Our ward had the fathers and sons camp-out last weekend. Miles was really looking forward to it, and as an added bonus, Uncle Ross and Uncle Jacob were able to come along also! They had such a good time! Gwen knew that once the boys were gone, we were going to have our girl's weekend and she was ultra excited about that. Good thing they are pretty easy to please still. We made brownies and painted toenails, and watched not one, but two princess movies! The next morning, as a bonus, I took the girls out to breakfast at a restaurant. We've only done it a handful of times, so it was extra special. It was just a diner here in town, but Gwen thought it was so fancy because they brought our food out on a tray. :)
The other Sunday, I snapped a few pictures of the kids in their church clothes because they looked so darn cute. Plus, these might be the last pictures I get of these 3 kids before we add another one to the mix! See the ouchie by Gwen's eye? It should be noted somewhere that the night before, we had friends over and as Gwen was swinging on the tire swing (really high), the rope snapped and she hit the ground pretty hard. She was completely freaked out, which made Richie and I nervous because she's usually pretty tough. Once we realized there were no broken bones, then we moved on to worrying about a concussion etc. After our friend helped Richie give her a blessing, and Grandma Garner came over to assess Gwen, we felt much better. She was fine the next morning besides the scrapes on her arms and face. Whew! Could have been a major disaster, so we felt lucky the effects were minor.
Some friends gave us this old bookshelf the other day. We didn't have a specific place to put it, but when we had our carpets cleaned, it ended up in the kitchen. Turns out, it's pretty handy having it there to hold all of the fresh produce we've been getting!! All of that food, minus the bananas and oranges, is from our garden. Cool huh. Our garden isn't big enough to produce as much as we need to put up, but it gives us plenty to juice, and freeze and munch on.
This didn't really happen in August, but I'm just getting around to documenting it. And it must be documented. Ever since we've lived here, all of the boxes of kids clothes have been stacked in this closet in our storage room. I told Richie that for my birthday this year, I wanted shelves to put them on, so that when I want to pull out one box, I don't have to un-stack everything. He delivered, and then I proceeded to organize every single item of kids clothing that we own. Big undertaking. I pulled out every piece of clothing, made sure it was in the right box, purged a bunch of stuff because when you lay it all out, you realize you don't need 20 (literally 20) pairs of boys 6t shorts. We're so lucky to get so many hand-me-downs, but it sure start accumulating quickly. The bins are SO organized now, and so easy to access. Plus I got rid of at least 5 garbage bags FULL of clothes. Ahhh...
We started school at the beginning of August, knowing that once baby gets here we'll be taking a big break. We slowly eased ourselves into it, for everyone's sake, and it's been going so well. There were some attitude problems at the beginning, but nothing that couldn't be solved with some minor bribery. The kids are now more self-motivated and capable than ever before. It's amazing. I still have to be there every step of the way pretty much, but there are these glimpses that are showing me that one day, they will be able to work more independently, and those glimpses are so welcome! This year, instead of choosing a family theme for the school year, we let the kids pick out their own individual ones. Miles chose "Be a good steward", and Gwen chose, "Make Good Choices". They hung them on their doors and I hope they prove to be an inspiration to them throughout the year.
1 comment:
Love the pictures! Now we want pictures of baby Ira!!
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