1st two weeks of school

These last 2 weeks the kids have been back at school.

I gave them some of their favorite snacks on Friday to commemorate the occasion.

These were met with plenty of silent munching...but not much else.   

I informed them the proper way to respond if they would ever like a repeat of said gestures would be an expression of thanks.  

Some thanks was mumbled.

You can see how excited Taylor is for school by his picture.

He's actually pretty happy with his classes this year. He has Calculus, Physics, Art (which he said his teacher is uptight and thinks they should all be some kind of awesome artist), Language Arts, Honors American History and PE.

He had to transfer out of Cross country for PE when he didn't make the time trials. His leg has been giving him a hard time but finally a year later he seems to be able to run some, just not enough to qualify for the team. Dissapointing but he plans to keep training until track season and hopefully be able to compete then. (I'm actually glad because he wasn't conditioned enough to keep up with the crazy runs the team was doing and I didn't want him to reinjure himself)

Jacob is not happy with my picture taking...so this picture will be the photo to document for all time Jacob's first day of high school.

Jacob has Algebra 2, biology, language arts, Spanish 1, PE and Engineering.  He says he's not much into plants and animals in biology but he likes experiments and blowing things up. I'm thinking he might like Engineering.

He's been doing great on getting his homework done...how do I know...he leaves evidence of it all around the house at all times. I guess thats better than the alternative, not getting homework done. 

Ashley smiled for me!  (I promised her cookies after school too)

Her new teacher's name is Ms. Cavioli and she seems happy with her  and her class. 

Now that the kids are all occupied at school for part of the day I feel like I have a little more time to breath and focus on things that I haven't been doing like visiting teaching, exercising, blogging, connecting with friends and so forth. 

I planned a mommy breakfast, and a gym day, visiting teaching appointments but then life started getting busy with the start up of seminary, piano lessons, plans for 100 mile club, book fair, back to school night plus buying school supplies, trying to get a handle on house cleaning and so forth. I started getting overwhelmed so back in my shell I sort of went to try and feel on top of things again. 

One night we had a Court of Honor for the boys. 

Jacob got his Star.  

We are proud of him. He is actually 5 merit badges and a project away from being Eagle though we have to wait out the time periods to advance. I know now that he's in high school it gets harder and harder...so we'll keep working on it now. 

Friday we all went to King's first football game. 

Jacob actually went with Taylor and Ashley and Jeff and I hung out together. 

Thats been happening more lately...the boys hang out together away from us. It's actually nice to see them walking home together from school, talking about people and classes and upcoming things. Taylor is generous with his friends which makes me a proud mama.  This last weekend Jacob went to his first church dance and Taylor got to go with him and be his wingman...the night before we went as a family to the movies and a girl that Taylor knows was there with her friends and Jacob was Taylor's wingman so they could go sit next to the girls. 

(Hee hee how nice to have a brother that's a best friend too.) 

Saturday night we went to Ooka, which is a Japanese restaurant where they cut up all your food right in front of you and cook it. Jacob complained the whole time that we dragged him there...

Here the guy is getting the onion stack ready to light on fire...

There it goes it was an onion volcano!

Jacob complained and said he didn't like the food, the place was a waste of time... but he seemed to have no problem eating his food.   

(I think we're entering the "I hate everything" and the "I'm too cool for this" phase now)

This last week Jeff and I went to chaperone a group of Young Women while they were ice skating. 

Jen Williamson is the young women's president and I've been enjoying working with her. You can tell she loves the girls and is trying her best even though her husband is the young men's president and they have a 1 year old baby! Talk about busy.

I actually didn't want to get on the ice...I have only been ice skating once...20  years ago and I was nervous about it but Ashley had never gone before...

She was brave but she kept falling so I figured I'd better be out there with her even though I didn't feel like a big help. 

Emily and the girls were really sweet to help Ashley out if she needed it. 

The young women had fun and were brave enough to skate even though some of them had never done it before either. 

