End of the School Year

Here are some pictures from the end of our school year last year (June).  Summer has come and gone and a new year has begun but I am a bit behind on blogging about it, so here goes.  John had an end of the year project and presentation about how to do something (a how to type thing).  He chose to teach the class how to make breakfast cookies, a fun treat we make at home sometimes.

John worked hard learning the process of making cookies, taking pictures of the process, making a poster and practicing his presentation.

His teacher sent me this pictures of him doing his presentation in class.

Way to go, John!

Here's Grant participating in the 5th grade end of year track meet.  His class nominated him to be one of two team captains for the class.  Grant was all over the track area with a clipboard helping his classmates know where to go for their events.  He was pretty stressed about being team captain but he did a good job and it worked out.  Here he is long jumping!

Emma and Grant played in a spring soccer league that finished up at the end of the year.  Emma is pretty new to soccer so it was just figuring out how to kick the ball for her.  Good job, Emma!!

Grant is standing in the goal here with the hoodie jacket on.  

He played goalie a lot this season and did a good job.

Here is John helping to mow the lawn.  Scott and I struggled with our lawn a lot this year.  We had weird weeds, lots of heat, overly acidic soil and burrowing creatures to deal with.

We also have a strong raspberry patch going this year.  Our strawberries didn't do too well and neither did my tomatoes.  Our apple tree produced a bunch of apples and our pumpkin and zucchini patch is going strong.

Emma, John and I planted some peas, pepper and other things.  We harvested several peas, a few peppers and then I didn't really do a good job taking care of it after that.  I think I got too ambitious.

Matthew is going to get braces - he doesn't have them yet but has some brackets in to space his teeth out enough to prepare for braces.

We roasted marshmallows in our new fire pit for Memorial Day

Anna likes them very burned as do I.

We went to Scott's parents 50th anniversary party.

All the cousins were there

Here is Anna with her cousin, Karlee.

It was fun to see everyone.

We got to go to a carnival in downtown Portland for the Rose Festival, courtesy of Pa2.

John wanted to go on a lot of the big, scary rides but then looked so nervous.

We all had lots of fun!

We got a lot of rain this year - here is some flooding near the Columbia River.  Cottonwood Beach was underwater for most of the spring and early summer.

And as you can imagine, there were a ton of mosquitos in all the standing water.  One day while running near the river a swarm of mosquitos literally followed me for about a quarter mile.  I was swatting like crazy but to no avail.  I got a bunch of bites and didn't go that way for a while.

The flooding has since gone down but it was pretty amazing!

Another day walking on the levee near the Columbia in Washougal.

It started out great and we walked down about a mile to see some bird houses for wild birds along the river.  Emma loves birds right now and says she wants to be a "bird scientist" but all she wants to do is help baby birds that fall out of their nests.  Recently she angrily told me that she hadn't found any baby birds in need of help getting back in their nests this summer (as if it was my fault) so she may rethink her career choices.

When we got to the bird feeders it started raining so we had to walk back a mile in the rain.

Anna had an end of year science project to design a rocket that can hold an egg and safely land it back down without breaking after being launched.  She and I sat down together one day and talked through her ideas for her team's rocket.  I guess she was the lead on the rocket design portion.  In the end their egg and parachute deployed successfully and the egg touched down again unbroken.  I was relieved it worked since I kind of helped - I would feel really bad if it totally failed.  But that's part of engineering too.

And then the real end of school arrived.  And Grant graduated from 5th grade and elementary school!!

Here he is receiving his certificate.

Hooray Grant!

They had some celebratory cake for the kids.

So Grant is on to middle school next year (now).

And Anna graduated from 8th grade and middle school.

The principal actually mentioned Anna by name at their graduation ceremony as being the only student ever to receive two Lion Pride awards (their school mascot is a lion).  Maybe 40 kids from her graduating class had gotten this special award over the three years out of 250 kids (for doing something extra special).  And you aren't supposed to be eligible for it again if you already got it, or so we thought.  You get your picture up in the school permanently for receiving the award so Anna had her picture up for winning it last year.  And then we were notified that she was receiving it again this year.  So the principal mentioned it and I think Anna felt embarrassed.  She thinks it was just an oversight - she thinks they didn't realize they already gave it to her last year.  But she did go above and beyond tutoring a couple 6th graders that were behind in math this year, so I thought maybe it was because of that extra help.  Anyway, we think she is extra special so she deserves it.

