This past spring Ash was so excited to be able to join the "big kid" ranks in our family and try out her soccer skills. We now officially have three soccer players and one basketball player. Sometime around that magical age of 8 we let our kids begin playing on a sports team. And even then they can only play one sport a year, and with soccer's double seasons, we've had to say only one season . . . spring or fall (except we made an exception last fall and allowed Nate to play).
After watching Nate and Kiersten play soccer and having Nate coach her a few times in the backyard, she settled on soccer and boy was she was she fun to watch. That girl has more energy and was in constant motion tracking that ball down. Sadly she never scored a goal but came close a dozen times. After the last game of the season, a competition coach approached Tyler and Ash and tried to recruit her to play on his competition team. This was only her first season!! We had to turn him down. I just want her to have fun and not feel the pressure to win. I also did not want our summer spent doing soccer. Summer is family time and I'm not going to have anything intrude on it.
I made the mistake of putting Alex's wrapped presents out on the mantel when I got out Ty's presents for Father's Day. It's been a LONG week!
We had also hidden a present in the shed and several times he "discovered" it and came to find me and excitedly tell me all about it.
The big day finally arrived. Ash was kind enough to keep him in his room until we came to get him.
The big present was his favorite, a garage sale toy that we commissioned Aunt Gwen to find. For several months now he's been putting his play dishes in my big oven or I'll open up my pot drawer to find his little pot and lid in there. He's been baking and doing dishes and microwaving to his heart's content.
I've been asking him for several weeks now what he'd like to eat for his big day. All he requested was some Marshmallow Matey's and chocolate milk. Done! And I threw in some french toast for us.
We went hiking up to Donut Falls in Big Cottonwood canyon. It was a fairly easy hike until we got to the actual falls. Some people were climbing up the rocks to see the hole the falls goes through. I told my kids we were staying put although we did cross the river and venture up the steep dirt trail.
And on the way home we spotted a moose. That was a rare treat.
Alex kept telling us he wanted to go to a park and we kept telling him we had gone to a park (hiking and Silver Lake for lunch). That wasn't good enough. He finally told us, "No, a playground park!" So we obliged before really heading for home, dinner, cake, and ice cream.
I'm not even sure how the subject came up as we were talking over the fence, but before I knew it my brother-in-law's mother was telling me all about her solar oven and wonder oven. And I was intrigued enough to listen and make some bread dough to try them out for myself.
Looks pretty good, doesn't it. The solar oven is pretty remarkable and extremely easy to use. And I liked that my kitchen stayed cool on this rather hot summer day. This contraption is definitely going on my wish list so I can try a myriad of other things in it.
The wonder oven was . . . well . . . weird. That tote does NOT contain the actual oven. IT IS THE OVEN! Looking inside after the dough has "baked" for approximately 5 hours. It still looks like dough, doesn't it? Bread after sliding it out of the can.
That's got to be the strangest looking loaf of bread I've ever seen. I don't think I'll be setting up my bake sale table outside anytime soon. I mean would you eat bread that's sat in a plastic container and looks like the can it was baked in?
Well, Ash gave it a try
. . . and a thumbs up.
Surprisingly it tasted just like my original homemade bread only a little denser. There wasn't a crumb left after dinner.
Sixteen years of marriage or sixteen years old? :)
Sixteen years of marriage sure seems like a long time. But as we were celebrating at Red Lobster, an older couple came in and was seated somewhat close to us. The waiter asked them if they were celebrating anything special that day and the lady replied that it was their anniversary.
For the past couple of summers I've made my kids brainstorm and come up with some goals they'd like to accomplish.
The first summer was okay and I knew we needed some improvement.
Last summer was a joke. Tyler and I took off for 10 days right from the get go and I don't think I ever got a hold of summer like I wanted to. We were pretty much up to our eyeballs in yard stuff and trying desperately to get grass in the backyard before school started and I lost all my helpers.
THIS YEAR . . . I made sure things were going to be different. The first week of summer was a freebie since we took off for Phoenix immediately. Last week was our first "real" week of summer and I think it went rather smoothly.
