Back to School

End of Summer

 

Here are some pictures of our recent family adventures.  We're about a month into school now and into new school year routines.  Things are busy but good.  Scott has finished some time intensive Air Force classes but will need to travel out to do his reserve duty soon and is busy with his regular job as usual.  I've started taking graduate classes - I've dabbled with this before but I have more time now and am really enjoying my first class (I'm still on my first class) but it takes up a lot of time.  So forgive all my typos here, I am rushing through and don't have lots of time to revise.  :)  The kids have various and sundry new activities going on and we're trying to find our new normal.  

These first few pictures are from the end of summer.  We traveled down to the nearest  In&Out Burger in Keizer, Oregon.  Several kids threw up on the way there so it was quite the adventure.  It's a little more than an hour away with no traffic and no stops.  We had traffic and stops, so it took a while.  When we got there it was super crowded.  Worse than the ones in California, which are often crowded.  We did enjoy our food though.  John has been asking me regularly when we can go back.  Maybe not on a Saturday next time.

Squeezing around one little table

The food was good, as always

We stopped in Gladstone on the way home to get shave ice.  Unfortunately all our Gladstone/Oregon City relatives were out of town that day, bad timing.  So we'll have to come back.

Lots of Lego houses being built at the end of summer

Emma's house #1

Emma's house #2

Anna's house

Grant's Lego house

We got lots of Lego compatible base plates from the dollar store for the house construction

John got a slot car track for his birthday

The boys had fun building it and racing!

Scott was the major driver of this endeavor - pun intended

Emma went through a phase of making me babysit her toy koala.  Lucky for me, she was fine with me putting baby koala in some room all day.  That koala loves to nap.  She's ok with a lazy babysitter.  Thanks for understanding Emma.

Matthew and I went to the running store for a foot analysis.  He went on a long backpacking trip and had some serious foot discomfort so we got a foot analysis from the running store.  It's free for the analysis.  He has lower arches than Scott and I and thus different shoe needs.  We got some nice new shoes and some inserts.  Hopefully less walking pain now.

John lost another tooth up front.  He's got another wiggler up front there so soon there will be a massive gap.  One tooth is starting to grow back already so that's good.

We had a few plants around the yard.  The raspberries did well.  Tomatoes yielded some good tomatoes but I didn't take care of them well enough and I didn't like the varieties I picked this year.  I love garden fresh tomatoes, so if you have a favorite garden tomato variety (is beefsteak the best?  early girl?) tell me.  I bought a bunch of flowers and planted them.  And we have a little zucchini and pumpkin patch.  All the pumpkin leaves got some fungus, but the pumpkins are still growing.  Emma helped me water.

Picking some of the last summer wild blackberries

And some last summer crafts

Back to School

Here are all the kids on the first day of school.

Our school supply list - intense.  I actually like shopping for school supplies but it can get a little crazy.

The tally marks on the side are how many of each item we needed.

Anna is a WEB leader this year - she is in charge of helping the new 6th graders (she is an 8th grader) get oriented at the beginning of the year and helping them throughout the year as well.

Into the swing of school - Grant won a class contest for a paper parachute design.  Longest flight time was the goal and his design came down the slowest.  He was able to change his design a little on fly to make it work better.  Good engineering, Grant.

He and a classmate worked on it as a team

John worked on a "all about me" type poster.  Scott and I chuckled that he picked Mario and Sonic as his heroes.  Maybe next year he'll give us a shout out.  Or at least give a shout out to a real, human person.

And school mornings are a little crazy.  I started out making breakfast more but not we've gone to a lot of days just eating cereal.  One hectic morning I left the last few French toast pieces on the griddle too long.  I do that a lot.  Once the last ones are on there my brain switches over to whatever the next thing is.  John was disappointed with the slightly burned French toast.  He had plenty of unburned ones to eat, so don't feel too sorry for him.  He made me a sign (above) to remind me that there is French toast cooking.  He just set it out in the kitchen, pointing toward the stove, so I wouldn't forget about it.

And beyond

We got to go to my niece's baptism in Hermiston.  It was fun to see my brother and his family.  I'm hoping we can get together more.  This is my niece, Megan, with Emma, post baptism.

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Hiking the butte in Hermiston

I didn't take enough family pictures while we were there.  I always forget

Our older two kids got Covid vaccines

Matthew hates shots so had to psych himself up

We got through it

Our apple tree yielded a few apples.  Most of the blossoms blew off as we transported the tree home last spring.  So we didn't have a huge harvest.  I think we got 6.  They were good though.  Hoping for more next year.  Scott and I have loose plans to get a stone fruit tree...maybe next year.

Matthew and Anna took some tennis lessons.   Matthew has long been interested in tennis and has taken some lessons in the past.  Anna went too this time and picked up on it pretty well.  John and Grant are also taking some tennis lessons now.  I don't know if we will continue with this or not.  We'll see how it goes.

We had some big rain days, which everyone was excited about.

You can't tell from the picture but it is pouring here

Maybe the rain will help our dead grass spot, which Scott and I call "Australia" because the shape of it sort of looks like Australia.  It's starting to fill in a little now.

Emma has been getting lots of how to draw books from the school library

She wasn't sure what a lemur was in real life so didn't attempt to draw it

And Emma lost her first tooth.  She was so excited!

Super close up picture, sorry

They are doing some kind of periodic cleaning of our local lake and have drained the water really low.  You can walk out on part of the lake bed - its squishy in parts but interesting.  Here are Grant and John exploring parts of the low lake.

Emma hated every minute of this lake exploration.  I kept telling her she didn't have to wear the mask and she wouldn't take it off.  She got her pants dirty, rocks in her shoes, a blister, fell down several times, was sorry she had the wrong shoes on, didn't like seeing so many bugs, didn't want to walk, thought it smelled bad, too many blackberry brambles were in her way, the ground was too squishy, was hungry, etc.

But the boys had fun

Scott had surgery on his hand recently and has been recovering from that too.

He's almost back to normal by now but was limited for several weeks.

Glad he's starting to feel more normal.

More family adventures to come