Creeking and Kayaking

We have had some fun water fun since the warm weather has arrived.  We headed over to Preddy Creek last week with the Farnsworth's and then went back on Saturday with the Lenox girls.  We were watching them for Tom and Tara while they went to to the temple.  Jared and Lydia love playing with Jessie, Tegan and Lainey. It often seems like we are either all boys and one girl or all girls and one boy when we meet up with friends. I am glad that Lydia and Jared can play with either just fine and hope it lasts.  Lydia and Abigail are good little friends too so it works out well.  Pretty Creek is such an easy little hike to the "water hole" and all the kids did a great job on the hike.  When we were heading back with the Farnsworth's Lydia and Abigail were leading the way leaving those silly boys behind.  I don't know that Lydia and Jared love hiking but they are really good sports about it so we are going to keep doing it. I think it just has to be the right distance.  We can't be too ambitious and that is just fine.

They spent a good amount of time digging around for little clam shells Saturday.  Many times piles were lost in the creek and had to be found again. Some handled this better than others.  Jared found the most and was the most upset when he lost any. The Lenox girls were so nice to help him find them again and again. Jared has made great improvements in his reactions to things that upset him over the past school year so its weird when he reacts like he used to last Fall. But we worked through it. 

We know we will back many times this summer. 

Ever since we went out to Washington (back in 2010) to visit Mark's sister Susan and went kayaking for the first time we have been waiting to get some kayaks.  When we lived in Colorado, Jared and Lydia were so little and there wasn't any water close by so we saw no point in getting Kayaks.  Once we moved here and saw lots of water options we knew it was just a matter of time.  Then we bought this house which is one mile from a lake and just waited for a good deal. Costco did not disappoint! We got a very nice adult kayak and a youth one for Jared to use.  We got them about a week ago and since then Jared has been anxiously waiting to try out "his very own personal Kayak" as he likes to refer to it. He was thrilled when he found out it was for him not him and Lydia.  Eventually she will use it but he can enjoy it until then. Friday night Mark and I went out on a date to test our kayak.  It was sort of a funny date since we only have one adult kayak so we didn't really spend that much time together... but being on the lake in the kayak was awesome.  Mark's niece Hannah and her husband Matt came up to visit us on Monday and we all went to the lake to hang out and try them out.  It was Jared's first time going by himself so after a quick paddling/safety lesson from Mark they were off.  He did awesome. After a quick excursion with Mark and then Hannah I went out with Jared and we paddled over to the dock, opposite the beach.  Jared went in circles a good amount but he is figuring it out and made it over and back just fine. It was really fun to be out with him. He was not scared at all and worked really hard.  He loved it.  He wanted so badly to jump off his kayak and loved dipping his feet in the water.  It will be lots of fun to use them in the summer/early Fall.  We had a delicious BBQ with Hannah and Matt and are so glad they came up.  We are so thankful for all those who sacrificed it all, and their families who are still feeling that sacrifice that allows us to enjoy all that we do.

For some reason he looks so little and young here to me. 

Last day of preschool

Last Thursday was the last day of preschool. What a fabulous year it was!  Such nice, supportive families and kids who really enjoyed being together. They were such a great first group. 

Dallin Bean, Camden Arnold, Lydia Spencer, Lainey Lenox. 

Cam is coming back next year and if the Lenox's don't move Lainey will too. 

We had a regular class day and then we drove over to Chris Greene Lake for a picnic and end of the year ceremony.  I made photo collages for each child of different activities from the year and gave them each a bag of chalk with a note reading,"Hope your summer is chalk full of fun" and I gave them each a Pink Lady Apple.  90% of the time I brought a Pink Lady Apple for my snack sliced and peeled and each kid would ask me for a slice of apple.  The families got me flowers and wrote me such sweet notes of thanks.  I had been thinking about teaching a preschool for about 3 years and am so glad that I got to work with such a great group and truly enjoyed teaching preschool so much.  I am excited to teach again this Fall. I'm really happy with how this year turned out. I feel like my lesson were fun and informative and the right level for this age. I liked the schedule I set up and am excited to plan out next year. It will be similar but more age appropriate. I still think kids need to play and have fun and they do learn doing that but I will step it up some since they are going to kindergarten.

