Back to School (and blogging)

Lucy started her first day of school today. It's hard to believe she's a 2nd grader now. We moved into a different house over the summer (same town), so she had to start at a new school. This is Lucy's 4th school in 3 years. I guess that's the life of a military child. Fortunately, Lucy is pretty out-going and has been blessed with the talent of making friends fast.

Lucy isn't a big fan of the whole school scene. Some of you may recall the first half of last year. She cried almost every night and I had to drag her to school every morning. Even after she got over the crying, we always had a hard time on Monday mornings or after any breaks from school. So, needless to say, I've been nervous about this year starting, especially because there would be very few familiar faces. Listening to her talk about the new school year has been pretty entertaining. In a matter of 2-3 minutes she'd go from excited to stressed, back to excited, mad, nervous, excited and then nervous again. She'd always say, "It's going to be fun for a couple days and then I'm going to be mad that I have to go."

This morning we walked to school and she got in line with her new class. We were so happy to have met a couple girls at our neighborhood pool a few days ago that have the same teacher, so she at least knew them (I have been so nervous for her and when we met them on Monday, I knew my prayers had been answered). Her teacher came out to get them and I said, "She looks like she'll be a nice teacher." Lucy then said, "Not really, old people are usually mean." Nice, very nice.

We said our good-byes and I proceeded to cry the whole walk home. I'm not sure why I'm so emotional about it this year. I just get sad when I think about all that time that other people are influencing her and the person she'll become. There's 6 hours of the day that I don't know what's going on with her and how she is doing. I'm sure many of you can relate. (I wasn't sad enough to consider home-schooling, though. I'm not sure Lucy would survive it.)


When I went to pick her up, I tried to get her to talk about her day. Here's most of the highlights from our conversation: 1. Recess was boring (the playground is not up to par) 2. They don't ever get to talk 3. She only got one drink during school 4. They can only go to the bathroom once a week (except for during recess and lunch, of course). When I asked her what her favorite part of the day was, she sighed and said, "Lunch, I guess." Later she told me she enjoyed language arts when they wrote about themselves.

Here's hoping this year goes a little better than last!

Documented Cuteness....

A couple of funny stories I want to remember:

On the way to a BBQ at a friend's house on Saturday, we were listening to the Hairspray soundtrack. There's a song that says, "Baby, you're timeless to me". Lucy wanted to know what timeless means. So we explained that it was something that never gets boring and is still cool, even when it gets old. (We said something to that effect.)

We got to our friend's house and Lucy noticed their kitchen sink. It's a stainless steel sink with three different tubs. She said to our friend, "Your sink is so cool!" Our friend explained that it's actually really old and very 70's-ish. Lucy then said, "It's timeless!!!" It had us all laughing.

Graham calls the missionaries, the primaries. I love it. I'm always hoping he won't pay attention when people correct him.

I was recently called as a primary teacher in our ward, so I have a front row seat to watch Graham misbehave through sharing and singing time every Sunday. Yesterday was particularly entertaining. Every time any question was asked by the instructor, Graham would yell out, "Jesus!" or "Nephi!" Regardless of what they asked. It had me laughing. The teacher asked at the end of her lesson, "Is Jesus a special person?" Graham said, "No way. No, no, no." Then he looked at her face and could see that wasn't the answer she was looking for and so he changed his vote.

Don't Go!

We were so sad to say goodbye to our good friends, the Glazier family. We moved into the house right next door to them on the base back in August. We seemed to be instant friends and even in that short amount of time, we grew to love them and depend on them.

Audrey, Lana, Abby, Caleigh, and Lucy

We got together for a little play date at the park the day before they headed out. Abby and her brother John were such great buddies to Lucy and Graham. When we first moved in and Jason was still deployed, Lucy begged and begged to go over and see if Abby could play. If they weren't home, she'd check their driveway every 10 minutes to see if they were back.

Katelyn, Graham, and John

Here's the whole fam, plus Graham. I could not get him to move out of the picture.

We'll miss our buddies. I always tell Jeana that without her I would not have survived the first 4 months of Ben-O's life. She walked Lucy to school for me every day, took Lucy and Graham on numerous afternoons (even after Graham peed on her during his potty training days) and she was always on call on extra rough days (I say "extra" rough days because all of those days were rough). Our chats and her sense of humor kept me going on days when I thought I would just fall apart. We feel so lucky and blessed to have been there neighbors, even for just a little while.

We hope they are settling in nicely to their new home in Japan!

Bowling with the Bard Bulldogs

Back in May, I had the pleasure of joining Lucy on her class field trip to the bowling alley. Good times were had by all!

