A long overdue trip to the zoo

A while ago my little brother decided that our families ought to spend more time together. Once a month for birthday Sunday just wasn't enough. He was even willing to take charge and organize activities for us. That's Jared, he's amazing like that.

So, for our first activity since the decision, we -or rather, Jared- decided that we would go to the zoo. We haven't been in a while so I thought this would be fun, even though it was kind of early in the morning.

We hadn't even seen the baby elephant yet, I think she's almost a teenager now.

Apparently, Scott really wanted me to take a picture of him since he hopped in front of my elephant picture.

That's better.

There were a lot of changes since we last visited the zoo.  The whole new area for the otters, seals, and polar bear were amazing.

The polar bear was fun to watch.  He'd swim towards the wall...

Then push himself backwards into the water again.  He did this several times.

Then he got up and walked away.

The giraffes have always been my favorite.

I caught this one on his way up from bending down to eat.

We tried to get a picture of the cousins.  My older boys were impatient and had gone on ahead.

This monkey(I know I'm being technical here with the names) was happy to pose for us.

We decided to get tickets for the carousel but we were the only ones.

The boys still had fun.

Brigham loved it.  Sometimes, my favorite reaction from him is just a small smile.  That's what he did here.  So cute.

Luckily, we all had tickets for the train.

Here's Jared and Kristy with brand new cousin Brandon.

It was a fun trip, I'm glad Jared was willing to put it all together.  I can't wait for the next activity.

What is my blog for?

I've been asking myself that question every once in a while over the last several weeks.  I haven't updated in a while and even though I have things I could post about, I haven't been able to motivate myself to post about them.  I already scrapbook so I don't really need another medium for recording family happenings.  I had been just posting about any event that had pictures to accompany it, but I'm wondering if that's all it is.  I guess I'd like it to be more on one hand, but it's also time consuming and hard to sit down and get my thoughts out.

I'm really just thinking out loud here, and as I think out loud, I have a sneaking suspicion that it really boils down to the fact that I'm just being lazy.

My dad called to see if I could help him solve a problem he's having with Blogger.  As I was trying to help work it out I uploaded a test picture.  These are the pictures I chose to test with, so I suppose this is what I'd like to post about.

These are pictures I have taken over the last month or so that I'm really proud of and I'm even considering entering them in a photography contest through Jaaromy's employer.  I hope you enjoy them.

This picture was taken from my driveway.  It was still raining so I had to stand under the tree to take it.  I have been dying to see a full rainbow ever since I figured out how to stitch photos together.  Finally, it came.  This is six pictures stitched together.

This one I took just this past full moon.  I wanted to try different settings on my camera to see if I could get a better picture.  I'm not sure if it was the settings or the fact that I forgot I had wanted to take pictures of the full moon and didn't remember until after midnight so the moon was overhead and thus a much clearer shot.  Either way, this is the best picture of the moon I've taken so far.  I'm happy with it.

So, there you go.  I've finally updated my blog and it was something a little different and more personal.

First Day of School

I wasn't entirely looking forward to the first day of school.  I was definitely exhausted from our Super Fun Summer Schedule and needed something to change, but I wasn't sure starting school would be a step up, more like a step sideways.  New problems, for sure, but just as much stress.

One of the drawbacks to school starting was that my three boys were going to be at three different schools, with three different start times.  I just wasn't sure how it was all going to work.  We moved the boys around bedroom-wise to prepare, thinking that it would be better to pair the two in elementary.  Turns out, Nathaniel and Brigham are the ones who are waking up at the same time.  Jonathan has a whole other hour before he has to get up.  It's definitely harder to find something that works when there are so many different needs.

In the end, I was slightly more excited for school to start.  After worrying about how it was all going to work for most of the summer, I was ready to actually do it for real to see what would work and what would need to change.

