Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Summer Phone Pics

In sharp contrast to my last post, I have a bunch of pictures on my phone I need to put up, documenting much of our everyday life this summer. Brace yourselves, there are a lot...

 I kind of started Eli on piano. We started right before school started, and since it's been very sporadic. I'm hoping to start back up with some more regularity in the near future.
 Anna thinks she needs to wear a helmet too.
 One hot summer day. We may not officially have our own yard, but this grassy space is right outside our front door and no one else ever uses it, so I brought out the hose and a big bin and we had some fun.

 Contrary to what this picture suggest, she had a blast. She's also a drama queen and this was totally fake angst.
 Jeremy and I ran a 5k!
 It was my first time ever doing a real race, and it was different for sure. It didn't go as well as I had hoped (the course started off going up like 50 stairs! Cruel!!) but it was a good experience! Thank you to Jeremy for agreeing to do it with me!
 Coming into the finish line by the river.
We did it!
 My friend Janae watched the kids the morning we did it, and after we got back, Jeremy and I took our two oldest and her two oldest to the Big Truck Show at the park. Janae stayed home with Anna and Kenzie.




 Sometime in August, all the kids got sick with Hand, Foot, and Mouth. It was pretty mild luckily, but we did have a day where everyone was miserable at the same time so I let them go brain-dead watching a movie for awhile.
 If we walk to take Eli to school, we go through the park, so we often stop by on our way home!
 Connor with all his gear. :)
 Our neighborhood picnic!
 There's a fire station just around the corner from our house, in our neighborhood, so the firemen came too! So fun!
 Anna was making eyes at one of the firemen.

 One of our summer storms headed our way...


 Two minutes later it was on top of us as we ran into the house and barely missed the rain and thunder!
 This was the next day at the park. I thought the clouds were so beautiful!


 Ohhh insanity! I bought a bushel of tomatoes and canned every last one of them! It was over 50 pounds. Eli helped me peel about 7 pounds or so, other than that I did it all myself. I'm crazy.
 Just so you get an idea, here is the basket appearing to be almost empty. I counted out how many tomatoes were in there at that point - 73. So I think it's safe to say I did at least 500 tomatoes.
 Don't worry I got more than this! I got 14 quarts of crushed tomatoes and 13 pints of diced tomatoes. That should last us awhile! Jeremy feels slighted that he didn't get to do any, so he's pushing for peaches and applesauce. We'll see what happens...
 So Jeremy was out of town one night this week, and of course the day he was gone, the boys both crashed badly on their bikes. Poor Eli was in bad shape. He fell on his face pretty much and had a bad gash on his chin, then he must have bit his tongue and lip because they were all bloody, along with his forehead and knees. Connor just scraped up one knee luckily, but of course we were at the park, so we had to hobble all the way back home. Whew!
This was this morning, looking quite a bit better. Whew! I'm all caught up now! I put up four other posts today if you missed them. Thanks for looking!

Playing with my Camera

One of these days I need to buckle down and take a photography class or something. I've done some reading online and in my manual, but I know I need to do more. AND I just need to play around with my camera more. So a few weeks ago I got it out while the kids were playing outside so I could experiment with different settings. It's hard to tell what works and what doesn't until I get out of the bright sunlight to analyze it, but it was fun to play around and get a couple decent pictures of the kids.  I have a LONG way to go, but it was fun.


 Can you tell who loves the camera the most? Hehe.
 And the camera loves her.  I love her little face!
 Quick insert - this pic totally reminded me of one of Jeremy at that age. Do you agree?
Pretty wild.
 This kid avoids looking at me as much as possible when the camera comes out. :)
 Hair! It's coming!




Mmm popsicles. I can't believe it's September. I'm not ready for summer to be over yet!!!

Kingergarten!

It's official! Eli started school. He goes to half-day kindergarten, just 2 hours and 35 minutes a day, which is great! Despite the fact that he can already read chapter books, he seems to be loving it. He has already made a good friend, for which I'm very grateful. He sits next to him at their assigned table and they seem to have a lot of similar interests. It's funny the things he chooses to tell me about. The first couple days he was always telling the "funny" things his teacher had to tell them to do - "I already KNOW you have to put the lid back on the glue stick but she had to teach us that!" and he would always tell me about when someone would get in trouble and had to have a note sent home. There seem to be two boys who have a listening/talking problem. Haha. Now he tells me more about the activities they do and what he and his friend Kaden talked about. :) They have PE twice a week, and then Music, Art, and Library each once a week. He's not all that talkative, but he usually comes out with a smile on his face and he's always eager to go everyday, so that's a good sign for now.
For the first week or so, Connor insisted on having his backpack on everyday too, even if he was riding his bike. :)

I have many mixed feelings about public education and I don't know if it's what we'll always do, but I feel like it's a good choice for us this year. I'm so glad it's only half day and we can walk to school in about 10 minutes or drive in 3, so I don't feel like I've completely handed him over to the brain-washing, creativity-crushing institution yet...but that's another subject for another day...hehe...
The gang on the way to school one morning.

Visit to Indiana

On Labor Day Weekend, we drove the whopping 2.5 hours to West Lafayette, Indiana to see Amy and Rob!!! Wow, that was awesome. The drive was a breeze. We left early Saturday morning and got there with the whole day ahead of us! We had such a great time playing baseball in the backyard and visiting until WAY too late at night. :) It's so nice whenever we go visit the Weavers because it really feels like a vacation! (That probably means I didn't help Amy nearly enough!) They're so easy to be around, our kids are perfectly entertained by their cousins the whole time and we get lots of time to visit and enjoy each other's company. Heidi and Sam came too which of course made it even better! My one regret is that I forgot my good camera, so I don't have great pictures to go along with the great memories. Oh well...
Connor had a great time with the ninja turtle gear - and with Grant!

Friday, the day before we got there, was Jeremy's birthday, so instead of eating cake that day, we brought it with us and had some yummy carrot cake with everyone on Saturday night.
Four boys in the tub! I took a picture of Anna, Sydney, and Elise too, but it wasn't so modest and Elise was screaming, so I won't put that one up.
Sunday, Amy, Heidi and I sang in Amy's ward. It's always so fun to sing with my sisters! That afternoon, Jeremy and I went to a cemetery to look for an ancestor his mom believed was buried there. Jeremy's parents had (by a complete miracle) found this cemetery a couple months before and discovered one of George's ancestors, and his namesake. They couldn't find the other one they were looking for, but we did! The cemetery is over 150 years old, and completely in the middle of a cornfield. It was pretty unreal and very neat we were able to do that!
Thomas A. Son of J.C. & E. Nowland. Died June 23, 1856 Aged 1 Yr. 7 Ms. 22 Ds. :(
23
Monday we went to the park and then we took off a little before 2 in the afternoon. We were worried about Chicago traffic with the holiday. There was a little, but luckily it wasn't too bad, and we were going back to Central Time so we got home before 4!

These boys had so much fun together!!
  It's pretty crazy that I'm within 3 hours from two of my sisters now. Who would have though a few years ago that this would ever happen, especially here in the Midwest? It's great!!