Here's Lucy with her best pal, Evelyn.

Gianni, Lauren (behind Lucy), Lucy, Evelyn, Joshua, and Wesley

Lucy and I posin' it up before her next turn. She's going through a necklace phase. Notice she's sportin' 3 or 4.

Lucy has grown up so much this year. We had a rough start. Lots of tears at night before bed and every morning when I dropped her off she cried and cried and wouldn't let me go. By mid-year she still wouldn't claim to like school, but life was much better and we only had a few tears after long weekends or holidays. She always came out of class with a smile on her face and I knew once she got there, she was enjoying herself.

I laughed out loud yesterday when I was reminding Lucy of her chores for the day. She turned around and said in her perfected annoyed voice, "I can't wait for school to start!" Music to my ears.

Father's Day

Nothing to crazy exciting happened for us on Father's Day. J got to sleep in and we made him breakfast. We had one of his faves, enchiladas, for dinner. We followed that up with some chocolate chip cookies.

I am so blessed to have Jason as my eternal companion and the father of my children. He is a fabulous Dad. He makes time for them every day and makes special efforts to make sure his kids know how much he loves them. You know your Dad loves you when he takes you swimming many times when it's 60 degrees or colder outside. Lucy has been enjoying her evening game of checkers with Dad before bed. They miss him during the day when he's at work and always look forward to evenings and weekends when he'll be home.

We struck gold with this guy!

Benny at 8 months

In just a week or so, this kid will be 9 months, so I thought I'd should post some of the pictures I took to document 8 months. Isn't he adorable! I can't get enough of this guy!

I love this one for a couple reasons. It looks like he was trying to pose for me and I love his wrists.....lovin' the rolls!


We see this cheesy face a lot. I love it!
This guy has been workin' on some teeth. There's been some rough patches here and there in that department. Super grouchy! At one point he had 4 or 5 trying to come through. In this picture you can see the bottom two that were already in, but if you look close, you can see a few others that are peeking through (as well as a piece of goldfish on the left side).

This is my friend's baby. She's about 6 weeks older than Benny, but she's so much smaller (especially his noggin). I love how she looks like she's looking for help and Ben is so happy to be within striking distance.
This guy has finally mastered the pacifier. He did a couple months back. He always wanted it in his mouth, but couldn't keep it in very long. Very frustrating.

He's getting closer and closer to crawling. He gets up on all fours and rocks and rocks and rocks. He was anti-army crawl for a while, but finally started to use it in desperation the last few days. He really wants to be more mobile. This guy is amazing in the old school walker we have for him. He can get wherever he wants to go. It makes me laugh every time I see him start moving in reverse and he looks behind him to see where he's going.

He's our smiley guy! I love the reaction I get when I go get him out of his crib in the morning or after his nap. Yes....even when it's 5:30-6 in the morning (that's his hour of choice....yes, it's early, and no, it shows no sign of changing). He plays in his crib for a while and one of us goes to get him when he lets us know he's done rolling around and wants out. He's a great napper and adapts well with our ever-changing schedule.

I'm so excited to go home to Utah in a couple weeks to show him off to the fam.

Jasterpalooza

Still playing catch up, but better late then never.

Over Memorial Day weekend, we were asked if we could watch our friends 4 kids while they partied it up in the Hawaii. We took on the challenge and had a fabulous time! Their last name is Jaster, so we started calling the weekend Jasterpalooza.

On Saturday, we took the kiddos swimming at our neighborhood pool.

Here's Jacob, Isaac, Jason and Graham. Side story: Graham couldn't remember Jacob's name. He kept calling him "that guy". Graham didn't like it when sweet little Isaac called us "Mom" and "Dad". It was weird seeing Graham get so possessive.

Sophie, Lucy, and Abbie

Here's Ben-O chillin' on the sidelines.

Sunday evening we made homemade ice cream. Here's Jason and Sophie waiting for the good stuff.

Here's Sophie, Abbie, Jacob, and Lucy enjoying some of the good stuff.

On Monday we went to the beach with some friends in our new ward here in Oxnard and then went back to the pool for more water time.

Our house was so quiet after all the kiddos went home with their Mom on Wednesday morning. My kids loved having constant playmates and missed them when they were gone.

We had 2 of the 4 from Friday to Wednesday and all 4 from Saturday to Monday. Church was quite the adventure. It was only our 3rd week at our new ward, so many of the members hadn't met us yet. I could see people counting the kids and trying to figure out how we had 7 under the age of 9. It got a little crazy at times, but we were so happy to have them! Hopefully our kids will be as well-behaved as the Jasters were when we leave them at their house in the spring ;)!