It is Summer Time!

It has been a busy last two weeks.  The kids are out of school and we are getting into summertime routines.  Today we went to the Explora museum and enjoyed playing with things there.  It is an interactive discovery museum and there is a lot to do.  We were there almost three hours and didn’t even go into all the areas.  Andrew and Spencer tried the bike thing today.  It was open this time and they decided to brave getting strapped onto a bike to ride over the play area.  They said it was fun.

These were wind mill type things, they worked really well but the picture caught it in one frame, so they aren't spinning like they were 

Two weeks ago on May 18^th was the final band concert.  The kids did a good job.  The bands sound good for middle school bands.  I think it is because of the dedication and enthusiasm of the director. I am glad the kids can enjoy being in a good band.  Ruth was all emotional after the concert because it was her last one, since she made the decision to not continue with band in high school.  She has been exploring more on the guitar and piano since then.  I am glad that she still enjoys doing music.

Andrew's band, he is in the back on the right

Ruth's band, she in on the second row on the left 

May 19^th was our ward’s father and sons camping trip.  The boys were excited about it.  Neal didn’t have work that day and was able to have everything ready so when the boys got home from school they left.  They enjoyed the camping and being with friends.  Saturday they took their time at the camp ground and enjoyed playing and visiting.  Then they went to a train show at the fair grounds.  They enjoyed being a part of the club and helping with their trains on display.  They stayed there all afternoon and even helped clean up the clubs things.  They had a great day together.

While the boys were away Ruth and I enjoyed time together.  We tried out some Chinese take out food for dinner and enjoyed it.  We watched “Mr. Hollands Opus” at home that evening.  I thought Ruth would enjoy it since she had just finished with band.  She liked it.  Saturday morning we got going a bit early and went to an “early bird” showing of “Beauty and the Beast.”  It was a good movie.  The music was beautiful and the animation with people was believable.  It was a good show.  I am glad that we were able to go see it. Saturday afternoon we went to the mall and were able to get a few things for Ruth for summertime clothing.  It was a nice time together.

The kids had some fun year end activities that they enjoyed.  Ruth went with the 8^th grade class to the amusement park “Cliffs” that is here in town.  She enjoyed going on a roller coaster and many other rides for the first time.  Neal and I don’t really like amusement parks, so we haven’t taken our kids to any.  Ruth decided she loved it.  

Andrew had a 6^th grade pool day at the school outdoor pool.  He had fun with that and being with friends.  His PE class had done a swimming unit the last two weeks of school and so he had been swimming every day and loved it all.  He has been doing a lot of bike riding too.  He is working hard at being active.

Spencer and Caleb both had days at school that they had a PE Play Day time.  They had each grade go through about eight activities and games at the school.  They really enjoyed doing it.  Their classes also got to go to the library party for classes that had turned in all books by the deadline.  They enjoyed that party too.  The first grade did a picnic for kids and parents one day.  I went to it and enjoyed eating lunch with Caleb and his friends.  

On the 24^th I went to Ruth’s 8^th grade promotion ceremony.  It was like a graduation and they called each of the kids names and gave them certificates and a flower.  Ruth was happy that I would come and watch.  Afterwards I took Ruth to the park where she met with a group of friends for a “out of school” and a birthday party for one of the girls.  They had a great afternoon playing and being silly together at the park.  She got together with friends on Friday evening too.  I am glad that she can enjoy her friends.

The last day of school was the 25^th for the boys.  Andrew didn’t need to bring anything and told me he ran to the school and ran home.  He said it felt good to run and to be free of carrying anything.  I know that bringing the trombone to and from school was a bit hard for him but he enjoys playing it and plans to continue with it.  The kids were all happy to be home and enjoyed telling me about all the fun things they did the last couple of days of school.

Caleb and Spencer with their teachers

Ruth and I both went to the eye doctor during the last couple of weeks last couple of weeks.  I was thankful that my eyes have stabilized again and didn’t have any changes this time.  Ruth is more near sighted and we ordered her new glasses.  I guess she got my eyes.  I am thankful that we both have healthy eyes and we can see.

Spencer has really been enjoying playing with Lego.  He has made many creative things lately and will work on things intently for long periods of time.  On Friday the 26^th in the morning we met with some friends from church and did a little hike.  We went to Carlito Springs, just east of us off of I40.  It was a pretty little hike and the kids enjoyed being with friends.  We ate our lunch there and then came home.  In the afternoon we filled up our pond and ran the fountain and the boys enjoyed playing in the water.  That was a fun way to spend our first day of summer vacation.

