Back to School Traditions

The last couple years we have made homemade pizzas the night before school started.  I try not to do things too over the top because it stresses me out way too much.  I have seen people do elaborate back to school dinners and celebrations, but this seems enough for us.  A little low key, but hopefully something the kids will remember.  I have really been trying to cook homemade and eat as clean as possible and even though I'm not much of a baker I loved making homemade dough for their pizzas. I even doubled the recipe and tried freezing half of the dough to do another night.  

Tacy helped with a lot of the prep and chopped up a lot of the veggies in preparation.  It's one of my many goals to have my kids comfortable in the kitchen and the older kids are really starting to be able to cook and make some things on their own.  Since it can be a bit overwhelming to have all the kids in cooking with me sometimes, I try to have them take turns helping me.  It is a great time for me to spend some time one on one time and they are actually getting really helpful.  And I hope that in the process they are learning and cultivating good eating habits.

We actually had to do our back to school dinner 2 nights before school started because I am in charge of memberships for the PTA and my big night is back to school night which was the day before school started.  I spent quite a few days getting ready for that and then spent most the evening getting people signed up.

The Monday before school started we took the kids to the temple with some ice cream and spent some time there before heading home to do back to school blessings for each of them.

I love this picture, because at this point Cardon was upset about something and refused to smile for our family temple shot.  I am sure we will laugh at this in years to come so I'm actually glad we didn't get he perfect temple shot.  We ended the night with going over our theme for the school year which is "Do Your Best."  We talked about what that means and how to accomplish that when it comes to school activities.  I have it posted where the kids can see it and have referred to it already with some of their concerns with school, so hopefully it helps them.

End of Summer...I Promise!

Finishing up posting randoms from our summer before I finally get onto school photos.

I feel like I'm always posting pictures of the boys on the counter but they always want to help with everything!  And since we we spend a lot of time in the kitchen preparing meals, it seems like they are right there with me.  I never thought the amount of counter space meant room to prepare meals and a place for the kids to sit.  No matter how many times I try to get them to sit on a chair, they always end up right in the middle of everything.

One afternoon Cardon colored and cut out some animals and then we glued them onto sticks.  The boys had a lot of fun making a puppet show.

Cardon is so into card games lately and is always asking if I can play one with him.  Luckily on this day Chambers volunteered.  Cardon was teaching him to play "war" this time.

We are finally in the process of getting our basement ready to rent and when we found the paint "buy one get one free" we stocked up on 16 gallons.  The redo started to feel pretty real after buying all this paint.  The boys were very involved in picking paint samples to help us make our color choices.

Cardon and Chambers sing all the time now.  Here is a shot of him singing to Jer.

One last ice cream run with friends before back to school.

Prentice has taught the boys how to care for her babies while she is not home.  When I came out from getting ready for church I found them both feeding the babies before we left.  Hopefully this will help them be quite the attentive dads someday!

Fun with Family

We got to spend some time with my brother, Anton and his family right before the kids headed back to school.  We went to an old ghost town right outside of Zion's National Park named Grafton which was really cool and different.  First we visited the cemetery and I was reminded of how common in was for people to die of a young age back then.  Apparently the town was settled by Mormon pioneers, but it wasn't easy for them.  Floods, sickness, and tragedies seemed very common for them. The kids had a lot of fun reading the gravestones and learning about this town.  After the cemetery, we visited the actual town that still had a few building standing.  I love learning the history of places like this and envisioning what it might have been like to be alive back then.  Definitely a different life then we live now!  It was also beautiful there being right outside of Zion's.

Cute group shot of all the kids!

After the ghost town we decided to grab lunch and head to Grandma and Grandpa's pool to cool off.

We got really ambitious after lunch and decided to plan one more activity for the day.  We wanted to take everyone on one of our favorite petroglyph hikes.  Even though we have done it a few times we enjoy it every time.  It was a pretty hot time of day and luckily the hike isn't too long.  We looked around for a while and then headed back.

That night we ordered Mexican food, put a movie on for the kids and Jer and I played some cards with Anton and Liz.  I feel liked we packed in a lot of fun stuff in a couple short days.  Good times for everyone!

July 24th up north

Seems like the last couple years we have gone up north to hang out with Anton, Liz, Lilly, and Claire for the holiday.

Friday we headed to the zoo.  The kids had so much fun as usual.  It's such a great family activity for all of us.  The had a special dinosaur exhibit throughout the zoo which was a lot of fun for the little boys.  Chambers seemed a little grumpy and tired from what we thought was staying up too late playing with cousins, but figured out after we left he was sick when he threw up right as we were pulling up for lunch.  He ended up with a fever and once the medicine kicked in he did good the rest of the day.

That night we cooked out and got ready for our fireworks show.  I love hanging out with Anton and Liz and I love that my kids get to spend time with their cousins.  I am sure we will make tons more fun memories in the future.

I was a little worried about how Chambers would handle the fireworks and as soon as the noise started he kept saying it was too loud and laid down facing away from them and was pretty silent from them on.

Liz did a great job getting tons of fireworks and keeping the show going well into the night.

Saturday we went on a fun hike which ended with Cardon falling on his face.  Other then that it was fun to be out and active.

Our usual blurry picture with our phone that has clouded over.

Sunday we dropped off Truman and Prentice to hang out with Grandma Linda for a week at the cabin in Logan.  I was excited for them but also very sad to see them go.  By the end, Tacy and I were both in tears and I just had to leave before it got worse.