Cinco for Sunday

1. Snuggling with Abby  I think Sara took this picture of Abby and I.  This is a common pose for us in the afternoons.  She has been sleeping better, but her naps are still pretty much 45 minutes long to the minute.  But if it's quiet and I sit still and hold her, she'll fall back asleep immediately.  So I'll use that time to read with Sara or look through my phone or maybe, just maybe, close my own eyes.  How dare I, right?  I actually love this time. I love the way she snuggles right in and I don't intend to give this time up anytime soon.  Spoiled?  Absolutely, and I don't even care. She is going through a phase of sleeping better at night and I've been disappointed a couple of times this week because she hasn't woken up at 5 or 5:30 and come into my bed to snuggle with me.  I know it's crazy, but I know she won't do this forever, so I'm just enjoying it now.  

2. Matt's 11 year old birthday  Matt has surprisingly been really excited for his birthday this year.  Ha ha, of course he's excited every year.  He has been asking for an iPod touch so we told him if he earned half of the money, we'd pay the other half so he asked for that for his birthday.  He has worked really hard to earn his money and done extra jobs and sold rainbow band bracelets to earn it.  I've been really proud of him.  We decided to surprise him and actually buy the iPod so that he would have it when he opened his gifts.  He kept asking when we'd have to time to go buy and I tried to be really vague and say he had school and a baseball game that night and yada yada.  Needless to say, he was so excited to open the actual iPod that morning.  It was a fun surprise.

 He asked me if I could check him out of school for his birthday.  A lot of his friends had done that this year.  I was a bit surprised because it was his last week of school and they were doing a lot of fun things, but I was happy to grant his request.  He went to school in the morning and then I picked him up when I picked up Sara. We went to In-n-Out for lunch and then we came home and he plopped himself on the couch and didn't move until it was time for baseball.  I think he likes his iPod.

3. Wrecks and bruises  The kids have been riding their bikes to school again with the nice weather.  If I'm picking up the kindergarten carpool then I pick up Sara's bike and Matt and Kate ride home by themselves.  If I'm not doing the carpool, then Sara and I ride back to the school and get her bike and them.  One day we'd ridden back to the school and on the way home I challenged Matt to a race up the hill by our house.  He beat me.  I was so mad.  Now, mind you I'm pulling Abby and the trailer behind me, but still, Matt has really grown a lot this year physically.  He's up to my lips in height and he's gotten a lot stronger.  I don't like to play catch with him anymore because he throws so hard.  Anyway, at the top of the hill we stopped racing and Sara saw it as her chance to beat us.  That girl likes to win even if it's not her race, not like me at all.  So as Matt was cruising along, she tries to pass him without telling him and handlebars became entagled with knees and elbows and bikes and it was a bit ugly. They both went down. Matt was all tangled up in  his handle bars and frame.  I could see he wasn't bleeding so I focused on Sara, she almost saved herself from falling, but in the end, she didn't.  Luckily, they both tipped over on the grass or they would have had some pretty bad road rash, but they didn't.  The both, however, had deep bruises from where they hit their bikes.  I took a picture of Sara's knee and of course it doesn't do it justice.  They were ok so that was a good thing.  Sara is just too competitive for her own good!

 As I said, Matt had a baseball game on his birthday.  While they were warming up, something happened and he got hit in the face with a baseball.  I took this picture the next day after the bruise showed up.  The first night though, he had the outline of the stitches on the baseball on his lip.  All this week, every time I've looked at him I've seen his bruise and it totally looks like a mustache.  It has cracked me up all week.  He's a tough kid though and still played a great game.  

 4. School awards When I picked Sara up on her last day her teacher had had her wait in the back of the line and then pulled her aside and gave her a certificate and told her she was giving her a student of the year award.  I was so happy for her.   Sara has not loved her teacher this year because she has been pretty grumpy and kind of mean.  In fact, there have been a lot of tears about it this year.  So, I think it made her feel really good to get this little prize.  In the car she said, "I'm really going to miss my favorite teacher."  I was like, "What?!!"  Her teacher said that she has worked really hard but hasn't drawn attention to herself.  She just does her work and moves on to the next thing.  She hasn't ever gotten in trouble and is just a friend to everyone.  Why do all my kids act perfectly in school?  Is there some amount of fear that teachers instill in the students?  Would some teacher please come and tell me the secrets??

