Back to School

On the last day of summer, we partied. We started off the day with and early breakfast at Black Bear Diner. We started this tradition a few years ago. We wake the kids up at the time we wake up for school in order to get them ready for the first day. We figure if they wake up early then they will be ready for bed early and thus, ready, for the first day.

After breakfast, we headed home and got on swimsuits for a fun day at Cherry Hill(a family fun center/water park). We didn't tell the kids where we were going beforehand and they had a lot of fun trying to guess what we had planned. All they knew was that it was something to do with water. In fact, when Ashley broke her finger, her biggest concern was being able to still go to the "fun place" that we had planned to go to. We went and just let her get the wrap completely soaked. Her hand was so wrinkly by the end of the day. We didn't take any pictures at Cherry Hill because we were too busy having fun, but the kids were sad when we said it was time to go home. After all, keeping them out late would have defeated the purpose of waking them up early that morning.
The first day of school came and went. The girls are in 4th and 6th grade this year. For the first time ever, they have male teachers. It seems to be going well so far. Ashley was quite sad that she is not in the same class as her best friend, again. But they still find time to play during recess and after school.

As happy as Ashley looks in this picture, she was actually quite anxious for school to start again. She was sad to loose the freedom of summer, but her biggest concern was how to get past the uniform policy about her black wristband that she has worn since first grade. In past years, she has hidden it under a sweatshirt, but she really did not want to face another year of having to always wear her sweatshirt at school. So Danny went and talked with the principal(who happens to be in our ward) and got an exception to the uniform policy for just her. She was so happy and has been better about going to school. She still doesn't like all of the work, but she is doing okay so far with the work load.

Tyler started preschool a week after the girls started school. He goes 3 days a week for a couple of hours each day and has a class of 12, all boys except 1. Two of the boys are from our ward, so we were able to work out a carpool with them, which has been nice. So far he loves his teacher and going to preschool. He especially loves to show me the things he has made that day and what he learned.

Broken Finger

Shortly after we returned from California, I took the kids to this new indoor playground in the area. It had a lot of fun stuff including slides, climbing tubes, a trampoline and a ball room(where you could shoot little foam balls at targets and at each other).

The kids were having so much fun until Ashley fell on her hand and was clearly in a lot of pain. After examining her fingers a bit, icing and attempting to wrap her finger, and getting an explanation of what happened, I decided that she should probably see a doctor. We made an appointment with her pediatrician for a couple of hours later and let the others continue to play(Ashley mostly sat with me, but she occasionally wandered back into the play area, being super careful not to bump or use her hand.

The pediatrician examined her, wrapped it up a little more sturdy than we had and then sent us off to the hospital to get x-rays. Later that night, we finally received word that she had a fracture on her ring finger. The pediatrician was worried because of the nature of the fracture about doing it in their office, so he referred us to an orthopedic surgeon. After many phone calls and a lot of waiting, we finally got her in with the doctor. This is what it looked like just before that visit(two days after the break)

The doctor redid one of the x-rays and determined that the finger would heal just fine on it's own. Ashley was worried about a cast and ruining the rest of summer, but he said he thought it would be better to just wrap it up this way, then to put a waterproof cast on it.

We ended up getting it wet a few times, but just dried it after wards. She was happy for the wrap and the ability to take it off occasionally and let her fingers air out. It has been 6 weeks now, since it happened and her finger is completely healed. We had to postpone starting her with the girls new piano teacher for a month and I worry that it is going to be hard to get her back into the habit of practicing every day, but other than that, she was mostly able to function normally. We were especially grateful that it was her right hand and not her left(since she is left handed and this happened a week before school was to start).

Random Stuff from Summer

We went down the the Utah County Fair again this year. This time, we got tickets for the Demolition Derby(a first for all of us). We went down a few hours beforehand in order to see some of the things at the fair. The kids were especially excited that they added carnival rides this year. We let them ride a few.

Here is our demolition derby selfie. It was kind of fun to watch the derby. It was especially exciting when cars would crash so hard that one of them would flip over. In fact, there was one crash where one of the cars ended up on top of another car. Camden, somehow, fell asleep in my lap towards the end of the derby, even with all of the noise.

We enjoyed the eclipse from our 90% totality viewpoint. After hearing people talk about what it was like from totality, I kind of regretted not going to see it since we were only a few hours away(Danny did not agree with this). But the day was entirely too busy to even make it possible. I guess we shall see where we are in 7 years when it happens again.

Alyssa got her braces on. Here she is just before getting them on(after we had been expanding her mouth for a couple of months.

And the after picture. She only got the top ones on for the first appointment because she freaked out a little about it and they ran out of time. But now, she does have top and bottom on and I think she is pretty used to them at this point.

Alyssa had fun making these cookies one afternoon. The recipe even had her make a bowl out of sugar cookie dough. They were pretty to look at, but we ended up throwing away half of them, so they weren't the tastiest of cookies.