We were no where near our ideal bedtime when it was time to start school, but the kids got up pretty well.  Nathaniel set his alarm but didn't check the volume on the radio and so didn't hear it.  He was a little behind but apparently, so was his ride and he made it out okay.  Brigham's bus came 15 minutes earlier than they said they would so I told them they would have to wait because he wasn't ready.  Jonathan had all morning to take as much time as he needed so he was great.

Nathaniel is the first one off.  A bunch of kids in our neighborhood go to Kennedy so we were able to work out a car pool which has been great.  Now that we're three weeks in, I can say that I think Nathaniel is doing great.  We've been worried about how he'd do in Jr. High for so long, it's so wonderful to see him enjoy it.  He loves that he has so many fun classes.  It helps that his cousin is in three of them.  He sometimes gets frustrated at the responsibilities that come with getting older, I think he still enjoys it.  I'm so proud of how much he has accomplished.

Next to leave was Brigham.  I don't know how much he understands about the First Day of School, but I tried to talk it up the night before.  He's so mellow that he just went along with it.  He knew that it was time to go when the bus came.  He knows the drill.  I've been really optimistic for this school year for him.  There just seemed to be so many more options for him than in Kindergarten.  I almost feel like Kindergarten was a lost year for him.  All the gains he has made have been entirely the work of his private speech therapist.  So, I was excited for this class he was going to be in.  Turn out, it is not the best fit for him and I'm anxious to move him to a different class, but it's taking so long.  We're three weeks in and he's still there.  I'm still optimistic, but extremely frustrated at the bureaucracy.  Why didn't they know this last year?  Why are we only finding out now that this wasn't the right class for him?  Hopefully we'll be able to work it out soon.

 Last to leave was Jonathan.  Apparently we didn't go over the new schedule because, as you can partially see in Brigham's picture, he thought it was time to go when the bus got here because that's what our schedule was last year.  He was on his way down the street as I was getting Brigham on the bus and I had to call him back.  He was really sad that it wasn't time to go yet.  I think this will work out well for him.  I always felt bad that the boys didn't have a ton of free time after school.  With homework, Scouts, and extracurricular activities, there just isn't a lot of time in the afternoon.  Last year I had to stop teaching him how to play the piano because he was struggling in school and homework had to take a higher priority.  I didn't want that to happen again this year so I decided that we could use this extra time to practice the piano and trumpet, read, and get his chore done.  Then he has more of the afternoon to play.  I still hate homework, I feel like it's an intrusion on our time.  Sometimes it can be a good thing if we're working together, but there are other things besides school to do.  School is, of course, important.  That's why we dedicate over six hours to it, but I feel like it should end there.  I'm happy to help him if he's struggling, like we did last year, but homework just for the sake of homework is wrong.  There, I said it.

Jonathan is the only one walking to school now.  It kind of makes me sad.  This wasn't how I pictured it.  One of Brigham's options for school is a class at Jonathan's elementary.  That would be so great, I would love it.  But it's okay if it's not, if the other class is better.  Still, I'm glad Jonathan and Brigham share a room now.  It's good for both of them to play together.

I love my boys!

Happy Birthday to Us!

My birthday and Jaaromy's birthday are only two weeks apart so we often go on a nice date somewhere in between to celebrate.  This year we decided to take a trip overnight.  We haven't done that in a little while and we were starting to feel the affects.  We decided to go to Logan.  I had wanted to go somewhere with dark skies so we could take the telescope.  It's been a long time since I have seen the Milky Way, I miss it.  Well, I'll tell you right now that plan didn't work out.  It rained the whole night we were there.  However, we still enjoyed ourselves and plan to go again next year.

We ended up staying at a resort in the mountains between Brigham City and Logan.  It was perfect.
We went into Logan for a movie that night and then breakfast the next morning.

Since we were so close, we drove up to Franklin, ID to see my Grandpa Nash's grave and to take a picture for my 1BillionGraves app.  I ended up taking a picture of all the Nash graves, I hope I got them all.

It's a little cemetery right over the border.  Seriously, I saw the cemetery before I saw the border sign.  I've only been once before but I had no trouble finding our family's area.