One of our last activities we did was to make ice cream in a bag.  We mixed up our ingredients in one bag then double bagged it and added the ice and rock salt.  To make the ice cream the preschool kids (and later Jared with the Shaw's)  had to shake it up for a good 5 minutes of rigorous shaking.  The experiment worked as well as the participants shook it up.  In preschool Lydia had really runny ice cream but when we did it again after school hers was nice and solid.  It was a fun little activity. I so love doing these things with my preschool class and with Jared and Lydia. I have had a harder time getting them done for just Jared and Lydia, well mostly Jared since she does them in class and hope I can plan better for him to do them to next year.

In exciting news, I got an email today saying that my preschool license was issued.  It's official!  I met all the regulations, now I just need to get enough students to make it worth the time and money I put in to get it.  I can have up to 7 kids if Lydia is in the class or 8 if she is not. I feel it would be good for her to go elsewhere but the logistics of it all is kind of crazy. We will see. She seems perfectly happy to stay at my school. I was talking to Dallin's Mom and she mentioned that each time they talk about his new preschool (since they moved it is a long drive for them from Ivy) he tears up and says he doesn't want to go. I know it will work out great for him but I am glad he enjoyed this year with me so much!  I did too and will miss these kids together. 

Marathon in a month, kindergarten program and Father/Son campout

It's been a busy few days! We got together with friends tonight and ran our last mile. I am so proud of Jared.  This was a lot of running and he did it! He really enjoyed it and I am so proud of him for setting this goal and sticking with it.  The last week he went running with me and ran 2 miles without stopping 3 different times. He did great. I asked him if he thought he would keep running and he said probably once a week. It was so fun to get together with friends and run. We celebrated with popsicles and super cute medals that my friend Tara made.  Lydia wanted to sleep with hers on. Earlier in the week we asked Lydia if she wanted to run today and she said she did and asked Mark to run with her. They did great.  She ran it all and was cute to watch.  I am so proud of them both.  Especially Jared not only for meeting his goal but for being okay with not finishing first. He came in 5th and was quite happy with himself.  It was great to see him being a good sport and enjoying the event.  Tara and I were on finish line duty.  I brought some crepe paper and we held it across the finish line for the runners to break through, they loved it! We can't wait to do it again next year.  I am so grateful for the awesome friends we have here.

I told him to give me his best runner pose. 

He's so handsome. 

So proud of these great kids! 

Last night we went to Baker Butler for Jared's kindergarten program, "The 12 Days of Kindergarten." There were cute songs and they all did really well. He was really happy to have a speaking part and did a great job.  His line:"3 pencils, what could be better? Now I'm off to practice writing my letters."
He also did a group dance performance.

 

3 Pencils! 

He was happy he got to sit by his best buddy Tyler.  A few weeks ago they dressed up for twin day.  It will be so sad for Jared when they are not in the same class next year.  (I think his chances are pretty slim that his teacher would advocate them being in the same class. They are not naughty or disrespectful but they will talk to each other any chance they get.) We meet up with the Shaw's for a playdate once a week and I hope we can keep doing that.  They are such a nice family. I have really enjoyed getting to know Julie. Lydia thinks Tyler's older brother Sam is pretty amazing. He is in second grade. We are so glad they moved here.

Last Friday Mark took Jared to the father son campout. They had a great time. It's still been pretty rainy around here but they got a lucky break and had great weather.  Mark met up with the Shaw's  (Tyler and Sam and their dad Chris) and Wooter's (Harrison and Stuart). It was a pretty low key event preparation wise.  They ate dinner at 5 guys then set up camp.  The stake provided breakfast and had a few activities planned for Saturday morning.  There was a fireside planned for that night and Mark and Jared went down but left before it got started because it was getting close to 9:00. It was a great night.  Lydia and I went out to Wendy's (her choice) and watched a movie together. After she went to bed Julie (Shaw) and Ashely (Wooters) came over to hang out with me. It was fun to chat with them and fun that we hung out while the boys were camping out. Again, we are so fortunate to have such great friends here.