Andrew has enjoyed cooking lately.  He likes to make muffins and has tried many different recipes.  He also tried making pretzels one day.  They turned out pretty good and everyone voted that we should try them again.  Andrew is working on his “Family Life” merit badge and one of his projects to do for his family is to learn how to cook new recipes that he has found on the internet that are foods from other countries.  

Saturday morning Neal, Ruth and Andrew took a bike ride.  They enjoyed going some distance.  They started their ride by going up to Ruth’s friend, Brianna’s home, so Ruth could have confidence to ride her bike there.  It is up the mountain side so she ended up walking her bike up the last big hill, but she did get there.

Sunday we went to Kent and Jorge's home.  They are an elderly couple in our ward.  We have gotten to know Jorge because she comes to choir and she plays the organ and piano a lot in the ward.  She is a sweet lady.  Neal met her husband (who isn’t in the church right now) and he said Neal should bring his family over sometime.  We were able to go Sunday evening.  It was a nice visit and we enjoyed sharing some things about our family with them.  And they shared some fun stories with us.

Monday was Memorial Day.  I enjoyed going for a walk and seeing flags on many of the houses.  We had a busy day doing our regular chores of grocery shopping, laundry and caring for the yard.  Neal was home from work and that was nice to have him around.  In the evening we grilled some burgers and hot dogs.  Then we had some fun with Neal’s sister Holly and her family come for a short visit.  They were on their way home from a trip to Texas, they live in Arizona.  We had dinner with them and Neal took everyone on a hike in the open space.  Then we had Tuesday morning with them before they headed out to return home.  I am glad that we could see them.

The kids played with the rocks while they were waiting for their cousins to arrive

Monday was also my parents 52^nd anniversary.  I called my mom and she said she had a nice day visiting cemeteries, going out to lunch, and spending time with my sisters.  I am glad she had a good day.

Yesterday Andrew enjoyed visiting with his friend Aiden.  He said they mostly played Lego at Aiden’s home.  But that was great they could be together.  He is in our ward, in fact Aiden’s dad is the bishop, and the boys have really gotten to know each other because they play trombone in band together.  

We have done a lot of work in the yard.  Neal worked a lot getting a drip irrigation system set up in our garden.  I did weeding with the kids and cleaning up the rose bushes from the dead blooms.  With 22 rose bushes it does take some time to keep them looking good.  The fruit trees are growing well.  The weather has been nice and I have enjoyed going for walks and being outside.

I got the results for Caleb’s gifted testing.  He did amazing.  This was the second round of testing they did.  He first took the cogat a couple of months ago.  Since he scored high on that and they did more testing on him to see where his strengths are.  When the lady called me she gave me the back ground information that the kids need to score at least 92 to be considered for gifted services.  She said to get full services and in a full gifted schooling experience a child needs to score at least 98 in two categories.  Then she told me Caleb’s scores.  He had 98 in critical thinking; 99 in math; 99 in reading and 99 in creativity.  So he qualifies for the full service gifted program in the school.  I am excited for him.  He has expressed that he really would like more in school to learn.  I think he will get it next year.  For now we will do things with him at home.  This week I taught him how to multiple multiple digit numbers (like 52x16) and Neal taught him how to do long division.  He got excited about the concepts and has been practicing them. He also likes to draw pictures and has been playing games a lot.  If he can’t get anyone to play a game with him they he will just play two players himself.  He has a game of Monopoly that he has been working on a little bit every day for over a week now.  He also likes Ticket to Ride and anything to do with the United States right now.  

Well, as you can see we have been busy.  We are thankful for our family and are happy that it is summer time and we can spend more time together.  We have asked the kids to do some self motivated learning this summer.  They needed to pick a topic to research and work on it every week.  Each week they need to write at least one paragraph about what they have learned.  Ruth is working on ancient Greek culture right now and is enjoying learning about it.  Andrew wants to learn about animals in New Mexico.  Spencer is learning about Navy ships and other boats, he also wants to learn more about air planes.  Caleb wants to study about solar and lunar cycles.  It has been good for them to have a topic to work on.

Spring Weather

Today is a beautiful sunny morning.  It felt cooler but nice this morning as I walked the boys to school.  Yesterday afternoon it rained and cooled everything down.  Last Saturday I was able to plant my tomato and pepper starts I bought.  I also planted a lilac bush.  I look forward to wonderful smells from that.  I really do love lilacs and am glad that they grow here.  They didn’t grow in Texas, because it was too hot for them.  I hope my garden grows.  So far none of the seeds I planted have come up.  I am surprised that nothing is happening.  The pictures I took are too shaded but still show the garden.  The bigger plants are in the middle and I surrounded them with patches of different smaller plants like lettuce, spinach, peas, bush beans, radish, carrot and onion.  I guess I will see what decides to grow.  We have talked about getting a watering system set up for it but for now I have been watering by hand.  I was outside this morning and ended up taking a couple of pictures of the yard, from a different angle than I have done before.

