Retraction!

Ok, so we've actually had quite a busy last two weeks of school. Of course, I should have known it would be full of activities! I guess I had wishful thinking!

First of all, Morgan had her final performance with her Tiger Talents group. It ended with several afterschool practices and with an assembly for the entire school. It was lots of fun to see, but hard to take Elly, as it was smack dab in the middle of nap time! Oh well ...
It was her last performance and she really enjoyed the opportunity to learn so many songs, dances, and other speaking parts. I know she'll really miss it!

The next event we got to celebrate was kindergarten summer birthdays. They gave the kids a chance to celebrate their birthday on a day in May for those that had their birthdays in the middle of the summer. For the first time in their lives, the twins got to celebrate their very own birthday all by themselves. Addison had her birthday on a Tues in school and Bradly had his on a Wed. They each got to bring snacks to their class. Addi chose Dibs ice cream and Bradly wanted cupcakes with lizards on them. Addison gave out crazy straws. They had a lot of fun and enjoyed passing out the treats and being sung to.

Elly loved coming to the school with me and sitting in the chairs an participating in the class things. We came about 15 min before school got out and they were still cleaning up when we'd arrived. Then they'd all sit on the floor on their assigned letter on the mat and she loved finding a letter to sit on as well. She really loved sitting by Bradly and enjoying some of his birthday treat!

Before Bradly's party, I had to go to the Weber County Fairgrounds. Morgan made it to the District Math Olympiad for the Krypto category. She was very excited about making it, and her and her other team member practiced after school for a few days. Her team consisted of her and 2 other boys. They had to try out for it and compete out of all the other 4th graders at their school (there's 3 classrooms of 4th graders). If you don't know what Krypto is, it's a mathmatical game. your given a certain number of cards and you have to get rid of all the cards in your hand by using each number mathmatically to equal the number that is pulled from the deck. She's definately the champion at our house, so we knew she'd do well in the competition! They are timed and the team that gets krypto the most times in that time wins.

Second place winners!!

Rylan had a baseball tournament for Memorial Weekend. The first day of the tournament was On Friday, but the twins had their kindergarten program on Friday as well. I found out that they were performing it for the school on Thurs. so I went Thurs to watch it. It was so cute! I can't believe my little twinners are going to be 1st graders!!

We got done with games fairly early on Fri, so I took the opportunity to borrow a rotatiller and get the garden ready for planting. Sat. morning I got up early and headed to Wal-mart for plants. We put sunflowers in the back, then 2 rows of corn, some tomato plants, green pepper, jalopenos, and a pumpkin and watermelon plant. We had strawberries come up again and this year we have a lot of berries on them! If I can just keep the birds away!

The kids lost a game, so we were out of the play-offs for Mon. That was a huge relief to me, because Mem Day is the HUGE Saver's sale! Everyone that knows me around here knows that I have no other committments made for Fed. Holidays in UT!! Those are the 50% of Saver's sales. I get clothes for so cheap there and they are darn cute clothes! I took Morgan with me, since she was in need of the most and is the hardest to buy for. She's so tall and skinny!!

That night, we continued our family tradition of getting the fire pit up and ready for the new season! I thought it would be a great chance for my boyscout to use his skills, but unfortnately he failed! I figured there was NO WAY I'd be able to get it started, but alas I came out victorious!! We had a lot of fun and enjoyed roasting hot dogs.

So last week was the last week of school! Thanks heavens ... it's bitter-sweet, but I'll be glad to not have a definate schedule anymore!! I am no longer a day-care provider and will work at Mc Donald's if I am ever that desperate to work again! It was a blessing and got us financially ready to send Richard to Korea, but I am SO GLAD it is done! The day before my last day, the boy I watch was laying on Elayna on the couch with a pillow over her head! He's lucky he didn't seriously hurt her, or I may have seriously hurt him. I'm glad it's done and I will NEVER do that again!

