Back to school 2013

The day finally came!!  I love, love, LOVE my kids.  But they finished school in Indiana before Memorial day.  By August I was spent.  Just ready to get back into some sort of a routine.  And they kind of needed a break from being with each other- and only each other every day.  They were anxious to meet friends.  

Hayden started 3rd grade and Rebecca started 1st grade.  

 I really like their school so far.  And their teachers seem amazing.  They are really liking school.  I never had the experience of changing schools.  I went to the same elementary school every year.  Same with middle school and high school.  I never really had to worry about making new friends.  Of course you make new friends that you didn't know very well in each new class, but I still had friends from church and previous classes that I'd see throughout the school.  I am very proud of my kids.  They have learned to take change in stride.  There are definitely some moments that are tough for them, and those moments break my heart.  Rebecca came home from school on the first day of school with 3 new "BFFs".  This doesn't surprise me, and I'm so happy that she makes friends so easily.  And she even has a boy from the bus making her bracelets and necklaces regularly.
Hayden is a little more like me.  It takes him a little longer to come out of his shell.  And once he is out of his shell, he's completely himself.  One night at dinner, Rebecca was talking about all of her BFFs that she has made, and what they play at recess.  Hayden got a little quiet and said, "I don't really have any friends yet."  UGH!!  My heart just broke as he opened up and said that he doesn't play with anyone at recess, he just swings on the swings alone.  And at lunch he does sit by people, but he said he didn't really talk to anyone during lunch.  Friends are everything to Hayden.  He misses his friends from Indiana, and even Las Vegas still, so much.  Jerry and I gave him some tips about how to make friends, and ideas for striking up a conversation with kids in the class that he wanted to get to know better.
I went to the back to school open house and felt just a smidgen of what they feel.  It was odd to me, to look around and not see a single person I know.  Hayden and Rebecca are the ONLY members of our church in the ENTIRE school.  In Indiana they didn't have any members of the church in their classes, but they saw their friends from church around school, and played with them at recess occasionally.  It's just nice to see someone else that is familiar.  Our ward covers 7 towns, each with several elementary schools in them.  So the friends they've made at church still live far enough away that they aren't in our school.  I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining, because we really like it here.  But as good as change is, it is still definitely hard.  It is making them so strong though.  Stronger than I was at their age.  I am so proud of them.
Hayden has come out of his shell a lot more in the weeks that he's been in school.  I'm so happy to hear that.  I was so worried about him.  I was really shocked the other day when he came home and said that he wanted to run for student council!!  WHAT??  My first thought was to try to talk him out of it because I didn't want him to be hurt and sad if he didn't get elected, mainly because he's new and the school doesn't really know him.  But I'm so glad I kept that quick thought to myself, and saw the bigger picture.  Honestly, I am so proud of him.  They had to write a little paragraph to read about why they wanted to run for student council.
Side note:  When did my boy get so grown up??
I listened to him share his ideas about why he wanted to be on student council and why he thought he would be good for it.  He was so cute.  At one point as he was talking about the fun days they could have like hat day, sports team day, etc.  he stopped and said, "but I'm thinking about the fun part, I need to also think about the work part of it." He decided he didn't want to run for president because that would be a lot more work for him.  Then he said, " and I won't be upset if I don't win.  I know that not everyone knows me, but I still want to run."  Oh, I am so glad I hadn't told him my reservations and burst his bubble before he could even tell me all about it.
He asked me to help him with his speech.  I only helped him with a few words, and giving it a conclusion, the rest was him.  So here is his darling speech
" I'm Hayden Ewell and I would like to run for student council.  I am honest, hard working, and responsible. I take ownership of my choices. I am willing to work hard for this school.  I have good ideas to make school fun while we learn.  I have to take notes and I love to write.  Some fun ideas would be, twin day, hat day, costume day, and sport day.  And a few surprises if you vote for me, Hayden Ewell, on election day.
He didn't win, but I am SO proud of him for at least trying.  Major mom pride!  And he took it very well too.  He was happy that he tried.

Rebecca was so excited to start school, and she is loving it.  She deals with change much differently than Hayden.  He gets quiet, and sad, and when he finds the words he verbalizes.  She just gets angry - at everything.  I can laugh about this now, because it has gotten so much better in the last few weeks, but I didn't know if I would survive the first couple weeks of school.  It actually started more in the summer, and it wasn't all the time, but little things would set her off and she'd get so angry.  Once school started I hoped it would get better.  She loved school and would come home happy, but within a few minutes something would make her angry and she'd be yelling at everyone.  At open house her teacher said that they were doing a lot of testing those first few weeks to gauge where everyone was at and she told us all that if our kids had been extra tired or emotional, that was probably why.  Ahh, light bulb!!  She is adjusting to the change in her own way, and now that she's making more friends and getting used to the busy day schedule she's gotten so much easier.  Once again my sweet girl is back.  However, the daily morning fight of finding socks that don't "bug" her or "feel weird" along with making sure her shoes are tied tight enough - she wants them tight enough to cut off her circulation, but still wants to be able to move her toes.... -that is still there.  Baby steps right??


I looked into many preschools for Sydney, and just like everything else on the East Coast, ridiculously priced.  The average price for preschools is around $250-300 per MONTH!  Ha!  Yeah, right, not going to happen.  After lots of stress I found some girls in the ward that have kids Sydney's age and we started our own preschool co-op.  We teach one week at a time for two days a week.  So far it has worked out really well.  There are 4 little 4 year olds, and they are just so dang cute.  We call it the fantastic four preschool.  She loves it, and does so well in it.  It's a good thing for me too.  I taught this week and really had a good time with it.  I learned very quickly that activities need to be about 10-15 minutes only, because that is about the max for their attention span at a time:)

 She really wanted me to take a picture of her with a silly face (above) and her "special pose" (below)  She is growing up so fast.  So fun.

