Fall Busyness

Is it too early in the year to wish for the return of the lazy days of summer?!? Holy cow. I was so looking forward to the start of school so that we could get on a better schedule. Now that we're a couple weeks into the school year I'm slightly overwhelmed by our commitments and the general busyness of life.

Here's a rundown of our fall schedule:

Monday:

Addie - Preschool
Addie - Gymnastics
Makenna - Soccer (3:30-4:30)
Carter - Soccer (5:00-7:00)

Mondays used to be my favorite day. I would get my house cleaned up from the weekend, do all of my laundry and get ready for the week. My Mondays are crazy this year. I drop my big kids off at school, drop Addie at school and then rush to the gym to get to my class (my favorite of the week so although it adds to the overall craziness it is worth it). After the gym I rush home and quickly shower then pick up Addie from PS, head home to feed everyone and go straight to gymnastics. After gymnastics I run home to get Emery a quick nap (like an hour - poor baby) and then go pick up the big kids and start the soccer madness. This week I was so frazzled/busy that I almost ran out of gas between soccer practices. I pulled into the station just as my tank went to 0 miles to empty.

Tuesday:
Carter & Makenna - piano lessons
Carter - scouts

Wednesday:
Addie - Preschool
Carter - cross country meet

Wednesday were supposed to be my saving grace but Carter BEGGED to run cross country this year. It is only 5 weeks of meets and they do their practice during recess a few days a week so it's not a huge time commitment but everything feels like a BIG commitment when you're running around with 4 kids.

Thursday:
Makenna - Soccer (3:30-4:30)

Friday:
Addie - Preschool
Carter- Soccer (5:00-7:00)

Saturday:
Carter & Makenna - Soccer games

Adding to the madness is the fact that I volunteered to be the team mom for both the kids soccer teams. I had no idea what a huge time commitment this was going to be and I spend several hours a week doing soccer stuff. I also got roped into being the room mom for Makenna's class when her teacher could not find a single volunteer. That will include doing the monthly newsletter, planning class parties and organizing field trips. Allen is so crazy busy with work right now and is spending 2-3 nights a week doing meetings with his team in China right during the dinner hour which is definitely adding to my busyness.

I've found that I'm having to manage my own time more carefully than ever. I've put myself back on a cleaning schedule to make sure everything gets done during the week. I haven't done that in years! I have to do all my meal prep first thing in the morning or even the night before to make sure we're getting home cooked meals.

Having older sisters with older kids I know my weeks will get even busier as the kids get older. I can hardly imagine it.

Ward Campout

Last weekend we attended our ward campout. The church owns a very nice campground about 45 minutes north of where we live where we spent the night. My original plan was to drive two cars to the campout and then leave with Emery while Allen stayed the night with the older kids. However, my mom and sister harassed me endlessly and told me I was being a wimp so I decided to stay. We have a 5 person tent and we could not fit all of us plus the pack n play in the tent so I decided that I would sleep in the car with Emery and Allen would sleep in the tent with the other kids.  Ems did great. It took her a little while to wind down but once she fell asleep she stayed asleep the entire night. Me... not so much. It was probably the worst night of sleep in my life. We folded down the seats in our car so I had a huge place to sleep but it was so uncomfortable and I was freezing all night long. It ended up being a very, very long night for me. Luckily I had a book on my iPhone that I listened to off and on for most of the night.  I looked at my watch at 3:30 a.m. and was so bugged that I still had hours before the sun came up.  Allen and the other kids were snug and warm in the tent and all got a full night of sleep.  Despite my horrible night of sleep it was still super fun. I only took a couple pictures.

Some of the YM invited Carter to play lacrosse with them for awhile. He was in heaven and we were so impressed with these older boys allowing Carter to play with them.

Addison with her new friend Kate. They live in our neighborhood and area already as thick as thieves:

The darling Miss Ems could not get enough of playing with the ash in the fire pit. She is a digger and was filthy by the time we came home

After the campout we've decided it's time to invest in a bigger tent so we can do more camping in the future.

Labor Day Weekend

We decided at the last minute to go to my sister's house for Labor Day weekend. We picked Allen up from work at noon on Friday afternoon and drove to Vancouver. It's usually a 3 hour drive but it took us about 5 to get there due to the holiday weekend traffic.  We got there in time to BBQ and celebrate Brooklyn's birthday with her and some of her cute friends.

We planned to spend all day Saturday on their boat but we woke up to cloudy, chilly weather. We were really bummed but hoped it would burn off later in the day. We packed up right after lunch and headed to the Columbia river. It ended up being a gorgeous day and a perfect way to end the summer. 

I had to laugh when all the kids announced they had to use the  bathroom. This is how you do it in the river.

Emery liked the boat as long she experienced it from the safety of my arms. She did not let me put her down for most of the day.

The kids had the BEST time going on the huge tube behind the boat:

We docked off of a little island and let the kids play on the sand dunes for a couple hours. The sand was BEAUTIFUL (think Caribbean beach sand) and the kids had a grand time running up and down the dunes. I didn't bring a camera since we had to swim a ways to island but it was so beautiful.

Allen and Jon deflating the tube.

Emery loved holding the flag but was unhappy that I put her down to take this picture.

Cousin dog pile. I love that these guys love each other so much and especially love that we live close enough to see them often.

After we put the tube away some of the older kids/parents did a bit a wake-boarding. Allen hadn't been for about 10 years but he got right back into the swing of things quickly (and can you believe how beautiful the background is in these pics!?)

