Clyde and George go to science camp!

Remember how our cute nephew George visited us last summer to attend a science day camp? Well, he came again this year (I think that officially makes it a tradition!) and Clyde got to go too, woo!

 Here they are heading in to camp the first morning. This is the same program that I worked at for like ten summers in a row back in the day (first as a counselor, then a teacher/assistant director) so it was slightly crazy to send Clyde off as a camper.

 Melissa and Courtney and Lily brought George up and then stayed for a couple of nights, which was super fun.

 Lily and Will spent most of the day adorably playing 'school' :).

Monday night found us outside for FHE; Will taught our lesson and then the kids rode bikes and played as our activity. And we obviously needed delicious ice cream sundaes for our treat!

 Chuck had promised the boys a game of freeze tag before bed, and what followed was the most hilarious sibling interaction I'd witnessed all day: Chuck trying to evade his big sister all around the front yard (and vice versa!!):

 I almost died laughing - my favorite was the two of them bent over by the tree (Chuck was taking his 10 second break and Melissa may have been puppy guarding) as they commiserated about being old :).

 And then I did a double take as I watched George continually trying to outrun his big sister all over the front yard:

 I almost wished Quinn were around so I could crazily chase him... but I settled for holding Jack (to keep him from getting run over!) and collecting photographic evidence of the fun.

 Our last activity Monday night was making the boys crazy hats to wear the next day at camp. Since they were in the orange group, I gathered as many little orange objects as I could find around the house and we hot glued them to plastic hats:

 And to complete the effect, the boys dressed in as much orange as possible. Will and Lily were pretty insistent that they get in on the crazy hat action as well, so we busted out the paper bowls and they were thrilled :).

  Camp was the main activity all week, but we also fit in t-ball practices, Cub Scouts (George got to come with me!), and we made time for ice cream cones.

Mismatch outfit day at camp:

 There was only so much we could do with their actual clothes (and still be comfortable/able to participate in camp activities) but George came up with sharing his socks. The camp staff loved it!

Thursday was Aloha Day and we had lots of fun getting the boys decked out. It was also the day I spent at camp volunteering (Volunteering = discount. Former staff = discount. Discounts = Clyde getting to go, summer camps are expensive!!), so I was able to tag along to their classes and see their cute little creative minds in action:

 One of their favorite activities was taking apart an old object or appliance and then attempting to make a catapult out of it; by the end of the week they were able to launch a rubber ducky!

 On Friday afternoon there was a slideshow presentation and the boys led us on a tour of their classes as we gathered all of their projects.

Clyde and George had a great week with their counselor Anna and their junior counselor Cole (another surreal moment for me since Cole was just a wee camper back when I taught!). I'm glad that the boys had so much fun; it was such a big part of my life those summers and it's fun to see it from the perspective of a parent now. And we loved having George stay with us - hopefully the tradition continues next year!!

Saying goodbye to Holly

Once upon a time I made a dear, dear friend named Holly who lived like a mile away from me. And life was wonderful. And then two months later she moved 12 miles away. And it was dreadful, and I cried, but we managed. And then a year later she moved 500 miles away. 

And it's dreadful and I cried.

 But before I cried, we smiled for a picture. And we didn't even mean to match! Well, we didn't mean to match our shirts. We definitely meant to match our poses. One of the valuable life lessons Holly taught me was to take pictures with my hand on my hip :).

 Running was what brought Holly and I together; one night at a RS thing I was chatting with Nicole about what time we were going to run and I noticed Holly nonchalantly looking at us, so I asked her if she wanted to come. She said yes and we never looked back. Gosh, I just love her.

One benefit of Holly moving to Boise last year was her super cute new next-door neighbor (and running buddy!) Madi. They came out to Nampa to run a few weeks ago (right before the 5k) and we had a blast (we had like ten or eleven people running with us that night; we looked like a hilarious mismash high school cross country team). Before Holly and Madi left that night, we decided we needed a picture to commemorate the occasion. What followed was probably the most ridiculous half hour of my life.

 Left: the first picture we took, at 10:27. Right: the last picture we took, at 10:53.

 Just a small selection of the hilarity that ensued inside that time frame:

Multiple locations, hairdos, line-ups, poses, and SO MUCH giggling :).

 Obviously it was all worth it.

 Anyhow, the main point of this post is that one of my best friends moved to Seattle last month (it's taken me this long to face the reality that she really left and that I need to blog about our farewell) and I love her and I miss her and I'm grateful for her friendship.