August 2013

This was the event of the day one morning in August.  I smelled a funky smell in our basement.  It smelled like a blown fuse, and one of our light fixtures wasn't working.  I figured that was the problem.  But after a couple days the smell was still quite strong.  To be on the safe side I called the fire dept. to come check it out.  I didn't realize that there would be 2 fire engines and 3 police cars pulling up to my house with sirens and all.  Quite exciting.  Luckily they didn't find any hot spots or leaking gas.  It just needed more time to air out.  Glad all was safe and sound.  They were great.  And of course we had to get some fun pictures.  

Here is Luke, being his silly self.

I had super ambitious plans for the last week of summer.  Sadly it got filled with a car repair, dr. appointments, and back to school shopping.  We were able to have some fun along the way though.  We finally found a good park close to our house that we can go to.  There are tons of parks around, but a lot don't have a playground area.  We had fun soaking up the sun one more time.

Luke didn't want to go.  He hid under the table when it was time to go.  

July 2013

July was a very fun month.  We went to a great 4th of July party at my friend, Rhonda's house.  Food, fun, and fireworks - perfect combination for a great night!

July 19th was my parents' Golden Anniversary.  We've been planning a big to-do for their 50th for the last couple years.  It finally came and it was so special.  We first had a nice family dinner with just family and a few of my parents' very close friends.  Then we had a little open house with a program that all of their friends were invited to.  It was so fun being there.  Unfortunately Jerry and the kids weren't able to be there with me.  It was just too much money for everyone to fly back, and since he just started a new job he couldn't take off the time it would take to drive back and forth.  And after we did the cross country trip just a month earlier, there was no way I was going to put the kids through that again.  Even though I missed them, it was kind of nice not to have to worry about the kids.  It was a super fast trip, that was made even shorter because of a flight delay which caused me to miss my connecting flight:( I got to SLC at 10:30 am Saturday morning and left at 11:50 pm Sunday night.  But I'm so glad I was able to go.  We also had a little picnic at the park after church on Sunday, then our traditional sister's favorite things party.

isn't my sister, Esther amazing? She decorated the party!

My sister, Elizabeth made the wedding cake.  It is an exact ( as much as possible from looking at a picture) replica of their wedding cake.

My mom's wedding dress

Jerry survived at home without me, with only one little scuffle of locking themselves out of the house. Hayden being small comes in handy sometimes:)  He was able to squirm through a window that Jerry found hadn't been locked.  They were able to open it enough to let Hayden squeeze through. 

Later in the month I was getting dinner from the freezer in the garage when Luke came out to join me.  As we went back into the house I held his hand to "help" him up the stairs.  Just as I lifted he twisted back towards the garage and started screaming.  I thought he was just mad because he wanted to play outside.  But after the crying continued for way longer than normal I started getting worried.  Long story short, a trip to quick to urgent care, they sent us to an orthopedic surgeon where they popped his shoulder back in socket.  He had to wear a sling for a couple days.  He HATED it.  Once they popped it back in ($600 out of pocket for 30 seconds of work!!! grrr) he quickly started acting better.
So now I think I am on their radar of abusive parents.  I guess it is extremely rare for a toddler to dislocate a shoulder.  Elbows and wrists are very common, but shoulders are rare.  So they sent me to a special pediatric orthopedic surgeon (another $200 out of pocket!! grrrrr) just to double check that his growth plates weren't injured, and probably to scare me.  The pediatric surgeon is doubtful that it was his shoulder because it is so rare, he suspects it was his elbow.  Who knows, all I know is that even though it was too much money, I'm glad my boy is healthy and just as active as ever.

We love having our basement.  It is partially finished, and extremely dirty in these pictures.  We had a fun night playing Rock Band one night.  We all had a blast.

Luke transitioned to his toddler bed pretty well.  But once he discovered that he could climb up into Hayden's bed he wants nothing to do with his toddler bed.  I should just take it out to make more space in the room.

Sydney started taking dance classes this summer.  In the first session there was only one other girl in the class.  This session she is the only one. haha.  She still loves it.  We might have to move her into the performing group because they will cancel the class if she is the only one.  Rebecca started taking gymnastics as well.  She's been begging for the last 2 years to take gymnastics, so we promised her once we moved she could start.  She's loving it.  Unfortunately she hasn't slowed down enough in her gymnastics leotard for me to take a picture.

Hayden was also able to go to scout day camp for the last week in July.  He loved going.  Unfortunately he wasn't in the same group as any of the boys from our ward, but at least he was able to see them around while they were there.

Hayden and his friends from our ward at scout camp.

June 2013

 June flew by!  A few weeks after we got moved in my sister, Ruth Ann and her family came to visit from New Jersey.  They have lived in New Jersey for so long, wishing family was closer, and a few weeks after we moved here (Only 2 hours from where they lived) they moved to Seattle.  At least we were able to spend a few days together before they moved.  We had a great time visiting here at our house.  Then that weekend on their last weekend they had planned to go into New York.  We didn't know that and we'd planned to go into New York that Saturday as well, so we invited them to meet up with us.  It was kind of funny.  I'm so glad it worked out.
We met up at central park and played for a while.  Then we caught the subway where a lady was NOT pleased to be surrounded by so many kids.  We went to times square.  And grabbed dinner at John's.  It is DELICIOUS pizza.  Then we just walked around the city together and just had fun.  We didn't want to say good bye.  The kids all cried when they had to say good bye.  I'm so glad they've been able to become such good friends with their cousins.

I think this is a cool picture showing the park and the city in the background.