My Aunts and Uncles and Grandparents

I'm gonna post family photos. Really.

It's been a re-e-e-e-e-e-eally long time since I posted my family photos.  So I am going to start putting up old ones and backdating.  Look forward to some very outdated family moments!  But first, enjoy these recent shots:

Gotta love a cowboy and a schoolgirl/Spiderman/pirate. No, this isn't a Halloween photo.  Just any old day at my house.

My mom, myself and my daughter at LDS General Conference.

My kindergartener recently told me all about the birth of his younger brother, three years ago.  I was impressed with his memory, even up to the part about how Daddy bought a new carseat in a big box.  (It was an emergency purchase while I was at the hospital, because baby came two weeks early after a yard equipment mishap and we didn't have all our baby stuff yet.) My kindergartener's understanding of the birth process is so-so.

After realizing how much torture it was to have two kids in two separate baseball/softball leagues at once last spring, we put our daughter in fall softball this year so we could have one little league team to attend at a time.

With a whole heck of a lot of encouragement from mom, my kids finished the Library Summer Reading Challenge and won a free day at the Museum of Natural History. Why do I have to nag my kids to read?  My parents used to have to enforce limits on my reading when I was a kid, by making me put my book away at the table or stop reading and go to sleep.  I guess bookwormishness is not hereditary.

We had a bumper crop of apples this year.  It was the first time the apples trees we planted when we moved in to our house really produced.  I'm glad we went with dwarf trees.  We have enough! Even our crabapple tree, as it turns out, produces delicious, golf ball-sized fresh apples.  We bought a dehydrator to attempt to deal with all of the excess.  I learned that making fruit leather is hard.  The Internet really failed me.  Why are all the people who know how to make fruit leather posting such vague, unhelpful instructions on their blogs?  It is a good thing we had so many apples to experiment with, because it wasn't until after several tries that we were able to make anything sort of edible with the dehydrator.

First Day of Kindergarten

The night before, his older siblings gave him so much advice that my previously calm child got worked up into a fret.  Then the big kids tried to comfort him by tucking him into bed with his stuffed animals.

But by the next morning he was over it.  He was the first to wake up and get dressed, no assistance needed and lots of enthusiasm.

At school breakfast, first day:

Kindergarten has been a hit.  He walks up to me and says things like, "azul" or "S-E-E" to show off what he is learning.

#40YearsYoung Family Portraits

Reflecting on Reflections

When my kids complain that they are bored during the summer, I often encourage them to do projects for the annual PTA Reflections contest. There are a bunch of arts categories and a child can submit to each category, so there is potential to keep them occupied for a long time with this.  I have also learned over the years that while droves of children at my kids' school submit drawings and photos, very few compete in categories like music or film.  My kids tend to come home from Reflections night well-decorated with medals, since they are often among the only children at the school to submit a project to one of the less popular categories. 

I just helped them turn in their projects.  This could be the year that they learn the hard life lesson that you don't always win.  Most of their submissions this year happen to be from the high competition categories.  

Here are last year's submissions:

My daughters song (sung) and my son's song (improvised on the piano).  (I set them to random kid-created video footage.)

My daughter's poem:

My daughter's multi-media sculpture:

My son's sculpture (just clay).

My kindergartner spent several weeks (in very short sessions to accommodate his short attention span) making this 10 second video:



In contrast, my daughter, on the night Reflections projects were due, became extremely motivated when she realized that her younger brother had a video to submit and she did not, so she whipped this out:

Just a bunch of photos of kids being cute and stuff

Why do we buy toys?

Showers are pretty much his favorite thing.

His "I like to crawl over people and pets" phase. Big brother was not a fan.

More from that phase...

Potty training was exhausting.  For both of us.

My three-year-old orders mac and cheese.

Interview with a Three-Year-Old

For a library art contest about things underground.

Yes, he had permission to play on the police officer's motorcycle.

Dancin'

My five-year-old made this sculpture of me.  Looks just like me!

Self-Portrait

Mom-and-Me Girl Scout Camp

 Putting on a show with her cousins.