Cornbelly's!

In the last 2 weeks, we had our last filing deadline for tax returns.  It looks like we were actually in better shape this year than we were last year, so that's good!  Last year I think we had 31 to still complete ON the filing day, and this year it looks like we only had 23.  Still more than we'd like, but it seems we are improving!

We had a Friday off of school 2 weeks ago, so we went to Cornbelly's for some fun.  I love doing this every year and I can always find a good deal on tickets.  They have big bouncy houses/pillows, a corn pit (like a sand pit, but with corn kernals), mini mazes, big wooden toys to play on, and tons more.  We were there for as long as we could be while Ruth was still cooperating.

We also got some free tokens, so we used them to shoot some corn out of air cannons.  The kids loved it.  They had a couple metal cow cut-outs and some broken down cars caged off to shoot.  I shot some apples out of a bigger cannon and managed to tip over one of the cows!

This last weekend was fall break, so we had Thursday and Friday off of school.  Bostyn came over to play on Thursday and we did some Halloween hand/footprint painting.  Ruth can apparently unscrew the lid from the paint though...

On Friday we met my amazing aunt Angie up AF Canyon for family pictures.  We are so lucky that she is willing to take our family photos for free.  I always bring her a thank you gift and we keep trying to get her to let us do some tax work for her in exchange.  I wish I had some previews to share but it was only a couple days ago so I guess you'll have to wait until next week :)

Apples and Grapes and Workshops, OH MY!

I don't think I realized how busy my life was until I tried to really keep track of it!

Last Monday, we had dinner at Bart & Jaclyn's house and picked apples from Afton's tree.  We should have gotten a picture of me climbing around way up there in my flipflops!

Fast forward past the "boring, everyday busy stuff" to Friday.  We went back and made 66 pints and 2 quarts (plus a little for a tupperware) of applesauce!  Tristan and Ben loved helping!

We also picked all the grapes before we left on Friday because some of them were shriveling and some were falling off and we were worried we wouldn't get to them in time.  I took the jars of applesauce home and sealed them all on Friday, and processed the grapes while watching conference on Saturday and Sunday.

To close out our Friday night, we tried out Pizza Cake.  It was delicious!  Ruth couldn't wait for me to finish taking a picture before she tried to dig in!

Saturday morning before Conference started, we headed over to Home Depot for their free Kid's Workshop.  This month: build an EMS truck.  It's a really cool truck with doors that slide on and off so you can actually put someone in the back!
They had a real fire truck there too for the kids to look at, and a firefighter at a table to ask questions to the kids.  My favorite:
Firefighter: What do you do if your clothes are on fire?
Ben: Take them off and put new clothes on.  And call 911.
Tristan: NO!  STOP DROP AND ROLL.  I learned that in my Kindergarten class. (said with the tone of "are you really that dumb?").

That's my literal Ben.  If your clothes are on fire, take them off and put new ones on.  Seriously.

Last bit of fun:  Ben has a cute little female friend at school and he says he loves her "on the inside, because I don't want anyone to know."  He told me he likes her more than Grandma.  :)

A year later...

Well, it looks like almost another year has passed before I came back to blog again.  I post on Facebook sometimes, and I guess I didn't realize it had been a whole YEAR since I tried to actually blog something!

This time my renewed commitment will be due to Steve & Afton Baxter's mission.  I figure if they are going to write us once a week to keep us updated, I should try to do the same.  In reality, "write blog post" has been on my recurring Sunday to-do list for a few months now, but I really don't look at my to-do list on Sundays!  Maybe this will be the time that sticks??

This last week I've felt more accomplished than usual.  I got some projects off my list that I've had for a long time, including Ruth's princess towel.  I think I need to go back and add some jewels to the crown though, since it doesn't look as good as it did in the tutorial online...

Most elementary schools have a special playground that is just for Kindergarten, which I think is great.  Except Tristan's school didn't have the rubber flooring installed until last week.  It was KILLING him.  He'd get in the van every day when I'd pick him up from school and say "Had another GREAT day... but the playground isn't ready yet."  He was VERY excited when I picked him up today because it was the first day they actually got to play on it!

