The kids were on a short day schedule the whole first week of school, so we decided to take advantage of them being home early and squeeze in one last boating day this season. It turned out to be a milestone trip for the whole family. My big accomplishment was backing up the trailer for the first time (both to launch the boat and to pick it up). It wasn’t as hard as I thought. I’ll still make Nate do it if the launch area is crowded, but I’m confident enough to do it on slow days.
The milestone for the three oldest kids was to cross the wake on the kneeboard. They have been practicing their turns all summer, but it is tricky to get up enough momentum to make it over the wake when you don’t weigh very much. Ben was the first to do it. He was totally trying for it, but I think it surprised him more than anyone when he actually made it over. The girls didn’t want to be outdone by their brother and by the end of the day they had both conquered the wake too.
Abby’s milestone was riding the kneeboard for the first time. She didn’t want to try it by herself, so Nate went with her. She loved it! Emily took pictures since I was busy driving the boat.
I’m already excited to go boating next year. The more the kids can do, the more fun it is to go.
Nate’s milestone was hitting a rock with the propeller. He’s never done that before. Hopefully, he’ll never do it again.
I took the family out to dinner at Arby’s on the way home with my jury duty money (Nate had to cover the curly fries, but I paid for the sandwiches). There is a funny story about my jury duty check (for the whopping sum of $18.50). Nate and I are still debating who has a better sense of humor. The day it came, Nate was ordering some MP3 players for the kids online. His total was about $80. He was just about to order and said “Should we really be spending this money right now?” and I said, “Don’t worry about it. I just got paid.” Wah ha ha. Laugh out loud funny right? Nate only gave me a courtesy laugh (and maybe even an eye roll). Things like this make me wonder if we are really meant to be. :)
I spent most of the summer lamenting how fast time was going. I was dreading sending the kids back to school. Luckily, about two weeks before school starts, they start to drive me crazy. They fight and whine and all of a sudden I realize that I won’t miss them too much if they are gone for six hours a day. :)
The kids weren’t exactly enthusiastic about school starting, but we are off to a great start. They all came home with big smiles on their first day and so far everything has been wonderfully smooth. Ben is in the 5th grade this year. (In my head that is “THE 5TH GRADE!!!”) His teacher is Miss Wallace. She is young and fun and I have a feeling that she is going to be perfect for Ben. He is thrilled that he has some good friends in his class this year and so far we haven’t seen his typical “I’m freaked out about starting a new school year” behaviors. Phew.
I feel a little déjà vu with Emily and Elise this year since Emily has Mrs. Swanson (the same teacher Ben had in 3rd grade) and Elise has Miss Carter (Emily’s 1st grade teacher). Emily is in a 3rd/4th split which I think will be ideal. She is a fast learner and school has always been easy for her. We hope that being in a class with kids a year older will provide her with some opportunities to be challenged and she’ll have to stretch herself a bit.
I think Elise is doing great. I ask her every day what she learned at school and she says “I don’t know. I already know everything we are doing.” It is true. And it probably will be for quite a while. Oh well. There are worse things in life than being at the top of your class.
I had a serious fall off of the blogging wagon last month. I wanted to remember all of the stuff we did this summer, but taking the time to blog was starting to take the fun out of it. I actually typed up lots of posts, but it seemed like way too much effort to pick pictures and upload everything. My goal for this week is to get the blog up to date (or at least up to August). Just don’t think I am drunk when I say things like “yesterday was Pioneer Day”. It really was when I wrote the post.
Nate and I decided to squeeze in one more camping trip with our kids before school started. We headed up a little after noon on Friday. We were lucky enough to snag the last campsite in Perception Park (important since we had all taken up our bikes and it is the only campground that has paved roads and trails). There was a reason it was the last site available; it kind of sucked (close to the road and not much shade), but we decided to be glad that we got a spot and like it anyway.
We’ve been super busy around here lately and needed some time to be lazy. This trip really fit the bill. We had simple meals and spent our time riding bikes, playing games, and sitting around the fire.
