School Fun

Well, our school year has begun and I'm getting into the swing of things. We had a little bit of stress getting everything set for Joshua and Charlie to enter Kindergarten, but I feel really good about the way things are now. Here's our day: Josh leaves on a bus at 8am, we take Joseph and Charlie to school at 9am, Charlie's in half-day so we pick him up at noon, then pick Joseph up at 3pm and Josh's bus brings him home at 4pm. Lots of fun! Emma and I are having quality time together. The first two days of school, we went shopping after we dropped the boys off to finish getting all the school supplies everyone needed. Well, that night Emma included in her prayer, "Please bless Mommy, that she can go shopping." I thought that was pretty funny.

Summer's Over!

Well this was our last hurrah before summer ended this year. As you can tell by the look on Charlie's face, it was a little cold to be swimming and then eating ice cream bars. :)

Grandma's Coming!

We're very excited that Grandma will be coming in mid-October. Our kids can't stop talking about it!! I just can't believe it's almost here. We're also excited that school starts this week. Charlie and Josh are going into Kindergarten and Joseph into 1st Grade. Joseph is reading so well now. He gave a talk in Primary today on Baptism and read the whole thing very clearly and loudly--He did a great job!! I hope Joshua and Charlie get as good of a teacher as Joseph got for Kindergarten.

2 More Monkeys Jumpin on the Bed

Can you believe we're going to have 2 more monkeys in this family??? I'm barely starting to wrap my mind around it. (It's okay, cause they're my favorite kind of monkeys!) We're starting to get things in place. We got some car seats and a stroller and this past weekend we got a new mini van. Thank goodness they have created something called the 8 passenger mini van. I don't think I could drive a suburban around yet and I'm seeing full size vans in our future!! AGGH! :) Joseph saw a really long stretched limo/hummer driving down the street and he said, "Mom, I think we need a car like that." Maybe I should start taking commercial driving lessons in preparation.

Part 3, The End

Okay, last post for the day! Today I was released as Young Women's President in our ward. I really feel like I was SO blessed to be able to work with these girls even if only for a year. I will miss them for sure!! They are in GREAT hands, though, my friend Cortney is now President and do a much better job!! :) One more thing--we've been going back and forth on middle names, but I think we have the first names figured out!! Can you see in the picture which names are new????

Part 2

The next part of our trip we spent in Utah with my family. It was also very enjoyable and our kids were able to see more cousins. Here is a picture of me and my sis, Ann. I'm actually 4 months pregnant! See the bump? One of our kids favorite parts of the reunions in both AZ and UT was that they got to dress up like Alvin and the Chipmunks and preform 3 of their songs. They hardly know any of the words to the songs, so they were barely recognizable to others, but they had a blast.

Wonderful Sunday!

Since Derek's schedule has taken an unexpected turn for the worse, we have seen little of him this week. We miss him and we were SO thankful he had Sunday off! This past Monday I was in a fender bender where a young girl turned left into our van AND AMAZINGLY none of us were hurt. The van also had minimal damage. I know Heavenly Father protected us!! So I promised some trip details (a little late? yeah): We had a lot of fun down in Arizona with Derek's family. All together in 2 houses in Peoria. WOW! It was so good for all of us and we know we can't stay away from family for very much longer than we have to. We spent one afternoon in the Children's Museum in Mesa. (It's amazing what you find when you don't live in an area anymore.) The kids are still talking about a kitchen area where they could pretend to make meals--simple things entertain the most!!