Super Nursery Man!

Darrin is THE most popular nursery leader. The kids just LOVE him. A couple of years ago, one of our kids asked her mom if she could have Darrin come over to play, and when he is not there, they always ask about him. Sunday he had quite the group of girls all sitting in his lap, and so I snapped a few pictures:

First Day of School!

Monday was the first day of school for Kyra & Callie.
Kyra started 9th grade (Freshman year!) which is at the middle school in this district:


Callie started 4th grade. She is in a split class again this year - half fourth and half fifth. Her teacher is the same one she had for math last year. Kyra also had her in fifth grade (I think)


Brynn did not actually start school (That will be Sept 4) but she did get to go and meet her teacher and have an assessment. (The teacher said she's very smart. Shocker.)

Last week of summer vacation!

So Monday we got the new garage doors and finally got our Kyra back. She had a wonderful time and as soon as she gets her pictures off her computer (and has a photo exchange with Katie - they each got half a trip's pictures) I'll have some to post here.
Wednesday morning we went with my friend Andrya & her kids to a place called Backyard Adventures - they have a big room full of inflatable slides, jumping rooms, etc and another big room full of big, fancy swingsets. The kids had lots of fun!


We also went to the library that afternoon to get a few more books to last us the last few days of summer vacation. As is typical, Brynn picked hers out in 30 seconds flat, and the bigger kids took much longer. Brynn always likes to spend the time waiting doing puppet shows for me on the little puppet theater int he children's section.

Friday I canned peaches I got from Marti. I am always tempted to eat them right away, but then what would be the point of all that work preserving them if I didn't use all that preservation? So I'll wait and really enjoy them some December morning for breakfast!

Saturday we went to my nephew Ben's birthday party at a lovely park up on Traverse Ridge. I'll leave it to Tim to post pictures of the birthday boy, but here are a few of my gang at the party. (Since for once I actually had the camera AND remembered to use it, I must make record of this feat by posting the pictures!)



We went the complete opposite direction that afternoon to see my mom & dad and help them get their computer network up & running. While I did pull out the camera to show the pictures from the party to my mom, I never did take any pictures up there. DOH!
On the eve of the first day of school, I'll leave you with one final picture. When your kids get to be teenagers, there are not as many firsts for the baby book. But when we were up at Ben's party, Brynn showed me something Kyra did that is a first for Kyra. Her first graffiti! (That I know of). I told her that her punishment for defacing public property would be its publication on the blog, so everyone feel free to ask her about it and tease her a tiny bit, too.

Before and After

Look what we had done today!

Missing Kyra!

Kyra's been gone a few days, and we miss her quite a bit! From the sound of it, she's having quite a good time in Seattle with Leslie & Kate. We'll post some of her pictures when we can- she gets back tomorrow night!!
So this week, we had a nice visit at Wheeler Farm (no relation to Sarah) with some good friends of ours. This is me and my good friend Andrya (pronounced just like I say MY name!)

That's her youngest daughter on her lap. Some other pictures of our kids together that day:



Callie's electronics kit came that afternoon, and she's had a great time building a lie detector, a doorbell, and a recording device. Inexplicably, the recording device plays random Christmas carols after it plays back what you recorded! That was good for quite a few laughs.
That night for family night, Brynn got to choose the game. She chose to draw a hopscotch grid on a large piece of paper that was padding Callie's electronics kit during shipping. We had a lot of fun playing hopscotch:

Tuesday we lost Kyra to a big babysitting job - she went up to Tim's new house and watched the boys while they went gallavanting off around the countryside. Because they planned to get back so late, Kyra stayed overnight and we got her back the next morning. Then she turned around & left us again for ANOTHER sibling! She was very excited to go, though, and it sure was fun to watch her head off on another adventure Wednesday afternoon.
Thursday morning Jack came to play with us for a couple hours while Sarah & Carter were busy. It was fun to hear his great laugh all morning. At one point, he came to me and said "Brynn's telling stories, and they're NOT EVEN FROM A BOOK!" He was amazed she could just make it up. But that is one of her favorite things to do. When she says "come play with me, mommy" what she REALLY wants is an audience for her stories. Jack and Brynn played really well together and I got quite a bit done that morning.
I spent Friday frantically looking all over my house for a $300 check from a client that I have apparently lost. I'm still hoping to come across it but have no idea where else to look.
Saturday afternoon we took Callie & Brynn swimming. They wanted to wear their life jackets, and it was funny how uninhibited they were with them. Brynn was just everywhere doing everything. She especially liked floating, and would yell "I'm flotationing!" every time, which made other swimmers (including me) laugh. Callie practiced dogpaddling and eventually got pretty good at it.

They say everyone has a double

Kyra found hers in Seattle!

And look at those muscles!

She had fun on the flight. She said she & Katie "squealed like it was a roller coaster and annoyed the woman sitting by us." (And probably every other passenger, too!)