Last Thursday I enjoyed going to a Relief Society activity about health.  I always enjoy getting around the other sisters in the ward and learning from them.  Friday afternoon Neal came home from work a little early and suggested that we go on a date.  We went out to eat dinner and then went for a walk at a park.  It was a nice evening. Saturday evening we had the missionaries over for dinner.  They are good young men and talked about being excited to talk to their families Sunday.  I hope it went well for them.

Sunday was Mother’s Day.  I enjoyed getting cute notes from my children and some small gifts they made.  I appreciate their notes.  I am glad that I can be a mother.  I am thankful for my mom too.  I was able to have a nice visit with her on the phone that evening while Neal was fixing dinner.  Neal also fixed a nice breakfast.  Ruth helped with some of the cooking.  Neal was able to talk to his mom that morning.  I am glad that we have mothers to help us grow.

I have a new calling in the ward.  I was released from teaching Relief Society, which I will miss doing, and have been called to teach the four year olds in Primary.  It will be a big change.  I will miss going to the adult classes.  I hope that it can go well and I can learn from the children too. I will continue to do the Activity Days for the young girls.

Yesterday was the K-2 track meet.  The kids had lots of fun.  It was a beautiful morning.  I was helping with lining the kids up for races.  That was a bit hard to keep them in their places.  The event was well organized by the PE teacher.  Caleb loved participating.  He did great too.  He came home with two metals and a ribbon for his efforts.  He came in 5^th place for first grade boys in the 100 m race.  He came in 2^nd place for first grade boys in the long jump, jumping 2.3 m.  And his relay team took first place.  There were four on each team and they each ran 200 m.  They did great.  Caleb was so proud of his metals that he wore them all afternoon.  Tomorrow is the track meet for the 3-5^th grade kids.  I will help at that one too. Spencer is excited to participate. 

I was able to finish binding my quilt yesterday. The quilt is for the lower bunk where Spencer sleeps.  We have two bunk beds for the boys and so an extra bed.  I made quilts for the boys two years ago and decided to make a matching one for the extra bed.  I am glad that it is finished.  Spencer likes to store things on the bed, like an extension of his shelf and dresser for his stuff.  He needs to clean it off so we can get the quilt on.  

The boys have enjoyed their little snail pets.  Amazingly they are still alive.  But I have decided to banish them from being inside.  They weren’t always screwing the lid of their jar tight, because they said the snails needed more air than the holes provided.  But the snails could some how squeeze out.  After the second escape I decided that I didn’t need snails in my house any more.  Yesterday we found the second escapee in the ball bucket.  Amazing to me that it could move that far from its jar.  The boys also decided to catch other things and put them in a different jar.  In the second jar they have worms and beetles.  Both jars are sitting under the apple tree now.

I need to leave soon to go to a lunch at the school library today.  It is a nice thing that the librarian does for the volunteers each semester.  It will be nice to visit with the other volunteers and have a nice lunch.  

Blessings

Life has been busy.  Has it really been three weeks since I wrote?  I thought I would back up and tell a little about the busy things going on.  I will go back to April 22nd.  It was a nice day and perfect weather for our activities.  In the morning Neal, with the help of a friend, Thane, went with Thane’s pick-up truck to buy some compost.  They unloaded it and Neal was able to mix it into the dirt in our garden area. He also pulled out lots of large rocks.  I am amazed at how many there are, they just seem to keep coming. Things got busy that week and I didn’t plant anything.  But it was okay because on April 29th it snowed.  I was glad I hadn’t planted any tender young plants.  On May 6th I finally got out there and planted some seeds with the boys help.  Now I just hope that they have a chance to grow, I have seen some birds in the area.  I have some starts I bought I the store and will get them planted this next Saturday.  It is nice to think that I finally started my garden here.  It has been a lot of work to get it ready.  One other thing I did to prepare it was prune the bushes that are next to it so they didn’t hang over the area.  That was a big project too.  The weather has been pretty good this week, some rain and a bit cooler but sunny too.  

