February

Well February has come and gone, and we didn’t have too many exciting things happen, although we were very busy. Every day seems to be packed with something. I’ve got girl scout meetings once a week, I babysit three days a week, Ethan has cub scouts once a week and Kyle has been subbing for one or the other leader every single week since Ethan became a bear in January. Dinah and one of the little girls that I babysit have preschool twice a week. Jeremy is in Kindergarten every morning until noon. Ethan and Tyra are in school all day, and of course Kyle goes to work every day. And this is just all the regular stuff that keeps us busy!

Ethan’s pack meeting for this month was the Blue and Gold Banquet on the 8th. They decided to have a fiesta this year and we had taco salads for dinner. They awarded the boys that had earned awards recently. Ethan hasn’t earned anything new yet, considering he JUST moved up to bears and hasn’t worked his way very far into the book. They gave gifts of appreciation to leaders that have been released. There were some skits performed and after all the eating was done, they let the boys pick either a sombrero or maraca to take home. We finished the night off with a pinata, which the scouts got to take turns whacking at. First they let the kids in the wolf den beat at it, and then the kids in the bear den. I think it busted before they got through all the bears though. I was kind of bugged that the pack meeting is supposed to be a family thing, and yet only the scouts got to hit at the pinata, while the siblings stood back and watched, hoping that they would get some of the booty.

On the 10th, Tyra’s class invited family to come to the school during school hours to come check out all the animal reports that the kids had put together. I always go to these things and see all the other projects and wonder if all the kids really did their projects all on their own. Some of them are always way too good to be the work of the child alone, that’s for sure. Tyra chose to study and do her report on foxes. This also fell on pajama day so all the kids were wearing their pjs. I let Dinah and Chloe wear their pajamas to school as well. I didn’t get to stay very long to look at many of the other projects however, for as soon as we got there and we were looking at Tyra’s project, I discovered that Chloe had a dirty diaper. Such bad timing. Also Dinah ran off, and then Chloe kept trying to sit on Tyra’s lap. Chloe also decided that since we were no longer traveling outside that that meant she could take off her shoes. I tried to get her off of Tyra’s lap and get her shoes back on which resulted in Chloe throwing a huge fit, crying loudly. I felt bad for the mom next to me that was trying to video tape her daughter telling her about her animal project. So I told Tyra she did a good job on her project and took Dinah, Chloe and Lydia back home!

Something else that happened this month, most people will probably think I’m silly for mentioning. I had a dental checkup, my regular cleaning and exam on the 24th. The thing that was different about this one was that when the dentist was done looking at my x-rays and my teeth, he seemed really surprised, and asked if this was a first. “A first what?”, I wondered. Then he said that I have no new cavities! I’m sure that to some people that’s no big deal, but for me that was the first time in YEARS that I haven’t had new problems when I went in for a checkup. Usually I have one or two cavities that need filling. At least once a year for the last couple of years I’ve needed a new crown (I’m up to NINE crowns in my mouth!)…just something new every time I go in. Now this doesn’t mean that none of my teeth have problems this time, just that there were no NEW problems to have to deal with. My 3 wisdom teeth that are showing all have cavities, but the dentist doesn’t want to bother filling them because I need to have them pulled anyway. One of those three cavities is more like a huge cave on the back of my tooth. But I already knew about the wisdom teeth issues (I’ve totally been avoiding going in to have them pulled), but am SO excited that there were no new problems. πŸ™‚

And the last exciting thing worth mentioning, is that as the girl scout troop leader with a large van, I got to go up to Salt Lake City to pick up our troop’s girl scout cookies! I really wish that I had been able to take a picture of our stack of cookies, but our camera hasn’t been working properly lately. Our troop had two pallets of cookies, and almost filled my van (which we had taken the seats out of, to make more room). I was really excited to get to see how they distribute cookies to each troop. We did annoy some people from another troop that were waiting for us to get out of their way so they could start loading their cookies. But I promise we weren’t trying to annoy anybody. We had loaded the first pallet of cookies into the van and then looked up to find the rest of our cookies, but they were nowhere to be seen. We stood there and waited a few minutes to see if they would show up on the dock when one of the other pallets was moved out of the way, but they didn’t. So Amy (our troop’s cookie mom) went to go ask about it. It turns out that our other pallet of cookies was just sitting in the back of the warehouse all by itself totally unnoticed by anyone. So we brought it to the attention of the guys operating the fork lifts and they brought it to the dock for us. And now we have the fun joy of delivering all those cookies!

Tooth fairy’s last visit for 2011 and first for 2012

The tooth fairy made her last visit for 2011 to come and collect Ethan’s tooth on Dec 31.

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And now, one week later has to come make her first visit of 2012 considering Tyra lost a tooth too. Ironically they both lost the tooth from the same spot, the one just to the right of their two front teeth. Unfortunately I failed to get a picture of Tyra with the new hole in her mouth.

Tyra’s RAD Kids Graduation

Tyra had her RAD kids graduation this morning. It was more of a presentation of the things that they’ve learned. I knew what to expect of the graduation, because I had gone to Ethan’s last year, but I wasn’t sure what to expect out of Tyra. When it was Ethan’s turn, he saw the kids before him going through the course and he nearly freaked out and just would NOT do it. Tyra is a lot more outgoing though and she went all the way through. They basically had the kids go up to a person that was holding some soft squishy things to pretend they were attacking the kids, so the kid had to go into their stance and yell “Stay back you’re not my mom!” Then they had to go up to a dummy and pretty much yell the same thing and try to attack it. THEN they had to try to get past the police officer that has been teaching them. He was dressed from head to toe in red pads, and looked a lot like a transformer. πŸ˜‰ The kids had to get from the dummy to their teacher, BUT the police officer caught them most of the time and they had to fight their way out!Β Tyra went through it just like she should, and she gave the officer a couple of good kicks because he had hold of her arms. She seemed rather pleased with herself for getting out of his grip.

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School starts

Well summer vacation is over and today is the first day of the 2011-2012 school year!!! Kyle took the day off so he could help walk the kids to school, and be here when they got back from their first day. I got up early to make cinnamon rolls for breakfast, unfortunately they took too long to rise and weren’t ready before we had to leave to take Ethan and Tyra to school. Kyle made the kids protein shakes for breakfast while we were waiting for the cinnamon rolls and that ended up being their entire breakfast. Oh well they got to eat the cinnamon rolls as a snack later.

Ethan’s teacher this year is Mrs Quist, and Tyra has Mrs Gustafson. Here they are all ready for their first day back:

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Here’s Tyra by her classroom door:

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Ethan had been really excited for school to start back up, but as soon as the bell rang, and he had to line up, reality set in and he started being rather sulky:

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While the kids were at school, we came home and played for a bit. The little kids ate their cinnamon rolls and Kyle started taking pictures of them since they were being so cute:

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Then we went to Costco to get some staples that we had been running low on, and since we had a bit of time after that before the kids got out of school, we decided to stop by the ward garden and check it out.

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Remember that picture that I posted back in July when the corn was only a few inches high? Now it’s taller than Jeremy! Check that out. We got to harvest some potatoes and green beans then it was time to get home and go get the big kids from school.

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Look at that! He went in sulking and came out with a smile. πŸ™‚ I knew he would have a good day. (Actually I didn’t KNOW I just REALLY hoped he would).

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Tyra came out of school with her backpack on her front and this new one on her back. I guess Costco provided new backpacks with some supplies in them for all the kids in 1st through 5th grades. Ethan got one too but his new one was on his back under his old backpack. All in all it was a good day, and the kids seem to like their new classes.