We had a late night dinner out where we were quite a spectacle with our 9 kiddos. It is always so funny to see people's reactions to our big families.

Sunday we went to church, played board games, had a huge and yummy dinner, watched movies and played at the park.

We left Monday morning in an attempt to miss the holiday traffic coming back into Seattle. We stopped for lunch at Red Robin where we traditionally have dinner on the first night of school. We had piano and scouts after the first day so we decided to do it the day before.

We got home in time to go to a BBQ with some new friends and got home in plenty of time for showers, back -to-school blessings and early bedtimes. We had a fabulous Labor Day weekend and it was a great way to bid farewell to summer!

Summertime Bucket List, part 2

We worked really hard to complete as much of our summer bucket list as we could. We had a really fun mix of stuff we could do at home and lots new things to explore in the area.  

We started a Sunday  night tradition of doing S'mores in the fire pit.

We spent a glorious day at Jetty Island. This man-made island in the Puget Sound has the warmest water anywhere around. The tide goes out in the morning and warms the sand for the entire day and then when the tide comes back in, it warms the ocean water. We had such a fun time playing at the beach on this day and we would like to go back several times next year. You do have to take a ferry to the island (another item on our list) so it's not super convenient to get to but well worth the extra effort. The big kids playing on the piles of driftwood:

 Ems seriously LOVES the sand and will sit and dig for hours:

 We spent a Saturday at the Woodland park zoo. I had to have this picture taken since it is a re-creation  of a shot we took in this exact spot at the zoo in 2006.

 At the petting zoo. Ems was in awe at all the animals and loves to MOOOO at everything. She's at such a delightful age right now!

 Playing at the Seattle Center Fountain:

 More dates with Mom and Dad. I took Addison to a fun country village on Saturday morning. We played at the park, rode the vintage train, fed the ducks, looked through some shops and got a treat at the old fashioned candy store. We had a great time together.

 Allen took Carter to see The Avengers (which they loved) for their date but did not get a picture of them.

The 3 older kids completed two sessions of swim lessons at the gym. Carter and Makenna were on the pre-team for swim team and got a lot of perfection of their strokes. It is much harder to qualify for the team here and I am glad that they got some good one-on-one attention to really improve their strokes. I was less than thrilled with Addie's lessons and I felt she didn't progress at all over 2 sessions. I've decided group lessons are a waste of money at her age and have enrolled her with a private teacher for later in the fall.

 Last day of swim lessons celebration treat:

 All 3 older kids completed the library summer reading program. They had to read 1000 minutes over the summer (which they EASILY accomplished). The library had fun prizes this year and these glasses light up and blink in different colors.

We have done lots of late summer berry picking as the blackberries have come into season. Blackberries grow wild all over the place in Seattle and the kids' soccer fields are surrounded with bushes so we have been doing a lot of picking. I made a delicious cobbler with some of the berries and have frozen a bunch more for smoothies.

Overall we had an awesome summer. We didn't accomplish everything on our list but we did a TON and even added some things as we found out about even more that Seattle has to offer. We also did lots of bike riding, hiking, tons of playing with friends and exploring different parks. We ended up skipping most of the indoor activities and saved them to do during our months and months of rain.

Back To School 2012

We made it through the summer! Hallelujah. We had a great summer but it ended up being very long due to our move! Everyone was ready for the new school year to start and get into a bit more of a schedule. Yesterday was the first day of school.  We had the typical before school photo shoot:

Carter:

Carter is my child who is the most excited for school to start. He has two kids from our neighborhood in his class plus a friend from church. He is thrilled that he already has built in friends. His teacher is impressive and I have been happy so far working with the school on his gifted and speech issues.

 Makenna:

 Makenna is growing up so much. For the first time ever she is SO into her clothes and hair. She has been planning her first WEEK outfits for the past month. And she had very specific instructions for her hair on the first day (skinny braid + a curly side ponytail).  Makenna has a male teacher this year and she is a bit nervous about it. We have heard glowing reports about him and know that he left a high profile corporate career to become a teacher. So far I have been very impressed with him.

After school we had a visit from the Back-To-School Fairy.  Makenna got the cute sparkly cap, Addison got a Merida (from Brave) doll and Carter got a game for the iPad that he's been dying for (Minecraft). Everyone was pleased as punch.

I tried a new spin on the traditional caramel apple after school snack and made a caramel apple bar for them. Big, big hit and probably what I will do from now on. We had apples and caramel dip and for toppings we had mini chocolate chips, mini cinnamon chips, crushed oreos, crushed heath bar and sprinkles.  It was super yummy. I also considered doing mini marshmallows and coconut flakes. Lots of options to try next year.

 Addison started pre-K today. She has been counting down the days for school to start and was so disappointed to have to wait an extra day. She had a fabulous time today and also seems to have grown up so much this summer. We had 3 goals for Addison this summer: learn to make her bed alone, learn to wipe her own bum and learn how to write her name. She accomplished all three quite quickly and is great at all of it now. Addie is also quite opinionated about her hair and insisted that I straighten it today. I had no idea that her hair is almost to her waist!

For me I am excited to get into a better groove now that school has started. I have a very long To-Do list of stuff I put off all summer (including lots of catch-up blogging). Today I spend over an hour browsing at Target while Addie was at school. It felt like a vacation being there with only one child. I sure miss my kiddos while they are gone but definitely look forward to seeing how they change and grow this school year.