Mariam is home!  She's actually been home a few weeks but we just got to see her for the first time last night.  She came right before we went to Robbie's scout carnival.  We all went running outside to hug her.  She's just a lot of fun.  WE all went to the carnival and then she helped us put the kids to bed with stories from her mission.  Then her, Ryan and I all stayed up till one eating icecream and talking about her mission and some dates/social awkwardness since being home:).  This morning, after reading and breakfast RYan left for work (we decided no school for the whole week after getting home from Reno and the Doxeys on Wednesday)  Eva invited us to go to the Gateway Children's museum with tickets she had from Tara.  I love being around Eva and Mariam loves her too (I think she was her YW leader in Houston).  Great children's museum plus lots of fun talking=awesome morning.  We rushed back to pick up Hallie from a playdate and then rushed home, put Clara down for a nap and then Mariam, Aubrie, Hallie and I went to Aubrie's piano recital--which was technically her first.  She was SUPER nervous.  I loved watching her work through the whole thing and it was a lot of fun to have Mariam there who could totally appreciate the whole thing (And filmed it to show grandma).  Aubrie played three songs (Entertainer, Irish Wedding Dance and Circus song).  I am glad for those experiences for her and can't wait for Robbie and Hallie to join.  MAriam had to leave to head back to Provo for her date and I ran Hallie to tumbling and Robbie came with to go pick up some last minute Halloween costume things.  Finally we got home (After 2 solid days of running around) and had an hour and a half to get costumes together which is always so much fun--for me and for the kids.  I love trying to figure out how to put costumes together.  Creative juices flowing! :) Trunk or treated it up (it was a little lame actually--way too rushed).  And now the kids are in rooms struggling to sleep because they are on a sugar high (Aubrie and Hallie are doing homemade treats only right now to earn $35 by the end of the year, but I think they had quite a few of those tonight anyway) and they are all so excited tomorrow is Halloween.

Blake wakes up every once in awhile at night.  He is really the only child that does that.  Whenever him and I talk about what wakes him up with bad dreams--he always says that it is when he sleeps on his ear.  He's convinced that sleeping in this certain position on his ear always makes him have bad dreams.  And he tries to never go to sleep like that, but sometimes he turns in the middle of the night.  It's so strange to me how adamant he is that is what causes it.

Our UEA weekend

Desperate times call for desperate measures (i probably should've put it in a waterproof baggie)

We just stayed home.  And Friday it drove me crazy, because I knew there were so many things we could be doing :)  and then Saturday I loved it. We were all just home working on the yard all day together.  Ryan and  I both especially love Saturdays like that.  When we work in the yard a lot during the day (or just work hard on something), I always end the day feeling good.  

We harvested alot yesterday (I wish more grapes)

 
We spent hours working on the backyard yesterday.  Pulling out most of the flowerbeds, and cutting back alot of the vegetable garden and grapevines.  I thought we'd pull out most of the garden--but it's been so warm that we still had a lot left to harvest.

We changed out the retaining borders on the flower gardens with much prettier brick that we had just laying around.  I like it a lot better. 

We literally pulled out everything along the back fence. I think we'll put dark mulch down back there. Ryan trimmed our peach trees-ALOT--hopefully that is ok for next year.  Robbie did the lawn and edging and has just gotten SO good at the lawn!

I had to take a couple shots of this cuteness this morning.  She loves to go and show everyone her shoes and clothes in the morning.  And I LOVE her haircut that Courtney just gave her. It's so easy to do.  

A more detailed snapshot of life

October 12, 2015

Pretty normal day.  The kids (we all) woke up later than we should which has been happening alot lately.  Especially after our BYU day all day (Till midnight) on Saturday.  Woke up at 8:00 and  I exercised/got kids going/run over and start oatmeal in the kitchen and Ryan gets ready for work and helps with getting kids going.  We read 15-20 verses in Alma 30 and actually have a good discussion about relativism for a minute or two. (sidenote: man, is it so relevant to now).  Ryan grabbed a bowl of oatmeal and ran.  Somedays I make the kids do all their "stuff" before they can eat.  Today was not one of those days.  I just was hungry and I could tell they were too.  With minimal complaints from Aubrie about how we ALWAYS have oatmeal (MAYBE once a week these days) we ate it up with some peanut butter toast.  Then on to the "stuff"--practicing piano--they try to escape to the downstairs piano so I can't hear how little they are practicing; cleaning their rooms--Aubrie and Robbie are the only ones that usually do that well; and getting dressed.  I've been trying so hard to make sure that we don't get lazy about that--hair done, try to match your clothes and get shoes on.  Usually they do a pretty good job.  I often do the girl's hair while they're eating breakfast.  They each have one job to do, ROb-bathroom (he does a pretty good job although he usually skips the bathtub and just closes the curtain, Aubrie is dishwasher, Hallie is vacuuming and cleaning the living room (she at least vacuums) and Blake is the garbages which really only happen when I notice they are full or its garbage day.  And although he really can do it himself he always "needs help".   Meanwhile, Clara is still in her highchair--eating away and then just watching the madness.  The nice part about homeschooling is our mornings are not so stressful and we've all enjoyed that a lot I think.

