Clyde is NINE (and a half, whoops!)

Once upon a time back in September, Clyde turned 9!

We kicked off his birthday with some pictures before school, because why not? This is actually the first time in Clyde's little life that he's had to attend school on his actual birthday, which seems crazy.

Clyde had Scouts that night and got to officially kick off his career as a Bear. Their activity was creating a family motto/shield so in advance we came up with "love, pray, work, play". And after Scouts we played in the sand for a while because, again, why not?

We celebrated as a family the next night when Chuck was around - we had pancakes for dinner and Clyde got Minecraft legos which he promptly built and showed off!

 And then we stretched out the bday celebrations to the next week when I (finally) made the poor kid some cupcakes (he took cookies to school on his birthday), which I think Carma actually enjoyed the most:

And Clyde recruited his buddies Andrew and Asher to head over to the bike park with him (photo credit: Chuck) and they reportedly all had a great time!

Clyde is the cutest, funniest, SASSIEST, most energetic (until it comes to chores, grrr) nine-year-old around and we love him so much. Even as his most exasperating I just have to remind myself how much he reminds me of me at that age and then I try to breathe deeply and not punish him too much for being a victim of genetics ;). This birthday was actually pretty difficult for me because it's halfway to 18 - which will find my baby graduated from high school and moving on to a mission and college and leaving me behind and oh my gosh I'm going to start crying again haha. BUT the point is that Clyde is nine... and a half almost... and we love him!

august activities: the rest!

The boys wrapped up swimming lessons the first week of August, and again, I can't say enough good things about Jack's teacher! She was the sweetest and I love the pictures of the two of them running around the splash pad area. And a few more shots of the older boys jumping off the diving board, crazies.

One afternoon (while Chuck was gone) found us up at the school playground for a picnic and fun with Grandpa Braden and Cody. Such a great time! I love my dad and brother!!

Oh, also while Chuck was gone I got inspired by my amazing friend Jamie (instagram and etsy shop) who is an incredibly talented artist and incredibly energetic DIY-er and I fiiiinally did something with the dresser in Jack and Carma's room. I bought it off craigslist last year am so thrilled that it's done. It happened in parts - first I did it all white with just coral handles but that looked... bleh so I did the outside coral too. I still need to do something with the flower outlines (probably just trace it with coral too?) but don't hold your breath ;). Things I learned: get the expensive spray paint. Totally worth it. Also, put something UNDER the dresser if you spray paint on the driveway, not just in the garage (you know, where no one would see paint marks, duh).

I'm not entirely sure why I have these pictures of the kids eating but it miiight be as proof to Chuck that I fed them while he was gone?

 As always, we hit up the library a lot in August - and sometimes took friends along!

 Carma and Grandma Pam! Cute girls.

Chuck took all four kiddos to one of the bike parks one day while I... I don't know? napped hopefully?

 Jason arranged an awesome surprise for Grace's birthday - playing Clue dressed as all the characters! (then he, as Mr. Green, suspiciously won...) L to R in the group shot: Professor Plum, Mrs. White, Colonel Mustard, Mrs. Peacock, Mr. Green, and Miss Scarlet. We had a great time!

 Will was very intrigued by all the Clue talk so we ended up playing a lot in the next few days - in addition to other random games around the table during the month.

Sometimes Jack nurses his monkey and Carma's hair gets crazy. 

 Girls' night! Emily very sweetly hosted all of us (minus Nycole) in her hospital room where I'm pretty sure we freaked out every nurse that stopped by, first with our boisterous presence and second with our intense campaigning for better bathroom rights for Em (which it turns out we needed to take up with the doctor, whoops!). Also, I can't get over how cute Kara and I are just perched at the foot of the bed.

August = back to school! Will and I headed over to my mom's new classroom to help out a bit and we were highly productive minus the half hour we spent locked out of the school hahaha. Let the record show that prayers are answered and Heavenly Father cares about two grown women who watch a door close and then say to each other, "Do you have the keys???"