Gardening

My good friend Laura really motivated us towards planting a garden this year. Mark has wanted to plant a garden for a long time. I am fairly neutral on the subject not really opposed to it but not really excited either.  Laura is planting a huge garden in her yard so when she offered to start some seedlings for us I knew we were about to become gardeners.  We knew where we live there would be an issue with deer and our yard is not really flat anywhere so we would need to make some raised garden beds, that part was easy but trying to figure out how to keep them safe took some good researching. We finally found an idea that looked good and this week for FHE we bought our supplies and started putting it together.

Mark built a 4 x 4 bed to plant in and then we worked on the removable protective cover together.  He screwed eye hooks into the corners and then we stuck the PVC Pipe into them to help it hold its shape and stay up.  We then took some garden mesh and tied it onto the PVC Pipe with electrical ties.  Its nice that we can easily lift it off to weed, water and hopefully harvest our crops.  Mark has already commented that if this work's well this year he wants to build another one for next year. We will see how it goes.  We planted (Well Laura started for us) garden beans, zucchini, cantaloupe, and watermelon.  We let Jared and Lydia each pick some seeds at the store for FHE and hope they will have enjoy watching their plants grow. Lydia picked some snap peas and Jared actually picked Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins.  We will wait to to plant those till July.

Since this was supposed to be our FHE activity (it took us three days to get it all done) we had our treat tonight. I thought it would be fun to have a garden themed treat (we rarely have themed treats) so I made some chocolate frosting and had Jared and Lydia spread it on a graham cracker. This was their garden bed and soil.  They then planted their gardens with M and M's.  What I love most about this was that I came up with the idea all by myself, no Internet needed this time. They loved it.  We will see if our garden grows or gets eaten by animals.

Windows

Awhile ago I wrote abut how Lydia accidentally broke one of the panels in one of the windows in our basement. (A very pricey accident) Because of this we ordered some new windows, one by our kitchen sink and three in our basement.  Today they got installed and they are beautiful.  I especially like the one by our kitchen sink, its the very best.  The old one was so dirty and it had this yucky cover on it.  Now I walk in the kitchen and it feels so much bigger.  We used Window Depot and I hope we can order some more next Spring.  They are split windows where you can open either the top or the bottom and can move the screen to match up to whichever one you want open.  The coolest part is that they fold forward or into the house so you can wash both sides from inside the house. Its kind of amazing. We have never had windows like this and I love it. Only now I will feel obligated to wash my windows. I'm pretty sure I haven't washed them since we moved in almost a year ago... I have washed our sliding glass doors but not the windows. I should start doing that. The window guys said that we should really see a difference in the temperature in the basement which will be nice (and the sound) because it was really cold in there this Winter.

Before and After Pictures. (Really bad ones.) It was super cloudy and even rainy while they were installing them. It will be fun to see them on a nice sunny day. It has been so nice to look out our kitchen window and be able to see so much more. And to not be watching spiders catch bugs and eat them... which is what has been going on the last few weeks.

The one that started it all. 

Broken Panel, bottom middle. We put contact paper on it till we could get these installed.

These were super foggy before.  It's hard to see how bad they were in this light (the top left was the worst) but you can still see the difference below. 

The seal had been broken I guess.  

May the Force Be With You

Jared has been anxiously waiting to watch the new Star Wars movie ever since he heard it was coming out.  Since it was rated PG-13 we told him he wouldn't be able to see it when it came out but one day he would be able to.  That day was last Saturday. Courtesy of VidAngel we were able to show it to Jared and Lydia with a group of their friends.  We had the Shaw's and Wooter's come over for dinner and then enjoyed the movie with some fun Star Wars themed snacks.

Julie brought:
Teddy Grahams - Ewoks
Seven Layer Bean Dip - Seven Leia dip with Storm Scoopers for chips
Canolis - Obi Wan Canoli's

I made Pretzel Rod Light Sabers and Star Wars Jello with our molds.

