Other September Happenings

I forgot to post the photos from Susie's birthday, which was at the end of August. We asked what she wanted for dinner and the answer was "Annie's Mac and Cheese", so that's what we had :) We also had watermelon and hot dogs. Susie requested a cookie cake instead of a traditional cake, so Kiki ordered her one. Beth made her a crown.

School starting is always a mixed blessing. I miss getting to see all six kids as much, but it's nice to have the structure that school adds to our days. We seem to have adjusted better this year to school starting and there was very little drama or crankiness.

Laura and Eva really like playing together and love the time they get to spend with Megan before she leaves for middle school. Megan has a group of friends that she walks to and from school with, so we're not driving her this year. I think the little girls like have the toys to themselves. I caught a photo of Laura happily putting all her dolls (and several of the other kids' stuffies) down for a nap.

Eva loves dressing up and found the perfect cowgirl outfit!

We've settled into a comfortable pattern. I am currently working Tuesday-Thursday from 11am - 9 or 10pm. We have a sitter for Friday as well, but I have a pretty light client load at the moment, so I'm waiting until I get more clients to start going into the office on Fridays. I'm adding about a client a week, which isn't bad. I spend about seven hours a week running group therapy sessions and see about 6-8 clients. With the groups I run, full time for me will be about 15-20 clients.

Laura, Eva, and I go out once a week or so with Jojo or Betsy for lunch. Rob and I try to do one or two lunch dates a week since we don't see much of each other during the week due to our work schedules. Drew and Susie watch the kids on Tuesdays and Kala watches them Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. We have something come up almost every weekend. We go on one to two dates a month and we spend most Saturday nights with Susie and Drew; either Susie and I go out while Rob and Drew stay home with the kids or the guys (Rob, Drew, and Dan) hang out while Susie and I stay home. We have family dinners on Sunday nights with Susie and Drew, and Kiki and Dan.

The kids are doing well in school for the most part. Meg is struggling a bit with turning things in on time and is grounded due to missing work and one low grade. She is doing pretty well in almost all of her classes though :) The other three all have mostly A's (we just got their first progress reports) and really like their teachers. Eva is as spunky as ever and Laura is talking up a storm. We are very blessed :)

Laura Turns 2!

I can't believe our baby is two! We are officially done with babyhood in our family as Laura is now a toddler. Very much a bittersweet moment for us.

We celebrated her birthday on Labor Day as both Rob and I had to work on the 2nd. Plus she is little enough that she had no idea which day was actually her birthday. All eight of us when grocery shopping and Laura got to pick out her own birthday cake. She picked a giant pink lemonade cupcake instead of a birthday cake, so we picked up regular cupcakes for everyone else. Susie and Drew joined us at Jojo's that afternoon to go swimming. Jojo gave Laura her first gift, a bubble machine!

We came home and had dinner, then Laura got to open the rest of her gifts. Her favorite tv show is "Daniel Tiger", a cartoon based of Mister Roger's Neighborhood, so we ordered her figurines from the show. We also got her an magnetic drawing toy as she loves coloring. A few days before, Rob and I had run to Walmart and Rob picked up a doll for her as well.

She opened the bag of gifts and saw the doll and didn't care what else was in the bag.

She passed the bag off to Beth, who pulled out the rest of the gifts. If figures that the gifts we spent time planning for were totally upstaged by the gift we picked up on a whim :)

She loved being sung to by everyone.

The next morning the older kids headed off to school and Laura rediscovered the bubble machine she got from Jojo. She found out that if she put it on a table, the bubbles would pile up and she could play with them.

1st Day of School

We let each of the kids pick out their own back-to-school outfits. Kylie has decided she prefers shopping in the boys' section as she likes basketball shorts and shirts that aren't tight. She also wears skater shoes and loves them. Kylie is really hard on her shoes and clothes and this switch means her stuff lasts much longer and she is much more comfortable. Beth found a purple dress, which didn't shock any of us. She also found purple sparkly sneakers. Jack stuck with red, his favorite color. Red shirt, black and red shorts, and black and red shoes.

They also got to pick their own backpacks. We give them a $20 budget and they can pick whatever they want in that price range. Kylie picked a heavy duty blue one (blue is her favorite color, which can also been seen in her choice of back-to-school outfit). Jack picked a blue one strapped triangle shaped backpack. Beth found a sparkly purple one.

This year Kylie is in 5th grade. She has Mr. Chamberlain and Mrs. Hammer. Beth is in 3rd grade. Her teachers are Mrs. McCabe and Mrs. Jackson. Jack is in 2nd grade with Mrs. Edwards and Mrs. Smith.

Megan is in 7th grade this year. I won't list her teachers as she has about eight of them. The electives she has are art and consumer science, which is a combination of Home Economics and an intro to business/career counseling class. She is most excited about the consumer science class, which surprised us as she loves art.

She picked a dress that, according to Beth, who has decided she is a fashion guru, is very "summery".

