First Day of School

I don't think I was entirely ready for school to start.  It's always about trade-offs.  I very much love not having to wake up very early in the morning to get kids ready.  I love that my boys, or two of them at least, could get themselves up and make their own breakfast.  It was really nice.  On the other hand, I enjoyed having time to myself after they were gone.  Although this was alleviated somewhat during the summer now that Nathaniel is old enough to watch his brothers for a little while.  So, the pluses of going back to school weren't quite as high.

But who cares what I think.  School started anyway.

 Although I only did it the one day, I got up in time to see Nathaniel off to school.  One benefit to being behind in blogging is that I can talk a little bit about how he's doing in school.  He seems to enjoy 8th grade much more than 7th.  Even though school will always be school, he seems happier this year which makes Jaaromy and I worry a little less.  So that's nice.  Last year he had the benefit of having a friend who was a 9th grader help him navigate Jr. High.  He was in his car pool, the Quest program, and Granite Youth with him so he was always there to make sure he remembered things.  This year he has pretty much had to figure it all out himself with varying results, but I think he's starting to get the hang of it.

Brigham was very sleepy the first morning of school and so I didn't have time to get a picture of him all ready to go on the first day.  So I took this one of him while he ate his breakfast.

Then I tried again the next day.  He's so cute and he loves school.  He's still in the autistic class at his school, but his teacher thinks he could be mainstreamed soon.  He's doing really well.

Here's Jonathan on his first day.  After thinking about it all summer(although I've been thinking about it in general for much longer) I decided to homeschool him.  It's just too easy for him to get distracted.  He had a great teacher last year, but he was still falling behind.  I've always hated homework, but I forced myself to do it with him because it was the only one-on-one instruction he was getting all day.  I just don't have time to re-teach him everything he was supposed to learn during the day, especially not in the early evening to evening hours.  So I decided that it would be better to do it myself.  I was 90% sure I was going to do it last Spring.  During the Summer I was worried that I would chicken out and not do it, it's a big decision.  But as the first day of school got closer, I reached the point where the idea of sending him back to school was harder for me than the idea of teaching him myself.  That's when I knew that it was going to happen for sure.  I found a curriculum online that I really liked, and even though it was expensive, I'm really happy with how it is going.  About two days into it I was surprised at what I was feeling.  I assumed that it would be hard but worth it, that's why I was doing it after all.  But I was surprised when I felt...satisfaction.  I was having fun.  I don't know the exact words to describe it.  But it felt good.  As a Mom, I am the one responsible for his education.  Even if I decide that my kids will go to public school, it's still my responsibility.  If for any reason I feel like it's not what is best for my kids, it's my job to make sure that they get the education they need.  I know that this is what is best for Jonathan right now.  I don't know how long I'll do it.  Maybe it will be a year, maybe it will be longer.  But I will always do what is best for my children, even if it falls outside the "expected" pattern.

So, we've fallen in to a routine.  One frustrating thing about Brigham's schedule is that the bus comes to get him at 8:10 in the morning.  Almost a full hour before school starts!  At first I considered taking him myself so he could get a little extra sleep, but then I decided to do it anyway and it has worked out well.  This way I have a little more time in the morning for myself before it's time to start Jonathan's lessons.

The night before school started Jaaromy gave them all father's blessings.  After the boys' blessings he gave me one too.  My main concern was that I wouldn't have time to do all the things I need/want to do during the day.  I was told in my blessing that I would still have time to do everything I needed and that has certainly been the case.  I'm definitely busy, but I believe I have been blessed with the strength to handle it.  When I have day after day of barely fitting everything in but I don't feel overwhelmed, I know I'm being blessed and I'm so thankful for that.

This is going to be a good year, I think.

Our Summer

We had a fun summer, full of all kinds of fun stuff like reading, and chores.  I implemented our Super Fun Summer Schedule as I mentioned in a previous post, but we did a few other things as well.

Because of our foster care training, we weren't able to get a set time for Brigham's horse therapy like we did last year.  But his therapist did occasionally have cancellations and so we happily took those opportunities to go.

He loved it and didn't even cover his ears when we got there.  It was like he never left.  He remembered exactly what he was supposed to do and did great.  It made me feel bad that we weren't able to do it more often, but we were able to go about four times.

On one of our visits we saw this really cool rainbow.  I've never seen one like this.  It was even in the South West.  I'm glad I was able to catch a picture of it.

Since we were just filling in cancellation gaps, we came a many different times.  If it was in the middle of the afternoon, I just left Nathaniel in charge of Jonathan and took Brigham alone.  Those were nice.  Sometimes it was right in the middle of lunch and so I'd have to bring all of them together.  On the plus side, we were able to go to the fun park down the road and eat lunch there.  The boys didn't mind.  It was a nice outing.  I'm glad Brigham was able to do it a few times this summer.

