Kitchen drawer mischief

Once upon a time, a little Izatt boy discovered the fun of opening kitchen drawers and emptying them of their contents:

 Clyde // August 2007 // just a few days of his first birthday

 

 Once upon a time, another little Izatt boy discovered the fun of opening kitchen drawers and emptying them of their contents:

 Will // March 2009 // eleven months (and a week)

 Once upon a much more recent time, yet another little Izatt boy discovered the fun of opening kitchen drawers and emptying them of their contents:

Jack // October 2012 // about a week shy of ten months

[here's to hoping the 'five second rule' applies to dishcloths and bibs; I'm behind on laundry as it is, so you can bet that those all went right back in the drawer!!]

Fall soccer wrap-up

 Last Saturday marked the last soccer game of the season for these two ridiculously cute boys.

 

Here's Clyde's (un)official team picture with the Avengers. I know I said it before, but we really lucked out with this team; it was such a great experience for Clyde. We're excited for the spring season to kick off next April! 

 

Clyde played really well in this last game and scored a couple goals (possibly three, who's counting? ... Obviously it wasn't me).

 So this shot's kind of blurry, but that is definitely Clyde on the ground over there. Can't wait until he's older and that kind of move from the other team gets us a penalty kick!

 Of course, when he's older there might not be adorable games of leapfrog happening on the sidelines, so I guess we don't want him to grow up too quickly...

 We put together a little thank you note and gift for Coach Rob, and this is Clyde shyly giving it to him after the game :). 

 

 And here's Will's (un)official team picture with the Scoring Rockets!

All signs point to Will retiring from soccer now, which is a shame since he looks SO. DANG. CUTE. in his little uniform. Sigh.

 Buuuut ultimately soccer held little to no interest for our Willy-boy, and I think this picture illustrates that - his expression clearly says, "Yeah, you better get a good shot of me kicking this ball during warm-up because it's the last time I have any intention of getting near it for the next hour. Suckers."

 He did play for the first few minutes of Saturday's game, and even got right in the middle of the action for a bit before opting to head back to the sidelines and Grandma Izatt's comfy chair. Will's excited to spend the free time he'll enjoy post-retirement exploring other activities and athletic pursuits; fall swimming lessons have already begun, yay!

  Both happily and sadly, Will's retirement means Coach Jana's retirement as well. Mostly sad because I think I finally hit on what could have been my signature 'coaching outfit' here - a la Bill Belichick's cut-off sweatshirts, only slightly classier.

A tender coaching moment as I get my kids ready to start the game. I LOVED this little team.

Chuck's parents were in town for the last game (more on that later) and sweetly took lots of pictures of me coaching. As I flipped through them I realized that I spent probably 88% of the games up in the air: 

 exhibit A

 exhibit B

 

 exhibit C

And yes, I am celebrating Elizabeth's goal even though one of my players is lying on the ground clutching his knee....

 but I promise I hurried over to him immediately after I ceased to be airborne. It should also be noted that my kids were champion floppers and half the time they went to the ground it was after contact with absolutely nothing besides their own feet.

 

 Here's a fun rundown of what I looked like watching Garrett make an awesome breakaway towards the goal and then miss at the last minute.

 A closer look at those last three frames...

 Luckily Garrett rallied back and scored on the next play to end the game, woo!

 

 In order to leave a lasting impression on my cute players, I made them cupcakes and wrote them each a card highlighting their individual strengths and how much fun I had with them. Since I'll only have coached for two seasons before retiring, I figure my best chance of getting into some sort of pee-wee soccer coaching hall of fame is via bribery.

Our soccer season wrap-up wouldn't be complete without acknowledging our boys' awesome fans - poor Jack sat through sooo many practices and games, bless his heart. Don't worry Jack, your time will come! (and Coach Jana may even come out of retirement at that point....)

We were so glad that Pops and Grandma Izatt could be here for our last games to watch Clyde and Will in action!

And of course a shout-out to Grandma Pam who made it to almost every game and was frequently recruited to chase Will as he wandered around the soccer fields. Thanks Mama!

Our cute little jogger

 Clyde's school had a jog-a-thon a couple of weeks ago to raise money for playground equipment and field trips (news flash: our school district has no money. Less than no money. It's bad).

 Each grade level was assigned a color to wear - first grade was purple. Juuuust kidding, it was red! Clyde was pretty into it, the idea for the hair color and that second pose were all his :). 

[random note: I hate to bring up thrift stores constantly... haha, who am I kidding? I love it, so here's another story: I'd been looking for sneakers for Clyde for quite a while and had alllmost committed to some at Target, but I was waiting until he could go with me and try them on. The night before the jog-a-thon, I took a huge load of discarded Izatt junk/treasures to D.I. and couldn't resist running in to look around - and behold, there I found these awesome sneakers in Clyde's size for $2. It gets better - they're the exact same Target brand as the sneakers he wore last year that are now in Will's possession, so they match! I just love D.I.]

