Back to School 2016

Back to school! 

Which means "back to school night" at Garrison Elementary... and Mrs. Phillips likes to make it a family night, so all the kids were there...which was good, because Cary was out of town and I needed to bring all the kids. ;)

The other kids were running all over the place, Clara stayed close.

"Look, mom, I can touch the ceiling!"

The next morning, up bright and early to meet the bus!

Britton's first day of Kindergarten

Aidan's first day of 4th grade

Ella's first day of 2nd grade.

☺

End of Summer

We usually have a church picnic at the end of summer, and this year was no different, however, with our usual place being shut down right now, we had to find somewhere different.

After the picnic was over, we drove around to see the Strawberry creek fire, and then hung out at Janille's house for the rest of the afternoon. It was later that evening we found out that one of the hot shots working on the fire had died that afternoon. :(

The Olympics! 

I guess you could say Cary and I are big fans, and we let the kids stay up a few nights to watch and decided that was a terrible idea after they were so cranky from not getting enough sleep! Lets be honest though, I was getting to bed too late too and not getting enough sleep. ☺

One of the saving graces of summer for me,was the fact that the kids were able to do lots of sleepovers at both grandparents houses! Even if Clara predictably wanted to come home at 10:00 every time. (She did manage to spend the whole night on the last sleepover though)☺

Good bye summer, I'll miss parts of you. ;)

Aidan's birthday!

Aidan turned 9 on August 10. 

This guy currently loves Star Wars, Nerf Guns, video games, (much to our dismay, lol) ;) and anything military.

He's a great big brother and very sweet to Clara.

He also has a new invention/ project idea every day. 

He still loves to read and he's still taking piano lessons from Doug.

He has also started orthodontic work, and he got an expander on August 4th, and he's supposed to get braces on next month, which he is very excited about!

Aidan had some ideas of what he wanted to do on his birthday, and I made him scale it back since his was an all day affair covering lots of miles and lots of work. ☺

We ended up inviting friends over for food and a water fight and then later had a little party with the family to celebrate the many August birthdays.

For part of his birthday, Aidan also drove in with Cary to SLC where he hung out with Jordynne and Kiera for the day (Thanks Jordy and Kiera!) and had fun with them, the next day he went to work with Cary and after work, they went to the Hill Air Force Base Museum. 

Aidan had a great time! 

Kitties, Kids, and Fire!

The kittens totally destroyed 50% of my plants in the front yard, and they've been working really hard to kill two of my small trees. :( The perennials will survive, so I'm not too worried about them, but I will not be happy if the kittens kill my two little trees, and then we hope next year the cats are old enough not to see the plants as targets.

We've started on our office, woo hoo! But in the meantime, lots of chaos.

Trying to decide if I'm brave enough to do a room a navy color

August 8, the strawberry creek fire... the smoke was so bad in the north part of the valley I thought that was where the fire was, but obviously once you see the mountains it was coming from this area. Thanks to the north part of the valley for taking all the smoke. ;)

30 minutes later...

10 minutes later...

Not related to the fire....;) 

The rest of July...photo dump.

We had to take Aidan and Ella to their pulmonology appointments at Primary Children's, just a regular check up.

In the middle of the month we met up for a BBQ at Strawberry creek, and I probably wouldn't have posted most of these because they are terrible, but since the campground just burned down, it's kind of nice to have some before pictures.

A photo from after the fire from the GBNP Facebook page and they have more pictures here. I just thought this one was interesting since you can see the remains of the fence/ gate from the corral that the kids were playing on.

Sharon made Clara a big girl quilt

This means something exciting is about to happen! :)

We visited Sharon in her classroom one summer morning, and Britton made me take pictures of him modeling ALL of the blankets. I spared you...

July summer concert

We've had to get creative for ways to play in water.