Saying Goodbye

As Rob was gone when Susie and Drew got here, we lent them our Avalon for a few days while their car was in the shop getting the transmission repaired. Unfortunately, Susie got in an accident. Susie was fine, as was the lady in the other car, but the Avalon was not.

The rear axle broke. As the Avalon was 17 years old with 225,000 miles on it, the insurance company declared it a total loss.

It was like losing a friend. We bought that car twelve years ago just after Megan was born. We used it to drive to the hospital to have five of our children and to take them home for the first time. Kylie was almost born in it. It's been extremely reliable and, despite how old it was, handled really well. We were really sad to see it go.

We've consoled ourselves by recognizing that as old as it was, the chances of something major going wrong were getting significantly higher each year. As Susie and the lady driving the other car were fine, this was probably best as at least this way we got an insurance payout.

The car we bought to replace it is a 2007 ice blue Camry. Neither of us love it like we loved the Avalon, but it's in really good condition and we got an amazing deal on it. We've decided it will be the kids' car in 4-5 years when Megan gets her license. It will be a really good kids car.

Last Week of Summer

Rob was gone the last week before school started, but we made the most of it.

I got the official copy of my license -

 

We had a wonderful visit with Elder Speer, who was driving out to college in Utah from SC. He was one of my favorite elders as he loved talking about my work.

We forgot to take a photo before he changed for a meeting he was going to that night, so he's dressed as he did when he was a missionary.

The first day of school was Tuesday. On Monday, Susie, Drew, and I took the kids to Golden Corral for lunch to belatedly celebrate Jack's birthday. We wrapped up the evening by going swimming at Jojo's.

Rob flew in around midnight so he'd be home for the kids' first day of school. Susie and Drew spent the evening at our house. We watched a movie (Switched) together while I waited for it to be time to pick Rob up at the airport. I missed him.

Susie and Drew!!!

First a few photos we took for Rob while he was in Oregon celebrating Wayne's marriage. It was the first time since my heart copped out on us that I had all the kids on my own for an extended period of time. We had fun :)

Waving hi to Daddy and Grandma and Grandpa -

Pigtails!

Eva picked out her own outfit. Can you tell?

While Susie and Drew were visiting a few months ago, we did our best to convince them to move closer to us, as we do with all our favorite people :) It's never worked. We got a phone call a few weeks after they went back to Utah. They decided to move here!!!! Yay!!!!

It took a couple of months to get everything worked out. They arrived August 21st, after spending a few extra wonderful days with my aunt and uncle in New Mexico and quite a few less wonderful extra hours in Amarillo due to their transmission going out. All of us were very excited when they finally made it here! They are living with Christy as she travels extensively for work and needs a roommate to take care of the cats and the house.

Within minutes of their arrival at our house, the kids had Susie and Drew giving them airplane rides.

Wrapping Up Summer

A few days after Jack's birthday, Rob and I celebrated 17 years of marriage. I can't believe it's been 17 years already, but I also can't believe it's only been 17 years, if that makes sense. In two more years, I will have spent half my life with him. The road has been harder than either of us expected it to be. In a society that touts "happily ever after", there isn't much room to teach that the most amazing experiences also take the most work.

The work is absolutely worth it though. Even after 17 years, Rob is still my very best friend and favorite person in the world. He is still the first person I want to talk to when I wake up and the last person I want to talk to before falling asleep. He still makes my stomach do flip flops just by looking at me. He still tells me I'm beautiful every single day. We are so lucky we found each other and I'm so glad we have eternity to spend together.

We celebrated our anniversary by going out for Brazilian food, a tradition we started 7 years ago. Afterwards we went out to see a movie (Guardians of the Galaxy). Megan babysat for us. We love that she is now old enough to babysit!

Rob's anniversary gift to me was a new, much smaller, laptop for work. It is basically a tablet with a detachable keyboard. My old laptop is huge as we got it for school and it is much easier to see full websites with a larger screen. It's really heavy though and it doubled the weight of my work bag.

My gift to him was a plane ticket to Oregon. Rob's best friend, Wayne, got married last week. We flew Rob out to spend some time with Wayne (and the rest of his group of friends). Out of his original group of friends, only one wasn't able to make it. Rob also got to spend time with his parents and brother and got to meet our niece and nephew for the first time.

As he got back the night before the first day of school, we took pictures at the pool before he left to commemorate the end of summer. This summer all four of the older kids swam without any kind of floaties. Eva and Laura both became very comfortable in the water and Eva even jumps off the diving board now! Laura swims on her own (with the help of an inflatable ring and sometimes arm floaties) and is very adamant about not receiving help. We are so grateful to Jojo and Dan for letting us use their pool every week! There is no way I would feel comfortable taking six kids swimming at a public pool full of kids as I would never be able to keep an eye on all six of them.

Nature blessed us with a rainbow towards the end of our time at the pool :)