Back to School 2023

We took the kids out for a fancy dinner on Monday to celebrate going back to school and for completing a family goal of reading 200 books this summer. They were way behind on books at the end of July so we had a couple of days of read-a-thons and they actually surpassed the 200 goal. 

9/10 when we go out to dinner the kids get water. We let them order a drink this time but we asked the server to bring out their sodas with their meal. Last time they got full on soda and barely touched their dinners. It worked!

Henry's proof that his burger was saucy. I'm relieved his pants stayed clean.

We ordered 2 desserts: bread pudding (which looked like a gigantic sundae) and chocolate cake. I think their desserts might be the best part of dinner.

Justin is so good at these selfie things.

Tuesday is meet your teachers day! Wahoo! The kids were pretty excited. Sarah left first to go to a thing at the seminary building then she had show lost 8th graders around at her school for school council. I dropped Henry off at the middle school and then I took the littles to the elementary school. This is the first year in like 5 years that a child of mine isn't starting a new school. Everyone went back to where they were last year. Kind of a low key return (For them. More on that in a minute.)

James is in Mrs. Murdock's first grade class. He's not with his bff Calvin and he's pretty sad about that. But there are like 6 kids in there from his kindergarten class so I think he'll be okay.

Erica is in Miss Blaisdell's 4th grade class. This is the teacher she was really hoping to get. After last year I am excited for her to have a great teacher. Her best friend isn't in her class either but she makes friends "too easily" Justin says so I think she'll be okay.

I dropped the littles off at home and saw that Henry was back as well then I stopped by the junior high to check on Sarah. She showed me where her classes were and this is her locker.

She finally got an email with instructions of what to do next about the job she got. We had to quickly head to the district office to fill out paperwork and get her ID badge. She is now a student sweeper at the other elementary school by us. She is so excited. She works for a couple of hours every day after school cleaning classrooms.

Finally back to school! For a few weeks Sarah was saying she didn't want to think about going back to school which doesn't sound like her at all. I think she was trying to fit in with what her friends were saying. She loves school and gets so bored at home.

9th grade is still at the junior high. She is taking seminary which I know she'll love. She's playing the violin this year in orchestra and is excited for student council stuff this year.

Henry is in 7th grade at the middle school. His schedule looks pretty similar to last year (2 semesters of PE, orchestra)

He doesn't have many friends in his classes but he's used to that. He lives for lunchtime when he and all the "narwals" get together.

And then the littles. This was the first year all my kids started on the same day.

Erica has some fun field trips this year so I volunteered to be the room mom so that I could get first dibs on which ones I could help with.

Harry Potter is the theme for a lot of the stuff they do in 4th grade and Erica isn't interested in Harry Potter at all. For no reason. 

And then there's James. I could barely look at him in the eyes the last few days without getting emotional. My little buddy gone all day at school? How did we get here? I'll be alone. I've had this feeling that my life as I knew it for the last 15 years is over.

He's most excited about having a desk and eating lunch at school. 

Here are some cute pictures of them going inside. I don't usually walk them all the way into class but Justin took the morning off work and I was feeling extra clingy.

(I stressed all day they would forget their new bike lock codes.)

And then Justin and I went home. He worked from home that day so I wasn't all alone. I cleaned the kitchen and even mopped the floor since it would stay clean for more than 10 minutes. I went to the grocery store right when all the high schoolers got there for lunch and that was annoying. I was one of those kids but I don't remember there being so many of us. Anyways, then I made chocolate chip cookies and welcomed them home one at a time.

Sarah left for her first day of work. She was there for more than 3 hours and came home so hot and tired. The AC shuts off at 4pm so it got pretty warm.

She's worked 2 more days since then and is getting a little faster at cleaning her assigned common areas and 10 classrooms. There's one high school boy that works with her and several senior citizens.

And then there's me trying to find out how to fill my days. I am so worried I'm going to be bored or lonely or just not know what to do with myself. First step is getting a feel of just how much extra time I actually have after still doing all the things. Fifteen years ago I took a day off work to return some baby shower gifts and buy some baby supplies I needed. I went to like 5 stores, got a bite to eat and made it home before Justin got home from work. That was the last time I had a free day that I didn't have kids at home waiting for me.

