Almost Done

Whew! We are almost done with our house renovation. Just one more hallway and a stairwell to paint. One more light to put up and about 6 doorknobs to switch out. The bottom level needs to be shampoo'd and all the windows need to be washed inside and out, but then we will be done with the interior of the house. We are planning on moving in this next week. We've already gotten several kitchen boxes unpacked and are washing every dish in the dishwasher. Once we move in, we've got exterior renovations to do. I've never let my yard get as overgrown as it currently is. My every waking moment is either renovating or helping James with his Eagle Scout Project. But the end is near. I have nothing new to blog about since I have been doing nothing but the house. I promised to blog once a week, so here it is. Once we're moved in, we'll be going up to the cabin for another week - for us to unwind and celebrate the end.

Happy Birthday James

Well, we now officially have a teenager in our house. Hopefully his attitude won't become that of a teen. James celebrated his 13th birthday last Thursday. We were up at the cabin, so we went to dinner to celebrate it and they brought him an ice cream with toppings - he was thrilled. It's a non-birthday party year for him, so he's going to take his friend Caleb miniature golfing as his special birthday activity. (The kids get birthday parties only on their even birthdays - 4, 6, 8, 10, etc. and a special activity with one friend and the family on the odd birthdays - 5, 7, 9, etc.) He got a jacket from Nonna and Papa, and money, a tie from grams and gramps, and money, money from Uncle Kyle, and money from mom and dad (and a bike he's been using for the last month). Can you see a trend here? All he wanted was money so he could save up to buy a Wii. He's less than $100 away from his goal and hopes to earn it all this summer by mowing lawns. I guess we're bad parents by not just buying him the wii, but Dirk said he had to earn it and he is saving and working for it, so it's teaching him some goals. His sisters have even said they will pitch in some of their money to help him pay for it, but I told them they could use their money to buy a game for it instead. So we'll see how long it actually takes him to actually earn the wii. He's currently working on his eagle scout project. He got the last signature he needed for it, so now he's going to be going to work on it. More info on that in a later blog. So Happy Birthday James!!!

Our latest Trip

So this past week, Athena (me) and the kids (James, Jenni and Emma) went on our annual trek to the cabin. Dirk had to work and we have another trip planned up there in three weeks, so this was kind of a bonus trip. For those of you that don't know, we have a cabin in Island Park, Idaho about thirty minutes from Yellowstone National Park. Dirk's family owns it and we share it with his family. We've been going up for 16 years now and there are many fond memories. We usually fish, fish, hike, fish, kayak, fish, go into the park, fish, play games, and oh yeah, we fish. This year was a little different. There was still snow in places up at the cabin and the spring runoff made the river very high and extremely cold, so the kayaking was out of the question. It got to about 49 degrees high and was rainy off and on. So the weather made it a little uncomfortable to do too much outside. Still, we had a lot of fun (the warm stuff like kayaking and floating down the river will occur when we go back in July). We still fished a lot. At one point, I had a good sized fish on my line and it got away. Next thing I know, Jenni starts hollering that she had a fish and couldn't reel it in. So I get behind her and we reel it in. It's a cutthroat trout that measured 16 inches. Now we got lots of rainbow trout (more than 20), but this cutthroat had beautiful pink meat and was bigger than all the others. So, Jenni wins the fishing award for this trip. Mind you, Jenni and James have to bait, cast, and catch their own fish (James also has to gut his). Emma ends up getting all the ones I hook. They have gotten really good at it and I am hearing "can I go fishing with you?" or "when can we go, I know it's raining, but I have a raincoat". They love it as much as I do. On Wednesday, we went into Yellowstone National Park to enjoy and see the animals. For the fourth year in a row, we saw bears up close and personal. What a fun experience. Some of the animals we saw were: a grizzly bear and her cub, a black bear and her two cubs, a moose, a coyote, a herd of big horn sheep, a buffalo merging into the road in front of us, a herd of buffalo with their young, elk, and more elk, even some bull elk, pronghorn antelope, white tailed deer and other smaller animals, prairie dogs, and marmots and squirrels. James said this trip into Yellowstone would have been perfect if we had seen a wolf. I think it would have been perfect if I had remembered my purse. I got all the way into West Yellowstone and forgot my purse (and my gas light was on). So I had to call my dad (at 7am) and he gave me my gas card number over the phone and I was able to get gas, but I had no cash or cards to buy anything. Thankfully we packed lots of food for the trip - we just didn't buy anything. At the end of the day, my mom and dad met us in West Yellowstone for dinner at a great Mexican restaurant where we celebrated James' birthday and I got my purse back. One crazy thing was that it snowed on us while we were driving through the park. The snow was so high in places, it was higher than our car and it felt like we were driving through a tunnel. Other places in the park, the snow was gone - that tells you the difference in altitude in places throughout Yellowstone. The kids stopped at the Continental Divide and we saw the river from a lake literally go in two different directions (toward the Atlantic and Pacific oceans). Sorry for the long stories - we just had a lot of fun and I wanted to share all the fun stuff with you. More from the cabin when we go up in a few weeks. (Oh, the bald eagle was just sitting in the river outside the cabin - I was cooking breakfast and looked out the window and it was just sitting there - usually where the moose hangs out.)

