School Year's Eve Family Party

Happy School Year's Eve! (yesterday!) and ~

Happy New School Year today!

It wasn't school year's eve for all our children, but it was the new school year's eve for our family, so that meant that even the Kindergartner and Junior High crowd that starts next Monday were invited to come. First, we had a feast of ham and cheeses sandwiches, with custom ordered turkey bacon avocado sandwiches for those with refined tastes (Corey).

Also on the menu were cheese puffs, Lay's chips, mango slices, and pickles.

Part of the decorations were our educational place mats. Sophia knows her letters!

After everyone ate their sandwich, they were free to have a cupcake.

We made three tiers, the lower tier for Elementary school (cupcakes said their grades, "granite" and such) middle tier was Albion for Hyrum. And the top tier was Churchill, with the greatest achievement of Jr. High schooler's world (around here atleast) being properly represented with the high and noble "SBO" cupcake. (cue holy music)

Abi's holy grail was the lollipops. She's always wanted a flat lollipop, so this was her lucky day.

Joseph being weird with his lollipop, kinda making a muppet face.

After dinner, we had some "back to school" activities at different "Centers" - (just like in elementary school!) First "center" was our lesson. Our theme for the school year is "Of Things That Matter Most" from this talk by President Uchtdorf. We watched this video.
We talked about what matters most. Being honest when you didn't finish your homework and might get a bad score, or copying from a friend and getting a good grade? Some hypothetical situations like that. Then was our questionnaire center.

This was our questionnaire. (I'll make the questionnaire cuter next year). This part was to capture a little personal history for their scrapbooks and is also going to help me (in my quest to be organized) to have everyone's heights and weight ready for when they go rent skis this year. Corey usually catches me off guard and I have to scramble, not this year! Go me! Then we did  a quick "Routine" Center...

And then it was really getting late (cause this is a school night), but I said we could start the "Visualization Board" center.  

Once the kids got going with this one it was hard to pull them away. Hard to pull myself away too.

Abi did a good job on her board. :)

Melodie and Ethan are working on their more this morning, they want to take time to get it just right.

Ethan is being serious about it, but he is also a big goofball, he was cracking me up.

Do you like his little mouse "Steve" who is at the top left of his "W"? Nice headphones, "Steve".

And some guy "Photobombing" Harry Potter in the middle of his W. Ethan, you're funny.

Ethan is going to Brazil with Corey on Saturday, so the quote under neath Steve was appropriate "It's a big world out there, Someone's got to see it" Yes, very appropriate for you, Ethan.

We didn't get to the Father's blessing center or the school supplies center, going to do the blessings sometime before Corey leaves for Brazil on Saturday afternoon.

And I'll have to catch them each individually about our family school supply center. The kids did think it was pretty fun, Wesley said "It's like our home is like school!" Well, I do want to be planned and prepared for school like school teachers are, so I'll keep trying to give the kids that impression. 

Overall it was a great success and I think will be a tradition we will keep for each upcoming school year. 

The little girls that will be my companions this upcoming school year were happy to play with balloons the whole time. I'm grateful to have them with me to constantly remind me of the moments and things matters most. Small and simple things ~ that's going on my visualization board. 

It's going to be a good school year!

School Year's Eve Lunch

Now that we're back from Brazil and now that Owen has been born, I'm ready to start doing little family "parties" again. We started off with a "School Year's Eve" event, like we did last year.

We began our celebrations today with a fun dinner, but it was more of a lunch. Last year they took hot lunch, so this school lunch was more in memory of cold lunches from year's past. Sandwiches, chips, fruit, gogurts, and Little Debbie snack cakes. H and A acting weird...

Ok, everyone grab your lunch tray and go through the lunch line for your dinner.

You're cute Lily

It was a busy last day of summer ~ the kids all went over to a neighbor's birthday party at 2 and then Hyrum had a band concert that night, so we squeezed this little activity in at 4:30. Corey wasn't able to make it, but ya do what you can.