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One day I caught Jonathan and Nathaniel having a jam session together.

This made me extremely happy to see.  I'd like to get Jonathan some private lessons.

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Nathaniel still did fun things with the scouts over the summer.  One activity was earning an archery badge.  When he got home after his first time going he was really frustrated because he didn't do well, but underneath the frustration I could tell that he enjoyed it.  He even mentioned that he improved significantly by the end.  He didn't qualify for the badge but his amazing scout leader took him and a couple more boys back to try again.  He more than doubled his score.

I'm glad he had fun.  I'd like to have him go again.  I'm even wondering if this could be a hobby for him.  I'm looking into it.

It was a fun summer, I wasn't entirely sure I wanted it to end.

Jaaromy's Birthday

Just two short weeks after my birthday, Jaaromy had his birthday.  In between our birthdays we got a pretty big present for both of us - for the whole family, really.

Our van was starting to get a little troublesome.  The driver's side window had trouble rolling back up which was merely annoying after visiting banks or drive-thru windows, but became a very big problem a couple of times going through car washes.  We started to adjust to it by having me climb into the back seat and pay for things through the passenger door.  No problem.  But that wasn't the only one.  We also had a problem with the passenger door handle.  It broke on one side which made it a little difficult to the untrained passenger, but then eventually broke off entirely.  Not a big deal, we just had to open the front passenger door and open it from the inside.  Minor issues were the missing hub cap and the big paint chip on the side.  There were other things too, but I think my list of complaints is getting a little long.  So, yeah, we decided to get a new van.  We wanted one with eight seats, in case we suddenly have three more kids.  You never know.  Isn't it pretty?!

For our first trip in our new car we drove up to Layton and went to Krispy Kreme and finally got the donuts I had wanted for my birthday.  They were amazing.  I want to go back.  It's probably good that it's not super close.  The boys had fun watching the conveyor belt with all the donuts on it.  It was a fun little trip.

For Jaaromy's actual birthday it was library night so the activity was set, but we did stop at the store and get a treat to stick candles into.

 Jaaromy's treat of choice was Klondike bars.  Not just any Klondike bar, but a Mint Chocolate Chip one.

 It was a little tricky sticking a candle into it, but we made it work.

 Brigham still loves singing Happy Birthday and blowing out candles.

What do I get for the guy who has everything?  Apps!  The money was going there anyway, so this way it's fun!

We had mixed reactions to the mint chocolate chip ice cream.  Jonathan surprised me and loved it.  He was happy to eat Nathaniel's after he decided he didn't like it.  Brigham didn't like it but at least he tried, so Jaaromy finished his.  Because I'm a push-over, I gave Nathaniel and Brigham a scoop of vanilla to make up for it.

Saturday Jaaromy and I went on a full date, like with dinner and a movie.  We went back to that amazing restaurant at the Gateway and we saw Wolverine which was really good.  Much better than Pacific Rim.  Good times.

Happy Birthday, sweetie!

My Birthday

I had a nice birthday this year.  Since Jaaromy was sweet enough to insist that I buy expensive new clothes on our anniversary date, I didn't want much.  The only thing I wanted was donuts.  Not just donuts from Wal-mart or something, I wanted donuts from a place that only made donuts or baked goods in general.  I wanted good ones.

For our birthday activity the only thing I wanted was to go to Wal-mart and get things we needed to be ready for our home study.  We got a fire extinguisher, a lockable cabinet for our cleaners, and a storage bin to put all my fabric scraps in so we can move it downstairs and finish the back room.  It felt good to get ready for our home study and it was exactly what I wanted.

As far as the donuts, Jaaromy ran into some difficulty fulfilling my request so he improvised.

 We stopped by Cold Stone and Jaaromy got me a tasty ice cream cake.

Happy Birthday to me!

We got together for Birthday Sunday at Rachelle's a week or so later.  I took lots of pictures for my parents.  Here are some of my favorites:

 Jared and Brandon

 Brandon wanted to help Brigham play on my phone

 Poor Hudson getting "messed with" by his aunt Sarah(my niece).

 Brigham having lots of fun watching Nathaniel's animations on my phone.

 Jaaromy enthusiastically singing along to his own birthday song

 My turn to blow out candles

 Rachelle with nephew Brandon and granddaughter Brielle.

Brigham was so sweet to smile for me.

Also, there were some fires around Tooele which made the sunset quiet striking.

 It was so cool, I kept trying to get the best picture all night.

 You could almost look at it directly, the clouds were so thick.

 It made the moon turn orange too.  After we got home I took this one.

It was a nice birthday.

Brigham's Birthday

Brigham turned 7 years old this year.  I can't believe how big he's getting.  I'm a little sad that he's actually getting older.  Some things are just easier when they are small.  But it was a great birthday either way.

