Going through old pictures

I haven't had much to blog about this week since school started. We are still trying to work out all the kinks getting the kids to school and back. The traffic at the schools is horrible and I'm still working out the best ways to get there and back, especially when I'm tired.

This past week, whenever I have some free time, I've been going through old photos. I'm getting back into scrapbooking and getting ready for the scrapbook expo in 2 weeks that Brenda and I are escaping to. There are good and bad things about looking at past pictures. I have been reliving a lot of good memories, but then I'm sad to see how much my kids are changing and growing up. Even Chelsea commented, "I thought I still looked the same" when she compared herself in her old pics. Here's one from Christmas 2007, when my baby looked like a baby. See what I mean?

School updates

Chelsea began 9th grade in High School.
Best part: She loved seminary! And she made 3 new friends
Worst part: She got lost several times (the school is huge!) Plus while she was waiting for her (girl)friend to meet her for lunch she saw one of her (boy)friends to sit by. The she was surrounded by 14 other boys and even got hit on. That's when she decided lunch was over :)




Brianna is in 7th grade in Middle school
Best part: She LOVES her art class and she got to wear her styling clothes.
Worst part: Didn't have many classes with friends from last year, but that doesn't stop her from being social. It really wasn't a problem.





Mason is in 5th grade in elementary.
Best part: He likes his teacher and made a new friend. He also liked his music class because they got to beat the "boom sticks" on any part of their body. He chose to beat it on his head. Oh, and NO HOMEWORK!
Worst part: Recess (WHAT?) because he forgot to take his Pokemon book out to look at and it's really hot outside. And when trying to find where his class lined up in the morning, he told the volunteer that he was in 4th grade. OOPS! I guess it's only been 2 weeks for it to sink in that he graduated into 5th.



Cord gets to stay home and have mommy all to himself.
Best part: Getting to play at the gym nursery (he loves it there)
Worst part: He still has to take a nap because he is super cranky if he doesn't. (This was mom's favorite part because she slept too)

School starts :)

The kids are out the door (finally) and the offical school year 09-10 has begun for us. This year we have 3 kids in 3 different schools. Chelsea began high school, Brianna in middle, and Mason in elementary. That means 3 different start/stop times. Hopefully we'll fall into a routine we can all live with. Chelsea begins at 7, Brianna at 8, and Mason at 9. Chelsea chose to do seminary after school instead of before so that means I have to pick her up (no bus). I don't mind taking Brianna to school, but she can ride the bus home. For Mason there is no bus option so I have to take and pick him up. That leaves little time for sleeping after a night shift. The traffic at the elementary is HORRIBLE especially since there are 2 elementaries side by side. After I dropped him off I was in my car for 30 minutes just trying to get out of the parking lot. Good thing I had books in my car to entertain Cord. I hope things get better and maybe this was just the "first day traffic".

I did cheat with the pictures though. Yesterday I made the kids get dressed up like it was the first day so I take some group pictures. Then we drove down to the school so I could take pics of them in front of it (when nobody was there). I know sometimes I can be really embarrassing, but I do try to keep it at a minimum when possible. I'll update the individual pictures after the kids get home and I can interview them about their day. My only regret....that I didn't make Mike put on his backpack and get in the group picture. He officialy started classes on Thursday. Only 2 more semesters to go! Has anyone checked out our countdown clock recently? I know it's way down at the bottom so I don't look at it very often. Only 263 more days until Mike graduates! Remember when it was over 800? I can't believe how fast it's going.

Now that it's just me and Cord, I have no more excuses for not scrapbooking, cleaning house, and going to the gym. I'll have to get started on that right away! (yeah right)

Daddy's ride

On Saturday Mike and my brother in law Eric rode in the Desperado Dual. It's a 200 mile bike ride through southern utah, but they have a 100 mile option (109 miles to be exact). I sent the camera with my loving husband hoping he could get Eric to get at least 1 picture of him on the bike before the ride or something. Apparently they both talked about it so they wouldn't forget. Well this is the only picture I got, the bikes in the truck after the ride because they both forgot. Anywho.... Mike said the first 70 miles of the ride wasn't bad, but the last 39 were miserable. A bad headwind, tired legs, and a sore bottom from being on the seat for 6 hrs and 15 min all added to the misery. It's the longest ride he has ever done and the closest he has ever come to puking on the side of the road. He usually finds great pleasure from riding. It's a good stress reliever for him. We usually like to go watch him do these big rides, but I just didn't have another trip in me after our busy summer.

