Saturday Day

If you look close, you can see that Adam played the piano today at a baptism, and he did an amazing job.

Seeing him share his talent with others makes all the fights over practicing the piano when he was younger (and, boy, were there fights back in the day) worth it.

Saturday Night

So... Sam is the absolute sweetest guy on the planet and totally cool and relaxed and 'go with the flow'...

Until you push him too hard and then he explodes.

I (hear) he may take after his dad that way.

A couple of weeks ago he got super mad and threw a video game controller at the tv and broke it. 

Which brought an end to our pizza and a movie night.

So, I decided we needed to go and do something fun as a family on Saturdays instead.

We used to do parks/libraries/activities ALL the time as a family.

Several years ago, our car died. 

We didn't have a car for months, which brought an end to family activities that didn't involve a bus.

And letmetellya, riding the bus isn't very much fun.

Then we got a great car, but it didn't seat all of us.

For over three years, Mike and I rotated park days, library time, Christmas light drives, etc. with the kids. We didn't do things as a whole family during that time.

I mean there were a couple times we all squished in the car (like on the way to church or trick-or-treating), but we tried to avoid it for the most part.

About a year ago, an incredible friend gifted us a car they didn't need anymore, but we were out of the habit of just doing stuff together.

I miss it and want to try and get back to it.

Doing stuff on Saturday nights as a family will be a fun start.

Tonight we took both of our cars and packed a picnic dinner and played at the park and had a fantastic evening together.

I Made It!

I worked 46 hours last week between the temple and my other job AND wrote a couple of orders for clients AND took care of my kiddos and house AND did my calling.

All on 3 hours of sleep a night.

By the end of the week, I was pretty darn weepy.

Because that's how I am when I get tired.

But.. I did it!

***

My other job is at CaptionCall, where I will work at captioning phone calls for the hearing impaired.

It's a pretty cool service based out of Salt Lake City.

There's a lot of rules and regulations around it and training takes two to three weeks.

I know it probably sounds silly to work as a temple housekeeper and at a call center when I have a degree and could get a job in PR or marketing or as a copywriter.

But, then I wouldn't get to hear about Adam's day on the way home or stop at the park after school and play with my kiddos or help with their homework or volunteer in their classes.

Someday I will get a job doing something I absolutely love, but for now, I'm thankful that I get to be with the ones I love the most.

And if that means taking a few silly jobs during the late night/early morning hours, I'll do it.

First Day of School Part Deux

Adam had his first day of being a JUNIOR on Monday.

His schedule was messed up, unfortunately, and he wasn't assigned a fourth period.

By the time he was seen by the counselor (the problem with having a last name at the end of the alphabet), only Chinese 1, Ballroom Dancing 2 and Cafeteria Employee were left for electives.

He went with Cafeteria Employee.

He is going to make $5/day AND get elective credit.

He is also taking Intermediate Piano, AP Econ, Algebra 2, US History Honors, English 11 Honors and Physics Honors. He opted to continue taking lunchtime seminary (duh).

First Week Down

They survived the first week!

So we celebrated with shaved ice.

On Monday Adam goes back. And I start my new job. I will be working a total of 9 hours per day and taking care of my family/house on about 3 hours of sleep each day.

It's going to be rough.

So we spent the weekend cleaning and de-cluttering to make my time a little less stressful.

Hopefully.

First Day Part 1

Grace, Josh and Sam started school today! Grace is in 8th, Josh in 4th and Sam is in Kindergarten.

Sam never went to an official preschool. Just a few classes at the rec center and working at home with me. He and I are "cuddle bugs" and he is the biggest Mama's boy (besides Josh) that I've ever known.

I was expecting sadness and tears, but he did great and loved it.

Here's to an awesome school year!

Cub Scout Day Camp 2019

Josh was able to attend Cub Scout Day Camp this past week and had the best time. He got to climb rock walls, shoot BB guns and arrows, make crafts, play Gaga ball and 9-square in the air.

The last night was "family night." Mike, Sam and Adam went and enjoyed a barbecue and lots of fun activities.

He worked sooo hard selling Camp Cards to earn enough money to go. We are so happy he had such a fun week!

This Week

It's temple shutdown and I'm tired and way busy, so a quick recap of the week:

Another flat tire. Seriously. We have had a spare on our car (in different positions) a ridiculous amount of times in the past several months.

Every Saturday night we have Pizza and a Movie night. More often than not, I give everyone a small ball of dough and let them go to town and make their own. Sam opted to make a bunny-turned-Pikachu pizza this week with Grace's help.

A little Christmas in July celebration with The Grinch and hot cocoa.