These next pictures were the day before school started and I guess Clyde and Will were trying to make me less sad about missing them? because they were AWFUL all day. Fighting, whining, blech. Yay for school!

And here they are, as cute as can be! Clyde started fourth grade with Miss Hill and Will began second grade with Mr. Eilers.  

 We sneaked in a bonus girls night to go back to the hospital and meet sweet Justus. I teared up immediately when we saw him in his little NICU bed (it was worth scalding my hands/arms for 120 seconds because I didn't know you could change the temperature of the hand-washing station water, whoops...).

  It was such a privilege to spend a few minutes close to Justus- Kara and I weren't even jealous that Paulina and Melinda got to be there longer and for his care routine! (that's a lie, I was jealous ;) ).

Once school started, it was back to just me and Carma and Jack during the day - luckily Clark made it over a few times to break up the monotony :). I love how Carma's looking/reaching through the slide ladder to get him.

Carma is my little night owl!

 Carma and Jack were very intent on helping me with the kitchen floor. I can't vouch for the whole room, but those two squares got REAL clean.

Oh man, one day I made a casual remark in Sunday School about having good intentions to someday firm up my arm muscles (aka acquire some arm muscles...) and the amazing Heather made me her personal service project haha. Her school didn't start until September, so she dutifully came over almost every day in August and made me work out and it was AWFUL, I mean awesome haha. I whined and cried and horrified her with my old CD's and frequent breaks and all in all we had a great time and it was gratifying to see how far I got in that time - like a little bit of definiton! I retired from working out at the end of the month buuuut it did provide some good groundwork for when I eventually dig deep and find the motivation to get a sweet bod. 

 The boys love biking home from school so we did that a couple times as a family. Let the record show that Chuck and I normally wear helmets but this time we awesomely forgot Clyde's and Will's and so they wore ours, whoops! Don't worry, we were super safe and didn't do anything dangerous like take pictures mid-ride. Oh wait... 

Oh, the last Sunday in August we marked the collegiate football season kickoff by wearing our best blue and orange! I'm not going to lie, the boys pretty much wear those exact outfits every week, Jack is possibly obsessed with that orange polo haha. 

And that was August!

august activities: church stuff

August kicked off with Chuck spending a week hiking around in the mountains of central Idaho! Also in attendance (left to right) were Andy, Adam, Dakota, Brother Fleshman, and Jared. They had a great time which will eventually be detailed here (have I ever lied to you?) and it was a really nice way to conclude Chuck's two-year stint as Young Men's President.

But holy moly the prep work for this hike - NO JOKE. They were gone six days and hikes 50 some miles and Chuck is amazing and had all the food and snacks and routes and lakes and everything planned so, so well.

I'd gotten pretty spoiled with Chuck's other outings over the summer; he had excellent cell phone reception at Scout Camp so we texted a lot and even talked a few times. The hike was way different, so I went back to my old school method of communication and sent him with mushy notes to open each day which I thought was pretty fantastic - but Chuck managed to beat me at my own game. He likewise left me notes for each day... that also led to a different treat/candy for each day! Bless his heart, he knew a serious amount of chocolate was going to be crucial to surviving our four darling kids without him for a week!

We actually had a pretty great week! My mom watched the kids on Friday so I could head to the temple which was wonderful. And Chuck got home safe and sound and dirrrrrty on Saturday afternoon, hooray! And also Braenna drew that picture of me one day and I loved it.

Pack Meeting in August was pop bottle rockets! And of course Chuck was stuck in traffic on the freeway; we greatly missed his muscles and poor Bishop had to help my kids - and Brother Chappell helped out with Carma so I could take pictures. Scouts is a group effort!

And speaking of Scouts, Chuck and I both got to be part of an Eagle Court of Honor for our buddy Will! I presented him with the actual Eagle award which was really neat and Brother Dille had indicated I could make a couple brief remarks so naturally I chatted for a bit ;). I mostly talked about the importance of being a person of integrity and honor. The best part was probably when I joked about being nervous to follow Brother Corn on the program but at least I could walk to the front... there's a chance he'd just had knee surgery, hahaha. Don't worry, he promises he'll get me back!