First, I am a chart maker. I love, Love, LOVE charts. It helps our family run so much more smoother and frees up my brain cells. We have a
Family Home Evening Chart
a Sunday Dishes Chart,
a Kids Weekly Schedule Chart,
a Saturday Job Chart and Zones Chart.
And now we have
Summer Dishes and Weeding Charts,
a Daily Jobs Chart,
and their usual Weekly Responsibility Chart that I've tweaked for summer.
Are you a little overwhelmed? I started thinking about this the first of May and didn't really get it to where I wanted it until 6 weeks later. I've put a lot of thought into how to make this summer work the way I wanted it to.
So here's the breakdown of how it works.
GOALS The previous summers the kids had physical, mental, spiritual, and musical goals they had to accomplish. They earned money for these to go toward school clothes and supplies for the school year.
I still wanted them to do these but this year I cut out the musical and made it part of their daily requirements and added a scripture/journal goal where they have to read their scriptures at least 4 days a week and write in their journal 1 day OR read their scriptures 3 days and write in their journal the other two.
They came to me with goals they wanted to do and how much they thought it would be worth to them. From there we talked about each one and changed some. They can work on these goals whenever they have free time and if they accomplish EVERY goal by the end of the summer, I'm throwing in an extra $20.
DAILY REQUIREMENTS This part works pretty much like we do it through the school year (I don't think I've ever gone into detail on how this works and it warrants a blog post all by itself.)
Music: Everyone is required to practice music, either the piano or the violin.
Housework: Everyone has a daily job to do to keep the house clean. During the school year we usually only do jobs on Saturday, but I figured since they're home all day my house is going to get dirtier. I've broken down our "major" Saturday jobs into smaller chunks that should only take 10 or 15 minutes to complete. Between the four kids the house gets thoroughly cleaned about every 8 or 9 days.
Dishes: During the summer I get really tired of always cleaning the kitchen. It seems as soon as I clean it someone comes right behind me and the cycle starts all over. I decided to delegate the kitchen duties so they would realize what a pain it is to keep clean and hopefully learn to clean up after themselves more. The kitchen duties are unloading the dishwasher, loading the dishwasher, wiping off counters, and sweeping. We change these weekly.
Weeding: This summer has been very quiet with no yard contractors. We pretty much have some manageable flower beds that still get weeds. So I divided up the yard into different zones with each kid responsible for a zone. We divide these up every week because I know some beds tend to get more weeds than others.
Alex: This past year poor Al has had me all to himself as a playmate and sadly I have neglected some aspects of his learning. Most of my kids love to read which I attribute to reading to them when they were younger, going to the library A LOT, seeing mom and dad reading. I've fallen off the bandwagon with Alex and reading to him. I tried doing it before naps but didn't do so well. So I decided to have the kids take turns reading to him this summer. SO FAR? He has loved it and most of the time he won't let them stop at just one or two or even three books. It's been a win-win for everyone.
Khan: What's Khan Academy? It's an online non-profit organization devoted to learning. With over 4200 videos on just about anything you want to learn plus practice problems, it is a complete self-paced learning environment. Tyler and I both want our kids to be self learners and think this is a great way to motivate them. To earn a checkmark they all have to earn 5000 points in one day which Nathan said was very attainable within 15-30 minutes. Well, after several days Kiersten was really struggling to get that 5000 points without spending several hours. Turns out she was learning some harder things so we tweaked it and made it 5000 points OR 30 minutes, whichever came first. Last Item: The last item was what I thought they needed to work on for the summer. For instance Kiersten needs to complete some Young Women goals, so she needs to work on YW every day. Nate needs to work on the R sound for speech; Erik needs to get better at brushing his teeth since he just got braces, he also has a slight lisp he needs to correct for speech, and needs to have better handwriting; Ash needs to work at keeping her bedroom cleaner. At the end of the day they have to get it signed off by either Tyler or me. This ensures that they are held accountable for doing the items on their list. During the school year they earn money this way, but I didn't want to pay them for goals and for daily requirements. So we made this part a point system.
