Random June

Random pictures from June adventures.

Makayla has fun in her baths.

Pedicure & movie night.

He wasn't going to participate in the first part. 

Just for interesting sake. So this is the aftermath of his lost teeth. They're growing in, but lovely and crooked thanks to my children's ultra small mouths.

FHE was family date to Pizza Hut and visiting on the porch.

This was our first official 'lighting of the tiki torches' this year. 

We really enjoy it!

Another FHE of teaching the kids about tithing and savings. AND aunt Heather started a reading incentive for the kids. If they read the allotted amount and check in weekly they get paid. 

Kaly's new bike. I love that she picked out a big tough bike but she's wearing her pretty bow shoes. :)

Makayla getting an expander so one of her teeth will have a fighting chance at coming in unimpacted.

They even let her pick her own colors. 

Tarl scared the children the other night after a scary movie. He put a speaker in their closet and remotely turned on creepy noises. Then he got this skeleton out and was holding it near the bedroom door so when they ran out to tell us about it they'd see this guy instead. It sorta kinda worked.

This was the kids revenge. They dressed up the skeleton and left it on our bed for us to find.

This is how we've been doing summer jobs around here. Every night I put their sticky notes in the kitchen and they get them done in the morning when they wake up. A few times they've even wanted a head start so they've peaked before and gotten them done at night (ok by me!!). It's been nice because I can make it specific to how the house was left the night before (I'm never sure when we're going to use the dishwasher or need a load of laundry done) and it's been keeping us all motivated. 

The girls did a 2 day 4H camp on cooking. They learned new recipes, helped create them in the kitchen, learned how to read food labels and more. I think we'll do this one again next year.

Kaly helping Makayla 'turn the key' for her expander. She had to do it 21 times total so he let us chose 2-3 times a day. 

The kids built some pretty amazing things with legos. At one point they all worked together to build a huge house and city and they played pretend with it for days. It was so fun to watch.

Kaly building another house.

Tyce pretending to be sad saying goodbye to our 1998 Honda Accord.

And smiling big for our 2006 Kia Optima. 

Tyce and Makayla did swim lessons with the city. They're in level 2 and 3. Everyone LOVES swim lessons. 

Friends, Field trips, FHE

May stuff

Makayla's friend Savanna, who lived next door, moved to Washington the first week in May. They were perfect little buddies! It was fun having someone the same age live right next door. These girls got along perfectly and enjoyed any chance they could to play together.  

Makayla's 2nd grade went on a field trip to the Zoo (and I brought Tyce and our neighbor I was babysitting along with me). Behind Makayla is her friend Marissa.

Tyce reading at the end of his Kindergarten year. This is his favorite book to read.

My laundry room. Priming the cupboards. This project took forever. (You can't see all of them because there is so many, 20 cupbaords and 4 drawers. Plus the fronts.) Paint one side, let dry. Flip. Paint side let dry. Flip. Repeat.

One of our FHE's was decorating tshirts. We've done this once before and the kids LOVE this activity. It's fun to see what they each decide to do .

April part 2

April part 2 

FHE activity. Decorating Easter eggs. The kids had fun with this one. Normally I only do a dozen (so we all get to do 3ish) but this year I just decided they're not that bad for one time so the kids got to do 7 each. I should have been smarter because we only had 1 cup for each color so it took a while. Next year I'll know better. 

The kids have to come with me when I go to YW. Kaly said the primary room was empty so she was working on her hymns. I told her she'd get a prize if she could play them well enough to accompany singers.  She told me several YW stopped to compliment her on their way out. 

Her request for her birthday class treat. This will be her last year to bring a treat to school. Next year jr high! Ahhhh. 

Cleaning Chewys cage. 

I got to speak on Easter Sunday on the Resurrection. The only speaker. Then the choir sang several songs. I wasn't nervous. Just wanted to be sure I had something good to share.

Kaly was born on Easter and this year her birthday landed on Easter too! Happy 11th birthday kiddo!

