Summer Bucket List

Our summer bucket list was long this year. The kids had so many ideas of things to do! We have crossed off a lot, some we marked out as 'not going to happen' and we are still working on the last few before we leave for our trip next month!

One of the items was to have a yard sale. Every time we move (which has been a lot!) we always seem to have a space or a room that is full of stuff. It's usually embarrassing if people see it. In the last house we had it all in the attic and had plans of building shelves and organizing it all. That never happened. So, here we are almost 10 months in our new house and we are finally getting around to going through all of that 'stuff' and cleaning it out! 

We built up a pretty big yard sale pile and threw a bunch of garbage bags full of trash away. The kids wrote both yard sale and lemonade stand on our bucket list so we killed 2 birds with 1 stone. It wasn't our best yard sale (we aren't on a high traffic street anymore!) but we did okay! 

I was really proud of the kids for putting the money they made from selling lemonade and cookies in the Disneyland jar. We made enough that day to finally fill it all the way up! We are ready to go next month!

It's always hard to sell toys when the kids are around! They were pulling everything off the tables and playing!

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Another thing they came up with for our list was a pie eating contest! I found some tiny, single serving pies at the grocery store that were perfect. They decided to make the contest to be who ever ate it first won. Daniel was not allowed to use his hands because we all knew he could eat that in about 4 bites! At one point I really thought Addie was going to win but then she started to slow down!

Daniel showing us his empty mouth and his #1 rank.

Johnny finished 2nd!

And Addie #3.

I chose to be the photographer and eat my pie leisurely later. :)

First Day of School 2015!

We officially started our 2015-2016 school year this week on Monday! Schools around here don't start until September 9 so we are a little early! We will be on vacation for the second half of September. I wanted to get a routine started and get somethings going before we left. We will be taking some of our school stuff with us and we have some educational stops planned while we are gone so I am definitely counting those as 'school' days!

All 3 older kids seem pretty excited about it this year. Dia is always asking when is it her turn to work with me. We are adding in a few more things this year like more geography, history, and an actual art curriculum. I am excited, but I always get excited when it comes to new books and school supplies!

Since Addie turned 8 over the summer this is the first year I have to send in the Declaration of Intent to Provide Home-Based Instruction form. I'm glad I can just mail it in and I don't have to deal with the funny looks and questions in person.

I love it when people ask my kids what grade they are in because sometimes they don't know what to say! Addie knows she would be in third grade this year if she were in public school but the thing about home school is that you work at whatever level you need to. Addie is doing 3rd grade level writing, phonics and spelling. We started her off at 2nd grade grammar (because it's not something we focused on last year), and we are doing math all together and it's based on 1st grade. 

I think Johnny will have a harder time distinguishing what grade he is supposed to be in because he never went to public school. He is doing 1st grade handwriting, math and phonics. He will also be doing analogies and mind bender puzzles with Addie.  The art, history and geography are all early elementary. It should be a fun year!

Dia was so funny and kept insisting that she pose with her leg bent. Haha. Little model.

National Night Out

I've heard of people having fun activities and things to do in their neighborhood for National Night Out. We never know about it until the end of the day then it's too late! This year it was advertised that our cute town was holding a celebration at the park. We decided to check it out! They had lots of free activities for the kids to do like face painting, jumpy houses, Lowe's had wood working projects. There was even a smoothie place that had 2 stationary bikes set up. They attached a blender to the bike and you had to pedal to mix it! Then they gave it to you for free!

 Our plan was to stay and watch Big Hero 6 in the park on the big screen but  Johnny forgot to bring his pack back which I had packed the little girls and my sweatshirts in and it was getting chilly. It still stays light here pretty late and they hadn't started the movie when left at 9pm so I think we made a good call not to stay.

We were impressed with the fun things to do and it wasn't super packed! Anytime we attended anything in Puyallup there were so many people and it was always crazy. One of the perks of living in a smaller city. :)

Opal started to get fussy because she was bored. Lucky for her someone was handing out suckers. She was a sticky mess by the end but she was happy!

The theme of the night was all about being safe and active. They had a course set up for the kids to ride a bike through. They made them stop at a stop sign (which Johnny blew right through!), at one point them had to stop and try to describe the guy they just rode past, then throw a newspaper in to a bucket while riding (which Addie nailed!).

I love Opal's face in the picture on the left. Typical Opal face when she is yelling at the kids to leave her alone!

End of July

I finally picked out a bike trailer for the little girls to sit in so now we can go on short bike rides! We mostly just go around the neighborhood since we don't have a bike rack for the car so we can't go anywhere.

