School Year Wrap Up

We've been busy with all of the end of year activities for the kids during the last couple of weeks. Here’s a quick recap.

Carver’s Cove

Elise had her last fieldtrip of the year to a petting farm in Eden. The kids got ride horses and feed/pet all kinds of animals. The baby pigs were especially fun to watch. I hope that Abby likes doing all of the same fieldtrips over again in two years when she is in preschool.

Preschool Graduation

Elise’s graduation program was two hours long. (Nate still twitches a little if anyone mentions it.) That is a long time for preschool kids to be on stage. Elise was a trooper and was very well behaved. Most of her fellow students didn’t do as well with sitting still that whole time. Neither did Abby. Nate ended up skipping out during the second slideshow (!) to go pick up dinner and give Abby a change of scenery.

Elise had a fabulous year of preschool. She loved Miss Jamee and loved getting to play with her friends at school. She can’t wait to start kindergarten and asks me every day how long it is until she gets to go.

“Goin’ Buggy”

Emily’s first grade program was lots of fun. The songs and dances were adorable and they even had cute bug costumes for all of the kids. It was loads better than most school programs I’ve been to. Emily did a great job with her little singing solo. I love that my kids don’t seem to get nervous about performing in front of a crowd. They certainly don’t get that from me.

Talent Show

Ben played “We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet” for the third grade talent show. I wasn’t too sure about him playing a church song at a school talent show, but I decided to pick my battles. I had already talked him out of doing a freestyle dance routine and figured I shouldn’t press my luck.

Emily played the theme from Star Wars. It was a hit with the first graders. A bunch of kids in the audience started humming along about half way through. It was funny. The first grade talent show was lots more entertaining than the third grade talent show. Seven year olds apparently have loads of self-confidence, little actual talent, and very few inhibitions. That can be a hilarious combination.

While we were at the school we snapped a quick picture of the kids with their teachers. We lucked out this year and both Ben and Emily got teachers who were a perfect match for them. Thank everything for great teachers!

Field Day and Water Party

I spent the day at the school on Thursday helping out with field day. Elise and Abby were good sports and hung out with me while I sold off the end of the PTA’s treat stash. After we had finished up at the school, we headed to the park for Ben’s water party. Nate got off work early to help and ended up manning the candy canon for the fourth year in a row. I’m glad he is always willing to help out when I volunteer him for things.

It has been a big year for the kids with moving to a new school and making new friends. I’m glad we made it through mostly unscathed and I’m very much looking forward to the summer break.

Baby Sarah

Jody and Kevin are the proud parents of a beautiful new baby girl. We took the kids to the hospital on Wednesday night to meet their new cousin. I think it is safe to say that we are all in love with her.



I came home from the hospital with a whole new appreciation for mothers who place their babies for adoption. It is such an incredible sacrifice for them and such an amazing blessing for someone else. We will be forever grateful!

Golden Boy

Ben got his braces put on yesterday. The orthodontist let him choose between silver, gold, or clear brackets. He picked gold. I was a little afraid of having that much bling on his teeth, but they look great and he couldn’t be more pleased. He took the orthodontist assistant’s “keep your teeth clean” lecture very seriously and tested out all of his fancy new cleaning devices last night. Hopefully his enthusiasm for brushing three times a day won’t fade too quickly.

Test Drive

We took the boat out today. The weather wasn’t exactly ideal for boating (high of 66 degrees), but we couldn’t wait any longer. Our original plan was to launch the boat, ride around for a while, and head home. It turned into a bit more of an adventure. Nate really wanted to test out his new ($20 at a yard sale) slalom ski. So, he gave me a quick driving lesson, put on his wet suit, and jumped into the COLD water. He skied like an old pro and I didn’t run into any boats. Phew. I didn’t want the kids to think that their mom was a wimp (and I wanted to test out the skis that came with the boat), so I jumped in next. I was very impressed/surprised that my old, out of shape body managed to get itself up on skis after a three year hiatus. I had forgotten what a workout skiing is! The kids were itching to get in too, so we inflated the tube and Nate took us all for a little ride. It was a bit bumpy. Abby was not a fan, but the other three loved it.

Here are the lessons of the day:

Nate learned that he should have the trim down when he guns it or the bow goes way up (giving Ben the thrill of the day and giving me a heart attack).

Elise learned that if you don’t hold on tight to your towel, it will blow out of the boat . . . and that towels sink in less time than you can turn the boat around and grab them.

Abby learned that the launch ramp is super slimy and slippery and you should really just wait on the dry cement like your mom told you to.

I learned not to be offended when Nate asks me to move to the other side of the boat because we are tipping too much. :)

We had a great time!

Lucky

I entered a giveaway and won this quality necklace from Angel Face Designs. I love it! It makes me smile every time I look at it.

SS Mario

Last night was Ben’s Raingutter Regatta. His boat wasn’t the top performing boat*, but his design was a big hit with the all of the kids at pack meeting. He took great care to get the sail just right. He even talked me into shelling out fifteen bucks for the big pack of Sharpies because he needed a skin-colored marker. I gave in partly because I’ve been coveting the 24 pack of Sharpies for a long time and partly because it was great to see Ben so excited about something involving art.