School starts promptly at 9:30 (yeah right) and we always start with the pledge of allegiance (true story). I'll put a snapshot of the kids agenda in here for a typical day (just in case we don't homeschool past this year;))  Aubrie almost always digs in and is great at staying focused.  Robbie slightly less so and Hallie is trying harder every day (I'm sure of it).  It kind of follows their ages and personalities to a T.  There is a lot of "come on, try it, you know this, sit back up, stop throwing the ball and finish, etc).  That's what we did for a few hours.

I really really needed to go to Costco and told anyone that was done they could come. Aubrie and Robbie were done--they didnt want to go, Hallie was not and she came anyway Spelling workbook in hand. Real life.  So Blake, Hallie, Clara and I (I don't know why I didn't put Clara down before we left since it was time) headed to Costco.  One hour, $250 and a lot of samples later, we headed home meanwhile getting 4 phone calls about being able to use the computer to play games from A&R.

We ate a delicious lunch of lentil soup and grilled cheese with garlic butter (yum!) and applesauce.  It was 1:30is by the time I put Clara down and she played and talked for the next hour before I finally went in and she had a dirty diaper the whole time. Needless to say she was quite grouchy the rest of the day.

After lunch the return to schoolwork struggle ensued.  Monday is History together and we were studying about Moses and the Israelites leaving Egypt.  History is probably my favorite part of homeschool.  I totally look forward to it.  Since we've been studying Egypt and have learned about the life blood that the Nile River was for them, and the sacredness of cows and frogs--the plagues had an all new significance.  Robbie often lays on the ground during history to "listen" and Hallie asks lots of questions and Aubrie is shushing her to get to the next thing.

After History, I went to finish folding all the laundry (Monday is the laundry day), Aubrie went to get Kaiya to play Dragon Shapers on the tramp with Hallie.  Robbie went to Liam's house and Blake had our new neighbor, Penny over to play for a little while.  I made dinner--chicken and roasted potatoes and the Kale salad from Costco.  easy.  Love that.

We ate, Ryan came home late because he got called into a meeting with John, his boss, and so we went ahead and started FHE.  He joined shortly.
Blake was in charge of parts, Aubrie had the activity (which we forgot to do--it was called "Find the Holy Ghost, that she made up as part of school last week), and I had the lesson, we read the scriptures related to and colored a page for each of the 10 plagues. The kids got way into it.  Nothing like a little gore and guts to grab their attention.  We ended with some caramel popcorn. Good FHE night which is not always the case.
Ryan put Clara to bed with a few stories, I put Bake to bed with a few stories, Ryan put Hallie to bed without a few stories and then Aubrie and Robbie were on the couch downstairs reading so I sat down to look at some of my mission pictures.  Next thing I know it's 9:30. Yikes (no wonder they are not getting up).  Tucked them in bed quickly.

Then Ryan had some work reading to do, so I sat next to him on the couch and watched Jimmy Fallon videos (I needed a good laugh).

There we have it.

Today was a good homeschooling day.  Whenever we do our "specials" or something just extra, they are always the good days.  Other than the kids "core" work (Spelling, Grammar, Math and Reading), we do history all together 3 times a week (my favorite other than math) and then one day a week we have been rotating between music and art.  Today was music.  I kept meaning to have Ryan prepare something and do it before work.  But I didn't.  Then I had this idea to teach them the power of music. To respect how powerful it is.  And that they can like, dance to and have fun with SO many types of music but to respect that it is powerful and can make you do things that you might not do otherwise. So we talked about its power and that it's almost magical. And that some music is just bad altogether, but that some is good and can be bad depending on lyrics or how it makes you feel or do. Anyway, so they all laid down on their backs and closed their eyes and I went through all types of music (just youtubing songs from different genres of music) and they didn't stay sitting very long--I had to keep telling them to lay back down.  But that was also a good example of how music just makes you move sometimes or run around like a crazy person (rage music).  We listened to Beethoven's 9th, ska, rage, R&B, Creed (I wanted to show them a good "Rock" type song), reggae, old blues, Glorious (DAvid Archueta), Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" and then at the end I said "I am going to play my favorite song of all time, the one that moves me the most" and put it on our speakers and had everyone lay down again--even Clara-- and we listened to Handels, Hallelujah Chorus.  Then it was over.  But it was so much fun.  And I think pointing out moments, like turning on ska and Clara jumping out of my lap to go dance around, or Blake running around like a crazy man to rage music, or getting goosepimples from Glorious, etc, helped them to get the point that music really does have a powerful influence over us.  They can choose what they liked to listen to and I hope its all kinds of music, but respect its power.

Like a Child

Yesterday Clara was down in the laundry room with me doing laundry.  I had all the piles in batches and was loading the washer when Clara came over and picked up a shirt and handed it to me and said "Aubrie".  And it WAS Aubrie's shirt.  So, I picked up the next one..."Gake" (spot on), and so it continued through the whole batch of laundry, each item of clothing I picked up she would tell me the name of the person that wears that item.  And she got almost all of them right.  I really was totally shocked.  How can an 18 month old be so observant??

So, then I decided it needed to be a FHE lesson.  Last night I showed the kids what she can do and we talked about if we could know and follow the Savior in the same way that Clara observes and does everything they do--we would be in a good place in life.

And reminded them to PLEASE only do, say and be good things so she could say and be that good! :)