Relief Society Retreat

This is the spire on top of the Palmyra, New York temple.  After enjoying a wonderful over-night Stake Relief Society  retreat on the Finger Lakes, we had the opportunity to go to the temple.  It was an amazing experience and really strengthened my ties to women in my ward and stake.

This is me on the grounds of the temple.  The flowers were so colorful and the sky was just a gorgeous blue color that afternoon after the rain had cleared out.

These are the three Jennifers.  Everywhere I go I always meet up with another Jennifer, but I have to say that these two are very amazing women and I am lucky to know them!  I get to serve in Relief Society with one and visit teach with the other. 

 

These are the two ladies that rode out to the retreat with me.  I drove and they directed.  It was about two hours from home, so I was glad to have their company.  I appreciate both of them and had a great time with them throughout the weekend.

First Day of School 2010

     Summer came to an end and we had to face the reality of going back to school.  Hayden is in seventh grade and gets up too early for me to follow him out to the bus to snap a picture, but the girls don't leave until much later, so I got pictures of them.  Actually, Sydney and Hayden started a day before Maura, because only half of her kindergarten class went the first day, half the second and then the whole class went on the third day that week.  So Maura and I sent the older two to school and she and I had one last day together.

     She planned the whole thing. First we went to the park and then we ate at, you guessed it, McDonald's.  It was wonderful, but heartbreaking too.  Maura has been my lunch buddy for so long, and now it is over, five years have passed and she is off to all day kindergarten.  I am happy for her, but sad for me.

     Sydney is in the fourth grade this year.  Her teacher was a fifth grade teacher last year and he did not want to have to move classrooms, so even though he is teaching fourth grade, they are in the fifth grade wing of the school and have their own, individual lockers.  It seems that my children are growing up faster here than they would have in Utah!

    
     Here are my two girls, ready for school and watching for the bus.  Maura had to wear her bus pass around her neck for the first few weeks of school until the kindergarteners learned the routine.

     While waiting for their bus, they like to get out their scooters and go over the "bumps" that have been made by tree roots underneath our driveway.  They have serious skills.

     This is the moment.  The one that every mother dreams of and secretly dreads, the day that their youngest child leaves for school.  It is humbling to realize that they suddenly spend more waking hours with another adult, a teacher that you have never met before.  Part of me was relieved, part of me was scared and another part of me was absolutely heart broken.  How had we got to this point in time so quickly?  Going back into the empty house was lonely.

Hayden is Now Twelve

   Hayden turned 12 on the 29th of June this year.  Twelve is kind of a big deal.  I mean, he advanced from Primary to Young Mens and he was ordained a deacon and received the Aaronic Priesthood.  These milestones seem like they will never arrive, but it is humbling when they do.  All of us were together to celebrate his actual birthday on the 29th.

A few days before his birthday, he had a party with his friends.  We sent out cool invitations that were shaped like a BBQ.  All Hayden wanted to do was have a huge water party in our backyard and have his dad grill steaks.  So that is what we did.  We bought each of the boys a water gun, had a lot of water balloons, put the slip and slide out and the beach ball sprinkler. We served steak, hot dogs, watermelon and chips.  We played the candy bar game where you have to roll doubles to pick one up or steal one from another player.

 Hayden wanted to mix it up a little, so the boys also had the option to put on oven mitts and attempt to unwrap a huge candy bar that was wrapped in several layers of aluminum foil.  Here is Adam giving it a try.

For dessert Hayden had picked out an ice cream cake from Anderson's. It was delicious!

His awesome friends gave him several gift cards, a huge Nerf gun and the Wii Ski game.  All in all, he had an excellent birthday.  Happy Birthday Son!

Maura Turns Five!

  Maura was so very excited about her birthday this year. Turning five years old meant that she could have her first birthday party with friends. She decided to invite all of the children in her preschool class and a few from church as well. We held her party at a local children's museum and they had this cake made for her party which was themed around butterflies and flowers.