 And every time I'm sad about Holly being gone, I'll just look at this picture and laugh :).

(And then probably cry more, haha).

BUT the good news is that Holly and Creed and Ella are settling in so well there and are happy and together and now I have a new reason to traipse up to Seattle sometime (my aunt and uncle even live there, and yet I somehow haven't been there since before I got married. Chuck clearly needs to take me there next summer for a tenth anniversary trip.)

Love you Holly!

The time we went to the zoo with Chuck's co-workers

It's not our usual M.O. to hit up the zoo twice within two weeks, but we're so glad we did - this time it was an excursion with some of Chuck's co-workers (Jenni, Craig, Brenna, Callie, and Wendy) and their families. It was a fun group - most of whom I had met before but don't get to see (not counting facebook!) very often. 

I can't tell you how happy I was to realize that Clyde's leg was resting on a rope (that he was instructed not to touch!) and not just being held in that position as some sort of flamingo-inspired pose. The hand on the hip is harder to explain...

The boys had a great time, as expected. It was significantly less crowded than on field trip day, so we had a little more wiggle room.

Chuck was quite taken with the jelly fish. It started looking a little hypnotic, so I moved us along :).

Taking a spin in the cool safari jeep by the lions. I figure this is a good preview of the boys' high school days when they can get themselves around to school/soccer/friends'/etc. Except minus the cool old-time jeep and add in a less cool old-time Saturn station wagon (excuse me while I take a brief moment to pray that the Saturn is still mostly running by then...). And seatbelts. Definitely add in seatbelts.

The boys took to feeding goats out of their hands as well as you would expect, considering how their mom feels about live animals with, you know, biting capabilities. I obviously opted out of this activity.

Oh, fun new thing at the zoo: dinosaurs! They're strewn throughout the place and they're big and they move a bit and are also LOUD, much to the displeasure of Craig's cute daughter Jaelyn. Bless her heart, she was very vocally opposed to each one - except the T-Rex, which didn't faze her.

The T-Rex did faze me, although I maintain I was just startled (not scared!) when it moved unexpectedly. And Chuck insisted we all pose running away from it. I'm still not sure why I agreed.

Our last (and favorite!) stop was the butterfly exhibit. I'd been a few years ago, but since then they've expanded it and it's a-mazing.

Craig and Jaelyn led our group inside and immediately Craig attracted several winged friends. Hopefully these pictures will provide lots of material for teasing Craig in the break room - isn't that what outside-of-work social gatherings are for??

It was so fun to just be standing sooo still and suddenly have a butterfly land somewhere on you! My favorite was the one on my back pocket :).

Will, Chuck, Clyde: such cute, contemplative butterfly-whisperers!

It's probably for the best that Jack had no idea that a butterfly landed on his shorts :).

After the zoo, we walked over to the park where we met another co-worker and fired up the grill for a BBQ lunch.

Jack mowed down on a hot dog... that was apparently a little hotter-off-the-grill than I realized when I handed it to him. It's all good, he went back for more!

I'm lame and didn't get any pictures with the whole gang - which just means we'll have to get together with them all again! Thanks to Jenni for all the planning; we had a great time.

We made it to NINE! (Can we call out the naysayers yet? No? Next year?)

As of last Wednesday, Chuck and I have officially been married for nine years. What the pickle?? How did that even happen? NINE years is serious business - scarily close to ten years. Do you know what kind of people have been married for ten years? Actual adults! Glad we have another year before we're in that boat...

Our anniversary itself was lovely. Mostly just a regular day (Chuck had a dr appt to get his medical form signed for Scout camp, Clyde and George had science camp, boys had t-ball pictures, my visiting teachers came, etc, etc) but we managed to fit in two dates: tennis in the afternoon (thanks to Tawny for watching Will and Jack) and a movie in the evening (thanks to my mama for watching all four boys!).

Here's what I wrote about our tennis date that night on facebook:

Good news: I beat Chuck at tennis today! Bad news: my tactic of distracting said husband with my cute tennis outfit resulted in a sunburn that reaches a little lower around my, ahem, neckline than it would have had I not used such a tactic. Dang karma.

Best news: Chuck and I have officially been married nine years and still love each other all the time and like each other almost all the time. Go team!

And here's a picture we took before we started playing, aka pre-sunburn. Yes, Chuck has a beard again. And he's wearing a camo hat. We're possibly approaching Duck Dynasty territory...

