{1st game of the season}

Yesterday was E's first game for this fall. He is on a young team and they tied 3-3 so that was good. It was fun to watch and as he learns how to play a position he will do better. Right now they are all still chasing the ball everywhere even though the field is so much bigger than last year. He played a lot of defense so that was good once he figured out he didn't have to play the whole field!

He is #1 this year...

{Volcanoes}

E made a volcano at school this week as a part of their science lesson. They made them and exploded them. He is anxious to do it again at home....

{school fun}

Friday was our back to school barbeque. Luckily Chad was able to take the boys as I had to be at church for a primary activity.

They had a great time and there were games food and fun. Here are a few pictures of the fun they had.

{1st Place}

This week was K's rain gutter regatta. It was a great night for him. He got 1st Place!!

He designed his boat with his dad and ended up cutting the model boat in half. He was so happy and had a great night!

{Watch this}

{think what E would do}

After the program at school on Thursday night a parent of another 2nd grader came up to me and wanted to share a funny story. (E is in 2nd grade this year)

Her little 2nd grader has had some behavior problems at school this year and has been in trouble many times. And she was trying to give him ideas of what he could do to make better decisions.

She told him that he should think before he does anything at school and ask himself "would Jesus do this?: and if the answer was no then he wouldn't do it.

He told her he would not do this.

When she asked him why he had a different plan. Hear is what he said

"I will just do what E does. He never talks without raising his hand. He never talks when the teacher is talking and he always does the right thing. So I will just think what E would do."

It was so funny and so true. E is afraid to break ANY rule at school or home and will always do exactly what you ask him too. We hope this continues for a few more years!

{this is FANCY}

So all these years we have been parents we have just figured out we have been going about feeding our boys all wrong.

We are those parents that feel a home cooked meal is the best and a very important part of their day. We try to have a good breakfast, healthy lunch and a home cooked healthy dinner every night. We don't use hamburger helper, mac and cheese, ramen or any of those staples around here. I try to make as much or our food from scratch as I can. We thought we were all doing great with our food choices for the boys.

Then Saturday night came.

And C and I were going to a church meeting so we were having a babysitter come over. Usually he will make dinner for them or we will get pizza if we are running late. This night I remembered I had got two TV dinners I thought I would use for my work lunches. But I hardly ever have time for lunch so I have never taken them. So I told the boys what they were they each choose one and I heated them up.

Upon giving it to E he looks at it and I explain what a TV dinner is why it is called a TV dinner and any other questions he had. To which he tells me "this is pretty FANCY."

Yep...our boy would think TV dinners are fancy...not all those hot meals we made form scratch to avoid preservatives and all the other bad stuff.

We are re-evaluating our food preparations now.

{School Work}

Part of the Constitution Night celebration this year is that each class and each scholar have a piece of work displayed that night.

K did a picture of the flag and a very short essay....isn't his handwriting nice? this year he can only use cursive and that has slowed him down a lot which I think is good. And it is a lot nicer than his print.

E did a "tree map" one of the thinking maps we teach the children. It is hard to read from this picture but he did a great job!

This last picture is the display from my little class.

{Constitution Night}

Our school has a wonderful night on National Constitution Day. We have each class write their own class constitution and then sign them on the big night. It was a great night and the boys seemed to have a good time.

The scholars sang "God bless America" and recite the preamble of the Constitution.

Here are our two boys doing just that...can you find them?

Here they are signing their class' Constitutions.

And here are their classrooms.

{Tis the Season}

for SOCCER!

E has started practice again this fall....

He plays on the 7-9 year old team now and is the youngest on his team (and the smallest). It is his first year on the regular sized field and is worried about how big it is. We are lucky to get the great coach that K had his first year and that worked with Chad last year coaching.

He can't wait for his first game!!

{Circus Circus Fun}

Over the holiday weekend we got a short but sweet visit from our Apo family. Grandma and Grandpa flew in on Friday and Uncle Kris and Auntie Elisa came in Thursday. We played at the pool at Auntie Elisa's hotel for the afternoon after school before heading to the airport to see G&G Apo.

We got to visit a lot and spend some great times with everyone including a trip to the Strip to play the carnival games inside the Circus Circus. We hadn't been there in about 5 years so this was a great treat for the boys.

We watched the circus acts they had and then played games.

Chatting before the circus started....

We came home with a BAG FULL of stuffed animals!