Since it was library night, we already knew what we were going to do.

 They played in the courtyard a little bit and so I decided to take their picture.

 They seemed a little too dour so I asked them to smile.  Jonathan tried to help Brigham smile.

After the library we came home and Skyped with my parents while he opened his presents.  Grandma sent him some clothes, candy, and some fun toys.  One of which was a stuffed space shuttle that makes blast off noises.  He loved it.  We got him a Me Moves dvd.  It's a dvd that he watches at school sometimes and he loves it.  We also got him a cool chair cushion thing for when he plays on the DS.  Cool stuff!

Then we sang and blew out candles, of course.

He gets so excited to blow out the candles, it's cute to watch.

We also decided to go to the planetarium the next day.  His favorite place.

 He had a lot of fun.

 I don't know why he never really felt comfortable enough to uncover his ears though, he really did have fun.  We even let him pick out a toy from the Planet Fun Store.

 It's a cool Earth spinner thing at lit up as it spun and even played Axel F(?!)  I haven't heard that song in a while.  Luckily, we were able to hear it over and over for quit some time after that.  He loved to watch it spin.

 This is what it looked like with the lights on.

He loved turning off all the lights to watch it spin.

Happy Birthday, Brigham!

Pioneer Day

So one of the downsides to being so far behind in my blogging is that I'm starting to forget details about the day.  I don't remember much about what we did on Pioneer Day, but I know we did fireworks.

Actually, one thing that I remember is that I let the boys watch the parade.  That's never been a tradition for me but I thought they might like to see it.  Turns out they really enjoyed it.  We hardly ever watch live tv so it was a little weird trying to find out where it was broadcast but we worked it out and they were able to watch quite a bit of it.  Maybe we'll have to do that again next year.

That night we did fireworks as usual.  I don't know why but it had never occurred to me to do light trails with the sparklers so that's what I focused on this time.  It's tricky to do, especially with wiggly kids but there are some fun shots.

 They were still a little new to the sparklers in general, we haven't done them much in the past.

 There were fireworks going off all over so I tried to catch some of them.

 They weren't sure exactly what it was I wanted them to do at first.

 So Jaaromy showed them that I wanted them to draw shapes in the air and stuff like that.

 They got better at it.

Just in time to run out.  But it was a fun trick, I'll have to try it again.

Unfortunately, we had an incident with the sparklers.  I wasn't watching and Brigham sat down in the chair with his sparkler and an ember broke off and landed on his knee.  He tried to get it off with his thumb and so both his thumb and his knee had a pretty bad burn on them.  I let him watch Baby Galileo all night while he held a cold pack on his knee.  Poor kid.  It's taken a while to heal too, the mark on his knee is still there.

Still it was fun.  We'll have to try again next year with new safety rules in place.

Jonathan's Glasses

Jaaromy and I have both been wearing glasses since we were roughly 10-11 years old.  So we figured our kids would have to wear glasses eventually.  It was no surprise when Nathaniel needed glasses right before third grade.  It was earlier than we thought it would be, but still, we were not surprised.  We would test his eyes every once in a while at church.  We'd ask him if he could read the hymn numbers and when he couldn't read them anymore, it was time to take him in.

I was a little surprised when it turned out that Jonathan needed glasses too.  I don't know why, I guess I was hoping that his eyes would last a little longer.  He took the same hymn number test and it seemed he couldn't see very far at all.  So I took him in.

He did great.  He was very cooperative with the optometrist and was excited to pick out some cool frames.  He was very disappointed when told he would have to wait a week before they would be ready for him to wear.

Finally they were ready!  He was also a little disappointed that the Sponge Bob sticker than had been on the lens when he tried it on was now gone.  But there was still a little Sponge Bob picture on the end of the ear hooks. (I'm pretty sure that's the technical term)

I have to admit, he looks pretty darn cute.  I think his longer face is well suited for wearing glasses.  He was so excited to wear them and when we left the optical department he read every single sign in Shopko.  He's very excited that he can see now.  It's so fun to watch him.

So, for now, Brigham is the only one of us who doesn't wear glasses.  I hope it stays that way for a long time.

Someone Else's Life

Jaaromy and I had a chance to take an overnight trip for our anniversary.  We had originally tried to go in May or June, closer to our anniversary date but everyone who could watch the kids overnight were all busy.  We even had a reservation, but we had to cancel it.  Apparently, though, we had rescheduled and forgotten until one day we got an email from the hotel telling us about our upcoming reservation.  Luckily, Jaaromy's mom was free and was able to spend the night with the boys so we could go.  So, hurray for last minute trips!