After awhile Ashley got better and better...

but she still fell a lot. Every time she got up and would just keep going. 

Until the last lap. She fell and this time it hurt and wasn't feeling better. 

She had a hard time getting off the ice and was worried she broke her leg (I knew she didn't break it even though it was hurt). 

I took her to the doctors the next day and he said she pulled a muscle pretty bad and she has to stay off of it as much as possible for the next week. He said it's really slow healing (4-6 weeks).

So she's on crutches right now. She's the hit of recess because everyone wants to try out her "cute little" crutches but they are annoying and she has to have help from everyone with her backpack. 

I am a parent coach for 100 mile club, it started this morning, so while I'm helping with it shes just sitting there watching. 

Sorry Ashley...Taylor knows how you feel. 

This last Saturday while Jacob and Taylor were off to their first dance, Jeff and I went with Steve, Tahna, Josh, Ron Richards and his kids and grandkids to the Nebraska, UCLA game at the Rose Bowl. 

Ron's kids and grandkids flew out from Nebraska for the game and we were excited to go and root their team on for them.

Even though we felt a bit like traitors for rooting against our local team there were plenty of red shirts who were there with us. 

It was funny to me how easy it was to tell who you supported...either you were red or blue and there was no hiding it ;)

Once we got there we had a bit of a walk from the car and an hour wait before kick-off. 

Jeff offering Ronnie a piggyback ride. Lucky for both of them he didn't take him up on his offer. 

In the stands waiting for the game to start you could see where the red ended and the blue began (in the shadows). The Nebraska fans were given all the seats on the end zones. 

It was an interesting way to watch the game. You couldn't tell how many yards they covered very well from our angle so we had to watch the scoreboard. 

The big screen with the replays and all that was behind our heads, so we had to crane around to see what was happening. 

When the fans got excited this is all I would see. I learned to jump up and stand on the bench. 

For most of the game it was back and forth, a tight game until the last quarter. 

In the end Nebraska never rallied and UCLA won 36 to 30.  Thats OK it was fun to go and we enjoyed both the game and the company. 

When we picked up the boys we heard from other people that Jacob was quite the dancer and had no problem having fun at the dance. When I asked the boys about the dance they said "It was OK" The fact that I didn't hear complaining and that the boys were coming home planning dance moves for the future was a good sign :)

The next day (Sunday) we had everyone over to celebrate Jacob being ordained to be a teacher. 

Its a nice excuse to get family together. 

Angela and Robert even came out from Camarillo and it was nice to see them. 

I've found you throw food out and put cousins together and they always have a good time.

The day also happened to be my birthday so Jeff got a cake and had people sing to me. 

My nice neighbor and friend also brought over a present and cupcakes! How sweet! 

The day didn't start out so great. Jeff went to early morning bishopric meetings and so I got up early to clean the house, and get food ready. 

I woke up in the morning realizing that we had put the ice-cream cake in the fridge instead of the freezer, I put the now slumped cake in the freezer trying to save it. 

Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning and I got to take the trash out and look behind me and the bag had ripped and watermelon juice is all over the carpet and floor :(

After I clean that up Ashley brought me my Ipod which was Jeff's birthday gift to me last year...she dropped it and broke the screen. It's no longer under warrantee either...I checked :(

The kids dragged their feet getting ready for church and though we were supposed to be saving people seats we got there late and had to take the front row.

We spread out and saved it for the entire time because either nobody saw us when they got there or they didn't want to hike up to the front row so we sat alone during church. 

I spend the rest of church in the young women's room getting filled in because I was missing meetings after church and then we raced home to feed everyone. 

 It was great to have family around though it meant my birthday was busy with cleaning and serving and not really about me. This was probably better since I couldn't think too much about how old I am. (Though Jeff announced it repeatedly so I couldn't forget)

The next morning I woke up to a 1/2 flat tire with a screw in it. It was too bald to fix so I spend the rest of my kid-free time getting tires replaced.  

I'm hoping the rest of this week isn't so eventful.