The jog-a-thon landed on Chuck's day off, so we headed over to the school to watch. And here we experienced our first (and I'm sure not last) public brush-off from one of our sons.

Yep, see that bottom right picture? We totally called out to him, and he just kept on a-walkin'. The only aspect that surprised me about that was that he didn't acknowledge Daddy, who is widely recognized as being wayyyy cooler than Mommy.

We laughed it off (on the outside, at least...) and found a spot between the two 'tracks' (younger grades on the inside, older on the outside) to watch. And then they were off!

 Clyde was so cute as he established a 'sprint, walk, sprint, walk' pattern (the Tortoise and the Hare is on our 'to-read' list, I promise).

 When he passed by on his third (or fourth?) lap, I offered to run with him for a bit, and with surprising enthusiasm (given the prior snub) he agreed.

I  did three laps with him and then another lap with two of my Cub Scouts along the outer track (they were a bit harder to keep up with!). My favorite was when, after walking for a bit, he would grab my hand and have me 'catapult' him forward for a little extra momentum to start running again :).

 Clyde ended up doing eight laps total before the time was up and we were really proud of him - running is not his favorite thing... at all... but he stuck with it so well. Good work Clyde Monster!!

Our eco-friendly baby

One day after the boys had cleaned up the table following an art project, Jack went on a fishing expedition in the kitchen trash:

wherein he found this orange scrap of paper, deemed that it could clearly still be used for another project, or in the very least recycled, and heroically saved it from the cruel fate of winding up in an already overflowing landfill.

Such a happy little tree hugger!

I did opt to step in after this and stop him from retrieving the Doritos bag; his next move was obviously to call us out on our junk food consumption...

Twin Falls road trip date

Here is an excellent combination for an awesome road trip date:

 1. Super cute husband: in my case, his name is Chuck.

[and sappily I think any date with him is pretty much the best date ever]

2. Special destination: Twin Falls Temple, yay! 

We hadn't been since June and I felt a sudden serious need to go. The probability of the trip working out looked doubtful for a bit, but then everything fell into place (the boys had a day off school that coincided with Chuck's day off, Chuck was able to get in last minute to get his recommend renewed, my mom could delay her drive to Utah for a couple hours, etc), and I'm SO grateful that it did.

3. Good food: Cafe Rio! 

Chuck and I decided a while ago that Cafe Rio should be our special 'after temple dates' dinner so we've stopped there every time we've gone to Twin. Luckily there's one in Boise so we'll be able to keep up the tradition after Boise Temple dates too because their pork salads are soooo gooooood (notice the part of the screen I pointed arrows at...).

4. A little D.I. shopping detour! 

I'm not going to lie; a lot of our dates include quick stops at Savers or D.I. This time we found a couple shirts for the boys and then left, only to return five hours later on our way out of town because I couldn't stop thinking about this brown polka dot dress for $4. IT HAS SHOULDER PADS! Now I'm just counting down the months (two and a half left!) until Jack is weaned and I can wear it to church :).

5. A gooood babysitter - 
and ours is the best, Grandma Pam! 
It's worked out so well that my mom teaches so close to Twin so that we can all drive down and drop the boys off with her while we go to the temple. This time we met her at her school right as her meetings wrapped up for the day, and the boys proceeded to have all sorts of fun in her classroom. As a bonus, I got to see two old friends that are new teachers at my mom's school - Jenny Holden, a friend from high school and Kmart (meaning she remembers when Chuck and I first met, haha), and Debbie Kelly, an old friend of my mom's from their days as young moms. Our families spent a lot of time together when I was growing up since their five boys were all around our same ages.

We finished up our trip by checking out where Grandma Pam lives during the school week - a fun basement apartment that she and Debbie rent together. Naturally the boys' favorite aspect of the place was the stairs :).

 Road trip dates are fun, but they're also looong (even longer when kids are in the car!) so we're pretty thrilled that the Boise Temple renovation is completed so that we can go much more regularly without having to make an entire day of it.

I figure the money we save in gas can be put in the 'D.I. dress fund' - still need to run that one by Chuck though . . .

Speaking of the Boise Temple, don't forget to take a tour of it during the Open House! Tours are available for the next three weeks (the last day is Saturday, November 10th) Monday-Saturday. I'll copy and paste the spiel I posted on facebook about it:

*The purpose of the open house is not (for once, haha) to convert or baptize anyone, I promise. No one will ask for your info or if you want to 'know more' about the Church. We really just want to share a look inside this building that we hold so sacred.