A recap and some foreshadowing

So last weekend was the ward campout. We decided the location was a little too exotic for us (Western LEHI! Woo hoo!) and so we just went for the Friday evening festivities. (Truthfully, the massive thunderstorm that day, combined with a forecast for more storms was what really made us decide to sleep in our own beds. I have this thing about wind, hail, lightning and thunder. I prefer something more solid than fabric between it and me.)
It was a fun evening, they had waterguns and so all the kids were trying to start a waterfight with the grownups. Mostly the grownups ignored their efforts, but a few times the grownups made it clear they still held the upper hand.

They had a fun game for the kids where they got to put duct tape sticky-side out all over and then roll in candy, and keep what stuck! My girls thought that was awesome!




Next they had a treasure hunt for dessert. The kids had to follow a map,

dig up a clue buried in a volleyball pit,

assemble a puzzle,

unscramble a word painted on rocks (some little boy ran off with the "E"), and finally they figured out dessert was......back at the pavillion where they started! A little anticlimatic, and they weren't too happy about that.

Monday night for our family night treat, we made homemade raspberry ice cream (with raspberries we grew!). It was yummy and the kids thought it was fun, even if Callie had to drown it in chocolate syrup before she could eat it!

Callie got to go to an Activity Days day camp a couple days this week, they sewed drawstring bags and made cloth dolls to go in them, as well as making all kinds of other crafts, tasting pioneer food, playing water games, etc. She really enjoyed it.
Wednesday evening I got a call from a client telling me she had some unexpected complications and was scheduled for a cesarean in 2 hours. Naturally, Wednesday evenings are the WORST for me to be gone, since Darrin is at the family history library and Kyra has YW. Fortunately, Callie was able to go play with a friend and Tim & Brittany were kind enough to take Brynn for me. WHEW! The birth went smoothly and I was able to be in the OR to support her.
Yesterday I took Kyra, Callie and a friend of Kyra's to see the new Harry Potter movie. It was a late birthday celebration for Kyra - she is too old for kiddie parties but likes being able to take friends to the movies. Callie & I wanted to see it too, so we tagged along. A good time was had by all.
Some things we're looking forward to this week:
A trip to Wheeler Farm with some good friends of our, the Lewis family.
Callie ordered a big "snap circuits" set with money she'd saved up. She has a small kit we gave her for Christmas 2005 that she just loves and plays with all the time. This kit will triple what she has and she'll be able to make things like a lie detector and an electronic cat (whatever THAT is!) UPS shows a scheduled delivery tomorrow, so she's probably having a hard time falling asleep right now. She's been counting down the hours all day.
Kyra leaves on Wednesday to fly (with Katie) to Seattle to visit Aunt Leslie. She's totally excited, I'm a little nervous about her flying without me.

More trip pictures

Got my film developed, and I have a few favorites I want to share (You can click on any of them to see them bigger):
This one is Grand Prismatic Spring. It is amazingly blue and surrounded by wide rivulets of hot water that support all different colors of microbes. Red and Yellow are hotter, blue and green cooler. But that's all relative, because "cooler" is still above boiling! Behind the spring, you can see the effects of the big Yellowstone fires in 1988. The effects were everywhere, and it was quite shocking to see it in person and see how widespread they were!

The next two show a rainbow effect that is interesting, plus I like how you can see through the clear water so well. This is a spring that is at West Thumb Basin but I don't remember the name of it:



This picture I took in Grand Teton National Park on our way to the Bar J for dinner. I thought it turned out pretty good when you consider I took it from the car while we were going 50+ mph! (Yes, Darrin was doing the driving):

At Big Springs, I tried my new filter that is supposed to reduce the reflections off water so you can take pictures of things in the water. As you can see, it worked pretty well! (I wish I'd thought to put it on at those deep springs in Yellowstone!)

This last one is a sunset from the cabin that I took on the last night we were there:

Too funny to wait

Conversation I just overheard between Callie & Brynn as they look at the book of pictures I drew in kindergarten:
Callie: Look, mom drew Mike as a baby. He's a lot bigger now, isn't he?
Brynn: Yeah, he's the biggest man I ever met!
Callie: And there's Matt, remember when they came and we saw them at the house with the slide off the deck?
Brynn: Yeah.
Callie: This one's Jo-jo. I don't know her. Maybe she died like Ben.
Brynn: I didn't know I had an aunt Jo-jo.
Callie: Yep, there's Matt, Leslie, Sarah, Mike, Jo-jo, Ben, Tim and Stephen. But Stephen is imaginary, so mom didn't draw him.
Brynn: She didn't draw Ben or Tim, either.
Callie: They weren't born yet. Neither was Leslie. She's the youngest.
Brynn: Why didn't mom draw Brittany?
Callie: Because Brittany is our aunt because she married Tim, she's not mom's sister. She's a sister-IN-LAW. I don't know why they call it "in-law" but they do.
Brynn: Is Sarah an "on-law" sister?
Callie: No, she's mom's sister.
Brynn: Maybe Jo-jo is an "on-law" sister.
Callie: Let's ask mom.
Leslie, they think it is very funny that you were once called Jo-jo, don't be surprised if they start calling you that!