Last day of school 2009-2010

Yesterday M&M and Luke's classes had awards programs for the parents. They both got a number of awards for the work that they did in school this year. Luke's class also performed some plays that the students had put together and learned. Today is M&M's last day of Elementary School!! I can't believe that she will be moving on to Middle School next year - it makes me feel older! The kids have all had good teachers this year and have enjoyed learning from them. M&M's teacher is retiring this year - she has been teaching for over 20 years! She was quite emotional at the awards ceremony yesterday and I'm sure today will be a hard day for her! Blondie's class did not do a program for the parents so I picked up the kids from school today so that I could get a picture of her with her teacher.

M&M with Mrs. H
Luke with Ms. T
Blondie with Mrs. S

Last Memorial Day Reunion

This year was the last Memorial Day reunion for DH's mom's extended family. DH's parents came into town to attend it and spend a couple of days with us. We were actually surprised at how poorly attended it was for being the last reunion. I guess that families have just been slowly checking out over the years until it hasn't been a priority anymore to attend.

I will definitely miss the BBQ sandwiches that are always served for lunch and the homemade ice cream served afterwards! Plus I will miss hearing the family songs that have become tradition as well as visiting the Brigham City Cemetery afterwards. I will also miss the Perry City park which has some huge shade trees, fun swings for the kids and a fun new playground that is the perfect size for the little ones!
Probably one of our last opportunities to rub shoulders with Elder Nelson. His first wife was a sister of DH's grandfather.

Jealous

On Saturday, the lady in my ward whose baby was due just 2 weeks before me had her baby. She was about 3 1/2 weeks early. I am a little jealous because now she doesn't have to endure the heat that has finally hit Utah. It was also her 6th baby and 5th girl, just like us. Now I am the next one in the ward who is due and it will come down to me and my co-den leader. She is due the week after me but is scheduled to have her baby by C-section the day before my due date. It will be an interesting transition for our den after our babies are born.

In 2 weeks and one day I will be officially 37 week and will be able to have my baby at home as scheduled. So I have to hold out until then, but then I'll be ready any day! For the most part I have been feeling good and I've been able to keep up with the things I need to do. Sometimes I just have to force myself to get something done and somehow I find the energy to do it. Probably my least favorite thing to do at this point is when I have to been over to pull weeds in the garden - very uncomfortable. I also have trouble sleeping some nights when my heartburn gets bad. That is definitely one thing I am looking forward to once this baby is born - no more heartburn!

The kids' last day of school is this Friday and then we don't really have any pressing obligations until school starts up again the last week of July. I'm going to try to get the kids in swim lessons to give us something to do and help the time pass by a little quicker - and so the kids don't drive me crazy being bored at home...

Since M&M is moving on to middle school next year, she won't start school until the end of August. It will be nice to have her around to help out with Kay and the new baby for a few weeks without the other kids around. She will also be able to help get Kitty ready for kindergarten and help her catch her bus to school. We have been assigned to afternoon kindergarten this year and I'm not too excited about that. I asked if there was anyway we could switch to morning like we had requested, but I was told that this was an unusual year because just about everybody wanted morning kindergarten so they had to just randomly pick students until the classes were full. We have always had morning kindergarten in the past so it will be a different experience for us.

End of the year band concert

The school band and orchestra had their end of the year concert on Thursday, May 27th. DH's mom arrived in town earlier that day so she was able to come with us and my parents were there as well. The band has been a pretty small group, but M&M has enjoyed being in it. They have had a beginning and an advanced group this year and M&M has been playing with the advanced group. I've been a little frustrated with the band director who didn't seem to be very organized - but it is only his second year teaching at the school. Before that there wasn't a band program for several years. Next year M&M will be in the intermediate band at the Middle School. We met the band teacher at the orientation meeting a month or so ago and he seemed like a really nice guy.For next school year Blondie has expressed interest in playing the violin in the school orchestra, so we may have to look into it when school starts up for next year.

Nursery

Kay is starting to learn the Sunday routine and knows that when I get her dressed in a dress in the morning that she gets to go to nursery that day. She was telling me at breakfast this morning about the things that she does in nursery and then after she finished eating she went up to her bedroom and found her Sunday shoes and tried putting them on herself. Now she keeps asking me about when she's going to nursery - too bad our ward doesn't meet until 1:00.