 Maura and Lilian found these butterfly costumes and had a lot of fun "flying" around the museum together.  It was great creative play.  The children also played in the store area, on the farm, climbed the rock wall and loved the arts and crafts room.

 All of the children were able to do some arts and crafts in the party room.  They were working on a butterfly project here.  It was so funny to listen to their conversations because they had been together so much this year, that they banter back and forth like siblings.  We heard one of the kids say to a classmate, "We know, you've told us like a million times!"  The museum employees thought they were hilarious.  We were just glad that they came because it made Maura's day.

 
  Her is our birthday girl, so excited to be five and to blow out the candles!

  Maura opened some cute presents from her friends at the museum party, but on her birthday she opened presents at home that were sent by her grandparents and from our family.  She was thrilled to finally get a Zhu-Zhu pet or two!

  Happy Birthday Maura!! I cannot believe that you are already five years old, it is making daddy and I feel a little old.  Our baby girl is growing up and soon you will be off to kindergarten!

Final Soccer Games

  Both Hayden and Sydney played soccer through our town's soccer league this year. They played in the fall and again in the spring, but they are two different seasons here, and you generally have different players and coaches for each season. To celebrate the last game of spring soccer, each team had a pizza party and the kids received their medals.

Michael Turns 39!

  Michael's birthday was just ridiculous this year.  The children were still in school because school did not end until the 23rd of June in New York and we had the craziness of all that going on.  His work schedule was ridiculous, he had not been home to eat dinner or see any of us in days.  In fact, he worked until after midnight on his birthday and did not even bother to tell anyone at work that it was his birthday!

  Meanwhile, I kept asking him what he wanted to do for his birthday celebration to which I got no response. So the 8th of June rolled around, and he had no cake, no presents, no plans, and he came home after midnight.  Finally he told me, "All I want is a coconut cream pie."  Pie!!? Seriously, that is what you want for your birthday? Done.  Of course, there are no Marie Callendar's in New York, so I made a pie from scratch- the crust, the whipped cream, all of it.  I made it the day after his birthday, and he was kind enough to pull away from work, come home for about 25 minutes, eat a piece and go back to the office.

 
  I am just glad he had the energy to blow out the candles, maybe that is why there are only three? Why would we only have three candles on there, one for each 13 years?! Were there only three left in the cupboard? Could we not be bothered to put any more than that on? Of course, 39 candles probably would have lit my masterpiece on fire.  But the downside to this whole thing is that after 17 years, Michael found out that I can make really good homemade pie- he wasn't suppose to know that.  How I miss Marie C's pies and stacking up all the tins in my cupboard until I would finally take them back in to get a refund on the tin deposits and have more than enough for a free pie!  I love Razzleberry and German chocolate and French silk, not to mention banana cream... on second thought, it is probably better on our budget and our waistline that we have moved away from Marie's!  But it was so great at Thanksgiving to just go and pick them up.

Maura's Preschool Moments

Earlier in the year, Maura had been sick and was not able to ride the bus to the pumpkin patch field trip. This was a major disappointment to her and I heard about it all year long. So when the opportunity came to ride the bus to the zoo, she was so excited. This is a picture of Maura and her cute friend, Keeley, they were told to wear red so that we could identify the kids in her class easier.

This is some of Maura's class piled into a wagon at the farm area of the zoo. Miss Anna was one of her teachers and is in blue.

Zachary, Maura and Keeley were buddies all day long. They had a great time finding all of the animals in their exhibits and we even ate a picnic lunch while we were there. Maura rode the bus both ways, but I caught a ride with some of the other moms.

Maura has a summer birthday and was excited to celebrate her birthday before the school year ended. So even though it was not really her birthday, we made pink cupcakes for her "unbirthday" celebration at preschool.

Well, eventually the fun had to come to an end. The year was over and Maura was graduating from preschool. She had gone the entire year from 12:30 to 3:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, and now she was ready to advance to kindergarten. Our baby is growing up, and I am going to miss the art projects and those silly preschool songs!