School's Out!

Welp, no more elementary kids in this house. 

Only Middle/High Schoolers. 

Insulation was installed the other day. 

Any day now this baby will be done and we can move in. 

We have two bears in our area. 

They came walking right up Sagebrush lane. Our neighbor four houses down got them on his ring camera. 

There is bear poop on our back roads and trails. 

Looks like they like cherries. 

The last day of school/first day of summer break 

we had a weenie roast at the beach. 

Right as we were getting cold and ready to pack it in, the boys got a fire roaring. 

It felt so good against the chill, but it's time to go!

So they had to carry the giant flaming drift wood logs to the water and douse the flames. 

Yay summer!

The second day of summer, the boys went to Whistler for a day trip.

See that bear down there in the trees?

They saw lots of bears and rode all day, got Whistler hands, crashed a little.

Evan is doing trails that Jim and Joe do. All those younger boys are going to surpass the dads soon. 

Third day of summer: 

To the beach of course. 

While Evan was doing all that, 

Avery has been at girls camp:

And Andrew has been slumming it on Sagebrush with his boys. 

They spent an entire day up and down the street,

and then the next night a massive sleepover at Hunter's. 

A Sunday walk with this wolfpack. 

All the kids are massive and adult sized. 

The straddle pet.

Lastly,

Sunday Robbie sent this to me. Annie found it in a Book of Mormon from the library. 

They go to church in the building I grew up going in.

This is my class - our teacher Laurie Bendickson. 

I can't explain how this picture makes me feel. 

That's me! And I know all of those little friends. They are all my cousins in one way or another (except the boy on the left. I don't know him). 

I don't know. It's just so crazy to realize that I'm a grown, old adult. I'm in charge. 

I just don't feel like I am very different from that little girl in this picture, but also I am massively a new and different person from that little girl. How can we be the same? Our souls are the same? How. 

Our brain grew and learned new things. Do I have the same brain? 

I just can't figure out how I am the same person as that little girl. 

Literally everything about me is different including all my cells that have regenerated. 

So what is the same? Our memories? 

This picture situation combined with the fact that my kids are huge - I just can't figure it out. 

G is for Gonna Be Christmas Soon

This is going to surprise you, but this month is flying by.

All the Christmas things and the basketball things and just all of it is a giant blur.

Everyone keep your fingers crossed that basketball doesn't get shut down. eye roll. 

If the children aren't going to be able to play sports, they will just go home and play on tik tok. 

So pick your poison.

Ugg. I'm so covid fatigued. 

Andrew told Ward Party Santa that he wants a b b gun for Christmas just to hear the santa chuckle and say "You'll shoot your eye out kid".

We always find fun things on our night hikes. The rock snowman was our main treasure this time.

Say hi to the ugliest tree in the world. It put me in the worst mood. It's so scraggly and half the lights are burnt out.

After it was up and decorated, I marched into Costco and bought a new one. 

We transferred the ornaments and I love my new tree. 

Here are this years' ornaments.

When we did baptisms in November, the grounds keeper jumped off his lawn mower and handed us all these hand made ornaments. 

Then Koda ate it. wahhhh. 

The last day of school before winter break was ugly sweater day.

We don't have any ugly sweaters, but I do have this awesome sweater I used to wear all the time when I was Avery's size. It's one of my favorite finds from my thrift store days.

It served as an adorable "ugly sweater" for my middle schooler. 

Her English teacher sent this pic in an email. It snowed for ten minutes so they all went out to enjoy it.

For the record, this was the day that many kids stayed home because nation wide there were threats of school violence stemming from stupid tik tok. 

What a world. 

Ok, there is always a Sunday in December that Avery teaches the best family home evening. 

It's always random, never assigned, and the topic is a surprise.

This week we were sitting in Stake Conference when she asked if she could do FHE tonight. 

The focus was service. She talked all about what and why we serve. Then she had these chain papers ready for the boys. They wrote a small act of kindness that they would do every day leading up to Christmas. They picked their own things they would do. They could go big or small. 

One of Andrew's was "make a chilli dog for someone"

One of Evan's was "take a break today. don't serve anyone" (but then that day he cleaned the whole house for me, so I'm thinking reverse psychology?).

Andrew's first chain on Monday said "massage someone's feet". 

cha ching. 

This year we made gingerbread houses because I had tons of leftover stuff from doing it with the young women. PS I was just released from YW Pres. I have mixed feelings about it.

Evan was SO excited to build his gingerbread house. He said he day dreamed about it all day at school. While Mr. Minkler read a book at the end of the day, he sat there and planned it all in his head. It would have two eves like this and a flat part so that he could sit his Santa and reindeer up there:

Those gum drops are the reindeer. 

I think it's fabulous. 

Andrew put a lot less effort into his house...

....and finished. 

Avery is back there folding laundry because she told me she needs a job, and I told her I need an employee, so we shook hands and she gives me an hour a day where she does whatever I tell her to do (beyond all her regular chores).

This was one day in December when school was cancelled because the power went out.

I was so annoyed. I swear school feels negotiable these days. The kids aren't one bit surprised when they are told school is cancelled. 

I took them to the trampoline zone, and they played for hours. We met a million friends there.