It was a fun little trip.  Not too far away, but far enough.  We hurried home after that since Heather was in the hospital having baby #4 while Rachelle, who had our kids, was staying with their three other children.  Bad timing, I guess.

Our actual birthdays were fun.  My present was my new camera which I had already been using for a month, but Jaaromy got me this tasty ice cream cake.

And Nathaniel, with his "new" camera(my old one) was happy to take pictures for me.

Jaaromy's birthday was on a Thursday which is our busiest day, so there wasn't much we could do about it.  His birthday present was an iPad which was mostly paid for when we refinanced our mortgage.  He deserved it for all the work he put in to making sure we were doing it right.  He also had his present for about a month before his birthday.  I still wanted to get him something to open so I got him a Captain America shirt.  I know he probably would have preferred a Hulk shirt, but I'm the one who has to look at him and so I chose Captain America.

I also made him this picture.

A neighbor of mine has one and I thought it was perfect for Jaaromy, so I made one myself.  I think it turned out nice.  In case you're wondering, the seeds are from l to r: carrot, tomato, watermelon, broccoli, and cucumber.  They were all I had on hand.

Also, on Jaaromy's birthday, we went to a special screening of "Manos" Hand of Fate.  One of the worst movies ever made.  Ever.  It was a live broadcast from the Mystery Science Theater guys.  We weren't sure what to expect but it was a lot of fun.  The jokes were all new, but sometimes I missed the old ones.  Many in the crowd knew them too and would say them out loud.  It was a lot of fun.

Since we were out on his birthday, we had to sing to him the next night.

We decided that we wanted shakes from Chick-Fil-A for his birthday treat so when we got home, he blew out the lighter.

It's fun having our birthdays together, it's like one big party celebrating our mutual awesomeness.

Sprucing up the old homestead

The wall above our tv has been empty since we moved in.  It always takes me a long time to put up wall decorations after we move somewhere but this wall was taking longer than usual because I didn't know what I wanted to put there.  I decided that I wanted a Family wall.  Kind of a family tree wall.  There are a lot of Aunts, Uncles and cousins on both sides and I wanted my boys to know who was who and how they were related.  I pondered upon my idea for many months.  I found the perfect frames to go with it and finally had everything I needed.  Then I had to figure out how I wanted to lay it out.  Before I go any farther, I must mention that my Sister-in-Law, Heather, was super helpful while I was working this all out.  We decided that it was ready to implement.

 First, I traced all the pictures onto cardboard, cut them out, and taped them where I wanted them to be on the wall.  To give you an idea how long I had been thinking about this, this picture was taken in March.  I ended up leaving the cut outs up for several months.  I'm not sure what I was waiting for, maybe I wasn't ready for it to be permanent.

 Finally, I just did it.  So our family is in the middle and on the left is all my siblings and their families.  I was so happy that a picture frame exists with exactly seven openings.  Then my parents, and my grandparents.  On the right is Jaaromy's family with the same pattern.  I like that it's kind of random.  I figured that my huge sibling frame would balance with Jaaromy's three pairs of Grandparents.  I think it does, in a way.  Below our family picture is a Families are Forever picture.  I've had it for a long time, but I think I'd eventually like to get something a little more contemporary.  But I don't know what.  I would also like to get two 8x10's of both my and Jaaromy's family while we were young, with no spouses or anything.  I think it would help my boys remember which Aunt or Uncle belongs to who and who is a sibling and who is a spouse.

Our family picture had been in the upstairs hall before I moved it downstairs so now I needed to find something to fill that spot.  I loved an idea I saw on a website a couple of years ago where they used parts of the temple to spell out a last name.  I've seen it since at Deseret Book but they were so expensive.  I decided to make my own.  This is also an idea that I've been pondering upon for a long time.  We took a trip down to temple square for family night back in March.  We managed to find all the letters we needed before it got too dark.  The Z was obviously the trickiest one, but I think we made it work.