They get a point for each requirement completed . . . Kiersten, Nate, and Ash can earn 6 points a day, Erik has 8. Potentially they can earn 1430 for the whole summer between the 4 of them. Since I knew that there would be lazy days and weeks of girls camp, scout camp, time at grandma's, I set a total of 1000 points for the entire summer that they ALL have to earn. I then let them decide together on a fun activity to do if they reached their goal which is a day at Cherry Hill (did this a couple of years ago as part of a family reunion and they all loved it).
With week one down I think this has been a huge success so far. There have been points missed and some lazy days but I like the two-part system that makes them all accountable to each other . . . meaning no one can simply decide to not do anything all summer without hurting everyone but yet they still have their individual goals they're working on.
I already mentioned Nate and Ash's Presidential Fitness awards and Ashlyn's school awards. That was just the beginning. Kiersten came home with the Chess Champion trophy. A chess tournament was held after school for anyone who wanted to participate, and she was the only girl to do it and brought home the grand prize. She must get it from her mom who has bragging rights as the 6th Grade Chess Champion in 1988. Okay, I really can't take credit for her chess genius because her dad has spent countless hours playing and coaching all the kids and he doesn't let them win just to be nice.
Kiersten and Erik both received end-of-school awards yet neither knew what they were getting. Kiersten received outstanding science student even though she tells me she really doesn't like science. Must have fooled some teacher. She also scored a perfect score on her math core test. Erik got one for outstanding math student. Yep. From that same teacher we really couldn't stand.
Nate's awards included perfect attendance which he's pretty sure they got wrong. We never have perfect attendance in our family. Then there was a superintendent's award, the core testing awards which he scored a 100% on both math and English and missed one question on science, and one for some essay they wrote online (his report card mentioned that he scored the highest out of the class on that).
It seems like the teachers really try to hand out enough awards that every kid will receive something and feel like a winner. But there were those few that went home empty-handed and I felt bad for them.
And in case awards assemblies weren't enough, we had an orchestra concert and an 8th grade talent show to attend. My kids never cease to amaze me with their enthusiasm to participate in events that showcase their talents. You would have never caught me doing anything like that. Performing in front of crowds terrified me at that age and still do to a degree.
Nate beginning orchestra. Kiersten had a solo in the middle of one of their songs. Listen at around 2:09 for her special part. She has her back to the camera and is sitting closest to the teacher.
Kiersten on the violin and her friend Trenton on the viola. I'm always happy when I make it through to the last day of school. And to add to all the craziness, my little sister and her family moved in with us for several days until their house closed. Alex was on top of the world that week with live-in friends.
I would like to say "Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start" but I'm not feeling that ambitious right now. (And yes, I did just quote The Sound of Music.) The weather's been gorgeous and I haven't really wanted to sit in front of a computer. But let me just say that I had absolutely NOTHING on my calendar today and it has been wonderful. So I . . .
Ran my 3 miles.
Ground some wheat into flour so I could make pancakes. I have to have wheat pancakes with some wheat germ, flax seed, and oats thrown in there.
Finished planting my garden in the midst of some very ugly weeds. We shall see what decides to survive and thrive. So far my garden has surprised me with potatoes. I planted them in March and got them up for good after two months and let the weeds get the better of that area. Then one day I happened to notice a small potato plant popping through the ground and got so excited.
Read a little in my book Same Kind of Different As Me and enjoying it.
Made some Lemon Rice Krispie Squares from Pinterest.
And watched kids play in the splash pad we got up and going today -- just in time for some hot weather.
One more thing . . . this kid became an official teenager several weeks ago
A link to how I started this blog and why the funny blog name.
"It is not … enough for us to be convinced of the gospel; we must act and think so that we are converted by it. In contrast to the institutions of the world, which teach us to know something, the gospel of Jesus Christ challenges us to become something. … Charity is something one becomes.” --Dallin H. Oaks, “The Challenge to Become,” Ensign, Nov. 2000, 32–34.
We become what we want to be by CONSISTENTLY being what we want to be each day. --Richard G. Scott, "The Transforming Power of Faith and Character," Ensign, Nov. 2010.
After the last game of the season, a competition coach approached Tyler and Ash and tried to recruit her to play on his competition team. This was only her first season!! We had to turn him down. I just want her to have fun and not feel the pressure to win. I also did not want our summer spent doing soccer. Summer is family time and I'm not going to have anything intrude on it.