James has some adjusting to do as well. Thursday he asked for a popsicle while I was making dinner and I told him no and he replied, "I don't have time to do anything!" He's missing his long quiet afternoons where he got me, the fridge, and the TV all to himself. Now afterschool time goes by really fast and it's noisy and chaotic with all the kids. He had a hard time waking up Friday morning and only the thought of Saturday got him moving. I had to drive him to school but he rode his bike home. We'll figure this out.

That's A Wrap

 As our summer break comes to a close, I thought I'd share some random pictures of things around my house. 

First are the shrubs I planted as part of May's extreme shed makeover. Two weigela plants put in the same day. One thrives, one dies. I don't know why (water? disease? bugs?) so if I replace it, will it die too? These questions drive me crazy.

Finding toys in odd places always mostly amuses me.

This is the bench in the laundry room as you come in from the garage. The bench is handy for kids to stand on to reach their backpacks or to sit on to remove shoes. For me, it's where my store returns go, mostly Amazon. There's always something to be returned.

And a surprise selfie from Henry. Pretty sure he was supposed to be in bed at this time but sometimes he wanders up if he gets tired of waiting for me to tuck him in while I'm reading to James. I have to tuck him in which really means talking to him while he closes his bathroom door, makes a couple of baskets in his little basketball hoop, tells me what he's going to wear tomorrow, and looks for something that suddenly seems crucial. Then he finally climbs up the ladder into his bed, gets settled, turns on his little clip-on reading lamp. I ask him what he's reading (Dog Man or Calvin and Hobbes for the hundredth time) and I say something like why doesn't he read library books x, y, or z that's on his desk. Replies "I don't know" in the humming sort of rhythm that is lazy but unmistakable. Good night, Henry. Good night, Mom. Love you bud. Love you too. And as I close the door he asks what we're doing tomorrow so I swing it back open and tell him whatever it may be.

I got Erica a new bike. She needed one that didn't need the chain put back on each time she rode it. We bought it from a lady in Springville and on the way over to take a look at it, I told Erica that even if she loves it she needs to play it cool because I need to talk the lady down in price. I worked out this code: "If you love it say, 'It's okay.' If you don't want it say 'it's a nice color.'" She rode it up and down the street, came back to the driveway where the lady and I were waiting. You should have seen her eyes when she said "It's okay." The struggle to contain her excitement was real.

Later that afternoon I took James to the doctor because a fever that wouldn't break turned out to be the mildest form of strep throat I've ever seen. He had a fever for 48 hours with basically no other symptoms except that his throat hurt "a little bit." His fever wasn't going away on it's own, it wasn't turning into a cold, and he had some white spots on his throat, I took him to the doctor. Strep it is. He's been a pretty good champ on taking his amoxicillin twice a day but it's getting harder to convince him to take medicine when he doesn't feel sick. He wanted to see the spots on this throat so this is the picture I took. 

My kids get a coupon to one of the many trendy diabetes shops from our orthodontist on their birthdays. I hadn't taken anyone to get their treat yet so Thursday was everyone's birthday. They each got a cookie and a large soda with several flavor shots and spent the rest of the afternoon in a sugar coma.

Sometimes my kids sit nicely together on the couch whilst reading scriptures before bed. This is one of those rare moments. Pretty sure someone starting invading another's air space right after I took this picture.

I don't know what is still on my kids' summer bucket lists because I don't ask. I think we're down to the things I don't want to do like have a yard sale or swim at the reservoir when it's 100 degrees out. What was still on my summer bucket list was to make homemade from scratch lemonade.

Homemade lemonade has to be started way ahead of time and squeezing 20 lemon halves takes the whole family but it is so good. I wish lemon trees survived here.

Okay one thing on their list was to get ice cream at Brooker's. (This is the Revolutionary War themed ice cream shop near BYU.)

Complete with guillotine. 

