First Day of School

Let me bring you up to speed on our life lately.  Scott's office wanted to transfer him from Sunnyvale, CA to Salt Lake, so we put our house on the market around Memorial Day.  We accepted a contingent offer that fell through after being under contract about a month and had to go back on the market.   But we got another offer and were eventually able to move forward with that sale.  And that house is now sold!  Goodbye Gilroy house!!  In the mean time we bought a house in Kaysville, Utah. We had thought about building a new house again but decided buying a resale would work better for us this time.  Many people ask me why we chose Kaysville.  Scott's office is in West Valley City sort of near the airport.  I researched cities in Utah for A LONG TIME and settled on the Kaysville/Farmington area even though I didn't have a lot of first had experience with the area.  I had kind of narrowed it down to Lehi/Highland or Kaysville/Farmington which, strangely enough were the same distance from Scott's work but in opposite directions.  It finally came down to 1) commute time 2) schools 3) crowdedness (or lack thereof) and 4) lot size of homes. Those aren't the only factors, but some of the major ones.  After our tiny yard in California I was really hoping for a large lot and there were a lot more of them in Farmington and Kaysville than other areas.  The schools are great and highly rated, its not as crowded as Utah county seems to be getting and the commute time is shorter to Kaysville than Lehi even though they are the same distance from Scott's work.  More people go south I guess.  Also its a plus for us to be closer to the military base up here.  We like being near the base and among some military families.  So that's why Kaysville.  And so far we're happy with our choice.  It's meeting and exceeding expectations.

So we bought a house, spent about a week getting new carpet and thought we would be able to move in just before school started.

We found out our stuff was stuck in California (due to a busy moving season there) and wouldn't be able to be delivered in time for school, so we moved into the new house with just our suitcases.  Its 45 minutes to my parents house, where we were staying, and that's too far to commute for school.  So we came the night before school started and set up camp.  Scott's sister let us borrow some pads and air mattresses and sheets.

Here we are on the morning of the first day of school.  Matthew is starting 6th grade, Anna 5th grade, Grant 2nd grade, John Kindergarten and Emma is home with me and not happy about it.

Matthew and Anna go to a school across town for a program there.  They were in a similar program in California but had to be retested here to get into it.  But it all worked out and they are loving their new school and teachers so far.  The pick up/drop offs are a little tricky and I'm nervous about dealing with it in snow since their school is up on the mountain side of town.  But all is well for now.

Anna came home telling me how much she loves her teacher so I'm excited for her and her school year.  Their school is great!

Grant goes to our neighborhood school which is also wonderful.  He loves his class so far and is starting to make friends.  The girl who lives next door sits next to him in class.

And John is really excited for kindergarten.  On the first day of school he had a short kindergarten orientation so it wasn't a true first day for him.  But he is excited for even a little bit of school.  More on his first day to come.

And Emma is really sorry she is not going to school.  Learning time at home with mom is just not as fun.  I must try harder.

I dropped the older kids off then drove back to the neighborhood school to walk in with Grant.  Here he is waiting for his teacher.  The first day seemed to go well until pick up time.   I went to pick up Grant and it started to rain while I was waiting.  And then hail.  Grant was fast and got in the car quickly but while driving to Matthew and Anna's school across town the hail really picked up.  By the time I got to their school it was thundering down large hail stones.  I didn't know where to go to pick up (first day) but I spotted Matthew.  As I drove up Matthew disappeared behind some classrooms.  I tried to jump out of the car and yell to him but the hail was so loud.  I had to drive over to park 'cause I was in the pick up only line.  There I saw Anna looking very sad.  I parked and ran over to get her.  We got wet and hailed on running back to the car.  Then I looped around again looking for Matthew and we found him this time.  We all got in the car and the hail was still going strong.  It was a really crazy first day pick up.  This seemed to happen in Colorado too.  If it was going to rain or hail it would do it about 3pm - that's just how the weather seemed to work there.  So school pick up was often very unpleasant and/or wet.  We made it home and it stopped hailing by the time we got home, but started up again an hour or so later.

Here we are watching hail storm #2 from inside.  I was able to get the car in the garage even though we still had the storage shell on top.  It just fit.

Hail is kind of novel to some of us - not sure how well the older kids remember it from Colorado.

Watching the hail in our empty house.

There were hail stones of all sizes.

Some even this big!  We didn't see any damage on the car from the school pick up hail, so that's good.

The kids wanted to venture out into the yard after the hail.

All except Emma

She investigated from inside the house.

Later we went out to dinner and the sky still looked stormy

It was quite an exciting/crazy first day of school, but I think its going to be a great school year.