I have taken the plunge to potty-train Elayna. She is willing to go on the potty chair, but I'm not sure if she's connecting the feeling of the urge to pee with running to the chair and doing it. If she sits in front of the tv and watches it, she'll eventually go, but she has yet to catch herself. I'll try to the end of the week and then we'll wait another month before trying it again. I just really want to have it done before the end of summer! We'll see. She's not even 2 1/2 yet, but she's dry when she gets up from naps and doesn't have much in the morning when she gets up.

Finally, I'm posting the most hilarious video that the kids shot today after church. Please excuse the trashed house. It is indeed a day of rest for me and we simply don't clean or pick up on Sundays, but I thought this was too funny and had to add it. Sorry if it takes a long time to download!

Love to you all and enjoy the summer ... it's finally here!

Things are slowing down! Woo Hoo!

Now that school is starting to wind down, so are other things. Rylan is now finished doing Jr. High baseball. He's had the opportunity to work for a couple neighbors and earn some money. He owes me about $200 for a new window, so that work will be really great for him. He is weeding for one neighbor and mowing lawns for a few others. I think he's learning some great work ethics and am proud that he's paying off his debt. He also had his last mid-week games. They tied for first place for this league, so that was very exciting for them. Especially being a first year team. We had a double-header on Sat. with our Salt Lake league and he pitched the first game. He did really well ... only pitched 69 pitches in 5 innings, which is really good. He only let 1 score and had a fabulous catch as short-stop as well as made a great double play off of second. It was a good day for him and I loved the wonderful weather! The other kids had a great time playing at a park close by the fields.

Bradly is really enjoying being on his T-ball team. We have found a way to ease his anxiety. When we get there he chooses where he wants me to sit and then is relieved when he can find me. He's been sticking me on the sideling in the grass where there really isn't anyone. I guess that's easy to find me when there's no one around me! They had team pictures on Thursday. Of course, my camera is way cheaper than paying $12 for a team photo so here is my professionalism. Too bad Uncle Jered wasn't there!



I also got my hair cut this weekend. We didn't have to leave for Rylan's games until 12:00 so I took the opportunity to go in at 9 a.m. I had to call the kids as I was driving to put shoes on and wait in the driveway for me. We sure cut it close!! I have to remember that this girl cuts my hair about an inch shorter than I ask for, so next time I'll try and grow it out an extra inch before having it trimmed, haha! Of course, that would take about 6-7 months with how slow my hair grows. I had her put red in the bottom and a few streakes peaking out on the sides again. Richard would have me go all red, but to get it back to blonde would be a nightmare, so this is about as close as I'll get it. Anyway, I really wanted my sides to be the same and just shorten up the back to make a really exaggerated bob, but it's way shorter than I expected. It looks fine and I'm ok with it, but I would prefer to have it a little longer. Here's the pics of the front and back. Do you love my little assistant?





Our biggest news of the week ... saved the best for last! Richard made Master Sgt! Hip Hip Hooray! We are so proud of him. We think this will probably change our orders from South Dakota since they put him in for a Tech Sgt position, but we don't really know for sure. The only thing I know is that I'm not putting the house up for sale until we have hard copies!! It will take almost a year for his line number to come up, so we don't really have the benefits of Master yet, but we're so excited and proud of him and now he'll NEVER have to test again in the military!!

As a final note ... to all you bloggers. Is anyone else having to cut and copy a url for their pictures where they want it? I used to be able to downloand the picture and just click and drag it to where I want, but now I don't see the picture when I download it, I just see a url. This just happened 2 weeks ago, so I don't know if I accidently changed something, or if blogspot has changed things.