In the original I saw they had "Built Upon a Firm Foundation" carved into the matting.  After weighing my options, I decided to just get a frame and some vinyl lettering.  Like the family wall, I practiced with taped up paper first.

I decided I was ready to get the vinyl.  It was smaller than I had expected but I decided it would work.  I taped up the lettering first to make sure it would work, of course.  This was a very gradual process.  I think each of these stages lasted a month or two at least.

Finally, I decided I was ready to make it permanent.  It was a little tricky getting it to stay on the wall while I peeled off the top strip, but I got it to stay.

So, there you have it.  A project nine months in the making.  I'm happy with how it turned out.

Brigham's Birthday

Brigham's birthday was at the end of last month.  I can't believe he's 6.  He still seems so little to me.  Maybe because he's the youngest, and probably because he still doesn't talk a whole lot.  But he sure is cute.

I was taking some pictures before he opened his presents and he just loved it when my flash would pop up.  So I got several cute pictures of him that way.

It was hard to stop since he was enjoying it so much, but we had presents to open.

 It was a little hard to figure out what to get him.  We already have everything even remotely related to the solar system.  I decided that what he would like would be something that goes up in the air really high.  So we got him a stomp rocket.  But we would have to wait until tomorrow to try it out.

I had all his presents picked out when I remembered that I had wanted to get him a mini trampoline.  He loves to jump and I'm just not strong enough to help him jump without something to help.  He loved this, and jumped for quite a while.  Also, if you notice my iPad on the piano bench, we were able to Skype with my parents so they could watch him open his presents.  It was so fun to have them there.

 Then it was time to blow out the candles.

 He was doing great at first but then his last candle was giving him trouble and he would lean over it to try and blow it out, but he was directly over it and it was too hot.

 So Dad helped him out a little.

He was so excited when he blew them all out!

 It was way past bedtime by now, but we had to try out the fun instruments that he got from Grandma Bonnie.

It was a good birthday.

The next day we were finally able to try out his stomp rocket.  It was definitely worth the wait.

 It was easy enough that even Brigham could launch it pretty high.

 I was right, he loved it.

 It really went surprisingly high.

Jaaromy caught this picture of Brigham mid-jump with his phone.  I love it!

Happy Birthday, Brigham!  I'm so excited to see what you will do this next year.

Nathaniel's 12th Birthday

When I found out I was having a boy, I admit, I was disappointed.  All my siblings had girls, I honestly didn't know what to do with a boy.  I had six brothers, I was done with boy stuff.  Although, I must say, my three boys have been just right for me and I wouldn't trade them for anything.

For some reason, the thing that really made me excited to have a boy was that one day, that boy would grow up and have the priesthood.  The part about going with Jaaromy to Priesthood session of conference and allowing me a girl's night out might have had something to do with it too.

So, Nathaniel has turned 12 and I have been looking forward to this day his whole life.  There are a lot of changes associated with turning 12 and I'm so excited to see him learn and grow.

Over all, he's handling his new responsibilities well and seems to be excited to face these new challenges.

As I've mentioned, one new responsibility is getting the priesthood.  His interview with the bishop went well and he was ordained to the office of Deacon two weeks ago.  We invited the Grandpas to participate.  Unfortunately, since my dad couldn't be there, I asked my brothers if one of them could come in his place.  I was pleasantly surprised when three of them came.

I love all these men, and I'm so grateful that Nathaniel has so many positive examples around him.

Last week was his first opportunity to pass the sacrament and he did a great job.  Jaaromy might have been more nervous than Nathaniel was.  We could tell he was nervous but he did everything he was supposed to and Luke, another semi-new deacon helped him out.  We're so proud of him.

In fact, I'm really proud of how much Nathaniel has grown.  Most of you know what a worrier he is and the way he has stepped up and done things that we know are hard for him has been amazing.

Happy Birthday, Nathaniel!  I'm so excited for your new and exciting adventures.