Our movie date was super fun; we are lame and haven't seen a movie in the theater for like three years. We picked the new Star Trek and it was highly entertaining and I only cried once, so... good date!

And now for some rambling thoughts about marriage:

A couple of months ago Ben Affleck won an Academy Award and in thanking his wife he acknowledged how much work they put into their marriage. Loads of crazy Internet people jumped right in to say that their marriage must be falling apart or how insulted his wife must have been that he said that. 

But I loved it. 

Here's the whole quote: "I want to thank you for working on our marriage for 10 Christmases. It’s good, it is work, but it’s the best kind of work, and there’s no one I’d rather work with." 

So true, right? I know there are people for whom marriage comes very easily, and I'm SO happy for those people. But for the rest of us, it takes work. But don't all the best things in life take work? And aren't they that much more valuable and cherished and worth it because of it? 

(Plus the part about no one else he would rather work with is pretty sweet.) 

I'm grateful that Chuck is willing to put in the work alongside me to keep our marriage strong and happy and healthy. Just a few hours ago, I sneaked a quick snuggle with Chuck and apologized for some ridiculous thing I'd said or done (it's hard to keep track with me), concluding with something about how I know I'm difficult, to which Chuck responded, "But very, very worth it." 

Man, I'm glad he thinks so.  Happy ninth anniversary, sweetheart!

May's Days

Ohhh man, May was a busy month.

Just ask poor Jackers, who had to work through lunch most days.

You know what May has a lot of? Holidays. Like Cinco de Mayo, which a) I frequently misspell and b) is NOT a celebration of Mexico's independence but rather a victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla fought on May 5, 1862. Let it never be said that this blog isn't educational.

 We attended a fun gathering over at the Curtis'. Yummy tacos, good company, fun games, and I got to wear my beautiful embroidered dress, so a win all-around.

 Random shot of the boys at bedtime. When we gather in there for scriptures and prayer, Jack has started wriggling his way in under one of the boys' blankets and onto their pillows and it kills me every time.

 Clyde enjoys it significantly more than Will does :).

 During the craziest weekend ever, it was Mother's Day! Chuck was luckily enough to have his wife and mom on-hand, and he took great care of us. Breakfast was delicious French toast, and he made my favorite pork enchiladas for dinner. Mmmmmm.

 Pictures after church... possibly not the best time to ask hot, hungry, tired boys to smile for long periods of time, haha.

 Cute Mother's Day artwork from the boys.

 The swingset has provided loads of fun this spring, and also a prime opportunity for Clyde to bang his little mouth and lose one of his top front teeth. Soo happy it was a baby tooth!

We dusted off our gardening gloves (not really) for this year's garden. Here's how Jack's experience went:

1. SUPER excited to stroll outside and see what was happening. 2. NOT happy about the 'friendly fire' incident in which he got sprayed with the hose. 3. Having second thoughts about sticking a fistful of dirt in his mouth. 4. Very content to watch the action from his stroller - he climbed up all by himself. 5. Finally intrigued enough by the shovel to come and contribute.

 The older two boys were ALL IN from the get-go. Adorable.

 I promise that I helped too; there are about five sugar snap pea sprouts out there courtesy of my careful seed placement. I'm pretty sure they're going to be the best ones.

Two of my Scouts (well, one Scout and one former Scout) played soccer this spring and I got to watch each of them play a little bit. Cameron is the cute redhead (wearing green) in the top two pictures:

And Jacob is the cute boy in the blue uniform in the bottom two pictures. It was so fun to watch them play - both Cameron and Jacob are superstars :). Clyde came with me to Jacob's game and was pretty intrigued by how hardcore the games are with the older boys.

Clyde and Will got recruited by Grandma Pam for some cheap child labor; while Mom and Cody and I weeded their corner flower garden, the boys picked up the little 'helicopter' seedlings dropped by her big tree. For each little bucket they picked up, they earned a shiny dime, sooo it was possibly kind of a throwback to the 1950's :).

They were thrilled though, and each earned about a dollar. The cutest thing came the next Sunday at church when Chuck helped them fill out their little contribution slip to pay tithing for the first time.

Ohhh Jackers.

Good thing that marker comes off kitchen floors! (And toddler skin...)

We spent some of Memorial Day visiting my aunt and uncle, which is always fun.

