Here are some everyday adventures from the past month or so.
We celebrated my birthday a few days after Grant's. Scott made me strawberry shortcake.
And got me some presents. It was very nice.
Grant has a BFF down the street and goes to play with him a lot (or he comes to our house). John feels left out sometimes. John got invited to a birthday party a few weeks ago and he was so excited. When he got the invite from his friend, I helped him read it and told him he had been invited to the party. He couldn't believe he had been invited and not Grant and asked, "Just me!?!" It made him feel special (I think) that he got to have a friend activity of his own. The party was a super cute Minecraft party - here he is with his birthday loot.
After spring break the final touches were put on the basement. Here is the bathroom just before getting the faucets on.
So exciting!
And finally the basement was done!!
The kids were very excited about it!
Scott got a riding mower - it was purchased in Oregon and Scott's dad drove it out to us. Everyone is excited about it, but now Scott can't park in the garage anymore. We're working on a solution to that.
We had some electrical work done to the house to bring things up to code and got new smoke detectors. They were about 10 years old and starting to chirp, even with new batteries.
John won a gift card to Fiiz for guessing (closest) the number of skittles in a jar at the dentist's office.
It was exciting for him!
We had a birthday party for Grant. We spent several weeks trying to convince Grant to have his birthday party at Boondocks or Chuck E. Cheese since the house construction was still finishing up. He said he wanted to have it at our house so I filled out the invites and had him deliver them to his friends. While delivering them he told all his friends the party was at Boondocks. Eyeroll. I had to quickly text a lot of moms to clear things up. Then Grant was sad about the mix up. But he's ok and we got it sorted out. Here are the birthday friends doing some games. I do not like doing birthday parties. I wish I could outsource it. Scott's not volunteering to take them over, but he always helps me.
Mummy game
Anna with Grant's friend from next door.
More birthday games
I hope it was fun for him. And I hope I can do better next time.
We drove up to Boise one weekend to see our niece give her missionary farewell talk in church. She reported to the MTC this past week and will be serving in Houston. I know about 8 missionaries heading to Houston soon. There must be a need there.
Anna and Matthew had their chimes end of year concert. It was very cute. Matthew played a solo on his trumpet but I didn't get a good picture. He played Shenendoah which has some pretty high notes. It was a great and brave effort by Matthew. Here you can see Anna while her class does the chimes. They did songs from all American composers.
School is wrapping up but that just seems to mean lots of work and activities.
Two boys doing homework and a unicorn.
Anna came one morning while we were getting ready for school and said she needed to make fresh baked cookies for school that morning but that she could do it herself. She actually did it in the short time before school. Impressive.
They were good too!
Since the basement is done I can finally start going through the storage room to get things where they go. I still have much to do in that area...and in the garage. I feel like this is a forever task.
I started taking a different class online. This one is a computer science class through University of Michigan. The other class I was taking was a graduate level electrical engineering class - this is a college freshman level CS class - and I have taken a similar class in college (many years ago) in another programming language and done a little programming in some of my previous jobs. So it seems a lot easier than the graduate semiconductor physics class and thus more enjoyable. The instructor is very good and entertaining. He won me over when he said he would have to be sorted into Slytherin 'cause he teaches Python (see him wearing the sorting hat?). :). I finished the class in about a week and a half with a 99% and it was very enjoyable so I think I'll take the next class in the series.
And speaking of computer science, Matthew made the STEM Olympiad team for his school in the Scratch event. He will be competing this week in the area competition. He has practice before school some days so we go early and I let the little guys play on the playground early while he practices but before its ok to drop off Anna. Here we are playing one morning. Way to go Matthew!
Grant has a big project due soon about an animal - he chose the Thorny Devil, a spiky lizard. He was supposed to make a 3D display of the animal. He made this lizard out of Model Magic and a little desert habitat as well.
Scott and I do a thing where we spent some time with each kid one on one on certain days. Usually we let the kids pick the activity and it often involved youtube videos or video games. Last week I said it had to be a no screen activity for time with mom and it was so much more enjoyable. Matthew picked to go on a bike ride with me which was a lot of fun. Anna and I made Rice Krispy treats together. Grant, John and Emma all chose to go to a park. Here is John on his day with me checking out the ducks. There were some babies there and they were so cute to watch!
Emma on her park night with mom
Anna and Matthew had an art show at school
Anna's picture is right above her head
Matthew's is in the upper right
Scott and I got to have lunch together on his day off - we tried a new sushi place.
John trying the chopsticks
There is a wicked glare through the windows that is starting to interfere with movie night, especially since its staying lighter later. We tried to jimmy rig some curtain rods to be one long curtain rod (sort of got it to work) and hung some curtains we had used in California. It does a pretty good job keeping out the glare now. It makes the room look a lot different.
Thanks Scott for doing the hard work!
John with me at one of the soccer games. Soccer games finished up for us this week.
Anna at Ellison park!
That's a Scott side of the family name!
John and Emma like to pretend they are dogs sometimes. I think that's a phase that many kids go through. I remember doing it too. They wanted to be fed dog food on the floor on this day. :)
Emma helped me plant a few flowers in a front flower bed. It got really cold and froze a couple days later and lots of these plants died. The soil there is really bad - clay, rocks and roots. So might need to add some potting soil before adding new plants. I did plant a hosta (after the freeze) that has not yet died, so hooray for that!! More adventures to come.