5. Carnivals and raffles  Our stake puts on a little carnival every year.  It's not great, but it's usually good weather and a fun time to chat with friends and neighbors.  Last night, was the event and this year instead of getting treats at each game, you got tickets to put into some raffle drawings.  I looked at the prizes with Matt.  There was a game table that was his first choice.  It had foosball, air hockey, pool and basketball shooting, but he noticed that a lot of other people liked it too and the ticket bucket was quickly filling so he decided that he'd be really excited to win a prize of two camping chairs and a camp stove and that bucket wasn't filling as quickly.  So he put all his tickets into that raffle.  We all played games and he'd deposit the tickets.  He put one ticket in the game table bucket and a few in a tent canopy bucket, but he quickly got his heart set on the chairs and stove.  So when they started drawing tickets, we divided up our tickets so we could each check the numbers.  They started reading the numbers and I saw I was 3 numbers away from the winning number-that was the second time that happened.  I was about to mention that and then I hear Matt yell, "I won! I won"  And he threw all of his non winning tickets all over and with all the excitement of a kid on Christmas he ran up to the announcer fist pumping the whole way.  I loved every second.  He was so genuinely excited that it made me so happy for him.  He was literally on cloud 9.  Then he got super excited when they announced the winners of the "guess how many of this item in this jar" contest.  He'd correctly guessed 92 bouncy balls.  He was totally excited, but since our family had already won, they gave them to the next closest.  I was totally ok with that.  I would not be thrilled with 92 bouncy balls flying around my house!  We walked home and Matt proudly carried his chairs and smiled the rest of the night.  It was such a great moment!

Four for Funday Sunday

1. Kate holding out on me and other Kate news  This week Kate got a very exciting surprise in the mail.  When Grandma Johnson was here Kate showed her her doll, Isabelle.  Grandma surprised her with 2 new doll outfits and matching bag.  Kate was very excited and promptly tried the new clothes on Isabelle.  It made her day for sure!

I also found out that Kate had been holding out on me on some big news.  Last week they had their Presidential Fitness testing.  She was talking a lot about how hard she was working on pull ups so after their testing I asked her how many she did and we talked about that and the sit and reach that she was 1 centimeter away from Presidential level on.  She told me about the shuttle run and that was about it.  She didn't mention and I didn't think to ask about any more running.  Well, this week, at dinner one night, somehow the news of more running came out and it turns out she ran a 3:58 half mile while holding hands with her best friend the entire time!  What?!  I was so proud of her and I can't believe she didn't tell me!!  That is so awesome.  It was Presidential level by a long shot.  That's an 8 min/mile pace.  She totally rocks!! She has been asking to run a 5k so we're going to train for one this summer.  I am so excited for it and so proud of her!  Yay for running!

2. Sara  Sara is becoming more and more independent as she gets older.  She is by far the most independent and the best at figuring out a way to get what she wants.  I babysat Beckett a lot this week which makes for hard days.  One day, I was feeding Beckett his bottle and Sara says, "I'm hungry.  If I feed Beckett will you get me some lunch?"  I was a little surprised because she doesn't pay much attention to him and never cared too much about feeding Abby but I was so proud of her for figuring out a solution to her problem instead of whining or complaining.  Love that girl!  

 She also really wants to blow bubbles with gum.  So I gave her some instructions and after a couple months of lots of practice, she has gotten it figured out and is now blowing bubbles all the time.  She's blown a few that were pretty big.

3. Baseball  Going to baseball games is one of my favorite summer activities.  We met a lady that has season tickets and sells the seats to a lot of the games.  We always buy a few games worth.  They are awesome seats.  They are the first row right behind the visitor's dugout.  They are great seats and usually the players will throw a ball or two to Matt and his friend.  They didn't this last game which was lame, but we still had a good night.

 There are four tickets so we get a babysitter for the girls and let Matt bring a friend.  We love that if they need something we can just send them together to get it and we can enjoy the game without a million interruptions!

 And we love that we can put our feet up, kick back and hopefully watch the Bees win!