The movie was pretty long but Jared loved it and Lydia enjoyed it too.  Mark and I have rented it from Red Box a few weeks ago and had basically told Jared everything that happened but he was happy to see it. He thought Kylo Ren's tantrums were hilarious and he loves BB8. Lydia also loves BB8 and thinks Rey is pretty great too. I am glad we could make it a fun night with great friends.

Spring Fun

Most of the month of April was pretty dry but then this last week was super rainy.  I think it rained almost every day.  I don't mind the rain really, I much prefer it to the humid and hot weather that will be here soon enough but it did interfere with some fun we had planned.

Near the middle of the month my friend Tara invited us to participate in a fun "marathon in a month" challenge.  She used to do it with friends back in Oregon.  The idea is to have your kids (and/or yourself) run 1 mile each day for 26 days (minus Sunday).  For the last mile the group gets together and runs it together with a celebration at the end.  Jared has been really into running at school the last few months and was really excited to try it out. He and Mark have run together most days and have passed the half way point. He seems to be really enjoying it.

Mile # 1

First time 10:38.  They are normally right around 10:15

One Saturday we went over to Forest Lakes and attempted to run together as a family but Lydia was not in the mood.  She did run a little bit but she and I walked most of it.  After we ran we fed the ducks (they are surprisingly hard to find here to feed so we lucked out that day) and then went over to Duck Donuts.  It is fun to be teaching them about taking care of their bodies and it's nice for Mark and Jared to have a specific thing to do with Jared.

They missed a few days because of some illness and have had to run 1.5 miles a few times to make up for it but are on track now. On Friday Mark was too sick to run with Jared. I had planned to go with him in the morning but it was rainy.  We went to hang out with some friends after school but still needed to get his mile in. I didn't really feel like running then as it as late in the day and sort of drizzly and Mark wasn't home to watch Lydia so I had Jared put on his swimming suit and I followed him in the car. As we were coming back one of our neighbors drove by Jared and then parked in her driveway.  As Jared ran by she asked him if his mom or dad were following him in that car.  I then realized that she was probably concerned that someone was trying to potentially kidnap Jared ! It was pretty embarrassing but good to know that our neighbors are watching out for him. I rarely see any of our neighbors (they all work and all their kids are grown up and we pretty much live in the woods)
and shortly after I saw her another neighbor drove by! It was kind of embarrassing that I was driving not running with him but at least they know I was keeping him safe. He is really doing a great job and I did get out and run 1.5 miles with him on Saturday.

Sadly we have also had some bad illness's at our house the last few weeks.  April was a really rough  month. (Thus the lack of blog posts) All of us had bad colds and I even lost my voice.  It is never a good time but this was a particularly bad time as I had preschool the next day and it was my **State Inspection for having my preschool licensed. Lydia got pink eye and was so sad.  It was awful.  She also had a rough month sleeping.  She is terrified of bugs, specifically bumble bees (they are rather large here) and wasps so once the warm weather started and they came back she was scared to go outside.  Then at night she was waking up terrified there were bees in her room.  She would wake up multiple times just crying and shaking.  We tried so hard to calm her and he sympathetic but we were getting pretty sleep deprived. She would wake up scared and we would go in to calm her and then she would stay awake forever because she was too scared to let herself fall back asleep. Many nights she would try to sneak into Jared's room but she kept waking him up so we were not cool with that. It was rough.  Thankfully she is doing much better.  She is still afraid of bees but will at least go outside now and is not waking up multiple times terrified.  Jared had a horrible allergy attack one weekend.  He was miserable all day, on a day that we happened to be having 2 fun families over for a campfire and asked if he could please just go to bed at like 4:45! It was so sad. He woke up at 7:45 sobbing that he had missed seeing his friends so we will have to try to have them over again.  Then Jared got a horrible stomach bug (he threw up/dry heaved 15 times in a 12 hour period.)  He was so sad and tired of getting out of bed to throw up he asked if he could please just sleep in the bathroom so we got out a camping pad and let him.  He thew up in the car on the way home from Lydia's swim lessons one Wednesday (glad we keep bags in there for such a purpose) around 4:30.  One of his PE teachers was at swim lessons as his son was in the class and he mentioned that Jared had told him his stomach hurt at school but Jared had not said anything to me.  We got home and he and Mark left to go run his mile (he seemed to be fine) and he threw up outside Mark's car.  Then we knew we were in for a long night.  He didn't eat dinner except for some toast and went to bed around 7:00 then woke up at 8:30 and the 30 minute interval throwing up began.  It was so sad.  He finally fell asleep around 11:45 and slept till 7:30. It was a horrible but quick 12 hour bug.  He stayed home from school the next day but by 8:00 you couldn't even tell he had been so sick the night before. I thought we were in the clear but the following Monday Lydia got the same bug.  It didn't seem quite as strong as Jared's but was still sad and disgusting. She woke us up around 3:45 AM saying her forehead hurt. I helped her back to bed sang her some songs and then went to lay down and she threw up.  It was so gross and sad all over her and her bed and a trail leading to the bathroom. So preschool was canceled.  We hung out together from about 4:00 - 7:00 AM downstairs in the guest room and after the boys left for school settled in for 12 hours of throwing up. But we aren't done yet, Mark then got a version of the bug too.  He came home early from school on Thursday and had a miserable 12 hours.  It was weird how it went like clockwork.  We will see if I manage to hold out. So yeah, April was rough!