On the way home we stopped at park we've never been to and swung on swings we've never seen before until it was dark and the mosquitos came out.

Erica spent the day with her best friend shopping and bowling. Her mom bought them matching outfits for the first day of school. They aren't in the same class this year (they were together for 2nd and 3rd) so I think this helps them stay connected and let everyone know they are still best friends.

Meanwhile I've been homebound too much the last couple of weeks. My car was in the shop for a couple of days last week for diagnostics and now it's back in the shop to be fixed. It's kind of putting the brakes on getting out and doing much with the kids so I feel bad about that. But we have been spending more time together doing simple things like board games and baking so I guess we'll just keep making the most of it.

"I don't know if I'm an expert but I'm retiring"

The title comes from what Justin told our neighbor when he came over to see what were were doing to our yard. Seeing the breadth and depth of what we were doing to our sprinkler system he quiped, "You must be an expert by now." This summer has been overshadowed by this large and never ending yard project. When we expanded the patio we knew we would have to redo one major sprinkler line and 4 sprinkler heads that the patio now covers. What we didn't know was how difficult it would be to find where the sprinkler pipes went under the patio and where they exited. (Plus all the other complications we created but we'll get to that.) Finding the right pipes took a lot of fruitless digging and some dumb luck. Then finding a Saturday where Justin wasn't doing bishopy things or that we were actually in town was also a challenge. In the meantime I got up every day at 7 am to move the tractor sprinkler around the yard for a couple of hours. The line we were redoing waters the bulk of the back lawn and while the tractor sprinkler I borrowed from my dad is a great sprinkler, it has to be resituated several times to get it all. It actually waters better than our sprinklers. But it also meant a lot of lawn died while we were in Montana for 8 days.

Finally the day came that we rented a trencher to make the new trenches for the new pipes and new sprinkler heads. 

James got in on the action. I did too but I didn't like it. Too bumpy and I can't see what I'm doing.

We also wanted to add a few heads in the front yard so we trenched there first. Unfortunately we (I say we but it wasn't me driving) cut through the existing pipe and then chopped through the sprinkler electrical wires. Zone 3 is now out of commission and the automatic sprinkler system doesn't work. We can no longer turn the valves on with the controller in the garage, not to mention from the app on our phone.  Then we moved to the backyard. We (again, not me driving) chopped through the main pipe of another zone. Now we can't water zone 4 which is the entire north side of the house. Alrighty. Put that on our list of fixes. Then we...Okay it was Justin during all of this! But in his defense this machine runs backwards so there's no way to know what you're going to hit unless you already know it's under there. Like 10 feet after cutting that pipe Justin cut through the internet cable. That we kind of knew was there from when the "call before you dig" guy came in preparation for the concrete workers. So in case you're keeping track, we ended up with the ability to only water half our yard but only if we wanted to lay down and turn valves on manually and no internet. All for the low low price of $345 to rent a trencher!

That night we sat outside in the dark with a jar of wire nuts and spliced 12  wires back together so I could water half of the yard with the sprinkler system. 

Comcast came out on Tuesday to repair the line. That was a funny call to make. 

"Ma'am, let me run through a series of troubleshooting steps to diagnose the problem. This will take a few minutes. What is the error code you see on your television screen." 

"I don't need any of that. I know what happened. We chopped through the line putting in sprinklers." 

"Just one moment while I ask you a few more troubleshooting questions." (clickety clickety keyboard) "Oh looks like I don't need to ask you any more questions." (Puts me on hold) "I have created a repair ticket and the technician will be out there tomorrow between 4-6pm"

We repaired zone 4 a few days later and added a head for better coverage.

A few days after that zone 3 and the new line 5 were back up and running. 

It took some late nights with headlamps on our heads and mosquito bites on our legs to get it done. And a lot of exclaiming "So many rocks!" For the first time since May all my yard is automatically watered and I don't have to drag a hose and sprinkler around all morning, every morning. Hallelujah. Instead I've spent several mornings backfilling the trenches and sifting out rocks.

Only 1 head for this entire area? Now there are 5.

