It's done now though and I am thrilled with the results.  Here are the before and after pictures.

This is the guest room in the middle of cleaning it out.  I forgot to take a before picture, but just trust that it was much messier.  The guest room became....

The boys room, complete with a chalkboard wall

The boys old room

 Which again I forgot a complete before picture so you will just have to imagine that there were two more piles of junk about this size and a bunk bed.  How do boys get so messy?  Was turned into...

 

The girls bedroom, again with a chalkboard wall.

 Bonnie's desk that she found at a yard sale and decided was perfect to do homework on.

 And the girls bedroom...

Became the new guest room. 

 Whew!  That concludes our end-of-school-year fun!  Next post, on to summer!

Jared

Just wanted to share a couple of quick stories about Jared.  

A few weeks ago he had cub scout day camp.  Day camp here is actually a 3-day camp.  They go from 2:30 until 9:30 in the evening so that its a little cooler, and they go Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  They also have a wet camp.  Everyone has squirt bottles and water balloons.  The boys get to swim and they love it.  

Because the camp is three days long the parents take turn chaperoning so no one has to try to be there all three days.  Ben went on Thursday and said it was a lot of fun.

On church the Sunday after day camp one of the counselors in the bishopric came up to me and said he had a story.  He had been one of the chaperones on Saturday and he was the fortunate one who got to give Jared a ride.  While driving home that evening he overheard this conversation in the back seat of the car.

Jared (to the other boys): Do you guys know what a chick magnet is?

Other Boys:  No.

Jared:  A chick magnet is someone that all the girls like...  I am a chick magnet!

________________________________________________

The other story happened just a few days ago.  On Monday for family home evening we made a delicious peach crisp with maple cream (courtesy of Pioneer Woman) for family home evening treat.  We all LOVED this dessert and amazingly enough since we doubled the recipe, we had some left over.  On Tuesday morning Ben and I thoroughly enjoyed the rest for breakfast and then rinsed out the dirty bowls to remove any evidence of our early morning meal.

Later in the day the kids asked us if they could have some peach crisp.  We told them that it was all gone.  Being pretty smart kids they remembered that we had put some leftovers in the fridge the night before.  So we confessed and told them that we had eaten it for breakfast before they had waken up, to which Jared replied with total outrage, "Vile Vermin!"

I guess we will have to make that dessert again sometime.

April Fool's Day and Easter

This year we once again had our traditional April Fools' Day dinner.  This time we were able to have our friends, the Piepers, join us.  It was a lot of fun and craziness as usual.

For Easter Ben was leaving the day before so we celebrated it the weekend before by coloring eggs and having the Easter Bunny come.  We had a fun time.

Gwen got the traditional raw egg that was added to the mix.

California

Nick's baptism

At the end of March my sister's fiance was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  We were able to drive out to California to be there to support Nick in his decision.  It was such a wonderful baptism and we are so grateful that we were able to be there.

This was our first trip to California as a family.  I have not been to California since I was 14 and Ben has only been there for business trips, so it was fun to explore and enjoy it with our family.  On Saturday morning we found a park with a duck pond and a lot of different hiking trails.  We spent a couple of hours going all over.

The kids were totally impressed with the size of the trees, and the running water, something they don't see very often in AZ.

Later in the day we went to the beach.  It was very cold, as you can tell from the jackets they were wearing in the above pictures.  It had been raining off and on all day.  So in an attempt to keep them from freezing to death I told them that they could only go wading, and not above there knees.  Well, I'm sure you can guess how long that lasted.

Ben and I and Becca and Nick watching the kids play.

My two little mermaids.

The artists who created them

Kids hunting for sand crabs

Gwen before she "fell over" into the water.

Jared and Bonnie looking for seashells

Nate the mummy

We had so much fun in California and we can't wait to go back and visit Becca and Nick again.  They were great hosts and we loved spending time with them.  Besides, I think my children have decided to live at the beach.

Craziness at Our House

So I am taking a break in my catching up to write about my crazy day last Wednesday.  I know that everyone has crazy days and I know that there are a lot that are much worse than mine was, but I'm going to document it for the future anyway.  Ben is in India for work right now.  He left on April 21st and his return date was set for May 20th.  This is very important information because not having him around definitely made it a more challenging day.


Wednesday morning I woke up at 1:30 to go get the papers ready for the route.  After preparing them Nate and I delivered them.  I brought Nate home and I changed and went running with my good friend Jamie Pieper.  I love running with friends it gives me some sense of sanity at the beginning of any day.  Anyhow, after showering and getting the kids to school I ran to Sprouts, our local health food store, to pick up some produce.  After unloading a lot of produce onto the register conveyor belt, with the cashier ringing them up, I realized I had forgotten my wallet.  I had my purse, but no cards.  Thankfully, and oddly, I had my checkbook which they very kindly accepted even without I.D.  My next stop was supposed to be Lowes to pick up a couple of items.  Lowes, however, is not as accepting of checks without I.D. so I decided I would have to come back later.

I proceeded home to start cooking a ham, which I had agreed to cook for a funeral that was being held at our church later that day.  I also mixed up a big batch of granola.  I had needed to do this for a while and decided that the craziest day of the week was the best time?!  Before cooking the granola I decided to run back to Lowes to get the items I needed.  I then proceeded to Costco to get some rolls, also for the funeral.  I then returned home, baked some of the granola, cut up a ham, got dressed in church clothes and headed to the church for the funeral luncheon I had agreed to help with.  I stopped by another friends house to pick up things she had cooked for the luncheon and took them with me.