We did manage to have a few fun days.  One Saturday UVA held their Spring Football Festival.  They set up some bounce houses and cool obstacle courses and had face painting and a balloon artist. The coaches (all of them from BYU) were there and you could meet and get autographs of players.  It was a beautiful day and  we are glad we went.  We hadn't been over to UVA in awhile and it was fun to go over there.

Mark and I also spent a Saturday Pre-hiking the hike we are taking the 2nd level girls on for Girls Camp. Instead of going all week like I did last year Mark and I volunteered to lead the girls on a hike.  Girls Camp was fine but long.  I am excited to help out this way with Mark. Our friends the Shaw's offered to watch Jared and Lydia as its a 6 mile hike and too difficult for them which was super nice of them. It was a rainy day but the hike was beautiful and it was really fun for Mark and I to go together.  We haven't gone on a hike by ourselves in years! We are taking them to White Oak Canyon in Syria, VA. Its about 45 minutes from our house and the trail follows a creek and there are lots of waterfalls.  It should be a fun challenging hike. Mark and I had a great time and Jared and Lydia loved being with the Shaw's. We will take the girls up to the Upper Falls but think we could hike to the lower falls pretty easily with Jared and Lydia. It was about 1.5 miles to them and pretty easy.  So 3 miles roundtrip.

Sometimes I see pictures of Mark and am amazed at how young he looks.  

Upper Falls

We also spent some time playing at Tonselr Park.  Lydia had swim lessons (which were honestly not what she needed.  She got moved to the other class but it was not a level 2 class like they said it would be. It was more level 1 and I don't think it helped her in any way. The other kids were much lower than her.  I know they tried to spend time doing level 2 stuff with her but I so wish I would have just asked to wait and transfer the money to a true level 2 class this summer) at Smith Aquatics and this park is right down the street from the pool.  We would pick Jared up from school and then drive across town for swim lessons.  We would typically get to the park and play for 20 minutes or so then go to lessons.  It is a really cool park in a pretty sketchy neighborhood. We were there at 3:00 in the afternoon so we were fine but it definitely has a different feel to it. Jared and Lydia loved the equipment there though.

Last day of swim lessons.  She did love going to them. 

**Which I totally passed! Woo-Hoo!! There are a few things I need to change (like I ordered the wrong emergency weather radio and some information was missing from the child records that the parents hadn't filled out but nothing serious and now I have it all fixed.)  It's such a relief to have this checked off and have done it! She will come inspect my school again in May and then I will be good for the next 6 months. So far I have 3 kids signed up for sure. I hope I can find more people soon, its so stressful. But having this done is really nice. Our last day this year is May 26th and I only need to plan one more week as I finished the other 2.  It's been such a fun year.