I finally got to take Heather on a Sunday School adventure! She showed me all around "Cost Plus World Market" which is a long name for a fancy store and then we picked up some pasta for a picnic in the park and Heather LOVED EVERY SECOND, especially when I took her picture. Heather and I spent a lot of time together in August (her school started later than most, so she used her free time to make me work out) and I'm so impressed with her intelligence and drive for success and her loyalty to those she cares about and obviously her charitable nature - did I mention the hours she spent putting up with my whining as my personal trainer?

August = time to get back out to the orchard and pick be.a.utiful peaches from trees that we had thinned back in May. I handed Will my phone and told him to take some pictures and he was darlingly diligent - here are the adults he snapped...

and some kids - including a selfie hahaha. As crazy as it is up there trying to keep track of a zillion kids while we pick, it's also soo neat to be there as families and as a ward family, serving together to fulfill the commandments to serve one another and feed the hungry.

More orchard fun - I may have found a spider in my bucket and I may have overreacted and Brother Fleshman may have plucked it away and pretended to feed it to Brother Rolfson, which may have been to make fun of me ;). Also, how cute is Carma holding a peach?

So, Chuck was released as YM president because at the end of July he was called to be Bishop Swenson's executive secretary... which makes me laugh because when we divvied up responsibilities in our marriage, handling the calendar and most phone calls fell under "Jana"... but now Chuck has them all figured out for Bishop, haha! One of Chuck's first big projects was to create a 'callings board' for the bishop's office and I was recruited as a scribe :).

It really was a big project, but it really helped reinforce to me how amazing the organization of the church is - at a ward level, no one is paid for doing their calling/job. All those pink and blue names on that huge white board represent men and women who willingly give of their time help the Nampa 2nd Ward function - whether that be playing the piano, teaching young children about Jesus, orchestrating fun activities for the youth on Wednesday  nights, making copies and organizing materials, etc, etc. It was really fun to work with Chuck to create this board, knowing that it will help the Bishopric map out the needs of our ward structure as prompted by Heavenly Father. My favorite part is being the lone pink name as Scout Advancement Chair in the lower left blue-dominated corner of 'Young Men' haha.

Allll riiight, we're into August so a mere six months behind. That's called momentum, my friends! Woo!

july: the infamous Izatt gang takes Lagoon!

Once upon a time last July, the entire Izatt extended family all took a quick break from our everyday lives as Civil War soldiers, ranchers, elegant ladies, saloon girls, cowgirls, cowboys, bandits, etc, and converged upon an unsuspecting amusement park in Utah.

The occasion was the birthday weekend for Pops/Lee/Bri, and we all met for dinner on Friday night, where we let the children run wild as we waited for enough tables to be ready... which ended up taking like an hour. Basically it's a good thing we all chatted and bonded outside because once we got inside and finally got to EAT we were all pretty focused on that ;).

The locals slept in their "houses" with real "beds" that night, while the rest of us (plus some kids) roughed it at the Lagoon campgrounds! ... as much as you can 'rough it' when there are shower and legit bathroom facilities right there. Whatever, I slept in a tent!

We attempted a group picture before we hit the park, I think the good one ended up on someone else's phone haha. We were missing Mallory (play practice? driver's ed?) and Eli (wisely still asleep).

And then it was go time! Carma and Jack and I headed straight for Kiddieland and it was perfect:

The lines were non-existent, so these two hit up every boat/helicopter/airplane/etc they could.

And then we met up with Anna, so Jack showed her around a bit. These two are just SO darling together. They killed me at regular intervals throughout the day:

We met up with the rest of our orange group for some more rides and YES I did dress all six of us in orange and YES I am a genius. It was sooo easy to find them in the crowds and it was sooo easy to remember what they were wearing (in case someone got lost). Chuck and the older boys + George spent the morning hitting up all the crazy rides over and over again - Wicked, Colossus, a bunch of other scary ones I don't know the names of. Chuck and Clyde and Will did not make it onto the crazy new elevator-looking one (what's it called? Insanity? Death Wish? Elevator?), Cannibal. It had juuuust opened a week or two prior and always had a crazy long line. I consider this an answer to my personal prayers but please don't tell my boys I'm the responsible party as they were devastated ;).