I was at the church from 12:15 until 2:30 at which time I left to pick up my kids from school at 3.  Nate plays the trombone, he loves it and he is pretty good at it.  He had decided on Monday that he wanted to try out for the district Jr. High Jazz band.  Of course Wednesday was the day for tryouts.  So we took the other kids home for a quick snack and got him ready to go.  He needed to be there by 4:30.  Now on this particular Wednesday Bonnie and I were supposed to have activity days at 5:30.  I wasn't sure how long his tryouts would be so I took Bonnie to the activity day leader's house in case I was late getting there, and Jamie very graciously agreed to watch Jared and Gwen for as long as I needed that evening.  Nate did pretty well in his tryout, I think, and we got home a little after 5:15.  Nate went to change for scouts and I took a moment to call Ben since I wouldn't get a chance to talk to him the rest of the day.  After telling him about my crazy morning and about scouts and activity days that I still had to go to, Nate had a court of honor so parents "get" to come, Ben said, "Well, this is probably not the best time to tell you this, but I have to stay an extra week."

WHAT?!?

What day will you be returning?  You know I have to leave to California for Becca's wedding on the morning of the 28th right?  Why do you have to stay?  That is so LAME!  I miss you.  This all spewed forth out of my mouth accompanied by multiple tears running down my cheeks.

After calming down a little bit I sent Nate to his friends to play and then get a ride to scouts since I would already be at the church.  Then I went to the church for Activity Days, which went pretty well despite a few unwanted tears creeping into my eyes, and Bonnie and I stayed for Nate's court of honor.

I got back to the Pieper's to pick up my kids at about 7:45 and Jamie had gotten us a pizza from Papa Murphy's (Thank you Jamie, I owe you big time).  At this point I would love to tell you that we all went home to bed and had a good night's rest, but I can't.  Instead I left Nate to watch the Pieper's boys and Ben and Jamie came over and helped me take all of our old carpet, carpet pad, linoleum, and baseboards out to the front of my house so they could be picked up the next day, which was the one day a year that Peoria does loose trash pickup so I did not want to miss it.  I really don't know what I would be doing without Ben and Jamie while my Ben is gone. They have been amazing!  I am so grateful to have good friends. We did all get to bed at about 10:30 that night.

Since then we have had a really fun book club at my house, a bridal shower, also at my house, Monday night band practice, Tuesday night orchestra concert, Wednesday night band concert (along with one sick boy who puked in the school bathroom, unfortunately for the janitors, not quite making it to the toilet) and lots and lots of Spring Cleaning that we are trying to get done before Daddy gets home from India. 

I will post some pictures of these activities (except the vomiting thing), along with an upcoming piano recital, at another date.  In the meantime, life is going on.  We have survived two weeks of Ben being gone and only have three more to go.  Although Nate did tell me, "Don't take this the wrong way, but when Dad is gone you're a little more uptight."  I'm not sure what the right way is to take that, but he is very right.  I am very ready for Ben to be home, then maybe sanity will return to our home.

Spring Break

After the weekend in New Mexico The girls and I came back home and Mom and Dad came too.  We were lucky enough to have them visit from Monday evening until Friday morning and we loved every minute of it.

We went hiking in the White Tank Mountains.  We took the Waterfall Trail.  I'm pretty sure they use the term "waterfall" very loosely as this is the only falling water we saw.

There was a small pool of water at the end of the trail.   Gwen refused to smile for the camera because she had tripped and gotten a scratch on her hand.

The boys spent a lot of time playing football in the back yard with grandpa.  I've got to say he is one very cool grandpa.

And one afternoon we looked out the back window to find the kids doing this.  They were out there for a couple of hours and there was not fighting or whining or crying.  The little bit of mud was well worth the time they got to spend enjoying each other.

On the Saturday at the end of Spring Break Jared had his very first pinewood derby.  I have to say he has benefited from having an older brother go through three years of pinewood derby cars.  Jared designed, sanded, and painted his own car, and Daddy figured out how to take care of the wheels and the weight so it went smoothly and and quickly down the track.  

Jared took third place overall.

There is a family in our stake that designs and races drag racing cars.  They were kind enough to bring their car over so all the boys could see it.

In this video they started the car up for the boys so they could see how loud it is.  You can see Jared try to be "tough" for a while and not cover his ears. 

We had a great Spring Break and hope to be able to have Mom and Dad visit again soon.

New Mexico

Our girls weekend

At the end of February my parents returned from a 23-month mission to Romania.  As soon as they got home they went on several short trips to visit different family members.  In March my sister Jessica and her husband Spencer blessed their baby girl, Kylie.  Mom and Dad drove down from Utah for that and I was able to drive up with Bonnie and Gwen.  it was so fun to spend time with all of them and Jess and Spencer were wonderful hosts.

Playing with Kylie.

 

Ready to be police officers

Spencer is going to police academy and let the girls dress up in his gear.  They were both taking their jobs very seriously.

Kylie in her beautiful outfit that Jess made for her.

Both of the girls loved playing with their new cousin.

This was the morning we left.  Spencer had already left for work.

The girls practiced their skills by arresting Spencer for stealing candy land.  It was very funny.

I know this is a little late, but thanks Jess and The Spencer for a great weekend.  We are so excited that you are living a little closer to us now.