Here's the rocky soil we were digging and trenching through. 

This is where I threw a small sampling of some of the big rocks. (I threw away 15 gallons of rocks into our garbage can. Shhh.)

This rock has the honor and distinction of being the largest rock ever dug up. If we find a larger one, it will get replaced.

 

I still have a lot of rocks to remove before I plant grass. I keep wishing they were worth money.

******

My sister was bemoaning the fact that her street in North Carolina is so narrow that it is difficult to drive through when people park their cars on it. I shared that I love how ridiculously and unnecessarily wide my street is. It's wider than the streets in either side of me and even wider than the busier cross streets to the north and south. To compare I measured. It's 55 feet wide. Is that wide for a residential street? 

My sister forwarded the information to our nephew and he chimed in with this and it cracked me up:

Justin and I went up to girls camp for their last night. The girls were making bracelets after dinner and Justin joined in. Once they found out he was colorblind it turned into a game of "what color does this look like to you?" It's his favorite game. 😄

Justin and his dad had spent most of the day boating with them. These girls are so cute and funny. We ate dinner with them, joined in on a fun activity then Justin led them in a discussion on receiving revelation before their testimony meeting. We had fun seeing Sarah in her element.

The next day was our town's Pioneer Day celebration. Pancake breakfast, parade, games and bounce houses at the park, fireworks that night. The usual.

Erica was feeling sick this day and opted out of the bounce houses. She wasn't feeling well when it was time for the ping pong ball drop so Justin stayed home with her. Luckily she was feeling well enough to make it to the park before the fireworks at dark.

James got to catch a ping pong ball this year. Until kids are 6 they are just put into a drawing. This year he got to go out into the drop zone and grab a ball. He won a scooter this year but no one in our group won anything this year. This was Sarah's last year for the ball drop. She's aged out.

Once the sun goes down and the glowsticks come out, it's magic time.

The fireworks started right on time this year. It's a show that never disappoints.

James stayed awake this year!

It's so long too. I seriously zoned out and and just watched, losing all track of time.

And the we walked 0.7 miles to where the car was parked and then drove the remaining 1.2 miles home. I'm not exaggerating.

Justin's brother and his wife and son were up from Moab that next day. We got to see their cute little boy. He's growing up so fast and is so cute. He's pretty wary of us all but he likes Erica.

Just kidding, we're never done with sprinkler problems! The last head on the line we redug doesn't have enough water pressure. We think we may have loosened a connection when we dragged up the pipe with the trencher before it cut through. So we need to dig up the lawn some more to find out if we need to make a repair. Sprinklers, man. Love 'em and hate 'em.

I don't have any pictures but Henry went to Deacon's camp for 4 days. They had plans to go to Starvation Reservoir (I've never been there but it sounds nice. Lol.) two hours away. But half of the boys had football clinic and tryouts so they went to a campsite up Hobble Creek instead so boys could come and go as needed. Kind of a bummer because that detracts from the experience but you do what you gotta do. Henry came home Saturday morning exhausted, happy, and filthy. Erica wouldn't even hug him.

Justin's parents kindly took us boating on Saturday afternoon. Each of our kids could bring a friend. The kids had more fun that way but it made for a long day with everyone taking a turn on stuff. We tried out the zup for the first time. It was a blast.

The final and main event is tubing of course. Justin and I went out for a crazy ride. I'm still so sore but I'm pretty sure we showed our kids we still got it. This is Sarah with her friend and Henry's friend.

More Erica and babies. This is the newest Dye. She was born a couple of weeks ago and we love her already. Erica is always glad for more girl cousins.

Corey found these socks somewhere and knew James needed them.

He told me they are too hot to wear in the summer but once it's winter he's going to wear them every day and he hopes he gets lots of doughnuts.

So I guess that's July. The kids are excited to get their schedules and see what teachers they get. We have a few things they still want to do before school starts so we'll see if we get around to them. I'm just glad we don't have any trips or camps to prepare for. The sprinklers run themselves so maybe I can just relax for a bit. (I probably just jinxed myself.)