Mustaches

Ada dressed up for Western day and the school admin gave her a fake mustache because she dressed up.  She was so excited about it that we found all sorts of things to put it on.

Evelyn and Seth had crazy hat and shoe day.  Neither wanted to do any of my suggestions, but Evelyn borrowed Ada's Dad socks and Dad's Mr X hat.

 

TERT

Friday night, Jer headed up the mountain.  He was at base camp this time.  The kids were all enjoying their video game day and didn't want to do anything else, so I drove up to join Jer for a couple hours.  It was nice before it turned cold.  There was a rabbit investigating Jer's camp and a chipmunk that I saw carrying something huge in it's mouth.

 

This and that

This week has been good, but it's also a little bit of a recovery week.  Maybe it's the beginning of Fall, but everyone was really tired this week.  

Seth had a police officer come to his class this week.  He thought that was pretty neat.  My friend snagged this picture.  Seth is the bottom right corner in the blue shirt.

Ada was napping on the couch.  Sam was tired so he laid down on top of her.  They slept for about an hour.  I giggled because usually if Sam tries to get close to Ada physically he gets in trouble.

Quick scripture study

All three of our soccer games were poured on this last Saturday.  Jeremy was doing his last TERT shift of the year, so Sam and I coached Seth's soccer game.  It was fun but very wet.  Ada loves playing in the rain, so it worked out for her.  Sam's game was in the afternoon and started out sunny.  It ended up raining the last half though.

Yesterday, I set up some quilts in my front yard.  I wanted to do something for refugees coming in just as it gets cold here, so quilts it is.  My Mom and Janelle came over in the morning and I had neighbors come by and chat and stitch.  It was fun and I got to visit with people.  We finished two quilts and are halfway through the third.  One unexpected turn of events, I had three quilt frames.  Apparently I had inherited one from my Grandma Wilcox and so did Sharon.  My Mom had inherited one from her Mom when she already had one.  Sharon moved and gave me hers.  Mom moved and gave me her Mom's.  I hadn't realized that I had three.  Janelle took one home and a neighbor wants one of them... so that frees up some storage space now.

 

Nellie's birthday party

It was Janelle's birthday this week.  It was so cute.  Vivian wanted to throw her a Sponge-bob birthday party.  So she did.  It was awesome.  My kids are not sponge-bob fans but they are Nellie fans.  It was fun to hang out and chat.  Happy birthday Nells!

 

misc

 

I go through our yard every day and pick up dog poop so that no one steps in it... especially daycare kids.  The last month or so, we've had lots of mushrooms.... even during the drought.  My thought is that it's because we have a lot of decomposing tree roots under the grass.  Most of the mushrooms have been growing along the root lines.  I filled a whole bag of these giant ones on Friday.  They had been growing on the base of a dead aspen tree that we haven't gotten down yet.  I don't know how I missed them earlier.  They were huge!

I was standing out talking to Bobbie Graham and the cat wanted to be part of our conversation.  She would lay only in my shadow.  It was pretty funny.

Mummies

 Last Saturday, we didn't have soccer games because of Labor Day, so we took a minute to go to the UofU Natural History Museum.  It's not as big as the Smithsonian, but it's still really neat.  They have Dinosaurs, gems and minerals, Indian history, bugs, animals, and their special exhibit this year is mummies.  I've been to several mummy exhibits, but my kids haven't.  It was neat. The kids have read the Red Pyramid series, so the Egyptian god names were familiar to them, but it was neat to see a timeline and explanation about them.  I was surprised to hear how much the kids knew about little tidbits as we walked through.

Evelyn had said that the reason that the paintings were always to the side was because they believed that they could have their soul stolen if they looked at them head on.... so Sam promptly went and had a staring contest with this bust.

funny back to school

 The kids reminded me that a couple of weeks ago, Sam had fallen to sleep after school and woke up disoriented.  He yelled, "Oh Crap!  We forgot to go to school!"  He thought it was the next day.

Soccer and week update

 This week, Evelyn gave a speech to her school because she wants to be part of their student council.  She is running for Secretary.  I think she finds out on Friday if she gets it or not. We spent family night making posters.  She sure would be everyone's friend if she gets it.  I don't know what all that entails though.   She also lost another tooth yesterday.  She was pretty excited to lose it. She wanted to tie it to the door and pull it using the door.  Jer did, but it fell out before they could shut the door.

My Mom saw Ada's eye wandering and asked that I take her to the eye doctor too.  She has good eye sight, but apparently her brain only uses her right eye. Ada's not thrilled to be wearing glasses, even temporarily.  And she got a kick out of not being able to touch the pen when he was testing her depth perception.  She had him do the test to her three times and do it to me and himself once each time. Then we came home and she had all the siblings do it.  Apparently Evelyn doesn't have depth perception either, but she's already in glasses and could do it if she was wearing her glasses.