The girls did another 2 weeks of tennis lessons at the end of summer. Alyssa got pretty good by the end of it and she can actually return the ball most of the time when we go to hit to each other. Ashley had fun too, but still needs a partner to make it worth playing against her.

 We went to this fun park and the kids had a lot of fun on this swing together.

We are so sad that summer is over and that the snow is creeping down the mountain and that it is getting so cold outside. But I guess it is fun to have different seasons and to look forward to what the cold means- Thanksgiving, Christmas, and birthdays.

Trip to California

This is almost two months old now, but we took a trip to California at the beginning of August. Danny had a work Conference in Nashville, so he flew the rest of us to California to visit Grandma and Grandpa Miner. I was a little bit nervous about flying with the 4 kids alone, but we made it there and back without any problems. We were blessed to have a really nice man sit next to Ashley and Tyler on the flight there who put on a movie for them and entertained them for most of the flight. On the flight back, the plane was pretty empty, so we didn't have anyone sitting in between me and the kids across the aisle from me. Alyssa and Ashley were big helps with their brothers and hauling luggage, which was nice.

We spent most of our time in California at Grandma and Grandpa's house. The kids explored all of their toy cupboards and Ashley chased lizards around outside. On one of the days we drove down to Brian and Maryn's house to spend the day with Wheeler cousins. The kids had a lot of fun playing together. These three boys got along so well.

When it got warm enough outside, the kids played with water balloons. They tried out the ones that fill up and seal all at once. It made the filling up part of the balloons super fast and easy, but the balloons didn't seem to break as well. As a result, they spent a lot of time slowly squeezing individual balloons over each others heads. Camden didn't like the water balloons and stayed close to me.

We were excited to finally meet Catherine. She is such a sweet baby. Tyler saw me holding her and wanted a turn himself. I barely snapped a shot of them before she tumbled sideways towards the couch.

 Later in the afternoon, we pulled out their slip and slide. The kids had a lot of fun on that too. Robbie and Alyssa had a wrestling match in which I thought she did pretty well for herself considering their size difference. Camden stayed close to me once again(mostly because he fell down every time he stepped onto the slip and slide).

 We ended up staying much later than I had planned and pulled out of there around 8pm. The kids were mostly asleep when we got back to Grandma and Grandpa's house.
The following day, we headed off to the beach with Grandma. It was a fairly nice day, but the wind was constantly blowing which made most of us a bit chilled.

Especially this lump under the towel(Alyssa). She is starting to develop that teenage brain where anything Mom says to you should be completely ignored and when I threw her swimsuit at her at the house and told her to put it on because we were leaving in 10 minutes, she didn't. When we pulled up to the beach she asked me where her suit was so she could change into it. I looked at her and said that it was probably sitting on her bed at the house where it had fallen when I threw it towards her. As a result, she swam in the ocean in her clothes and spent a lot of time low to the ground avoiding wind. Camden hated the beach and spent the final hour we were there sitting on my lap and crying. In fact, the only one(besides me and Grandma) that really loved the beach day was Ashley, who spent the entire day in the water and on the wet sand. She was so sad when it was time to go.

On the morning that we were leaving, we took a quick trip over to the children's museum close to Grandma and Grandpa's house. We have been trying to go there for years, but it has never worked into our schedule. We were especially excited to get in for free, thanks to our Thanksgiving Point Membership. The kids had a lot of fun exploring a new children's museum.

They had a dinosaur exhibit going on while we were there, so they had these noise making, movable dinosaurs both inside and outside.

About 10 minutes before we were to leave for the airport, Ashley finally caught a lizard. I took some pictures and got a video of it, but told her that we could not take it back to Utah. I left with Alyssa for the airport about 10 minutes before Grandma and Grandpa left(we had to return the rental car and it was a long walk from the return spot to the terminals so grandma and grandpa offered to bring the 3 younger kids and all of our bags to drop off at the curb for us). They were unable to talk Ashley into leaving the lizard in the backyard. I believe Grandma even told Ashley about how the lizard should stay here with it's Mommy, but it still didn't work. When I got to the terminal with Alyssa, I found grandma parked on a bench holding a sleeping Camden with Ashley and Tyler in tears over the lizard that will never again be with it's Mommy. She apologized and got out of there as quickly as possible. I could see that I wasn't going to make it into the airport as easily with Camden asleep and Ashley too upset to help, so I rented a luggage cart before grandma took off and piled the luggage on top of it, including Camden's car seat with him sleeping inside of it. We got to the counter and got all of the luggage checked and Camden woke up as we were going through security(that is also about the same time Ashley and Tyler finally stopped crying about the lizard). The rest of the trip was smooth sailing.

I was glad that we were able to get out of town while Danny was gone and have some time to spend with Grandma and Grandpa and some of the Wheeler cousins.