The End of Summer

After the family reunion there wasn't much summer left - we closed on our house in Utah before the reunion and then had new carpet and some tile installed before we moved in.  I had to drive from my parents house in Lehi to Kaysville (north of Salt Lake), where the house is, too many times since we weren't living in the house just yet.  It's only about a 45 minute drive but it was starting to get old.  I drove up with all the kids once morning to meet the fridge delivery guy and the tile installers.  While we were waiting for the tile guy Emma went out in the backyard, climbed up on the play structure, saw a bee, freaked out about the bee, and fell while trying to come down off the structure.  She toppled head over heels down the wooden steps.  Poor Emma.  Being afraid of bees is proving to be more dangerous than actual bees. We've later discovered there are quite a few yellow jackets and or wasps living near that structure.  We're working on that.  Our backyard is an insect wonderland apparently.

There are lots of little house repairs and cleaning jobs to keep us busy.  

Here are the kids waiting for the fridge delivery and tile people to come.

This is before new carpet.

Here is Emma a few days post injury.

She's going to make it but I really wish we could get her more comfortable with flying insects.

Here is Anna picking a few peaches from my parents tree.  We couldn't keep up!

Here is the tile being installed in our new house.  I had to swing by to pick the grout color.  They did a nice job on the tile install but I was a little disappointed with my tile choice.  I had another tile in mind but it wasn't available and we ended up last minute going with this darker color.  I shouldn't allow myself to be rushed into decisions like that I guess. Oh well.  The tile looks fine, but doesn't match the cabinets that well.  It looks better in low light.  :)

We got Matthew a new hair cut for school.

We picked out a new couch.  When Scott and I got married we each brought a couch to the marriage. Mine was a smaller slipcover couch from Ikea and Scott brought a brown sofa and matching love seat.  Those couches have moved all over with us over the past 13 years.  And we finally decided to retire the brown couch and love seat.  They had a lot of kid mess/stains on them and were showing lots of wear.  So we left them behind in California.  I think we let one of the movers take them.  The Ikea couch lives on, although it got a new broken arm during this latest move but the movers never included it in their inventory in California so not sure we can claim it.  In any case, our growing kids need a bigger couch.  So we picked out a sectional this time.  Now maybe we can all fit on the couch for movie night.  Here's Scott trying it out.

We spent a fun afternoon at Provo Beach for our niece and nephew's birthday celebrations.  Matthew tries out the ropes course here.

Singing Happy Birthday!!

Owen had a donut cake.  Might have to do that for Grant one year.  He loves donuts!!

Getting carousel pictures is always tricky.

Instead of mini golf they had mini croquet.  The kids had a lot of fun although we didn't learn much about the actual rules of croquet.

We got to see our niece, Olivia, get baptized.  She and Anna are only two years apart and love hanging out together.  I'm glad we got to be there for her baptism.

The finished tile work in the bathroom.  It looks better in this picture than in real life.  I mean, the tile looks great.  It just clashes a little with the orange-ish cabinets.  And I have only myself to blame.

Scott's dad helped us tame our backyard.  Here he's collecting peaches from our tree.  That's the garden to the left.  It looked a lot different a month ago when we made the offer on this house.  Wow, how those weeds have grown.  Lots more taming to do.

I think this is when I got bit by a horsefly or some other worse-than-a-mosquito flying insect.  The work to do on the house feels a little or a lot overwhelming.  Maybe I just have post-new-house-itis since our last new house was brand new and clean and perfect when we moved in.  The little things to fix aren't really that bad, but I just didn't notice them when we bought house.  I wish I had looked a little more closely so I could have asked the sellers to fix some of the things.

The kids try out the master bath tub for the first time.

I was feeling a little bit of house buyers remorse those first few days - and again it is all my own fault since I picked this house - but when we are all there together it feels a little more like our home.  Hopefully we will be able to tame it all.

Ellison Reunion

We went to the Ellison family reunion a few weeks ago - that is Scott's mother's branch of our family tree.  We had lots of fun visiting with family.  The kids had a great time. Here are Grant and John with their cousin, Owen (far left) and second cousin(? Scott's cousins's son).  They had lots of fun together.

Here is Emma having her rocket shot into the air.

Anna and her cousin, Olivia play a game.  One wears a shower cap with shaving cream on it and the other throws cheese puffs onto their head.

The original Guptills

All were present

Emma enjoys a swing

Scott ready to hit one into the trees (and he did).

Anna and Olivia

John heading off to our tent - borrowed from Scott's sister, Alycia, since our stuff is is still in storage.

And Emma made friends with this little girl/second cousin who's name I can't remember now (I want to say Payton?).  They had a lot of fun together.  We missed part of the reunion 'cause Scott had to work but we still had lots of fun.

We did get a lot of bug bites.  Matthew got two big bites on his forehead that really swelled up.    We think it might have been a spider?  Here is his swollen face.  

It went back to normal after a few days.  :)