Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Happy Memorial Day

We had a fun Memorial Day.  Gram was able to get away for a few days so she spent the weekend with us. Somehow the kids conned her into buying more squirt guns and we had a water gun fight with neighbors.  We're lucky to have fun neighbors that can roll with the punches!
The pool opened up so we froze in the water with friends. Ellie was the only one who stayed in the water the whole time.  The big kids were too cold to stick it out!

Ben should know better than to go after daddy with the hose!
We ended the night with snow cones, sparklers, pop its and smoke bombs with some of the neighborhood kids. They finally made it to bed around 9:30pm and we didn't hear a peep out of them.  




Monday, May 30, 2016

Friday


We had a busy Friday last week.  A friend and I took the little ones to an open gym at a gymnastics facility.  They loved it.  Once Zach discovered the rope, he was hooked. Ben and Sam got to hang out with dad and a friend at home.

After a group lunch, we swapped kids and I took the older ones to play putt putt and get some ice cream.  It was the first time 3 of the 4 of them had ever played so it was a looong game, but I think they all had fun.  Ben even won a free game for next time.  
I'm glad the kids will have every day all summer long to play with the neighborhood kids, but I'm going to miss going places and having the whole place to ourselves.  Yet another plus to homeschooling!

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Its done!

Jon takes care of updating our landscaping every year for a mothers day present.  We had a crazy mothers day weekend this year so the landscaping got delayed a bit. He was able to get it done over the weekend and it looks great. He was able to move a tree away from the porch which I think opens everything up.  It looks like a whole new yard.

Monday, May 23, 2016

Serenade

I love hearing them sing!

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Boise sucks!

Its that time again.  Corrie left for Boise this morning. She'll be gone most of the summer, come home then leave again for a week.  It sucks not having her around, especially when it sinks in for the kids that she wont be here to have lunch with every week anymore.  We told Ellie and Zach they wont see aunt Corrie for a while, but its obvious they don't understand what a while means. Thank goodness for Skype, Facebook and texting to make this somewhat bearable!

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Bowling

We signed up for the kids bowl free program again this summer.  We took advantage of our first free games last week.  The kids did great.  They all bowled their best games ever.  They're all looking forward to going back for more practice.  They have been promised ice cream if they can improve on these scores at the end of the summer.

Monday, May 16, 2016

Moving up

Sam was very excited to start first grade last fall.  He took school, especially math, very seriously. He usually did more math pages than necessary each day.  After he fixed any incorrect problems he made sure to erase the x marks because he didn't want that to stop him from going to second grade. He actually finished his math at the beginning of April.  Because we started early last August, and they did some extra school stuff at night for a couple weeks, they finished school on April 28th. We are officially on summer break!  We still have to have their portfolios reviewed to get the official ok to move to 2nd and 5th grade, but I don't see any problems getting that done. We're off to enjoy summer, assuming we don't get any more snow like we did yesterday!

Friends

We love spending time with friends.

Monday, May 9, 2016

Dough

Our favorite pizza place gives the kids some pizza dough to play with while they wait for the food.  It always seems to end up on Zachs face, in his hair, in his mouth and up his nose!

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Monday, May 2, 2016

9 years, 8 months

Every day for the past 9 years and 8 months, we have changed diapers.  Every. Single. Day.  Its been a long and expensive 9 years and 8 months! We finally have a big boy and no longer need to change diapers all day every day.
We've been talking to Zach a lot recently about using the potty, wearing underwear etc, but he just didn't care. We've had him in pull ups, set timers to go potty, bribed him like crazy and nothing worked.  Finally, 8 days ago, he kept his pull up dry all day.  We went for it last Monday and put him in underwear.  He went all week long with no accidents!  Its been amazing. He's not ready to go all night yet, but I can totally handle 1 diaper or pull up for night time.  He gets bummed when he has to take his underwear off at night so I'm guessing he'll pick up the night time thing pretty quickly.  Its amazing how much time is freed up during the day.  This is by far my favorite milestone!