This year the kids eggs were color coded. They told me this was awesome and wanted it done this way again. Each one also had to find a golden egg (per Makayla's request) which had $1 in it.  This was a fun Easter even if it was a little overloaded with having to speak, kaly's birthday, and Easter. Oh and Tyce had to speak in Primary too.

Makayla got two teeth pulled at the dentist. Her mouth was so squished that her adult teeth weren't pushing straight on these guys so they said we could pull them now or pull them later. Sure enough, a week later the one stuck down there is starting to come in.

Kalyana really wants her hair to have a pink stripe. We're working on saving up for some bigger items so the kids are having to make do with their requests for extras. I told her instead she could color her hair with Sharpie. It lasts a few washes. 

Finally painting my laundry room cupboards. Pulled them all off (I think there were 20). Two coats of prime, two coats of color. Took about a week. Had to paint. Dry. Paint. Dry. Flip. Repeat steps 1-4. 

Took Kalyana in to get hearing tests. We've been concerned about her hearing for a bit and this year at school they flagged her during their routine hearing tests. The dr that came to check the flagged kids told her that her right ear was 'bad'. After this appointment though (like 2 hours of tests, he was pretty thorough) the dr said she's hearing right on par and there isn't anything wrong. 

FHE. We decorated dollar store plates and baked them so the color wouldn't come off (but you can't wash them in the dishwasher). So far 2 of the 3 have held up. :) 

Our nice next door neighbors moved and couldn't fit it all in the truck. We bought their lawn mower (ours is broken again) and they gave us this weight machine for free. Tarl and I carried that sucker downstairs and it makes a great addition to our weight room!!

Official Officer

So exciting, look at my lover man!

Here's the actual link in the Idaho State Journal newspaper, but I dont know how long it'll work so I took a screen capture of it also.

Congratulations honey! I'm so incredibly proud of your hard work and determination. Here's to a fun new journey and adventure!

Preschool Pro!

Makayla had a great year in preschool and I really enjoyed getting to go with her some of the time. I really love the program that they have set up and I'm glad Makayla had a good experience. Since this is a 3/4 year old class the kids go to school one day a week and get a 'home visit' one day a week. The home visit lasts 1.5 hours and the teacher comes over and does activities with us (even Tyce got to participate with us), plays games, makes cookies, basically anything we wanted we'd turn into a little learning and a lot of fun.

Miss Lindsay (in the blue) was the teacher that got to come over to our house once a week and we really liked her! My kids would always ask me when she was coming and would play so well when she was here.

This is from the last day of school. The kids got to have a little graduation ceremony. They sang us three songs and were presented their certificates. Tarl and I got to go the whole day (for lunch, outside play time, circle time, story time, snack time, and the games) and really are proud of what Makayla has learned this year. (Although we noticed it was much easier for her to not be shy if we didn't stay. So after a while, we learned to just drop her off and wish her well.)

She is such an amazing little girl! She loves to write letters and copy words (from labels, books, anything!) and is getting so great at starting to recognize small words. She's very curious about trying to sound out words on her own. She loves craft time and often asks me if she can create things at home.

You have GOT to see this video. This is the essence of the school year. I went into her classroom alot and, considering the kids were all 3 or barely 4 year olds I'm not surprised by the way a lot of the acted. They're kids. For the graduation ceremony the kids learned 3 songs to sing in the program. They all did so well during the first two and this is the 3rd one. They're supposed to stand in a line and do actions with their hands. It cracks me up. You dont need to watch the whole thing, but go in about 45 seconds and watch a little bit.

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Catching Fire

It's not by any means that I hated this class, because thats far from it. I really enjoyed learning all about Geography and how the earth works and quite frankly I thought it was fascinating. But seriously, I had to go out with a bang since this was officially my last class needed to earn my Bachelors degree. I wanted to go up to a campsite and throw this in a giant fire pit but after two months of hoping to do that and not, I finally threw it on the stove and played pyromaniac on it's book behind.