Finally enjoying beautiful weather. Hope summer is here! I would really like to just have one seasons worth of clothes in my kids' closet. It's getting really hard to hold enough clothes for 3 seasons! We've had winter, spring, and summer in the last week alone!! Love to all! Kim

AHHHHH

I just spent 20 min putting together a post and waiting for videos to download. How frustrating!! OK, I'll try to do this again, but it's going to be a much shorter version, which you probably would prefer anyway!! 1-Rylan's last Jr. High game- I'm posting a pic of Rylan with his two closest friends that are also on the Sandlot team. I was bummed that I never got to see him play on this team. Being a 7th grader, he really didn't get much playing time, but on several away games he was able to play short stop. The last away game, they let the 7th graders play the entire game. I assumed they would also give them playing time on their last home game, but unfortunately he didn't get any, so these were the only pics I could get. 2- Morgan had her first major performace from the Tiger Talents. They've spent 2 days each week after school for several hours to get ready for this performance. I taught the girls a "cheer dance" and that was a lot of fun. It was a little inconvenient with Richard gone and my watching 2 extra kids after school, but now it's done and it turned out really cute. I won't include a video of it because it's so long, but I'm posting a pic of Morgan and a short clip of one of the 2 solos that she had.
3- Bradly has just started T-ball. He was disapointed when I broke the news to him that he can't have a bat bag until he's 12. Sorry, I don't think T-ball is serious enough to require a bat bag! He's pretty ticked that he's playing T-ball and not "Baseball" but he'll get over it. The biggest affect of his seizures as a baby we've found is the spatial memory loss. He has a lot of anxiety about getting lost and not knowing where I am or where to go. I was pretty concerned that he'd not be able to remember the order to run the bases, etc. but he plays outside a lot with Rylan and has actually done very well with it, however, he doesn't want to play anymore because of his anxiety of not being able to find me after the game. The coach has been very good about heading off his "anxiety attacks" in the middle of games, and I'm learning to sit right in the middle of the very first row of benches and keep waving my arm at him to remind him where I am. I run out to the field the minute the game is over so he doesn't have another "freak out" and hopefully we'll see improvments! Last Thursday, Rylan had his last Sandridge game, Morgan had her performance for Tiger Talents, Bradly had a t-ball game, and the school had a family film night where we got to see a play that the twins performed in. The both were in "The Little Gingerbread Man". Addi was the little old lady, and Bradly was the fox. It was a crazy day, but lots of fun. I also had to prepare for all of us to go our seperate ways for a baseball tournament in Pocatello, ID. Addi and Bradly stayed at Shelda (Richard's sister) and Amber's house (Shelda's daughter who has a son Bradly's age). Some friends were nice enough to pick up Rylan on Thurs at 6 a.m. and I stayed and took the kids to school. I left after I dropped them off and just took Elly and Morgan. It was so much fun to go and watch. It was amazing how different it was to not have the twins. We all made comments several times about how quiet and low key it was! It all changed the minute I picked them up from Amber's Sat at 9:00 p.m. The boys did pretty good at the tournament and won 2 games and lost 2 games. One of the games they lost to ended up winning the whole tournament.
I had a good Mother's day. I bought myself a few shirts the weekend before, and Rylan's coach bought each of us mother's some chocolates. I thought that was very nice of him! I woke up Sund morning to pancakes, eggs, and hot chocolate. Morgan made me breakfast in bed, and then put together a little play. Even Rylan participated! The night before after going through the mail, I accidently recycled the stuff I wanted to keep and put on the counter the stuff I wanted to recycle. In the recycling ended up being a $10 gift card to Kohls. She was so excited to find it and made a card and was proud to present to me a homemade card with a $10 gift card to Kohls. I thought that was cute. The twins had also made stuff from Kindergarten.

We had to have an impromptu funeral last night. Yep! Morgan's lizard of almost 2 months died last night. We had a feeling that it was coming, as it quit eating it's meal worms and started eating rocks and was starting to look skinny. We found it last night stiff and not breathing, so she took it into the backyard and buried it in the garden. Hope the rotatiller doesn't get it next week! She's doing well with the loss and is excited to get a frog now.



Well, that's about it for now! Only 46 more Sacrament meetings left to go through!! The rest seems to be going fast ... that just goes the slowest! LOL