Ada was having a hard time deciding which glasses to get, but I made her try on ALL the glasses because her facial expressions were so amazing.  

Harry Potter glasses

Old man from Up glasses

Doc Brown Back to the Future glasses

This is what she decided on.  She likes that she doesn't have to move her head to look through the glasses.  She likes that the frames don't go all the way around and she likes the color.

We started the newest soccer season. I had no problems getting them back into regular exercise Ada and Sam especially were getting into the habit of sitting rather than playing all day.  But then Covid spiked.  Now I'm nervous, but at least Sam and Ada are vaccinated and they play outside.  Sam has a nice big team with an excellent coach.  

Seth's coach is Daddy and he loves it.  He says, "Dad's never been my coach before!" He also has a friend, Jack, on the team.  Seth is pretty good.  He's not as fast as Sam at this age, but he's a pretty solid player and loves when he gets the ball. His and Ada's games are at the same time, so it's hard to watch both, but I switched between them partway through.

Jer needed an assistant coach to help on the second field.  In this age group, you have a 12 or more person team.  Then during the games, they break you up into two fields and you are actually playing two separate games. Sam ran one game and Jer ran the other.  Sam was so adorable running the one.  I think he likes coaching.

Seth and Jack.

Seth.  Happy kid that gets to run.

For Ada's team, it was a little different this year.  Most kids her age have gone to school teams, competition leagues, club teams, or just stopped playing all together.  Ada enjoys soccer and it's one of the sports that she doesn't complain about. So we signed her up and she ended up being the only girl on a COED rec team.  Her coach doesn't believe in practices... so she met the other 5 boys on the team during her game.  They didn't have a jersey larger than an L for her (see.... boys team... they don't realize that girls this age can be fully developed), so she wore an orange thing over a different jersey that I found for her in the uniform sale at the snack shack. She played the entire game.  She was not too aggressive, but after a year off soccer because of Covid.... she did really well.  She kept up with the boys and played the whole game without a break.  She just needs to remember to get the ball from them when possible and it will be like she was doing on her last team.  Maybe she needs to pretend that she's playing against Dad and Uncle Jay. All in All not a bad start.

Tuesday

Tuesday was back to school night.  Seth's teacher had a fun photo booth set up for the kids. Jer is coaching Seth's soccer team this year.  Seth is pretty excited for that.  He said, "Dad you've never been my coach before!" Evelyn is signed up for the Ballet 2 class again like last year.  They want to make sure that with her skewed feet she doesn't cause any injuries to herself by trying to go to Ballet 3 too soon.  She's sad that she has to leave her friends that are all advancing, but I think it's wise.  She did get into the advanced acrobatics class though.  That's the one that she really enjoys out of the two anyways.  She's been trying to convince Seth to join acrobatics.  They both miss the fact that they wouldn't be in the same class if he did join.

Ada is officially an 8th grader.  You can tell that she's feeling grown up and not afraid of anything at this point.  She's been getting up early to read her scriptures and run with Dad in the mornings.  She loves to draw, is excited that they get to write in her English class this year, loves choir, and somehow ended up in an intermediate math class instead of an advanced one like they had said at the end of last year. She also somehow ended up in the concert choir instead of Bella Voce like her choir teacher had said last year.  Apparently the new choir teacher and her new school counsellor misplaced all of the note on Ada this year.  I asked Ada to meet with them today and we'll see what schedule she ends up with.  She's getting into some fun piano music too.  I was impressed to see her challenge herself on so many levels. She's signed up for her first Coed soccer team.  So far she's the only girl on the team, but she says she doesn't mind.  I'll be there cheering for her.

Sam I think is getting the hang of 7th grade.  He was pretty anxious, but I'm proud that both he and Ada have agreed to wear masks at school and that he is slowly finding fun things.  He likes his drama class and band.  He's going to be learning how to play the flute and is pretty stoked.  I love how excited he gets over learning new things.  He told me, "Mom, they would let me practice before school or during lunch in the band room!"  I'm crossing my fingers that he can start seeing some of his friends as closer friends so that he chooses to spend time with them as well.  Sam has a great soccer coach this year too. I'm hoping that will help him get out of the funk he's in.  (Since he split his heel open, he's been hesitant about physical things). He's a good and sweet guy.  I love seeing him grow, I hate seeing his anxiety over that growth when I know that he'll be just fine.... maybe that's just part of being on the other side of it alread?