Larry and Iris have a fun bonus room that boasts quite the dress-up collection, and the boys spent lots of time playing with their second cousins Kara and Rachel, although they made it downstairs for ice cream (and to play with some supercool dinosaurs).

Will and I hit up the dollar store for crepe paper on Clyde's last day of school and came across some 'magic towels'... which he may have talked me into purchasing. And holy moly, were they worth the $2!!

The anticipation of waiting for them to expand and unfold in the water was like Christmas morning. Honestly, I might pick up some more for Christmas morning...

Finally, our awesome friends the Littlewoods came up to Idaho for a family baby blessing, so we spent the last day of May happily reunited at the Haws' for a BBQ with the old gang.

It was SUCH a blast! The kids played, the moms talked, the dads supervised the marshmallow roasting. Good, good times. I seriously got emotional saying good-bye to Littlewoods - McKay grabbed Will and it just reminded me how amazing he was with Will right around Will's autism diagnosis and it made me miss having them around all the time.

I insisted on some pictures, much to EVERYONE'S chagrin. Whatev, they'll thank me someday.

Angie, Lynndi, Tasha, Tawny, Nicole, Jana, Shelly

THE KIDS! I think six of them are new since the Littlewoods moved away three years ago - crazy!!

One more of the kids :).

And the guys. Ohhh, the guys. It was ridiculous trying to get them to nicely line up, but I did it. Kind of:

Troy, McKay, Dan, Ryan, Chuck, Duke 

(just missing Angie's Ryan, who was on a Scout campout).

And that was May!

Will finished preschool & Clyde finished first grade!

School recently got out, which means we officially have a preschool graduate on our hands:

Here is Will receiving his little certificate from Ms. Brittany.

We're so, so grateful for the developmental preschool that Will has attended for the last two years. He has come so far and a great deal of his progress is due to this program and the teachers and aides that put so much time and effort into working with their special needs students. 

They had a cute program where the kids sang a couple of songs and then the graduates were called up one by one. Will made the most of his time waiting by getting up close and personal with one classmate...

Ms. Brittany, Will, and Ms. Kim.

Uncle Cody was able to come for the graduation ceremony, which delighted Will!

We also sneaked Clyde out of school early that day so that our whole family could attend and support Will. I love that Clyde was quick to inform his teachers and office staff that he was going to his brother's preschool graduation - the boys are so proud of each other and it's the sweetest thing to watch.

And of course, Will's amazing preschool experience wouldn't have been possible without his bus drivers and attendants. We were so blessed to have the same two duos over the whole two plus years of preschool: Elizabeth/Jorge and Tammy/Katie. Along with thank you notes from both myself and Will, I also ordered these collages for each of them:

Jorge and Elizabeth. They were so fun and genuinely cared about Will. I may have had to blink back tears when I put Will on the bus for the last time with them...

 Katie and Tammy:

Love these ladies. They helped so much when Will was struggling with going to preschool after Jack was born; they were so reassuring to me and just took care of him and it meant so much to me. We're going to miss all of them!!

The next week brought the end of Clyde's school year. I don't think I can say enough how much he loved first grade and how much he loved his teachers:

Mrs. Holman, Clyde, Mrs. Blume. Love them both.

I didn't order his real class picture, so this sad imitation will have to suffice:

Clyde, Jeremy, David, Baylee, Hailee, Jr, Janeah, Alli, Aryn, Cash, Austin, Mrs. Holman, Collin, Billy, Dominic, Mrs. Blume, AnnaMarie, Abel, Jared, Keera, Danika, and Preston. (Not pictured: Roberto)

A few more pictures of Clyde Monster with his buddies.

And a few of the kids wanted a picture with me :). Chuck and I both really enjoyed volunteering in Clyde's classroom so regularly; I'm excited to be able to do it next year for both Clyde and Will. Hopefully some of these same kids will be in Clyde's second grade class!

On our way out, we stopped to get a picture with the librarian, Mrs. Morgan. We really appreciate how well she facilitated Clyde's reading this year!

We also stopped in at the nurse's office for a quick picture with Ms. Teresa, who was as instrumental in Clyde having such a successful year at school as were his teachers, if not more so. I was so nervous that Clyde's medical issues would interfere with school, but everyone there was so helpful and accommodating with his 504 plan - especially Ms. Teresa. Love her!

And then summer vacation officially started, with some crepe paper to mark the occasion:

And cupcakes. With multiple kinds of frosting, because why not? It's summertime!!