I also got school pictures back last week.  I don't pay for them because I can get individual shots of the kids when we do family pictures, but I loved what came back this year.  Tristan was "star student" during the week of school pictures, and I guess he forgot to take off his crown.  And I have no idea what's up with Ben's smile.

Last Saturday we went hiking on the Bell Canyon trail with some ward members.  We didn't go very far because it was very steep and hard to carry a 40 lb child.  We stopped at a large pond (small lake?) and some of the kids took off shoes and waded in a little bit.  When they got out, we discovered leeches.  Luckily there weren't too many to pick off the kid's feet.

October 15th

Wow, what busy times these are....

First of all, October 15th is when all personal extensions expire for our tax clients.  As of this morning, we had 31 (THIRTY ONE???) clients that thought they were going to give us the info we needed to complete their returns.  Neil is going to take tomorrow off, but then we jump right back into quarterly payroll filings.  Now, I do most of those, and since it's not year-end reports yet, it will only take me a couple solid days at the office.

Ben is doing great in the Chinese Immersion program.  On the english side of learning, he had his first spelling pretest, words like "fix", "in", "it", etc and since he got 100% on it, they sent him home with extra words to be tested on, like "suffix", "quick", "into", and "appendix."  He said he got 100% on the real test yesterday. :)
We asked his Chinese teacher for extra/harder math homework (I can't handle the simple math he is working on....) but since they learn the math AND math lingo in Chinese, she didn't think it was a good idea.  She suggested he do extra math at home in English and also explain his homework to me in Chinese.  He said he couldn't explain HOW to do it, but he was able to say "7-4=3" all in Chinese, so that was great!

Tristan is doing great too - we opted not to do preschool because he can already read and do simple math.  I do need to have him practice his writing more, because he wants to write questions for me to answer but he doesn't know how to form the numbers very well.  I also need to get him signed up for tumbling!  He would be great at it :)

Ruth is as mobile as ever and likes to empty whatever she finds - tupperware cabinets, silverware from the dishwasher, toys from the bath, shoes from the basket....  you name it.  She is adorable and super fat.  She is 13 months old but has to wear 24 month clothes because not even 18 month stuff will fit, for the most part....

Neil and I have been working on a health challenge for a while, and while I'm not very good at the "no sweets" part of it, I have made sure to be more consistent about exercising, eating better, drinking more water, and reading scriptures.  Unfortunately, Neil hasn't been as good about it, and now we're both paying the price.  He was over his weight at his PT test in September, and they said they wanted him to lose 3-8 lbs between then and Oct 26th.  It wouldn't have been a big deal if he had kept up with it, but now he's up 6 lbs from that Sept weight, and he has 13 days to lose 9 lbs.  I made him a list of things he should do to make sure he's keeping weight down, and hopefully that will help him.  Going to bed by 10, eating slowly, only a small (as in, 5 peanut M&Ms or a mini candy bar) treat per day, exercising 2x day, more water, etc....  I told him I didn't know that I could commit to cutting back that far on treats, and I wouldn't exercise at night with him, but otherwise I'd do everything else.  I'm sure it will be good for me in the long run, I do have plenty of weight to lose....  But no one ever likes making those kinds of changes!

80 lbs of chicken bottled!!  Ok, so a bit of it was put into some freezer crock pot meals...  But wow!

Sometimes when you read the bible, you get really confused.  What is Genesis 38 all about??  They didn't put that in the musical!!  Good thing tho, it's not for kids, or anyone else for that matter...  I shall have to do more digging to see if I can understand it!

On another note, the mobile baby got herself into this situation today.  She was not at all thrilled.

She also 'fell' ie climbed out of the tub today.  She is too big!

Arrow of Light

Back when we lived in AF and we were joint Cubmasters, I found this idea somewhere online and had my bestie Jess design it for me.  I have probably made about 15 since then!  The boys could probably care less but the parents LOVE them :)  We had 4 boys receive their Arrow of Light tonight and it was great!