It was a fun night. I think Nate is a little sad that he only gets one chance to help do a raingutter regatta/space derby/pinewood derby. He came away with lots of ideas of how to make a faster/more stable/better performing boat and is aching to put all of that wisdom to use. He thinks that the Activity Days leaders should start doing derbies for the daddy-daughter parties. :)

*Ben and Nate both informed me that Ben’s boat got first place in the Bear Den. There were faster boats in the Wolves and Webelos. Silly me for not keeping track.

Best Yet

This Mother’s Day was the best one to date. I think the secret was that I lowered my expectations for the kids going in. They weren’t perfect, but they did try hard and managed to be pretty darn nice most of the day. They were so excited to give me the fun presents that they had made at school. Nate gave me some great gifts too, but the big surprise of the day was an awesome DVD slideshow that he made for me. It must have taken him lots of hours to put all of the photos together. I’m not sure how he spent all of that time working on it without me knowing. I guess I don’t keep him on quite as short of a leash as I thought. :)

Here are the highlights of the day:

Breakfast in bed, chocolate covered strawberries, watching the slideshow on the big screen with Nate and the kids, Ben’s last minute Primary talk, Nate and the kids singing in sacrament meeting (along with the rest of the Primary and seven other dads), playing Super Mario Bros with the kids while Nate made dinner (until they started fighting), taking a Sunday afternoon walk, and watching the season finale of The Amazing Race (even though the cowboys didn’t win).

It really was a good day! I feel blessed to have four fabulous kids and the most amazing husband in the world. Now I need to work on lowering the bar before Father’s Day.

New Toy

We bought a boat! We’ve wanted to get one for a while, and decided that this was the year to do it. We started looking on KSL.com last month. Nate went to look at quite a few different boats, but we were having a hard time finding one that was right for us (small enough for our van to tow but with enough power to pull most any skier . . . and with seat cushions that didn’t bug me). We found a couple that we thought would be great, but they sold super fast. Checking for new listings became an obsession, just so we wouldn’t miss the next great deal. We probably looked three or four times an hour every day for a week. In the end, our obsession paid off. We found a sweet deal on a perfect boat for our family. It was great to finally be the first ones to answer an ad so we could have first dibs.


Nate drove to Lehi to pick it up on Monday morning. It turned out to be a bit of an adventure to get it here. We wanted to take it to a marine shop to get it checked out before we bought it. On the way to the shop, the trailer got a flat tire. On the freeway. In a construction zone. Nate barely made it to the exit before the rim hit the ground. He had forgotten to take our lug wrench and the man at Chevron didn’t have one, so Nate started going door to door to borrow a lug wrench. He ended up getting one from a nice, almost blind, old man that was mowing his lawn. That, and seven other delays, turned it into an all day process, but by the end of the day we had a boat. We’ve been cleaning it up and buying some fun new accessories to get it ready for the summer. Hopefully the weather will be warm enough this week that we can take it out for a ride.

Mother's Day Tea

Today was the Mother’s Day Tea Party at Elise’s preschool. She has been looking forward to it for the last week and a half. She woke up this morning asking me how long it was until we got to go. She asked about 43 more times before we left the house at noon. :)

We had a fun time together. The kids sang a few Mother’s Day songs and her teacher read the answers to some questions she had asked the kids about their moms. (Elise had a couple of great ones.) After their little program we had strawberry lemonade and cookies and the kids each gave their mom a flower pot that they had made in class. Elise loved every minute of the party. After all of the anticipation, I’m glad she wasn’t disappointed. I sure love that girl!

First Grade Bug Expo

Emily did a fun little science project this last week. Each first grader got to pick an insect that they wanted to learn about and then make a display to show what they had learned. Yesterday they set up their displays in the gym so the whole school could walk through and see them. Emily did a great job with her project and we all learned a bit more about walking sticks.


I have a hard time knowing where to draw the line when the instructions say that parents should “assist your child, but let them do the work." It’s tricky to figure out how much help is too much help. She made the quality model magic sculpture all by herself (she let Elise help with some of the leaves) and she did all of the typing. I just helped her with the formatting part. It took us 20 minutes to find a font she was happy with (like mother, like daughter), and she had definite opinions about what colors we should use. I’ll probably outgrow it, but for now I think school projects are pretty fun.

Confetti

Abby’s new favorite pastime is cutting paper. The good news is that she kept herself entertained for a full hour today cutting one sheet of paper into a thousand tiny pieces. The bad news is that she doesn’t want me to clean it up. “Mom, are you going to sweep the floor?” “Yes, I am.” “You need to move my papers onto the table first so you don’t sweep them up.” Um, I don’t think so. When I turned on the vacuum in the family room she came running in with a panicked look. She hurried into the kitchen and stood guard over her little pile of confetti until I put the vacuum away. I think I will wait until she goes to bed to clean it up and then blame Nate in the morning. :)