Grace and I love a good dinner salad. We usually can't get these boys on board, but since she's leaving for Girls Camp soon, we made this on Sunday and the boys didn't complain (too much).

You can't tell, so goodness knows why I am posting this picture, BUT, our wet winter and cool spring has made it perfect for hoards of grasshoppers to fly into Las Vegas. It's horrific. They love the big lights on the temple. When I leave at night, there are thousands and thousands on the temple, in the sky above and on the ground. It's so crazy.

Temple Shutdown

We're in the midst of temple shutdown here.

Which means I work earlier doing things like carpet cleaning stairwells for four hours straight.

And though I tend to exaggerate from time to time, that is not an exaggeration. It takes four hours to clean a stairwell properly. And I've done four of them the past two weeks.

We also do a lot of upholstery cleaning during shutdown. Every chair/couch/cushion gets cleaned.

It's hard and exhausting, and I tell myself I'm going to quit every time.

But, I don't, because not only do I get to be in the temple five nights a week, I have made two of the best friends I could ever ask for and I feel so darned blessed.

Temple shutdown January 2018

This next week is volunteers week, which means I work much earlier than usual AND Josh has Cub Scout Day Camp all week AND Grace will be gone at Girls Camp.

It's going to be a crazy one, but we will survive!

The temple re-opens in early August for a month, and then closes for two and a half months.

I won't be working for most of that, so I have an interview this week (because the week wasn't busy enough) to help during that time.

Corn Man

The "corn man" peddles his bike and cart past our home each evening, and Sam is always dying to buy some corn from him.

Every once in a while, I throw caution to the wind, and let that guy buy some corn.

He had butter and Parmesan cheese on it, and he thought the cheese was a little strong, but he loved it all the same.

It was the perfect summer treat.

Weekly Dates

I'm try to be better about spending one-on-one time with my kiddos as they grow up, because, man alive... they grow fast.

This week was Adam's turn.

We went and grabbed some Chick-fil-a together and teenage boys eat so fast, that I couldn't even grab a picture until we were back in the car.

Adam is so fun to hang out with and talk to. He's stinking hilarious, and he loves to debate and he knows pretty much anything on any topic.

I try not to get mopey about my kiddos growing up, because I'm genuinely happy for them, but it hit me the other day that I only get to do back-to-school shopping with him one more time, and I turned into a sad puddle.

Trying to make the most of these next couple years before he goes out and does amazing things with his life.

Pioneer Day 2019

The North Stake in Las Vegas throws a huge Pioneer Day celebration every year with a fun carnival, food, games and the best fireworks show. They raise money for the youth camps in their stake and up-keeping of the baseball fields with the proceeds from the event.

We try to go every year, and it is always one of the highlights of our summer.

It's so fun playing the games and then grabbing some food. They have a talent show and live music an dancing that we get to enjoy as the sun goes down and then we cuddle on the blanket as the lights are turned off and the fireworks begin. 

Mike has worked with and knows a lot of the people there, and it's so much fun getting to see everyone and be with each other every year.

Not 100%

This guy just hasn't been himself these past few weeks. He's been pretty tired and says he feels weak and isn't kicking the soccer ball everywhere like usual.

I took him into the doctor to check his iron levels (which were fine), and he told the nurse he had a sore throat and so they swabbed him and decided he had strep.

I don't know if he really does have strep or not, but we're loading him up on vitamins and good stuff to help him kick whatever is going on with him.

If he still isn't feeling well in 2 weeks, the doctor wants to run some labs.

When he fractured his skull a few months ago, they ran every test known to man on that kid on the account of him being so incredibly out of it, and all of the tests were normal, so I am hoping the vitamins and force-feeding him some vegetables will do the trick and he will be back to running and skating and jumping soon.

For School

Not counting shoes or socks or uniforms or clothes or backpacks or lunchboxes or water bottles or the pens/pencils/highlighters I got on sale on Amazon... THESE are the supplies necessary for my four kiddos to go to school this year.

Zoo-wee-mama!

I have been using my writing job and buying the rest of the school stuff all summer, but today we decided to knock out the actual supplies (before the rest of Las Vegas does), and man alive, it was a lot of stuff.

Also, I took all four kiddos with me to buy all of the said stuff, and they were all an amazing help and it made up for the constant fighting I had this morning.

So I decided to keep them one more day.

Sunday

A week and a half ago, the Bishop stopped by our house and released me as Primary music leader and asked me to serve as 1st counselor in the Young Women presidency.

I was incredibly sad to part with my Primary job, because being chorister has been such a great experience. I was also a little bummed because I've been in Primary in a variety of callings since I was pregnant with Josh, and I adore Primary.

