Half of Us

Today was a day of see-ya-later's as we had three kids leave home. First was Wesley's departure at 6 am. He is off for a week of a high adventure at Lake Powell. We trust that it will be less brutal than King's Peak was in 2019. 🠈Look at that first picture - oh my goodness, Wesley! You've grown so much the past two years! He felt very good about himself over the weekend when I was out running errands and called home and he answered, but I was stumped as to who I was talking to: "Hi... uh, is this Hyrum or Corey?" "This is Wes!" "Oh! Wes!" He said that made him very happy. He's becoming a man. 

Wes printed off his Driver's Ed handbook to study on the drive down to Southern Utah and back. He is taking his permit test early next Monday morning at 7am before he goes to his first day of Drivers Ed. He is missing the first week of Driver's Ed classes, and it only goes through June 30th, so... despite his poor track record over the past year for being able to catch up with late work, we're hoping he is able to get and stay on top of it after he gets back. So this summer Wesley is doing 1) Driver's Ed   2) an online fitness for life class, doing a Chemistry packet to make up his F in there Quarter 2 this past year, and he is taking a BYU Independent study class to make up for the 4 Fs he got in Math this year. Sorry, W, I'm not trying to rub it in by bringing up that you got Fs. Just telling it like it is. Have a good break this week and be ready to come hit it hard on Monday! Bye Wes! 

 

Since I was awake I took a long 90 minute bike ride that was really fun. I got home and got Lily was awake and started doing some chores. She's our new oldest kid this week and she was highly motivated to work, because she had a birthday party at noon today. I was so proud of her, she had all her stuff done before noon: reading, practicing, and cleaning. She cleaned up the whole kitchen which was a big mess after last night. She is stepping up to be a big helper like a big kid. 

Hyrum headed back to Philadelphia today. His flight was at 1:00 pm. I tried to wake up Hyrum as soon as I got back from my bike ride so that we could go by the orthodontist to get a quick peek at his bite, cause Hyrum's poor teeth don't line up. When we took his mission pictures and I was trying to help him smile naturally, I told him to close his mouth and he couldn't cause his teeth are totally misaligned. I don't know how that happened but I was hoping Dr. Dave could just take a quick look and give us some counsel. But H thought it was stupid to try and go by before he goes to the airport and didn't know what the point was and yada yada and he dragged his feet and so we didn't have time, so I gave up and we loaded up the little boys in the car and left around 10:45 to take him to the airport. Dropping him off at departures~ everyone say "Bye Hyrum!"

My parents came by yesterday to say bye to him too. That looks like a genuine smile Hyrum! There ya go! Good job.

While I was taking H to the airport, Corey was on his way down to BYU for an EFY camp that she will be at all week. They did a little walking around campus before she checked in so Corey could plant seeds of Cougar pride in her heart.

Check in was at 11. 

She is attending a Habits for Life youth camp down there, and we'll pick her up on Saturday. Hyrum loved his EFY experience, We never our oldest 3 to EFY, but I know Joseph, Mel and Ethan all went to Summerfest at BYU. I can't find the blog posts though - Corey probably went and documented them, so those pics are somewhere in our cloud storage. I think Ethan might have gone twice? So that will have to count as their fun pre-college experience in Happy Valley. We're hoping Abi has a great time. 

So we "only" have six kids at home this week! Wow! Lily was with friends most of the day, since they kept hanging out after the bday party. Corey got home and played a little bit of soccer with Sophi, but then decided he can get more playing done with more kids by biking. So I took them up the canyon and dropped them off. I was going to park at the bottom and bike up, but I figured they'd be down before I got very far coming up to meet them. 

But then I thought "No... I rode with Daniel last week, so I know that Corey's not going to get anywhere with him..." So I was happy to see I could park very close by at Grit Mill and I rode over and caught up to them, cause they hadn't gone far at all, and we tried to help D for a bit but he was pretty discouraged and scared. 

We knew one of us should catch up to the rest of the kids, so Corey and P hurried ahead and Daniel and I very slowly followed them. Daniel does not trust the hand brake yet or now how to use it, so he cried and complained, poor kid, as he walked his bike. Daniel you're doing great! You just barely learned to ride without training wheels anyway, don't be hard on yourself. He wasn't ready for Slickrock and might not be ready for Tahoe next month, but he's doing great. When we finally got to the bottom we waited for them to come back. 

They had crossed the canyon to do the fun little trail I showed them on Saturday. I didn't catch them on camera, but Owen and Sophi looked super cute in action, biking back up to us. Today Daniel did his best moving up to Owen's bike, Owen moved up to Natalie's, Natalie to Sophi's, Sophi to Lily's, and it was good that Lily was with friends cause we wouldn't have a bike for her. 

Actually I guess she could have just used mine (which is Abi's) since I ended up walking anyway. When they got back, they were ready for some water, but it was up in the car! So they timed me and I happily rode up the canyon, and it took me about 10 minutes to get back to the car. I drove down to pick them back up. We loaded up the bikes. The kids like to help with that. 

So this is kinda fun and feels somewhat manageable with just half of us! I called Nicole today (trying to not fall asleep on my drive home from the airport) and she laughed that a friend with 3 kids told her yesterday "I can't keep on top of it with my three, and you have DOUBLE that!" And Nicole said "Well, I have a friend who has double my kids!" It was funny. It's all relative. Also, no matter how many kids you have, they take 100%, so expect to give it your all. So six kids is nice. We haven't been here since 2007 when Abi was born! This should be easy right? Lily Sophi Natalie Owen Daniel Peter. Sweet Peter asleep this morning. Corey brought him into our bed while I was gone biking.

Oh, I also shared this picture with JMEH over fb messenger - this was Peter when I found him on Saturday morning. I said it looked like he fell asleep saying his prayers!

Joseph said "I fell asleep saying my prayers like that all the time on my mission!" I think Lily is excited to be the oldest. I am hopeful that this week I will be able to exercise every day, keep on top of housework, and maybe completely catch up on the blog. I don't really expect to have any quiet time or for listening during scriptures to improve much. But it's fun when things get changed up a bit. 

And our rose bushes are in full bloom, I'll put my plethora of pictures on my naturer blog - they are so lovely!