Not that it was a huge trip.  All I wanted was to stay downtown at the Grand America hotel and so that's what we did.  We checked in around five and then took the train over to the Gateway for dinner.  We weren't sure where we wanted to go so we took a chance and tried a restaurant called La Jolla Groves.  Turns out it was amazingly good!  Seriously, all night I was thinking about when we could come back and eat there again.  While we were waiting for our food to come we realized that if we saw a movie, which we were planning on doing, the trains would have stopped running by the time we came out.  We decided that we would walk back to the hotel even though it would be late.  We mapped out a route on our phones that we thought would be best.  Problem solved!

Before the movie, I had heard about a clothing store called Bettie Page from a friend of mine on Facebook.  I really wanted to take a look so we walked over there to see what they had.  Turns out it was exactly my kind of store.  They had so many cute skirts, dresses, and even some tops that were just my style.  We had some time so Jaaromy humored me and let me try on several outfits.  They were so fun and cute!  He ended up insisting that I buy several of them.  Three skirts, one blouse, and one full length dress.  They were not cheap either.  I decided to let him buy them for me, as my anniversary/birthday/Christmas present.  Also, because I've lost weight, I needed new clothes anyway.  It was really hard to say yes though, and even though I was excited for my cute new clothes, it was definitely the most I had ever spent on clothes before.  We left the store and the whole experience just felt a little surreal.

After that we went to the movie.  It has been a really lackluster summer for movies this year.  I wanted to see Man of Steel.  I had heard that it wasn't great, but it was pretty good and was probably our best option.  Jaaromy didn't want to be disappointed and so he wanted to see Pacific Rim.  That movie, we knew very well would probably be dumb but at least it would be exciting.  And it was.  The characters weren't very interesting, but giant robots battling giant alien monsters was definitely action-packed.  Sitting there in the theater watching a movie that was dumb and under normal circumstances we would never pay money to see just added to my sense of surrealness for the whole evening.  But the night wasn't over yet.

After the movie we started our long walk to back to the hotel.  Google maps said it would take about 20 minutes and it was close to midnight.  Before long we came across a bike rental station.  We kind of joked about riding bikes back to the hotel and then realized that it might not be a bad idea.  We went back to the station to see if there was another station close to the hotel.  There was!  They even had baskets on the front for my shopping bags.  So, for the ultimate surreal moment of the evening, we rode rented bikes through downtown Salt Lake City at midnight on a Friday back to our hotel.

 I'm glad I thought to take a picture.  It was so crazy!  I haven't ridden a bike in years, maybe decades.  It was fun, although it stressed me out a little because I don't know what the rules of the road are for bikes.  Luckily, the streets weren't terribly crowded.  It was midnight after all!

The rest of the night was fairly typical for an anniversary trip.  We ordered a dessert brought to our room while we watched Phineas and Ferb on Jaaromy iPad.  There's a tv of course, but nothing good to watch ever.  That's the only problem with hotels.  Oh well.  The dessert was tasty and we were exhausted.

The next morning we had a big breakfast brought to our room.  That, for me, is the hallmark of a great anniversary overnighter.  Breakfast IN our hotel room.  It was expensive but it was awesome and so tasty.

After we checked out of the hotel we walked around the new City Creek shopping center.  I hadn't really been before.  It was so pretty.

Then we picked up the kids.  It was a great adventure.  The most exciting and unexpected anniversary trip we've ever had.  Until next year.

Nathaniel the Teenager

Nathaniel celebrated his 13th birthday several weeks ago.  As far as privileges go, it's not as exciting as turning twelve, but it has it's perks.  Nathaniel was particularly excited about officially being a teenager, that suffix is very important.  We also decided that he could get his own Facebook page now that he was officially old enough.  He's had some fun with that already.   Nathaniel was a little disappointed that he still had to do his regular chores on his birthday.  I know, I'm so mean.  I did, however, allow him to skip his one cleaning chore.  I know what you're thinking, nicest Mom ever, right? 

That night we went to see Monsters University.  Even though it didn't get as good reviews as other Pixar movies, I thought it was very good.  I especially loved the ending, somewhat unexpected.

When we got home we Skyped with Grandma and Grandpa while he opened his presents.  They sent him a big box full of fun stuff that had been sitting on the counter all week.  The suspense was killing him.  Finally he was able to open it up and find that it was mostly clothes.  But he also got some pretty cool books.  Some from us and some from Grandma and Grandpa.

He also got another book from G&G that came late.  He is pretty set as far as books go for quite a while.

After the presents and Skyping we sang and blew out candles on our cookie brownies.  They are still our birthday favorite.

That's pretty much how it went down.

And here's a picture of Brigham because he's so cute.

We also had birthday Sunday at Scott and Heather's house a few days later.  Nathaniel used to be the only July birthday but it has really blossomed into a busy birthday month.

Good times!

Happy Birthday, Nathaniel!  It's so fun watching you grow, and I've particularly loved watching you grow over this last year as you've gained more responsibilities and also more confidence.  I love you!