Congratulations Anna!!  It was a weird middle school journey for her.  She did 6th grade in Utah, which was part of the elementary school there.  Then started 7th grade here in Washington in the middle of Covid shut downs - mostly learning from home.  But 8th grade was kind of normal.  She ran on the cross country team last year (didn't like it) and then played on the 8th grade soccer team this last year (liked it better except they played in the winter so there was lots of rain, hail and COLD games).  She won a DECA competition at the school, was chosen as a WEB leader (8th grade leadership group that helps the 6th graders all year), she helped pioneer the Dungeons and Dragons club at the school that is now wildly popular, she volunteer provided weekly tutoring to some girls who were struggling in math and recruited a friend to help her, got good grades, made many good friends, sang in the school choir (and the regional honor choir) and got TWO Lion Pride awards, against all odds.  She doesn't like it when I say things like this, but she is pretty amazing!!  And now on to high school!!

And Scott and I are just surviving.  Work is hard, school is hard, parenting is hard.  Sometimes we go running together.  Looking forward to some sunny summer fun.

Birthdays!

for Matthew and Scott 

We celebrated Matthew's birthday (back in February) by going out to eat at Olive Garden.  At the time there were restrictions on how many people could be at one table (the max was 6 but has since been increased to 10).  So we had to split up into two tables.  Scott was with the older kids at their table.

And I was with John and Emma at the younger kids table.

Matthew got a piece of cake, gratis, and a second piece was ordered for the rest of us to share.

For part of his birthday celebration he had to put in order the birthday "themes" or something we did from each of his birthdays for the past 14 years.  He easily got the more recent ones, but had to make educated guesses on some of the earlier years.  This was inspired by final challenges on the Amazing Race TV show, where contestants have to complete some puzzle about all the places they had traveled on the show.

Anna was the most helpful

Eventually the puzzle was solved and we continued with cake and presents.

Scott made a cheesecake from scratch which was loved by all

Matthew had a method for blowing out all the candles at once.

Happy 14th Birthday Matthew!

And a few days later was Scott's birthday.  Emma made this cup castle in his honor.

We had yellow cake with chocolate frosting, per Scott's request.

Hooray!

Happy Birthday Scott/Dad!

John is 8!

John turned 8 years old a few weeks ago.  His birthday came while we were in Washington house hunting so we celebrated a little bit late.  John wanted to have a Legend of Zelda themed birthday, just like last year.  John kept telling me the theme of his birthday needed to be "Link's Awakening" which is a particular Legend of Zelda game.  I didn't know anything about it but I looked up the game and read all about it and made a treasure hunt to go along with this particular game.  When I was almost done Scott told me that John actually knew nothing about the game, other than the name of it, and had never played that particular game before.  So my efforts to make it super authentic were wasted, but by that point I was almost done, so we went ahead with it.

Anna decorated this cake for John.  It looked very nice.

Here is the beginning of his treasure hunt - in the game a mysterious owl gives Link some information (or at least thats' what the internet said) so I am helping this mysterious owl give John some info to find his presents.

John got a sword and shield to help him with his quest

The kids all going on the treasure hunt

John/Link fighting a moblin (bad guy in the game played by Grant).

Finding rupees (money/treasure) in the treasure chest.

At the end of the game John brought the instruments with him to a certain location to finish the game.

Fighting the last boss to get his presents

In the end Link was successful and found his presents.

Good job Link

Blowing out the candles

John got some fun presents and we all had fun!

And a few weeks later, John got baptized!

John's Baptism

John was baptized on our stake baptism day - after we had moved out of our house.  We drove up to Kaysville from Utah county, where we were all staying.  The kids and I were planning to leave town the next day for Washington/Oregon so I got a little nervous when our bishopric member didn't show up right away.  Because of COVID we had a 20 minute window to use the baptismal font and I was trying to figure out what we would do if our ward people didn't show up, but at the last minute the bishop appeared and all was well.  Scott baptized John and no flailing limbs came out of the water, which I was half expecting with this child, so that's good.  Here are some pictures we took afterwards.  John looked very handsome.

The whole family

Kids and grandparents - Guptill grandparents on the left, Keeler grandparents on the right.

John with mom and dad

And John striking a pose on the rocks outside the church.

After the baptism we drove all the way back to Lehi for some lunch.  

It was a nice day.  Hooray John.