Courtney and I broke off from the bigger group after lunch to take Carma and Jack on some 'adult accompaniment required' rides. As always, the jeep ride and the puff the magic dragon roller coaster were extremely jostling and nausea-inducing BECAUSE I AM A WIMP but I didn't puke or cry so we're calling it a win!

I also didn't cry later that day when Courtney and Clyde and I took the Sky Ride across the park but that's mostly a miracle because I did freak out pretty good, yikes. I guess I forgot that heights kind of terrify me? so I agreed to get on and it was pretty much right away clearly a mistake. I don't know who runs Lagoon's website but I take considerable exception to the "Thrill Level: None" categorization as well as the advice to "Take a moment to relax" - I WISH. I was highly unrelaxed the whole ride - I was 88% sure Clyde was going to fall, so I got a SOLID grip on that kid that might have traumatized him for life. I forbade Clyde and Courtney from moving basically at all, I shouted out warnings to passing riders ('Hold on tight guys!' 'NO rocking!' 'Sit up straight!' 'You're good, almost there!'), I prayed pretty fervently, I refrained from swearing so I feel like I should get a bit more credit for that. Oh, I also demanded that Courtney tell me whether or not I was too fat to slide underneath the lap bar and plummet to my death hahahahaha. I don't even know who was more relieved when we got to the end - me, Clyde, Courtney, or the Lagoon security team who had surely been tipped off by alarmed fellow Sky Riders ;).

Luckily I spent the rest of the day firmly on the ground, attempting to photograph people mid-ride:

The Tidal Wave is a favorite - can you see Chuck and the boys (including George)? Super cute. We came back to this ride at the end of the night and they were able to ride it over and over with Amanda and Anna, who also loved it!

Carma was a superstar all day - she loved the rides and was chill in her stroller and even managed a couple naps.

I stole some pictures from other people who caught some fun that I wasn't around for - at one point there was a family bumper car war - I love Clyde and George looking back at each other before the start :).

Will and Lily hung out a lot - here they are prepping for an 'egg drop' adventure and possibly having second thoughts once they started going up, haha:

OH, and our 'Western' family pictures! This was quite the production, considering there are 22 of us and we timed our visit to the portrait studio right after two other huge groups, whoops! It meant that we were hanging out in line for about an hour... in a pretty small space... in the July heat... with restless little kids. We joked that if our family could survive that, we can survive anything! 

And luckily the staff there was amazing! They flitted around with costumes and props and didn't blink when I changed my mind... and Carma's... and they managed to get both Jack AND Eli in costume which was a-maz-ing and they ignored me yelling "No more guns! Let's just take the dang pictures!" when various family members kept requesting more prop weaponry hahaha.

#sorrynotsorry for posting all the pictures - I figure Mom and Pops paid good money for the CD and rights and they're all just so hilarious and perfect! I mean, can we even handle James, the cutest little bugle boy ever? Or Mallory, acclaimed actress, struggling not to laugh in the serious pictures? Obviously that front little row is just darling. And Chuck is just the best!

And now for a few more pictures I stole from Chuck and Melissa - I love how much cousin fun was had that day:

And a few more, including Mom and Pops on the front of some roller coaster.

Fun fact: I've looked at this picture at least twelve times getting this blog ready and I juuuust barely realized Carma is in it hahahaha. Anyways, thus concludes our awesome Izatt family reunion/birthday celebration at Lagoon! I'm so glad that I married into such a great family. In-law relationships can be really tricky to navigate sometimes but just like any relationship, they're so much more rewarding when you look for the positive and put effort in and all that good stuff and I love that we have such good relationships with both of our extended families. Watching my kids with their cousins/aunts/uncles/grandparents is one of my favorite things ever!