*After the tour, there are comment cards that you can fill out if you'd like to about your thoughts about the experience in general. Because of time/efficiency, the tour guides aren't able to answer questions along the tour, but afterwards questions are welcome, and there are cookies 

[correction: I've since learned that there is a small treat, but not cookies. I want to be angry at people with allergies who ruin cookie opportunities for the rest of us, but then I remember their lives/health are at stake, and I resolve to leave them alone and just eat extra cookies at home later].

*The tour is about an hour, give or take a little.

*If the thought of obtaining tickets is too much commitment, go during the morning or afternoon on a weekday when the crowd will be a little lighter and they will squeeze you in (be prepared to wait a few minutes though).

*Kids are welcome!

*I can almost guarantee you that any member of the church you know (myself included) would be happy to go with you if you ask.

*If you want the chance of having the awesome Jana Izatt as your tour guide, go during the afternoon of Oct 31st or the morning of Nov 1st and you might get me!

Here's the link to get tickets:    https://templeopenhouse.lds.org/tickets/6

The rest of September, featuring mostly Jack

Seeing as how Jack is still a bit young for organized sports and athletic endeavors, there was a serious lack of his cute face in the last post. This final recap of September should rectify that by detailing his life throughout the month, with a few mentions of the rest of us.

Jack has proven to be a [mostly] perfect little bystander; this picture is from one of Clyde's soccer practices.

Being darling at Chuck's softball game.

Of course, watching everyone else be so active works up an appetite, so Jack has become quite the opportunist when he spies the fridge open.

 

 After I took that picture, I remembered a similar shot of Will at this age and then scrolled back to early 2007 and found one of Clyde too. Quick observations: you can tell that Clyde was the first baby by the way we were clearly scared to cut his scraggly hair and also by the fact that he's completely dressed, whereas the next two boys are just rockin' onesies.

Jack LOVES attention, but also gets embarrassed pretty easily and turns his head to the side when someone smiles at him... which sometimes means he topples over, haha :).

Will and Jack get lots of bonding time together every day while Clyde is at school; it mostly consists of Jack stealing whatever Will is playing with and Will admonishing him with "No, no, Jack. No, no."

Not surprisingly, Jack particularly loves the XBOX and its controllers.

Quinn and Eden and Isaac came to Idaho in mid-September for a wedding and we were excited to host them one night (mostly thanks to the allure of our DVR and the BYU-Uof U game, which Quinn and I ended up watching at like 1am which made the ending that much more ridiculous and entertaining). Isaac fit in well with the relaxed dressed code we embrace around here.

Jack pretty much just roams the house as he pleases (a question posed probably too often is "Does anyone know where the baby is??"), and I love seeing his little face light up when we cross paths :).

We're trying to teach Jack not to head butt or bite people. . . neither of which is going super well. He may or may not have friends in the future.

I had a super fun girls' night at the beginning of the month with Kara and Paulina... and now that it's October, it must be time for another one!

Will's happy place - inside the tent, with the iPad, pillow, and Rex flashlight.

Soccer fans, as photographed by Clyde.

We had parent-teacher conferences for both boys in September! These pictures are from Will's, where we learned that he is absolutely delightful at preschool and so smart and and all that good stuff. He's been REALLY struggling at home (pray for us all), so we were relieved to hear that he's fine at school. I got to go to Clyde's conference by myself and it was excellent to hear from his teachers about how well he's doing, particularly in math and reading - although we did discuss strategies to help him focus and complete his desk work in a more timely fashion. The poor kid is so constantly pondering Star Wars and Avengers storylines in his head that school work apparently finds it hard to compete...

Oh, here's a tip - when your baby is in the kitchen all alone and you can hear delighted squealing, don't assume that he's just harmlessly playing with the tupperware or cookie cutters again. He might have found a blue dum-dum and be going to town.

Finally, I got to end the month with another girls' night - this time it was the General Relief Society broadcast (which was, of course, amazing). Our stake had an awesome dinner beforehand, and a few of us carpooled/met up there to enjoy the evening. 

Funny story: the stake presidency and high council members sweetly served us dinner, and Brother Swenson stopped by our table at one point to see if we wanted more of anything. A couple gals mentioned wanted some more fruit, so Dan comes back with FOUR FULL PLATES OF CANTALOUPE. Are you kidding me? We all took some, passed one full plate onto another table, and still had tons left over! So then Kristen takes our empty water pitcher to get a refill and is intercepted by a high council member who assures her that he can get it and asks which table he should return the water to. She gestures towards us and he says, "OH, yeah, the fruit table!" Aaaand then we all died laughing :).