Rainbow

On Friday I was outside putting some things away and looked up in the sky towards the south and saw this:

Kay knew what it was immediately and liked pointing to it and telling me it was a rainbow - she was very excited. After watching it for several minutes it slowly disappeared. Kay was quite distraught and when she went inside she went to find her dad to tell him that the rainbow was all gone.

With you

Kay likes to share things with other people - whether it is coloring, doing a puzzle, reading a book, playing outside, etc. She'll quite often say, "With you" when she wants to go somewhere with me or have me do something with her. Here is a picture I thought was cute of M&M and Kay laying together on the floor coloring.

Soccer season comes to an end

Yesterday was the last day of soccer games for this spring season. We definitely lucked out this year and had absolutely beautiful soccer weather for every single game - not too hot, not too cold and no rain or snow! We had a couple of practices where it rained a little and one that I had to end early because of thunder and lightning, but aside from that it was just perfect! It's been fun coaching Luke's team and I'm glad that my pregnancy didn't hinder me too much and I was able to carry on without any problems through the whole season. It was fun seeing the team improve throughout the year and really start to work together as a team. We ended up being undefeated the whole fall and spring seasons combined - I think we tied just 2 games and the rest were wins! I had a few really skilled players for this age and it was fun to be able to coach them and help teach them improve their skills. And I think that the girls on the team liked having a girl for a coach - which isn't too common around here. I wouldn't mind coaching again, but next year I will be taking a break with the new baby coming along here shortly.

M&M's team ended up losing only one game between the fall and spring seasons - and quite a few tied games. She's had fun playing on a coed team instead of an all-girls team. She has definitely learned to be more aggressive and it's been fun to watch. Right now we are debating what team to put her on for next year. She could stick with her current team because quite a few of them are going to stick together and the coach (who lives a couple of doors from us) is going to coach again. The only problem with the team is that the coach can't make it to a lot of the practices because of his work schedule so another parent runs them and the other problem is that most of the team lives in another part of the city and so they practice closer to where everyone else lives - about a 15 minute drive from our house. There is another boy in our ward that M&M is friends with that plays on a team that lives closer to us so we might switch her to that team - unfortunately both of their coaches might not be back to coach next year... We've decided to leave the decision up to M&M - and we have to register her by the 10th of this month.

Cheering on M&M!
For Luke's last game we had no substitutes and it was the warmest game of the year. Thankfully the kids all played really well and we ended up winning 5-0. During the second half I switched around their positions a bit to give the fowards and midfielders a break by putting them on as defenders for a bit. Luke graciously agreed to play goalie for us for the second half because we only had one of our regular goalies there at the game and he played goalie for the first half. Luke didn't even touch the ball once with his hands - although he did kick it once or twice.
Blondie has also decided that she would like to try playing soccer next year so it will definitely be a busy time in the fall. There is a team in our neighborhood that is coed and she knows the coach and several of the players, but I think that she has decided that she would like to try out an all-girls team - at least for the first year.

Summertime preview

I have a feeling that I'm going to be spending a lot of time watching this this summer:
Kay absolutely loved playing in the water. She didn't cry or whine once when she slipped and fell or got water in her face. The amazing thing was that she had just gotten up from her nap and after a few minutes was ready to just jump in and have fun with the rest of the kids!

Garden update - 6/2/10

Last Friday I was able to get out and do some more planting. Some of the things that I planted several weeks ago still hadn't come up at that point so I did some double planting of those things just in case the first plantings don't sprout for some reason or other. I ended up planting some cantaloupe, carrots, onions, lettuce, broccoli, corn, watermelon, pumpkin, cucumber, and radishes.

After some more rain this weekend and then last night, I finally made it out to see if anything had sprouted yet. This is what I have sprouting so far: lettuce, broccoli, a few corn seeds, one of the pumpkins, and some cucumber. These were all from the original plantings that I did a couple of weeks ago so I am excited!

On Saturday I took some time to spray the apple trees for codling moth. Hopefully we can stay on top of the sprayings so we can get a good apple crop again this year.