The kids smiled for a photo, then Joseph asked me to give him a count down so I could capture an action shot ~ can you spot the "action"?

Yes, Joseph threw a fruit snack at Ethan's head. the kids liked it. Joseph wanted me to get him in action catching a gold fish. The gold fish cracker as harder to see... But Sophi is cute

Ah, there is a little gold fish in flight!

Everyone's excited for the first day of school tomorrow ~ it's gonna start bright and early with Joseph leaving for Jazz band at 6:15. That will definitely feel early, when compared with the teenager's usual 11 am rise and shine time this past week. We're going to do more activities during the week - like our supply station (I gotta make another run to the store for binders and notebooks), a annual school year questionairre, and we'll probably do father's blessings on Sunday. Ready or not, here the new year comes!

School Year's Eve Prep

Tonight is our August Family Party. It is going to be the "back to school" theme. 

I took these pictures last night. When Ethan woke up this morning, he said "Where is Wesley's grade?" I pointed to the 5 on the window. He said to me "He's going into 4th!" What do I know, I can't keep track of all this. But I ran downstairs and quickly got the 4 (from our Birthday Window decorations) so maybe Wes won't find out that I didn't know what grade he is in. But anyway, let me show you my favorite part so far ~ look at the cute little banner I made! It makes me very happy to see it's back to school colors and fun patterns. :)

Honestly, I'm not thrilled about school starting again. But I know the kids are (mostly, especially Abi and the Jr. High crowd) so I figured since I can't stop it, might as well try to make the best of it.

If I had my way, we'd homeschool or buy a motorhome and have a cross country field trip and visit everywhere in the US or the world and just be together. But employment and kid's friends are becoming very important to them. What's up with that, right? I mean, MY world didn't center around friends when I was a teenager. Oh wait... nevermind. It did. Yeah, so like I said, if you can't beat 'em, join em. I must and I will celebrate school and school schedules and all that the new School year brings. I will smile like I mean it.

So for our family party, we're going to have a special "school lunch"-ish dinner, going to have "centers" where the kids will do some school prep stuff and learning, like "Where do you put your backback when you get home from school" which no one seemed to know last year. This year, I'm almost ready. Gotta do a bit more prep work and then make cupcakes and stuff. Should be fun!! :)

Two First Days

Today was the second first day of school for our family, since this morning the junior high school year began. I took Joseph and Melodie. I made them pose for me outside the car window, which is what my "mom memory" of their jr high life looks like.

Lily was very excited to go to kindergarten today. I got to snap a picture of her on the bus. You're a cute little one Lily! Little Lily starting Kindergarten?!?... how did that happen? Where did those 5 years go? My life is passing me by too quickly, nooo!

I guess we still have one more "first day" coming up, when Ethan goes to school for his "first day" after he gets back from Brazil. Hyrum, Wes, and Abi were all last week -

  

I didn't post their pictures cause I was too busy reporting on our School Year's Eve party. Well, so here we are, looking forward to another school year and seeing these kids make new memories and have new experiences.

New Years Tradition

Well! It's almost midnight and I'm home from our annual New Year's Eve Party with friends up at Brighton. We enjoyed pizza and yummy party food for dinner, and the kids played games - Wesley bought up Go For It. 

The dad's enjoyed a few intense games of foosball...

Around 9pm it got quiet as most of the children were watching a movie together -

They do the ball drop up there at 10pm, so we celebrated with New York, which works out great for us families with little ones. It was particularly helpful this year, cause if it had been later, I would have missed it, cause Daniel got sick right before we rang in the new year... He had been kinda clingy all evening. With about 5 minutes to go until the new year, he still wanted to be held and so I sat on the couch (cause I'm 37 weeks pregnant and I can only stand and hold him for so long).

