California Here I Come

It isn't every month that I get to spend 2 weekends in a row with my parents and siblings. This is an extraordinary month. First, July 11-13, I got to spend a day and a bit with some of them in Nauvoo, IL (no group pictures were taken, silly us!). Where we attended the Nauvoo Temple and watched the Nauvoo Pageant together.


Next, July 21-25, I drove (Ryan was at Scout Camp) to California with my kids to be at my sister's wedding, except the wedding didn't take place as planned, so we went to their open house, ate delicious wedding cake and the next day attended church at the Oakland 9th Ward.



And to finish off the month, July 29-30, I get to return to California to witness my sister be sealed in the Sacramento California Temple. This time, I'm flying by myself. Our whole family would have driven, but the children all declined. Can you believe it?

Lego Parade

I gave Roderic a writing assignment this morning. He need to write a story about legos and the 4th of July. First, he told me that he needed to build it and then he'd write about it. He spent an hour just building.













Then he wrote the story:


In case you can't read his writing, this is what it says:
By: Roderic and Hyrum
July 4th. It was a beautiful day. Blue skies. No airplanes. Some soldiers were marching in a parade.

Hyrum-ism

This one happened in March, but I ran across the paper I wrote it on tonight and thought I'd post it.

Hyrum: {burp} "Excuse me, Leo."

Leo: looks at Hyrum with a quizzical look

Hyrum: "He's saying, 'Tell someone "Excuse me" that's your own size.' Leo there's no one here my own size to excuse."


In other news, this is what I was wearing when I went to sing with Syringa Sound Chorus for the Veteran's Welcome Home yesterday afternoon. It is our 'summer costume' with minimal makeup.

Epic Vacation, Step 2: Planning

The planning stage has been time consuming! Where to stay, what to see, what to pack, how to keep the kids interested, etc.

Sabrina has created a blog to chronicle our Epic Vacation: mormonhistorytour.blogspot.com. So far, we've had the kids write reports about the different places we'll be visiting along our tour. While we're traveling, we'll update it with what we're seeing.

Google Maps has been my friend. Calculating driving times and routes. It's pretty awesome.


View

Since first planning this trip, my brother was called to serve as a young performing missionary in Nauvoo. We'll get to see him perform in 2 of the shows there. And my sister got engaged (Congratulations!) and will be married in California on July 23 so our tour is getting longer and from coast to coast, although we won't see either ocean.

We'll be going through 18 states, 1 Canadian province and driving more than 6200 miles. Let's hope our minivan is up for this odyssey.

Calvin and bikes

We got a bike for Roderic from a friend whose son had out-grown it. It was parked for a while on our front porch by leaning against the house because it didn't have a kickstand. Roderic's imagination and fascination with Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strips have caused him to nickname it his "Calvin bike". The bike doesn't have training wheels and when learning to ride training-wheel free, he would often say, "It's trying to kill me!" Just like Calvin. He has mostly gotten over this fear and will ride the bike for short distances (around our cul-de-sac).


One day while I was trying to convince him to ride his bike, I told him about a time when I had a "Calvin bike". It was a present from Ryan in 1997. I recently found a picture.


Here is a video of him riding his "Calvin bike".

The End of May Madness

In my previous posts, I neglected to mention family coming into town on May 13 to watch the National Touring production of Wicked! My parents, Carson, Milaka and Aanja. It was great to see Elphaba defy gravity!


That was also the night of the school carnival, so we went right at the start and stayed for an hour. Roderic got to stay longer with the Smith family (Clara is his best friend).


It was also Sabrina's soccer tournament weekend and team party.

And we put some plants in the garden: tomatoes, broccoli and brussel sprouts. We had already planted lettuce, spinach, peas and radishes.


I haven't mentioned that Sabrina went on the Environmental Field Trip in Cascade, ID May 16-19 (the week we went to Utah for Missy's wedding). Each year the whole 6th grade at Trail Wind goes to Trinity Pines Camp in Cascade for a 4 day field trip of learning outdoors type things. Fishing, tent set-up, geocaching, dutch oven cooking/leather working, arts & crafts, community service, archery, dancing, and a ropes course (high and low).


We attended a lot of T-Ball games. Roderic got the most improved swing award at the team party. He improved a lot during the season.


We had Joy School Graduation right after my final lesson last Thursday.

And to finish off the month, I've done some sewing: replacing elastic in new pants for Roderic, replacing elastic in hand-me-down pants for Leo, new BSU colored capris for Sabrina, and new cushion coverings for the porch swing.

It has been a busy month! Glad it is over!

More May Madness

May is truly a busy month with all of the end of school activities. But for good measure, we added a few trips on top of it, too. Shoshone Falls, Swan Falls Dam (Ryan and the scouts), Utah, and Spokane.

We traveled to Utah for Missy and Evan's wedding in the middle of last week. They were married on a beautiful rainy day in SLAKE.


All of Ryan's siblings (except missionary Meggan) were in attendance, so we made sure to get a picture of them together.

Then on Friday, after dropping our three oldest at 3 different homes, Ryan, Leo and I flew to Spokane so I could compete with Syringa Sound Chorus in Region 24's Sweet Adeline International competition. We sang our hearts out and Ryan took this contraband photo of the group. This was the first time Syringa Sound Chorus competed. 13 of the 17 singers had never sung in competition before. The crowd was pleased. The judges were pleased. We were pleased. Our score was 465, which was good for 9th place overall out of 15! I'm second in from the left on the front row.
And now that we're back home, I'm prepping to teach Joy School this week. The unit is about families and I made this Ancestor Tree for a part of the lesson.
Compared with all the traveling last week, this week should be pretty calm. Only 8 more days of school!