4. Countryfest  Every year South Jordan has their town celebration like every other town in Utah.  It's always a risk as to when they schedule it because a few times it has coincided with the cattle drive in Durango.  This year we were very safe as they scheduled it the first weekend in June.  We enjoyed the parade and Abby figured out how to get a few pieces of candy.  She had some help from the lady sitting next to us, from Matt and from people walking through the crowd that handed her candy.  We also had fun staying up late for the fireworks.  We ate dinner outside, played four square and another two square type game Matt and I made up and ate homemade ice cream.  Then we had fun watching the fireworks.  One of the highlights of the weekend was the carnival...  Sara is getting pretty brave and Kate doesn't like being shown up on rides so those two had fun.  I did the Gravitron with them and Matt and was done for the night, in fact I had to talk myself out of a minor panic attack before the ride started.  We'd just eaten dinner and I all of a sudden felt really claustrophobic and it was Sara's first time and I was worried about her freaking out and not being able to get out of there... but we all managed and the girls had a great time!  Afterwards they wanted to ride some other rides but they had to go by themselves because Matt and I were done.  Jerry ended up going with them once, but we'll save our rides for Lagoon!

I felt kind of bad because the first time this ride dropped, they both screamed and looked totally freaked out.  They ended up laughing but I felt like a horrible parent before I pulled my phone out and videoed it.  They are in the middle left.  I love the countryfest because it is a huge family tradition.  I hope they will always remember it.  We've had a lot of fun at all the activities.

Three for Thrunday

1. Memorial Day Fun  When Jerry and Matt were at the Father's and Son's campout they did some fishing.  They didn't have any luck hooking anything and Matt was really wanting to try again.  So we tried again on Memorial Day.  It was a beautiful day and it was so nice to be outside enjoying the sun and the mountains.  We didn't have any luck at all so we might be out again this summer.

 Abby had a ton of fun playing in the dirt and water.  She was filthy by the end of the day but she enjoyed every minute of it!

 Matt wanted to do most of it by himself.  He got pretty good at casting out.  We'll just have to keep trying.

 Kate also wanted to do most of it by herself.  Sara did for that matter, too.  None of them wanted to touch the bait though!  We used power bait and it was gross and stinky.

 I loved seeing the kids enjoy being together!

 I don't know what these two were talking about, but pretty cute seeing them together.

2. Matt's big week  Matt had an awesome week!  It all started with pack meeting on Tuesday.  Matt has worked really hard in Webelos this year.  He made a goal to earn each of the 20 badges that are possible.  We worked on it a lot and he had a lot of help from his den leaders and on Tuesday he earned the last of his 20 badges and his 20 badge patch.  He was very excited.  I was so proud of him.  It was great to see him work so hard on something and achieve it.  I didn't get a picture of him that night, but we'll take one this week when he gets ready for den meeting, so check back.

 Thursday night he had a baseball game.  He's been working really hard at practice and at home with Jerry.  He has had some frustrating games.  It's a bummer when you work hard and don't see the results right away.  He finally got to see the results!  He had two awesome hits.  It was so great to see him get that connection.  Loved it!  He has also been working with Jerry and in practice on grounders cuz dang, that bounce gets ya sometimes!  Well, he played second base for most of the game and he had one grounder come right at him and from the stands there was that moment when you wonder if he's going to get it. He did!  And finished it with a perfect throw to first base.  Awesome!!  He also had some other really good fields and just overall had an awesome game.  I was so so proud of him.  His coach gave him the game ball and that only sealed the deal of making him feel more confident.  It was great!

He also graduated from the DARE program on Friday.  They made a pretty big deal out of it.  It was another thing to make him feel like pretty hot stuff!

3. Kate's dance recital  Kate also had an exciting weekend.  She has been looking forward to her recital for a long time.  She loves performing.  She said she was a little nervous before the show.  She gets on stage though and loves having everyone look at her!  They danced as Audrey Hepburn and they looked pretty cute!  There was one dance step that she had to practice quite a bit so I was proud of her for getting it down.  She also worked very hard and it's nice to have a little reward for that sometimes!  I recorded her dress rehearsal.  She starts on the middle right.