"Cute little guy snuggling up to me. Aww, he's tired" I thought

I asked Mel to take a picture of my little boy who only gets to be the baby for 2 more weeks. And then, I heard it and felt it - he threw up down my left arm. I hold him up. Doh, we got the couch. Corey! I got a mess here we need to clean up... And then he threw up over my right side.... Okay!! Well, looks like I need to head home... and then he finished me off with the biggest barf of the three, unloading the rest of what his tummy was holding in all over my big pregnant belly (I was impressed with the liquid capacity of his stomach)

Well! Thanks for that, little buddy! Are you done? Let's be done? Yes, ok, I think he's done. Uh... I need help, where to start... Corey grabbed the roll of paper towels and I tried to get all the big chunks off.

I could feel it all soaking in and it smelled like throw up, aka horrible. Mel ran and got Daniel's jacket, we took of his wet shirt and put that dry jacket on him, but I didn't have a change of pants for him, so he was gonna have to deal with that. We threw his shirt in a plastic bag. I didn't have a change of clothes for me either, but then I remembered that thankfully I did wear a sweatshirt over my clothes when we came up, so I passed Daniel to Mel and went and washed off my arms as best as I could and changed my shirt. I had to deal with the wet undergarments and pants, yay. And everyone was tooting horns, happy new year!!

Corey went to get the car for me and I was on my way home with Owen and Daniel at 10:20, home at 10:55. I started laundry, got showered off, and these two toddlers were in bed just shortly after 11. Hopefully there will not be more messes during the night this time? I pondered New Year's celebrations from years past. Owen threw up all over me in 2017 and then we had a big mess the next day too. Hm, maybe we've left a bug at the cabin that's gonna infect us every year? Or perhaps it's an altitude thing? But then I remembered I also got thrown up on by Daniel last year, though not at the cabin on New Year's Eve, that one was on January 5th - so maybe it's a toddler thing during the cold months. Anyway, mental note to self (if my brain is able to recall this memory sticky note come the end of 2019): Tiffanie! Be on guard! Bring an extra change of clothing for myself and the toddlers wherever you go, and maybe a few towels, just in case!

So ends a great year of our life with kids! Good news is that Corey will be able to get a good nights rest up at the cabin, which doesn't usually happen. And that's good cause he is going to be on his own taking the kids skiing tomorrow. Not that I would have been a ton of help for him. I'm kinda useless right now. So yeah, they'll have fun tomorrow, and I'll have a day here at home tomorrow that I will hopefully not waste just lying around wishing this baby was out of me (but that will probably be how the day looks, if the past week is any indication of the current trend I'm on)... Party's almost over, it's been a fun winter break, but back to reality on Wednesday. The busy school week makes the time go faster, and I'm anxious for Jan 14th to get here asap, so bring it on, let's get these next 14 days over with!

Sick House

This is what it looked like around our house today:

Joseph and Melodie went to school, but Ethan woke up with a fever and stayed home (texted me at 6 and woke up Natalie, who I was being a body pillow for again). Hyrum went to school but came home saying he felt sick all day, and then he took a three hour nap.

Wesley and Abi both stayed home again. They missed yesterday too

Lily woke up at 6:30 this morning with her energy returned. She stayed home from school yesterday but went today. Glad she's feeling better.

And I'm very thankful that Natalie and Sophi are feeling better. Sophi is a low maintenance sick person, but Natalie.... it feels like I've been holding Natalie 24/7 since New Year's Eve. I'm very very glad she's feeling better, cause now I have a little bit of my freedom back. Abi talked to Corey earlier this morning, she had asked him for a blessing last night, but it was a little late to call around for another priesthood holder to come over. He apologized to Abi this morning and we called my dad for him to come over today.

He came over tonight after Corey got home, around 8:30, and then we all lined up for priesthood blessings for the sick. Nice to have my dad here. Joseph said he felt a little sick at school today to, so everyone got received a blessing except for Melodie, who somehow has escaped unscathed yet again, lucky duck.