Last day of school

Today was the last day of school! I MADE IT! I could not wait for school to end. Now I can breath a sigh of relief and enjoy having my kids home for the summer, and try to get them back in the routine of doing chores! I know that’s mean, but it’s for their own good.

As usual there were only a couple of hours of school today. They were out by 10:30, which seems like such a waste of a school day to me. Also, as usual, I walked down to the school to get pictures of the kids with their teachers.

Ethan’s teacher was Mrs Cunningham.

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Tyra’s teacher was Mrs Nelson.

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Jeremy’s teacher was Mrs Peterson.

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For some reason, my camera wasn’t working properly and took some pretty blurry pictures. So these are the best of what I got, and it makes me sad that they didn’t turn out as nice as I would have liked them to. Later I figured out that one of the kids messed with the camera settings and I had to figure out how to change it back.

Kyle’s Birthday

Today is Kyle’s birthday. I planned on making him a cake, but when I asked what cake he wanted, he said he wanted that chocolate mousse cake that we saw at Costco last time we were there. So he got to pick that up on his way home from work today.

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We had to tell him that he doesn’t get to eat the whole thing by himself, and that he has to share.

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Of course he knew that and was playing around with the kids, they did think it was pretty funny.

After cake we moved to the living room so he could open his presents.

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I got him The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on Blu-Ray, and a new hair clipper set. His old set of clippers has been doing a lousy job of cutting hair lately and he made the comment that he should probably get some new clippers soon, so I took care of that for him. πŸ™‚

Eagle Mountain Pony Express Days Rodeo

My girl scouts got to do the flag ceremony to open the Eagle Mountain Pony Express Days rodeo tonight!

We asked the girls to be there AT 5:00, so, as luck would have it, WE were the ones that were late. However, it wasn’t entirely our fault. Debby came over and I was just finishing getting the kids ready and so I told them to get in the van. The button for the van didn’t unlock the doors…not a good sign. I got the keys and manually unlocked the doors, and while Debby loaded the little kids in the car, I got in and tried to turn it on. The van wouldn’t start. I panicked. It wasn’t even making a sound like it was trying to turn over. It was just dead. So after trying to jump it with Kyle’s car, and trying to jump it with the neighbors car, out of desperation, we split the family in half and half went in Debby’s car and half in Kyle’s car.

The girls did a practice run, and we got to go sit in the stands to watch the pre-show while we waited forΒ  the rodeo to start.

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We took the girls back down behind the stands to get ready for our turn. I felt like we just stood in the way most of the time because nobody told us where we were supposed to be standing. Amy took Afton back to the box where the microphone is because she was supposed to call out the flags. However, that never happened. The speaker in the box had his own narrative to read and we just had to go with what he was saying. I wish there was some better communication between the rodeo people and our troop so that we would have had a better idea of what to expect. All things considered, the girls did a good job. They didn’t understand the announcers cue for them to walk out of the arena so they stood there a bit longer than they should have but that’s ok, they are cute second, third and fourth graders, so nobody minded.

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Next time maybe we will get the girls to all face the audience, instead of looking all over the place.

Then we got to sit back and watch the rest of the rodeo. This is the first rodeo that we have ever taken our kids to, so we weren’t sure just what to expect. But there were guys trying to stay on bucking horses, kids trying to stay on sheep, guys trying to lasso calves and tie them up. There was barrel racing, interestingly, there weren’t any men competing in this; it was mostly women, a couple of teenagers and a couple of younger kids.

The kids seemed to enjoy watching the rodeo, although the girls made several trips to the bathroom (I don’t understand their fascination with porta potties).

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Jeremy would make a very cute little cowboy. πŸ™‚

There was also a rodeo ‘clown’. He did some random funny things like sing songs to people in the audience, he hid in a big barrel in the arena while the other guys were riding their horses or chasing the cows. The act that we took pictures of though was when he took two cowboys and laid them on the ground right next to a ramp.

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Then he got on his little motorcycle and proceeded to ride up the ramp.

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Those poor guys on the ground must have been freaking out. That ramp wasn’t anything more than a folding table, and totally could have broke or fallen over…

To me the scariest part of the rodeo was watching the guys try to stay on the bucking bulls. They didn’t stay on long, and once on the ground those guys had to get up and get out of the way fast. There was one guy that got thrown off and the bull, jumped on him about five times (at least it looked like the bull jumped on him). Thankfully the guy was able to get up and run away and jump onto the fence to get away from the bull.

We stayed to the end. The fireworks at the end of the rodeo really spooked the horses. The horses in the corral behind the arena ran back and forth in the corral as if they were trying to run away from the loud scary bright light, but there was nowhere for them to run.

When we left the rodeo there were officers directing traffic and they directed Kyle towards the city center and they directed Debby and myself toward the highway, so we had to take the long way home. We got home, and unloaded the kids, and I just love seeing them all tuckered out like this:

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How Many Babies?

This is a conversation that I had with Dinah today.

Dinah: Mommy? How come your belly isn’t flat enough to have two babies in there?
Me: Heavenly Father decides how many babies go in my belly.
Dinah: What?
Me: Heavenly Father decides how many babies go in my belly.
Dinah: Heavenly Father decides how many babies go in our bellies? {Pause} I know that’s true.

That made me smile. πŸ™‚

Tyra’s ninth birthday

Today is Tyra’s ninth birthday. Eve, a friend of hers, came over after church to wish her a happy birthday, and that turned into inviting her and her family over for dinner. Her family declined this time, but said that she could stay. So she stayed, and while our kids were whining about how they didn’t like what I made for dinner, Eve liked it very much and was looking at the others like they were nuts for complaining. Also when Kyle imitated the kids exaggerated whining, Eve laughed out loud so hard. I guess her parents don’t act like that. But perhaps, her parents don’t have to act like that because their kids don’t act like that, I don’t know.

Tyra requested strawberry shortcake for her cake again this year, and so that is what I made.

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Eve shared a chair at the table with Tyra. We have other dining chairs, but they are buried in the garage at the moment.

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After dinner and just as we were getting ready to serve the cake, Eve’s brother and a couple of her sisters came over to collect her and take her home. We invited them to stay just a few minutes to eat cake too, and so they did before heading home again.

Brooke, another of Tyra’s friends, came down the street to wish her a happy birthday and bring her a birthday present, which was exciting for Tyra as well. Brooke couldn’t stay long enough for cake, so she dropped off the present and headed back home.

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It’s an owl shaped small purse that I saw at the Girl Scout shop, and (without planning) it actually matches a t-shirt that Tyra earned for selling 500+ boxes of Girls Scout cookies.

Next she opened a present that Kyle asked me to pick up while I was out grocery shopping last night. Tyra had been asking for a watch, and so I picked one out for her.

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Watches, in those funky shaped packages are difficult to wrap, by the way. πŸ˜›

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Last, she opened the present from her friend Brooke.

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And she finished up the evening by reading the card that Great Grandpa Tom and Great Grandma Kathy sent her.

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