Chelsea's girls weekend

Kids are amazing. Chelsea went up to St. George this weekend to spend some time with her BFFs while daddy rode in a bike ride. They seemed to have a good time doing nothing and took these pictures. Then they edit them and make them look cool. I'm glad she still gets to spend time with these girls and that in all our moving around, they are still close.

McKenna Can

This is Brianna's first best friend ever, McKenna (picture taken July 2008). They were 1 when we moved by them in Ivins. As soon as they could play, they were inseparable. We were so sad when they moved up to northern Utah. But whenever we can we stop by for a visit. They pick up right where they left off even if it's a year since we had seen her.

McKenna is starting her 2nd bout of Leukemia. We just found out that they are going to have a fund raiser/ 5K race for her family. I have never run anywhere but occasionally get mildly tempted to start. This may be the perfect opportunity. We are toying with the idea of coming up as a family to support the Davies family. The girls want save up any money they can earn to donate (they just need some babysitting clients here). But I wanted to put her website up for anyone who feels like they can donate a little bit to their cause. I can't even imagine having to pay for all those medical costs for a 2nd time. UGGG!

http://www.mckennacan.com/index.html

San Diego Summer Vacation

We have spent the last 5 days with my sister in San Diego. We had so much fun! Now after the 5 hour car ride home we can't really stand each other. The house is quiet as we are all spread out in our separate corners, and I'm happy because I get to blog about our adventures. I can't believe we jammed this much fun into 4 days. We even got to spend more time with Grandma because even though we didn't plan it that way, our vacations plans collided with hers. We saw the sunset on the beach the first day, spent time on the beach (and got a little toasty), went to "seal beach" and watched several seals playing in the water, visited Seaworld, Legoland, and the San Diego Zoo with grandma. I would have loved to have spent more time at the beach, but unfortunately I still have to work so we had to come home. But Tim and Maria say they love living in San Diego and they will be there forever. That means we can go back and visit more!!!

We appreciate their hospitality, letting us crash in their home, and driving us all over. Tim works at a radio station and was able to get us free tickets to the zoo and free dinner certificates in downtown San Diego. We went to eat at "Dicks last resort". It's a fun place where you can be rude to the waiters and they are rude back. We ate outside. We had a lot of fun with the waiter. Chelsea threw an empty ketchup bottle at him. Mason yelled, "Where's our freakin bill?" really loud. He then folded the tip into a paper airplane and threw it at him.. Brianna preferred to sit back and watch. The waiter brought us a diet coke (even though no one ordered it), when we told him it was wrong, he took the drink and set it on another persons table. We were laughing the whole time, but stressed to the kids that that kind of behavior was not acceptable at any other resturant.

So you may be wondering how we could do such a big trip on a student budget? Well I was proud of how thrifty we were.
*Hotel bill - $0.00 thanks to the Anderson Family.
*Seaworld tickets - Free due to saving up points from the credit card and cashing them all in for the tickets.
*Legoland - Collect coupons from masons lego magazines so the kids got in free with each adult ticket.
*Zoo - Free thanks to Uncle Tim's work

All I had to pay for was gas and food.

We did have some technical issues on the trip, with the camera that is. I've meantioned before that the new digital camera I got for my b-day was burning through the batteries quicker that it's supposed to. Well, even with a new battery, it decided to not turn on at all. Chelsea is really interested in photography so I decided to take my nice 'real' camera for her to take pictures. I'm not sure how many rolls of film she burned through, but it came in handy when my camera died. I did find a cheap digital one at target though so I could still take pictures (that's my favorite part of any vacation.) So when we get her pictures developed I may add to these posts.



We now have a week to get ready for school to start. It was a great end to our summer!