Great things about this trip:
No one got bitten by the black widow that had made her home in the bag that holds our pop-up shade. I noticed some webs with dead spiders when I opened the flap and immediately thought it was the work of a black widow. Being the wimp that I am, I made Nate come over to take out the shade. Sure enough there she was. I’m really not a fan of venomous animals thinking they should live in our stuff.
One of the training wheels on Elise’s bike broke. Hallelujah! She has been more than a little resistant to learn how to ride her bike, but with a broken training wheel she didn’t have much choice. She wasn’t happy about it, but she learned how to ride her bike by the time we left. The other kids had loads of fun with their bikes. Abby probably rode around the main loop of the campground 70-80 times and Ben and Emily were pretty adventurous about going on the smaller trails through the picnic area and group sites. Nate and I took turns going with them and we took a couple of family bike rides all together.
We played Apples to Apples, Set, and Speed UNO with the kids. We also had a fun game of Fire UNO. Our camping cards were getting pretty worn out, so we decided to retire them. We played four hands of UNO around the fire and used the fire pit as the discard pile. The kids (except Elise) thought it was so cool to throw the cards into the flames. Elise was just not comfortable with that level of rule breaking. She got over it and played anyway.
We tried the giant marshmallows this time around. That’s a whole lot of sugar and whole lot of stickiness crammed into one marshmallow. I think we’ll stick with the normal ones from now on.
We got home in time to get the kids cleaned up and sent them to the Jensens’ house for an end of summer party. Ben went early and mowed their lawn for them. It was a HOT day and their lawnmower has been broken for a while so the grass was long. It was tough work. He was a trooper and kept pushing through until it was done. That boy has a pretty good work ethic for a ten year old. He was so excited when they paid him $10 (even after he told them that he really only gets $2 for mowing the lawn).
The kids all had a great time at the party. There was a treasure hunt, crafts, water balloons, pizza, a movie, a piñata, cupcakes, and glowsticks. What more could a kid want?
We spent three days at Nate’s parents’ cabin last week. It was a great getaway for our family. We passed the time on the way up and back listening to the Focus on the Family dramatized version of Les Misérables. It was really well done and the kids (except Abby) liked listening to the story. I love that we can introduce them to some of the classics now that they are getting older. We kept everything pretty low-key on this trip. In the past we have spent most of our time at the pools or the beach or the park. This time we mostly hung out at the cabin with just a couple of trips to the pool. It was nice to just relax and spend time together. We discovered our complete lack of badminton skills, spent hours building a puzzle, watched dueling hummingbirds, played lots of games (namely Ticket to Ride, Set, and Speed UNO), watched movies (Next Three Days & Source Code for me and Nate; Phineas and Ferb & National Treasure for the kids; and Napoleon Dynamite for all of us), played volleyball, and went on a morning nature walk. If the kids would have remembered the rule that there is no fighting or whining while on vacation, it would have been perfect. But, even with some fighting and whining, it was still quite lovely.
The least fun part of our trip is that girls found a tick crawling on Abby’s arm on Monday morning. I checked all of the kids for ticks and found a quality bite mark on the back of Abby’s head. I’m glad the tick had already detached itself so I didn’t have to pull it out. With the three I found on Emily in Wyoming, that makes four ticks this summer. I’ll be happy if I never see another one.
One unexpected side-effect of our trip was a rebirth of the kids’ interest in puzzle building. We woke up one morning to find the three oldest kids starting a 1000 piece puzzle. We gave up on building it when we were about half done. It was a pretty lame puzzle. The pieces didn’t lock together well and about 500 of them were slightly varied shades of blue. When we got home, the kids couldn’t wait to build another puzzle. In the last three days we’ve built three 500+ piece puzzles (not to mention all of the 25-60 piece ones that girls have built and rebuilt.) It has been a good way to pass the time on these hot summer days.
