First Day of School 2013!

I can't believe it!  We have three kids in school now.  They were all so excited that the past few days that it has been a bit of a trial of patience for me.  Sadly, I didn't do very well...

But, they all came home so excited because they all have great teachers!  Jack was a bit upset because they tried to put him on a bus (buses don't go through our neighborhood).  He knew he should have been riding his bike we parked outside the school when we dropped him off but his tag they gave him was wrong.  Thankfully, Conrad saw him and was able to let the teacher know where he should be going.  Ahhh...gotta love that Jack's older brother was watching out for him. 

I love these guys.  My goal for the school year... I will be better at appreciating them, even when I'm at my wits end! 

Third Grade at Philo T Farnsworth Elementary;

 2nd Grade and Kindergarten at Jefferson Elementary:

An Ah Ha Moment

I've been debating all day about posting this because it may seem silly to some of you.  But, it wasn't to our small seven year old.

A couple of weeks ago we had one of those moments that any parent hopes to have with a child.  As a Mom I try to teach and instill in our kids to have faith in the Lord and a testimony of prayer.  I want them to learn this while they are small so our kids will know they can trust in the Lord in tough times.  Trust in Him enough to know they can pray for help having faith  that their heart felt prayers will always be answered.  It's hard to know if they are really getting it...

Caterpillars

Conrad had come home from a friends house one day with a caterpillar.  He really wanted to keep it and nurture it until it became a butterfly or whatever it is that the caterpillar was going to be.  He had taken great care of it changing the leaves daily and watching out for it.  About three days in he went to change the leaves and the caterpillar fell out of the bottle.  Con was so sad to find that the caterpillar was lost.  But, he looked down and saw it.  Very excitedly he reached down to pick it up and found that he had stepped on it and now it was dead.

Conrad just started crying and wasn't getting over it.  He was so sad.  So, I asked if he wanted to go catch another caterpillar.  (I had never seen one this summer and wasn't sure if we had any around us.)  He wanted to look.  So, we went outside and looked.  We looked some more and couldn't find one.  I told him Heavenly Father knows where his caterpillars are and said we could pray to find one.  He wanted to say a prayer so we said a little prayer.  I told him he had to know Heavenly Father would help and it would be in his time.  We gave up looking after awhile. 

Then a couple of days later we went camping.  We went for a RZR ride with some friends while we were there.  We stopped at a few places and then decided to stop for lunch.  In this little spot there were caterpillars everywhere!  They were much cooler caterpillars than the one he had.  Conrad had fun looking at all of them and then we rode on.  He didn't care to catch one.  He just thought they were cool to look at.

The next day I realized that his prayer had been answered.  I then thought that I should talk to Conrad about the caterpillars we saw.  I talked to him about how the last place we stopped for lunch was the only place we had seen the caterpillars, about how awesome they looked, and how many there were (way too many to count).  I asked if he thought Heavenly Father had answered his prayer.  He said yes. 

I wasn't sure if he really got it.  I then had the thought, "I should have him tell Bo about it".  We had just finished Family Home Evening and I said, "Hey Conrad you should tell Dad about Heavenly Father answering your prayers."  He was like, OK.  He started telling him about it and by the end he was all teary eyed. 

It was so sweet to see that he did know that Heavenly Father had answered his prayer.  This was such a tender mercy of the Lord for him and for me.  I am grateful for the prompting to talk to him and have him explain what he learned.  The Holy Ghost was able to teach him something I never could have.  It may seem like a small thing to some.  But, I know he will not forget anytime soon that the Lord knows him and loves him enough to answered his prayer to find a caterpillar and not just one but many.  It was a learning experience for me to listen for promptings more often and I don't want to forget...And now that I have blogged about it I won't.

Caleb's First Taste of Food

Yes, he is a bit old for his first taste, but it was nice to have him a bit older because he can actually swallow the food and doesn't just spit it out. 

I love this scrunched up face.  He just started doing it a few days ago.  I love this boy!

Vegas, the Second Time Around

Bo had another couple of trade shows at the end of July.  One was in Las Vegas and the other in Salt Lake City.  Nobody else from work was going and it's summer so we all went.  I was a bit nervous about the car ride with Caleb. :)

We decided to get up and leave at five in the morning Saturday.  We drove and drove and drove.  We stopped every couple of hours and the kids did awesome!  We made it with time to give Caleb and good nap and go out that night.  We may have overdone it a bit because we left at 6, keep in mind we were walking, and didn't get back until 10:30 (11:30 our time).  We walked from Bellagio to Caesar's Palace and had dinner is the Paris.  We were staying near the Bellagio so we had to walk back there.  Hailey would sit down any chance she got on the way back.  I was so tired from walking that I just about did the same thing.  I don't think the kids will ever forget that night.  I have never been so excited to get in bed.  We all slept very well that night.  It was worth it to spend the time together.

We went to the M&M factory on Sunday (not exactly a Sunday activity, sorry...)  The kids love that place.  They have a little 3D movie that we watched.  Everyone but Jack loved it.  It was too loud and a bit scary for him.  He's at that age where he is beginning to understand imaginary world and the real world and it can be scary at times.

Monday was Bo's trade show.  We just hung around the place we were staying and when he got done we went swimming.  They had a lazy river.  The kids put their life jackets on and floated around and around.  It was so relaxing that Caleb slept in Bo's arms for about two hours.  We also went to the pool which was perfect for the kids.  It was huge and three feet deep.  They had a blast.  We did the same thing the next morning before we checked out at twelve and headed to Salt Lake.

We drove all afternoon and finally made it to our hotel in Park City at nine thirty after losing and hour with time zone changes.  Yes, this was the closest hotel we could find to SLC.  Everyone was booked.  Crazy!  (I hope nobody from my family is offended we didn't stay with them.  We have never been on a family vacation with just our family so we decided to do it and we weren't in town for even twenty four hours.)

Wednesday morning I dropped Bo off at his show and headed back to the hotel.  Checked out at noon and went to visit Brooke for a bit until Bo was done.  We left Salt Lake at 2:30 in the afternoon and stopped in IF, got a pizza, and watched Bo play softball at 7.  Then went the rest of the way home. 

On a side note, It's funny to walk around Las Vegas with lots of little kids.  You get A LOT of looks like, you are crazy!   We did get a couple of nice comments too.  But, I have to say it was nice to get back home where we don't get as many looks.  It was so fun to spend that many days all together.  I'm so grateful for our family.  We are so blessed to have families.  I'm so grateful for these people I get to spend daily life with. :)

Once again I regret not taking more pictures.  I need a better camera though!!!

Look Mom No Training Wheels!

Monday, July 22, Brayden learned to ride his bike by himself!  Way to go bud!!! 

Brayden had had a balance bike since his second birthday and he has been crazy on it.  I decided to see if he could ride this bike.  Since the boy bike this size got parked behind our van and took a turn for the worse, I had to piece together this baby!  Hopefully he won't care it's Hailey's old bike until he grows out of it.

It took him about 10 minutes to learn how to pedal and he took off.  I have to say balance bikes are awesome!  Even though I did have to hold on to him while he was learning to pedal he was balancing the bike so it was soooo much easier for me.  I didn't get tired as fast. In hindsight I could have probably had him learn sooner and he could have had more fun with the kids this summer.  Oh well, you live and you learn, right...

(here's a pic of the balance bike if you don't know what one is.)