But, on Saturday, we had an awesome presidency meetings that got me pretty excited. Today was my first day with those sweet girls, and it was pretty great too.

I love those girls so stinkin' much already.

***

Every Friday I order groceries from Smith's and pick them up on Saturday mornings.

I keep that ClickList business alive, I tell ya!

They usually throw in a couple of freebies for us, but this week they outdid themselves: they threw in an extra container of ice cream, two extra bags of tator tots and an extra pepperoni.

I was thrilled about that little blessing.

Tonight we had the missionaries over for dinner, and I had planned on making pulled pork sandwiches, coleslaw, cantaloupe, tator tots and root beer floats for dessert.

When they came over, we talked awhile and then they asked if they could invite a little girl in our neighborhood over for dinner as well. Then went and got her while I set an extra plate.

A few minutes later, the missionaries frantically called and told me that the family had misunderstood and that they were ALL coming over for dinner.

Because we had gotten those extra things, we had enough dinner and dessert for everyone, and it was such a beautiful reminder of how Heavenly Father has His hand in everything.

An Adventurous Day

Back in February, I got a call from the radio station, where I was told that Grace had been chosen as Kid of the Month and that because I had nominated her, they wanted to talk to both of us on the radio the next day.

The only problem was I had no idea what she was talking about.

When I asked Grace about it, she promptly burst into tears and told me she was sorry and that she had nominated herself.

And, honestly, this girl is such a HUGE helper that I would have been more than happy to nominate her.

I just ask that she tell me about these things in the future so that I don't seem like a crazy person to the radio station manager.

:)

But, anyways, we got an interview on-air and we got to go into the radio station and meet Mercedes and JC (our favorite morning radio hosts). It was so fun.

The second part of her prize, though, was a birthday party for 12 at the Adventuredome. The party expired at the end of July, though, which is a month from Grace's actual birthday. We went and had a fun "summer" celebration together. They had a pizza and ice cream party, gave Grace a shirt and everyone got wristbands to ride the rides all day at the Adventuredome. Grace invited her very two best friends, Matilda and Katelyn; Katelyn's sister, Reagan; and Adam invited a few friends to hang out.

We all had a blast!

Patriotic Fireside

Adam stinkin' LOVES the United States of America.

He stands every day for the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem in school (though he usually is the only one), has read the Constitution several times, talks often how this is the greatest country in the world and is always respectful of the flag.

And if you ever mention wanting to go to another country, he will give you an earful about how you should never want to leave because we live in the best place you can be.

He is very conservative and loves him some Steven Crowder and Ben Shapiro.

But, that's a different story for a different day.

Our stake asked him to speak at our stake Patriotic Fireside.

And he did a wonderful job.

He talked about how much he loved this country of ours and how proud he was to be an American and all of the freedoms we enjoy because of those who gave their lives.

It gave me so much hope about the next generation.

While at Scout Camp, they "Helped"

Our Hyundai tends to get a little low on oil. 

Back in early June, Mike and Adam headed off for a week of Scout camp at the Great Basin.

And while they were gone, I decided to check the oil level in the car to make sure it was all good for the week. It was a little low, so I added so more oil.

Grace and Josh have helped Mike check and change the oil plenty of times, so when they asked if they could check the oil in our Taurus, I agreed and went inside to wash my hands.

They ran in later and let me know that they had added a quart of oil to it, but were a little worried that they had added it to the wrong spot.

And, yup, the radiator is definitely not the right spot for oil.

When Mike got home, I got to let him know how his helpers had helped encourage him to do a radiator flush in our car.

Lots of siphoning and flushing later, it was all good.

And now they most definitely know where NOT to put the oil.

Summer Fun Part I: 2019

Rather than doing a million posts to catch y'all up on our summer, I'm just going to dump it here.

Summer is never easy.

I mean, I love sleeping in, and I love not having hours of homework, and I love spending more time with my kiddos.

But a couple of my kiddos (though they don't believe me) crave the schedule and routine that comes with school. All that freedom in the summer makes them a little cranky.

SO, though it's never easy, I still always love it.

Here's the fun we've been having this summer:

Swimming at the local rec center

Dinner at Cafe Rio while the big boys were at Scout Camp

Splash pad

Deciding whether we were hot enough to run through the splash pad

Fun at Cowabunga Bay with our PogoPasses

Patriotic breakfast, a barbecue and fireworks for the Fourth of July

SeaQuest with our PogoPasses

Josh and the capybara

They LOVED petting and playing with the stingrays

Dressing like cows for our FREE lunch at Chick-fil-a

Family Bowling

FREE Slurpees at 7-11