{can't let the day go by without...}

We Never Forget....

{busy...busier...busiest}

Well to say that life is busy is not even necessary.

I think we should start rating our life on a scale of busy.

If we reach busiest I vote we close the doors and windows, turn off ALL phones, close the computer and watch a movie and breathe.

Our life is super busy right now. I find we are all exhausted and a bit on the overwhelmed part of busy. I felt that E was so tired that I even let him stay home with Chad on Thursday for a "mental health" day.

I am so tired the more I sleep the more sleep I need. Today I barely made it through lunch and back to bed.

I REALLY need one of you to figure out how to stop time so me and my family can enjoy some simple pleasures and not always be worrying about work, school, laundry, groceries, callings, and all of that and just breathe.

So we'll be back with some fun posts soon...but for now we are super busy and I can't find a spare moment to even pull the camera out for some extra fun shots to share.

{First Day Back}

Last Tuesday was the first day of school.

Fourth Grade for K.

Second Grade for E.

And First Grade for me.

The boys looked good in the morning in their uniforms.

We had a good morning considering we have to leave by 7 am now and we get up at 615. Only E is a morning person around here.

A few pictures of back at school with their friends.

And E only had one mini-meltdown and one crying bit during class. Improvement I would say from last year.

It was a good day but we are still sad summer is over!

{sudoku school style}

So are you seeing a pattern here of what we have been doing these last few weeks....

and here's another school related post...

So I was asked to "pretty up" the upper grammar scholar's schedule. Which means put on the school logo add some color....very easy.

Until I tried doing it and discovered big problems....like the high school scholars eating with the kindergartners.

Chad and I studied the schedule and figured out we had to redo it.

So after about 4 hours of work this is what the office whiteboard looked like.

Chad was proud of it and wanted me to show everyone in the blog world so here it is!

He says it was like a big game of sudoku...all I know is that it gave me a headache.

{Summer School}

For the last two weeks of summer we have spent a lot of time at our school working on my classroom and the rest of the school. The boys have spent their fair share of time there and have painted, cleaned, moved furniture....all kinds of things.

The last time we were all their as a family K. got to cut out stars for me for my Class responsibilities chart (nice way of saying job chart huh?)


So here is on of my helpers being his helpful self!

{Summer Work}

So besides all the work Chad does for work, he has also gotten to spend a lot of time at our little school working. He did tile, ceilings, walls, painting...all different things.

Then he got to come home to me thinking I need a bookshelf for school and that he could build it.

And being the loving husband he is he built it for me.

I love it. Now each scholar has his own cubby for notebooks that stay at school, abacus, and white boards. We will add the book they are reading to the cubby and other things that stay at school year around.

Now the other teachers want one too....but I know they won't be as lucky as me!

{Friday FIll in}

I though this would be a fun thing to do today since I can't find the cord to upload my pictures to the blog right now and I am too tired to go hunt it down!

And...here we go!

1. When will not be stressed?

2. The Time travelrs wife was the last good book I read .

3. Everything has its beauty but dirty dishes.

4. Hot dogs is what I had for dinner.

5. I'd like your patient attitude.

6. The beach is where I want to be right now.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to sleep, tomorrow my plans include laundry shopping, school stuff, home depot, haircuts and Sunday, I want to rest!

{168 months}

yep....it is our anniversary today!

Chad told me it sounds longer if we celebrate 168 months instead of 14 years. Sometimes he is a little weird....but as my niece tells me often "boys ARE weird" so we'll just stick with that.

What did we do today. Well a babysitter was hired....to babysit while I worked at school and Chad was at meetings with clients....aren't we romantic! Than Chad brought the boys out to school for the open house in which he talked with all the teachers and carried in a flat of water for me.....
romance=boys carrying heavy stuff.

Dinner and a movie? We ordered dinner in so no one HAD to cook or really clean and both of us are too tired to even think about a movie....you see Chad worked at my school last night from 4 pm to 2:30 am laying tile and putting in ceiling so we could be more ready for open house. I stayed up until 1 am getting open house stuff ready and got up for the first time in months at 630 am to go to work.

Either we are getting old and tired or we work too hard. I like to think we work too hard.

But even if we are both working on computers and trying to get more work done we know the truth....it has been a short wonderful fun 168 months !

{it's august......already}

I don't know how it happened but the summer flew by.

Now we start school in less than 2 weeks....

I miss summer already.