"The Talk"

I recently had to have "the talk" with James. It was the night he turned 13 and he asked me a very pointed question. Unfortunately, Dirk was not there to help me out since we were up at the cabin and he stayed home to work. So me and my dad had "the talk" with James. I think he understood most of what we were saying, he's mature enough to understand most of it. Once I told Dirk about "the talk", he admitted that he should have been there and said that he will have to have another "talk" with James to straighten him out since we have very different ideas. I mean, what do you say when your teenage son asks you "Mom, what's the difference between a democrat and a republican?" I am a republican and Dirk is a democrat and I had to handle "the talk" about politics all by myself. James is currently undecided about which party he supports. To be fair, I did try to give him the good points of both parties: republicans like guns and democrats like abortion; republicans like to urge people to work, democrats like to urge people to stay home and live off of those that work; republicans support those that fight for this country, democrats take $$ from those who fight for this country. No seriously, I tried to be as good as possible and show the good points of both parties. That's why he's undecided.

Our new house

We finally did it!! We bought a house! It's been a while since we have been in our own home (and we're still not in it yet). But we closed on our house in May and are renovating it before moving in. I insisted after painting our house in VA, and then painting my parent's house here in Utah, that I will not be painting and living in a house again. It's bad enough to paint 3 houses in 1.5 years, but to live in it at the same time is awful. So my parent's are gracious enough to let us stay with them while we paint and remodel it. Hopefully we will be in for good the end of June. I don't have any before or after pictures, but I will put some of our work in progress in a few days (I keep forgetting to take a camera when I go to the house). So here's the scoop on the house. It's in Layton (for those not familiar with Utah, it's north of Salt Lake City. We are at the base of the Rocky Mountains - beautiful pictures from our front windows. It's 2400 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 3 baths. All the kids have their own rooms, thankfully. I even have my own scrapbook/craft room. Dirk also has his game room with the pool table and game systems. We've got a bunch of fruit trees in the back: apricot, apple, pear, possibly cherry, 3 plum trees. Yum. We've got a garage that's oversized, yay, plus a storage shed. There are two storage rooms in the basement, one for the kids toys and one for the rest of us. We even have a separate kitchen/mudroom/laundry downstairs. The house is a little old - same age as me - and needs some TLC, but we specifically chose an older home with lots of space rather than a newer home that's smaller. It's perfect for our family - we love the ward/church we go to. They are very friendly. There's room out back for the trampoline, and a basketball court on the side and it's all fenced in. We are all anxious to move in, but painting every door, closet, room, wall, cabinet, etc. is very time consuming. I'm always painting or cleaning, or prepping, but it will be worth it. That has consumed all my extra (what extra?) time. So bear with me as we finish up the house - my blogs will be far and few inbetween.

Jenni's birthday

Okay, so this is not in the right order, Jenni's birthday was actually April 28, but because I am so behind, I figure I better post her birthday. She had a great day on her special day. She had a field trip (of course). For her Sunday dinner at grams and gramps, she chose breakfast for dinner - yum. She had a birthday party the next week. She wanted a beach party (since she was born in Florida - it was only fitting). So we had a friend make a triple layer cake of polly pockets going down a massive water slide. We had Hawaiian music and the girls all got leis and bracelets. They had a really fun relay type race similar to "Survivor" and the girls ended up doing it 4 times. We buried shells in the sand and let them dig for it. It was a great party - a lot of work to get ready - I even hand-made the cards, but it was a smashing success. Jenni was thrilled with all her presents and at 10, feels more and more like a teenager.

End of School

This last month has been crazy with the end of school. Jenni and Emma both had programs at school and did fantastic! They love to sing and perform. I finally went with Jenni on a field trip. She had 18 field trips this school year. It seemed like she went every other week. 4th grade is Utah history, so they went to every place they could. I hadn't been on a field trip yet, so I finally agreed to go to Antelope Island (where there was a farm) with her. It was interactive - I taught how they made wagon spokes. It was fun. I also went with Emma on a field trip to the zoo. We had a lot of fun there, and saw lots of animals. The girls also had their final recital for gymnastics. They have learned so much this year. Jenni also had her piano recital and did a great job with her memorized piece. Kudos to her. She loves the piano. James had a great end of year as well. He finished up band as first chair in bass clarinet in intermediate choir. He worked hard, having started out in clarinet and then switching to bass clarinet half thru the year. Another fun thing for James was his grades. He earned straight A's the whole school year. He came close to an A- once, but pulled it out at the last minute. He also failed to let us know that in March he was selected as 7th grader of the month out of 200 7th graders. We only found out when they sent home his certificate in the mail. It would be like him to 'forget' something like that. He was the top mathlete in 7th grade and earned $25 as well as going to state for a competition. As room mother I have had a lot of work in both of the girls' classes with teacher appreciation and end of year parties. Thankfully the year is finally over. I have posted pictures for you all to see their fun end of year activities. It was exhausting the final month of school, and because of that, I have decided to pull all the kids out of summer activities and let them just have fun. They will still have church activities, but we are not doing anything else all summer - let them be kids!!!

Sorry

Sorry everyone for not posting sooner. Lots of stuff has happened, I'll try to post more details later. Here's the highlights: we bought a house and are renovating it before moving in. Lots of hard work and hours put in and more to do. Schools out for the kids, yay - lots of end of year things for me to do with their classes as room mom. We are at our cabin in Island Park ID (near yellowstone) and I'm sitting outside a cafe typing this. We fished and read books and fished and played games and fished and did puzzles. Very relaxing - but going wifi-less is hard. More details later - thanks to my friends Laura and Jayme for guilting me into writing something. (love you guys).