Back to School

Summer is always a wonderful time, but going back to school is equally as fabulous.  After meeting their teachers and seeing their new classrooms, the girls were so excited to start a new year of school. 

 

Amelia is in third grade this year and has Miss Seely as her teacher.  After having her teacher go on maternity leave last year for nearly half the year, she was really happy to find out that she would be having consistency this year.  When her second grade teacher was on maternity leave, the class had two different substitutes and was completely out of control when Mrs. Olsen finally retuned.  Miss Seely has a castle and knights theme all around her classroom and seems like a very fun teacher to have.

 

 

Ashley is starting second grade and is a little nervous to be moving on from first grade.  She got to know her first grade teacher, Mrs. Weight, very well.  And Mrs. Weight was very good working with Ashley.  Her teacher for this year is Mrs. Curtis who actually taught kindergarten at the school a few years ago, moved away for a year, and is now back to teach second grade.  She seems very nice and I am excited for Ashley to have her as a teacher.

 

 

Elliot is starting school at the Kinder Garden again this year with Miss Meghan and Miss Nicole.  I have absolutely loved their program and am really looking forward to him doing K-prep this year.  Ashley was able to pick up on reading with their help and I hope that Elliot will be the same way.  He is a little confused at why he is doing another year of preschool but I know that it will be really good for him.  Last year I would walk him into the building everyday for school but this year is going to be different.  I walked him in on the first day and that was it.  Now, one of his teachers comes out to the car and then walks him in.  The first few times were rough, but he is getting used to it now.

Camping in the dirt

In mid-August, we were able to fit one final camping trip in before summer was over and everyone would be back to school.  My mom had always wanted to camp up Fairview canyon and so that is what we did.  She and Steve went up a day before us and staked out a spot.  This was our first experience dry-camping and everything went pretty well.  Since we would be hauling the trailer with a full tank of water up a steep canyon, we decided to let the Cummins do the towing.  It did a great job except for starting to overheat near the top of the canyon.  So, it took us a little longer to get there since we had to pull over and wait for the temperature to come back down.

 

 

Camping was fabulous.  We had a nice big camping spot just off the road where the kids were free to explore.  Their favorite thing to do was play in the dirt.  I have never seen my kids get dirtier than they did for those two days of camping.  Micah's hair actually looked brown due to all the dirt that he had in it.  We did have to hose down that boy before Guy would let him ride in the truck.  He had accumulated so much dirt on him that there were rivers of mud running off of him once we added water.

 

Our biggest adventure was when Guy wanted to go for a little drive.  He and I are quite different when it comes to camping.  I am completely content sitting around camp and just relaxing, maybe playing a game or reading a book.  He loves to explore and gets stir crazy if he sits for too long.  So, we went for a little drive.  He had always wanted to take Skyline Drive south to Joe's Valley and then back to Fairview canyon.  I was thinking this would just be a few hours, so we brought Ashley, Elliot and Micah with us and left Amelia back at camp with grandma and grandpa.  It turned into the most awful adventure of all time.  After driving for an hour and a half over dirt roads, we finally reached a big boulder field where the kids got to get out and run around for bit.  I wish that we would have turned around at that point and headed back to camp.  Instead, we kept with the plan and continued south.  The road only got worse from there.  It was more like at ATV trail than something for a full size truck.  We had to go extremely slow and careful over many deep ruts in the road.  We had absolutely no cell service so we couldn't even call to my mom and tell her that we were still alive.  We finally arrived back at camp about 6 hours after we started our adventure.  My mom had the worst thoughts going through her head of raising the orphan Amelia if we never returned.  We were all starving by the time we got back and I was so grateful that my mom had dinner ready for us and then it was off to bed.

Guy's first biathlon

Since taking up running this year, Guy has toyed with the idea of combining his love for shooting with his newfound love for running.  Hence, the biathlon was born.  Guy constructed target frames and figured that clay pigeons would work well for targets.  Each leg of the race would have five targets to hit.  Each runner started out with 5 bullets in their magazine but could use an extra 3 bullets for make up shots.  If any targets were still left on the board after that, the participant would have to run a penalty lap of about 100 yards.  Each leg of the race was just under a mile, so when all was send and done, it added up to about 3 miles.

Guy asked me to come and help run the race and Amelia wanted to come help out too.  I was lucky enough to get a babysitter for the other kids so I didn't have to worry about them.  We started things pretty early so all the kids were still in bed when the babysitter came.  Amelia had a lot of fun helping get the targets all set up before the race and collecting clay pigeons after the race.  I helped by keeping track of times for all the runners and doing a little bit of spotting with the scope.  Amelia was also the official water girl making sure that there was always something for the runners to drink.

24th of July Festivities

We started off the morning with the parade in Spanish Fork.  The girls decided to ride with the Turning Point dance float since Amelia wasn't able to do Jr. Drill with ALA like she has in the past.  This meant that I had to get up super early with the girls and get their hair super curly.  Guy had to work that day but luckily he helped me out a little and took the girls to the staging area at the beginning of the parade route.  This gave me a chance to get the boys ready without having to worry about getting the girls where they needed to be.  Once the boys were ready, we gathered up the chairs and headed out.  We were a little late getting to the parade route so we ended up just sitting in the middle of the street since all the streets were closed once the parade started anyway.  I decided to leave the stroller at home this year since I would be carrying 5 chairs plus water bottles and snacks.  This meant that both boys had to do their own walking and keep up with me.  It worked out ok.

The 2000 Stripling Warrior entry was the longest that I have ever seen!  It really was quite amazing to see all these men marching followed by the missionaries.  It was equally enjoyable watching the parents follow them along trying to find their son, like a needle in a haystack.

 Amelia is the one in the truck with her elbow hanging over the edge.  Ashley is just behind her shoulder, but not really visible.

 This was at the end of the parade route when I am picking them up.  Ashley was not to happy that she had to be in the parade, but I'm glad that she stuck with it.  Amelia was pretty bored since she is used to dancing with Jr. Drill, not just riding in a truck.

Everyone enjoyed the rest of the parade.  The weather was perfect.  Overcast and not too hot.  It even started to rain right as the parade ended.

That night, we did fireworks.  The kids were so excited to start setting them off that we didn't wait until it was very dark.  By the time it was dark, we were all out of things to lite, but the neighbors had a few that they lit off.

Fishing with Grandpa

My kids love to go fishing with Grandpa.  They still talk about the time that he caught a pair of socks.  I think that Amelia was just 3 or 4 years old when that happened.  Grandpa has only caught one fish while out with the kids and it traumatized Ashley for at least a year.  She didn't want to hear about how we actually eat the fish that we catch or any other meat that we eat.  I just about had a vegetarian on my hands.

The kids had a great time.  We didn't catch anything but everyone got pretty dirty.

Ashley's 7th Birthday

Ashley is such a fun girl full of questions and a thirst for knowledge.  She loves to read non-fiction!  She also loves to create displays with animals or any little toy that she can get her hands on.  Ashley absolutely loved being in 1st grade and is really looking forward to going into 2nd grade.  The saddest thing is that her birthday is in the summer so she never gets to bring treats to school on (or close to) her birthday.  She was in summer school this year so she did get to take treats and play games with her friends there.