We also finally got brave enough to talk to our neighbors about having our chickens in their backyard! Since our HOA specifically says no poultry, we've been without our fresh eggs for months! Our neighbors are really really nice and are totally fine with having our coop over there! We even already had a gate to go in between yards so it's prefect! They just don't want the kids running around the yard, probably a liability thing. We ordered a chicken coop and Daniel and the kids spent a Saturday putting it together. It is much smaller than we pictured it would be but it holds our 3 birds!

We were really hoping to get our 3 chickens back. Of course I'm not sure we would have been able to identify them! When we went to pick them up from the guy who was taking care of them for us, he already had 3 chickens in a cage when we got there. He said he went out to get them and they all took off in to the trees. He was able to grab these 3. We were a little disappointed that we at least didn't get to try and find ours. We know for sure that 1 of them is not one of our originals. One of them might be because she got excited when we shook the bag of dried worms at her and the third, we're not sure. But they are all laying and seem happy in their little coop. Eventually we will build a fence around the coop so that they can come out and roam around a little bit. I am just excited to have fresh eggs again!

The kids have been doing a good job of doing chores lately. They get paid .25 cents for every chore they do. Some of the things they do are: empty the dishwasher, sweep, clean the bird cage, set/clear the table, empty the garbage and help with Opal.

Addie set her mind on a LEGO set that she has been wanting for awhile. She saved up for a few (maybe 2 or 3?) months until she had enough to buy it! She did spend a few dollars in the middle on some fake nails which I think she regretted later. It has been a great learning lesson for them!

This little girl is starting to fight naps. We had a week or two where she just wouldn't take them at all. We are almost to the point where it is easier to let her stay up than to fight it. But honestly, I am just not ready to give up my quiet time yet. I need that break from hearing little voices! Lately she has been napping again and I love it! We have to go through a whole routine first before she will even consider laying down and most days I sit in there reading until she falls asleep. It's a good excuse for me to sit down and put my feet up for a few minutes!

The temperature has been rather warm here! We had quite a few days in the 90's. The kids have spent hours outside in this pool! 

We have 2 window A/C units that were going full blast on those hot days but our bedroom is always too warm at night. I tried to make one of these DIY air conditioners so that I could get some sleep! I feel like it worked for the first couple of days but then I couldn't tell the difference any more. Guess I'll just have to stick with the fan blowing in the window!

Summer and Jenna and Daniel

Daniel and I nicknamed this summer #summerofjennaanddaniel. It seems like this is the first summer in a while that 1) I am not pregnant and 2) We do not have a newborn baby that is attached to me! We have made it a point to get out and do a lot of things and it has been so fun! So far we did the zip line, parasailing, a few races and some other fun dates. We really want to go on an overnight hiking/camping trip but the summer is ending soon so I don't know if we will make it! It's been fun having a reason to have so many pictures taken with BOTH of us in them!

We went on a group date to see Jim Gaffigan in Seattle! He was pretty funny! We like to watch his videos, we especially love his clip on home births. :)

The race we did the morning of Addie's baptism was the Wipeout Run! It was like the TV show but it wasn't the actual TV show. I was a little worried that one of us was going to get hurt and show up to the baptism all black and blue but we survived! It wasn't as hard as I was thinking it would be. They could have made a few of the obstacles harder. We made it through all of them except one. I think it was near impossible! Daniel almost made it to the end and the guy working it said he would have been the 5th person for the day to make it and there were a lot of people that went before us! About half of the obstacles involved water. Since it was really warm outside it felt good every time we were sprayed with a hose or plunged in to a pool from a slide!

The summer isn't over yet so I'm hoping we are able to get in a few more fun adventures!!

Addie's Baptism Part 2

The morning of the baptism, Daniel and I ran a 5k (that post to follow). It made for a crazy day but I think it all worked out! We didn't realize they were on the same day when we registered for the race and of course it was non refundable!

 Our ward does monthly baptisms. All the kids who have turned 8 in the last month are supposed to get baptized on the same day. That way there is not a baptism every single weekend. Another girl from Addie's class was supposed to share Addie's day but at the last minute we found out she was waiting until the next month. Addie was actually excited it was only going to be her, she got to have her own special day! 

We were lucky to have some of Daniel's family come visit. His parents, his brother Paul and his 2 kids from Utah and his other brother Ben came with his 3 kids. Afterwards we had some treats and were able to visit with the other people who came. Then we loaded up our large group and headed to Olive Garden, Addie's new favorite place!

We are pretty proud of Addie for the amazing 8 year old she is. She is helpful and not usually a trouble maker. I love that she can help me with the little kids! We are proud that she chose to be baptized and we know that she will be an awesome example to her younger siblings!

Cousins! Nathaniel, Johnny, Addie, Dia, Lucy and Opal. We are missing Ben's kids in this picture!

Poor Opal. Always being grabbed and poked at!