The white area is the garden

we enjoy the view of Sandia mountain from our yard

planting the garden

We have had more social times too.  On the 22nd after the yard work was done we went out to eat with the Thane and his wife and enjoyed some visiting time with them.  That afternoon I took Spencer to a birthday party for Jesse, who was in our ward, his family just moved to Utah last week.  We enjoyed the party.  It was at a park and Spencer enjoyed playing with the many friends there and I enjoyed sitting and talking to the adults.  That evening we had Ruth’s friend’s family come over.  Brianna, her parents and four siblings came over.  We had dinner with them and the kids played.  The adults got out a game of Yahtzee and enjoy playing it together and visiting.  It was a nice evening. 

The following Saturday Caleb went to a birthday party for his friend Xan.  I went with him to the bowling alley.  He had fun with his friends and did okay with bowling.  I am glad that he can enjoy doing fun things and having such great friends.  Ruth still enjoys hanging out with Brianna and was with her again yesterday afternoon.  Andrew and Spencer enjoy their scouting activities with their friends.  

Andrew brought home a cool art project he did for a class.  I liked it and took a picture.  It is a train driving in the night, it is a collage made out of pieces of paper.  I am not sure what the assignment was for but his teacher liked it too.  He can be so artistic.  He enjoys cooking too.  Last Saturday he got up before me and fixed the family crepes and scrambled eggs for breakfast.  

The boys enjoyed making little tents in the front room last week.  They had lots of stuffed animals with them too, to make it cozy.  They enjoy playing board games together and I try to play with them too.  We have had some fun games of “Ticket to Ride” and “Yahtzee” lately.

On Wednesday April 26th we had our Pack Meeting for cub scouts.  Neal was in charge because the cub master was out of town.  He decided to do carrots as the “treat” for the end.  We kept them whole and just peeled them.  We had a fun reaction to them.  The kids thought it was great to eat a whole carrot and the parents thought it was nice to have a change from the sweet treats.  The group ate about five pounds worth of carrots.

We had a ward temple night on Friday the 28th.  I was able to go early and hear a short talk from a member of the temple presidency to us before the regular temple session.  It was nice to be there.  Neal joined me for the session.  It was a full room and I am glad we were at the temple that day together.

Monday May 1st Caleb had his gifted testing.  I had to take him to a school district office for it.  There were about 20 or so kids being tested that morning.  The parents were told they could leave as the test would be about three hours.  I did some errands in that part of town and read a book until it was time to pick him up.  He said he thought the test was mostly easy and felt he did fine.  We will hear back from them with the scores next week.  He really wants to be in the gifted class because he would like school to be more challenging.

Last week I helped a lot with the school book fair.  I enjoyed being a part of it.  I enjoy helping in the library.  Yesterday I was there helping with the end of school inventory.  It keeps me busy at times but it is good to be involved.

Last Tuesday evening was a school bike ride.  Neal, Spencer and Andrew participated.  They rode about six miles.  They enjoyed the nice weather that evening.  They got a little key fob as a token of their efforts.

I went to a book club last week.  We read an interesting book called “The Blue Tattoo.” It was a biography of a white girl, Olive Oatman, who was kidnapped into an Indian tribe back in the 1850’s.  The Indian’s tattooed the women and Olive was tattooed.  Then she was rescued back into the “white” world and the book discussed how she adjusted.  It was interesting.  I enjoyed our discussion of it too.

Last week end was our Stake Conference.  I enjoyed the messages.  I also enjoyed the extra time we had as a family Sunday afternoon.  Ruth and I worked on family history together and Neal played with the boys.  

This week Andrew started a swimming unit in his PE class.  He is enjoying having time in the pool that is by the school.  Last night Caleb had his first grade music program.  He was excited about it and did a good job singing.  

I also wanted to mention that my nephew Zach graduated from Georgia Tech University last week.  I am proud of him accomplishing a hard thing.  My mom was able to go with Zach’s family to the graduation.  

I am going to back up to something that happened that really made my life busy.  On April 24th Neal was in a car accident.  He was cut off by another driver making a left turn illegally.  I am thankful his injuries weren’t worse, he has had a sore knee.  The accident wasn’t his fault, so the insurance is paying for it all.  The car was declared totaled and basically we sold the car to the insurance company. Neal worked hard to do car research and went out looking at cars after work every day.  Last Friday Neal and I went looking at cars together.  We talked a lot about cars and what to do.  It has taken a lot of time out of our already busy schedules.  Last Saturday we bought a Honda Accord. We found one that was a manual, which Neal liked.  I thought it was pretty easy to drive too. I think Neal will enjoy driving it and it will be a car that lasts a long time for us.

I am thankful for the safety my family enjoys.  I feel blessed.