Tuesday, July 14, 2015

More summer!

We are not too exciting over here this year.  Taking that "part time" job at Ridley's has slowed down our summer fun.  We still have a few adventures here and there though.

Recently, we celebrated Caleb's 7th birthday!  Holy cow!  Where did that go?  When I asked him what kind of cake I was making he looks at me, very thoughtfully, and says, "Um....I want a pterodactyl."  I just looked at him like "Are you serious child?!"  Well, that morphed into "I want a Jurassic World cake."  Which I was happier to oblige to because that leaves me lots of room.  Then he added in, "Oh, I want a volcano on it too."  Of course he does!  So, here's what we ended up with.



He was pretty excited and really, that's all that matters.  I got to thinking while making this that the kid hasn't even seen Jurassic Park, let alone Jurassic World.  Looks like we'll be having a Netflix marathon while I have a few days off this week!  The boy loves his dinosaurs!  I think about 3-4 of his 7 cakes have been dinosaur related!  He got some fun birthday gifts and was super excited about the one from his great grandpa and great grandma Reeder.  I need to get a picture of him with it!  He woke up sick today so it's apparently going to have to wait a day or two.

The boys finished up their summer camps at the end of June.  They did 2 weeks of a space camp and 2 weeks of paleontology camp.  The fourth grade teachers at Canyon taught the camps and they did a great job.  The boys loved it and it was well worth the $80 I paid.  Nash will be sad when he is too old to go next summer!  This was their astronaut helmets they brought home.

Sam's been to two week long dance boot camps and 2 mini boot camps.  The week long boot camps are a Monday thru Friday 9 am - 1 pm with an hour and a half of ballet, an hour and a half of jazz and an hour of conditioning.  She does not love conditioning, but she does love her four pack!  She's hilarious to watch talk about it!  The two mini boot camps she did were only three days long and each one was only an hour.  She did a lyrical one and a jazz one.  This week she is at GIRLS CAMP!  So, she's missing two mini boot camps, but that's ok, she was ecstatic to go to Girls Camp.  I hope she has as much fun and loves it as much as I did.  I can't wait for her to come home and tell me all about it!  They went to Cinnamon Creek, which is where we went every year but once.  But, they get to go down to the dam and swim one day!  Lucky girl!  We only ever got to play in the river!  I never did go through all the stuff she had out to pack so I'm hoping she had everything on her list and didn't forget anything important!  I don't think I mentioned in my last post that she found a website where you can search for pen pals.  She now has a pen pal in TX, NZ, Turkey, London, one of the Dakota's and one of the Carolina's.  She's become very good friends with the one in Turkey.  They talk daily and have even been able to facetime on more than one occasion.  Sam sent her a package with a bunch of candy, some coins and her favorite book.  (Note to self, sending a box of stuff to the country Turkey will cost you at least $30.  Don't let the dad take her shopping to include candy - he buys the big bags, not the little boxes!)  She also has a cousin that moved to Saudi Arabia that she writes to as well.  She's becoming quite the world traveler through her writings!  Oh, and she finally lost her LAST baby tooth on Sunday night.  Yay!  Now they can put her braces wire all the way back where it belongs!

Brooke is still going to speech class (for a few more weeks).  We had her IEP meeting at the beginning of July and she has achieved all the goals they set for her in her original IEP meeting!  Yay!  That means she now only goes to speech once a week instead of twice a week.  It also means that once she achieves her new goal they will add her to the large group class.  That class is an hour and a half once a week.  She will love it I'm sure because she LOVES school and she LOVES speech.  I can only imagine her excitement when I tell her she gets to go see Teacher Angie for almost as long as she comes to preschool (she has only been going twice a week for 30 minutes each time).  The catch is figuring out how to pick her up from that class because it ends right in the middle of one of my preschool sessions!

Speaking of preschool, I had intended to only teach until noon every day.  I got to looking at my registration list and I realized I had 14 kids on my 4 yo class list.  I do not want 14 kids in one class.  So, it looks as though I'll be teaching 9:30-3 three days a week and only til noon two days a week.  Oh well, it means I'm loved, right? :)  This should be an interesting adventure to say the very least!  Most of the 4 yo kids I had this past year and we already know one another.  There are only about 3 or so new ones.  Right now I've only got 4 kids registered for my 3 yo class so unless I get some more kids registered that will be a little class.  I guess Brooke can always come to that session too! :)  After all, she was going to every single preschool session I had until January last year!  I know it will all work out so I'm not too worried about it right now.  I did ask for the entire first week of August off so that I can get ready for preschool though.  Since taking the job at Ridley's I haven't had much time to get things done like I wanted to.  I was hired for part time but I've been scheduled for anywhere from 24-34 hours a week since July started and it will stay the same through the rest of the month.  It isn't a bad job (could for sure be a lot worse), it just takes a lot of time out of the day when I'm scheduled for 9 hours at a time!  The kids have been mostly really good to watch themselves while I'm at work.  There's been a time or two that I've had to get upset with them, but for the most part they've done good.  I did tell them at Ridley's that once school starts I can only work the weekends and I would prefer to close.  Honestly, I'd rather not keep working, but we do what we have to do to reach our goals I suppose!

We did go to the pool once this summer

And we are going to go again on Friday to celebrate the end of the summer reading program with the city library.  It's also going to be our mini "On Caleb's birthday, birthday celebration".  Kids are pretty excited about that one!  I'm hoping at least one of them wins something from the grand prize drawings that they've got all their tickets in.

Samantha also played softball this year.  She hasn't played softball in a few years so I wondered how she would do.  She didn't do too bad.  When I was growing up and played ball our pitch was a slow pitch and the pitcher took a good step forward off the mound.  That wasn't the case with Sam's team.  They struggled to get the ball over home plate and fast pitch was a decent challenge for them.  When they were able to get the ball over the plate (without pelting the batter) Sam was able to get some good hits.  We only won once or twice, but they had fun.  They played in a single elimination tournament after the fourth of July that Travis was able to coach (her regular coach was out of town).  They lost, but I think they still had a good time.  I hope she will play again next year, as she seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.  Although, we've got to get her to quit running like a ballerina!  You can tell she's a dancer when she runs!  It's pretty funny to watch!





So, you can see that even though I've been working many hours and Travis is only here hit and miss, we've still had a few adventures this summer.  The beginning of the school year is quickly approaching so I'm hoping we can squeeze a few more adventures into our time off!  Hope your summer is going great too!