Tim and Maria even spent their anniversary with us at the Zoo. Kennedy decorated a cake for them that we shared that night. I'm sure it was their most exciting anniversary yet!

San Diego Zoo

Here's our day at the zoo. They have some pretty crazy animals there, some I've never heard of. We started out by taking a bus tour around the zoo. That's when we realized how huge it is. And the way it's laid out was a little hard to figure out. It's not like you can walk in a circle around the zoo and see everything. There were a lot of little paths and we missed several animals. But we were able to see everything that the kids wanted to. We ended the day with a sky ride across the park and back. We got a wheelchair for grandma so that when she got tired she could sit. I'm not sure if she sat in it more or if the kids did. Chelsea was in charge of the wheelchair and enjoyed taking grandma around the park. My favorite part was coming across the "live tree". A person was dressed up in leaves and was on stilts just walking around the park. She would blend in for awhile and then just start moving, freaking out everyone around her.

Favorite Animals

After taking a look at the map, we decided that we had underestimated how long it would take to get through the zoo and we weren't sure we would get to see everything. We asked each child what was the one animal that they wanted to see most. Then we made sure that everyone would be happy at the end of the day. Then they got to take the camera and take as many pictures as they want of their animal. Here's what they choose.

Cord couldn't decide so I decided that he wanted to see the giraffs.


Chelsea loved the Polar bears. There were two of them there taking a nap.


Brianna's favorite is the Zebras. The only thing that would make them better was if they had a pink bow around them.


Mason wanted to see the snakes. There were a ton of different ones.


Kennedy wanted to see the bird show, but we missed it. Her 2nd choice was to see the elephants.


Rhylan didn't have to think long, he wanted to see the Pandas. It was a popular attraction there because we had to wait in a line for about 15 minutes, but it was worth it.

Legoland

Mason is CRAZY about legos so we couldn't come this close and not go to Legoland. Luckily, Chelsea didn't want to go and was kind enough to keep Cord with her at Maria's house. So I could enjoy the day and ride all the rides with kids and Cord could get a good nap. He was really cranky after 2 days of busy all day and cat napping in the stroller. I'm amazed at all the statues made of Legos that scatter the park. The lines were really long today. Most of the good rides had a 30-60 min wait. But the kids didn't complain. They made up little games to play while waiting. Even though we stayed til closing, we didn't get to ride everything but we had a good time. The favorite rides were the roller coasters - The Dragon and Project X. The kids rode them 3-4 times each because toward the end of the day the lines were much shorter. We'll have to go back when Cord is a little older, I know there are things he would enjoy as well.




Here is a picture of the picture taken of the girls on the dragon. They loved to make silly faces and see how they turn out.

I thought it was cool that at the big rides, there was a little area in the line where the kids could play with legos while the adults waited in line. Then when we got close to the front they could join us. Makes the time go by faster for them!








The kids were worn out by the time we left, but they still had smiles on their faces. Even though Rhylan could barely walk, he kept asking if we could go back on the Dragon ride (he didn't understand that they were closing down). He was such a trooper for a 5 yr old. And he was brave on the coasters. He had to be my riding partner because of his height. The first time I asked him if I could put my arm around him and hold onto him. He said no. Then when were were going up the first drop off he looked at me in a panic and said, "Put your arm around me!". At the end he was laughing and asking to go again. He let me put my arm around him each time after that :)

Seaworld

It was a beautiful day at Seaworld. We loved all the shows, especially the funny seal show. Cord was so patient and sat through every one. He liked to see the "ish" doing the tricks and flips. He laughed when they spashed the audience. I think the other kids enjoyed feeding the seals the most. Mason felt jipped when a bird swooped up and took the biggest fish just as he threw it to a seal. The kids also did all the rides there. I think we waited a little too long to do the water raft ride because they got super wet. But by then it was cooling down and it they never realy dried off. We should have done it during the afternoon when it was sunny and hotter.






Here are the kids with their fish getting ready to feed the seals. Notice Cord has a bag of frijitos... we did not feed those to the seals.





Kids looking super wet after the water raft ride.