First day of school!

So today was a big day at our house. We started Kindergarten, 4th grade AND middle school! I have to admit I was a little nervous about how this morning would go. Kierstin won't go to bed at decent times at night and will sleep until noon. Waking up in the morning has never been a possible idea. Add to that her streak of perfectionism and mom had a nervous weekend. We met the teachers on Friday. Her teacher had some small activities for them to do. She was supposed to draw a self-portrait and write her name on the front. Her picture didn't turn out like she wanted and she forgot how to write her name over the summer (we forgot to practice). We left the school that day with her saying she didn't want to go to school because the teacher was going to be boring. Oh boy! Now what? I was worried that she would get stubborn and wouldn't get on the bus. What was my brillant plan? I pulled out the school lunch calendar and made the biggest possible deal out of what she was going to get to eat for breakfast (if she wanted to) and lunch. I was shocked to find that it worked! Here's how she turned out this morning.



As you can see, she still has sleepy eyes, but she's smiling! She even got on the bus this morning of her own free will! No cajoling or force required! Yea! I gave her the choice of 3 different shirts to wear today. She said that this one was her lucky shirt so it won. :)



Here's our new 4th grader, Brydin. He picked out the polo shirt to wear on his own. I didn't even have to make him! Yea! He pretended to be all upset that he was going to have to sit at the front of the bus with Kierstin all year long because those were the bus rules. Landin said that there weren't any rules like that. I told Landin to be quiet. If Brydin wants to say that there are rules that you have to sit with your baby sister then let him! :) It takes away from the uncoolness of sitting with a Kindergartener. :)

Of course, Landin started middle school today which is too big to take a picture for. I felt like he was packing up for college. No, mom wasn't getting sappy, the kid just had a backpack almost bigger than he was, a trumpet case, and a grocery sack with tissues for the teachers' class supplies. He literally looked like he was moving away. :) We'll have to see how this day went.

Whew! I'm going to go and enjoy some mommy only time. :)

So Cute!!!!

Okay, so I should have gotten a picture but it's not something you usually take a picture of so the camera wasn't handy. So, last night was the last family night before school started today. This means it was time for the traditional Father's Blessing to send the kids on their way through the new year. Kierstin went first, then Landin. Then before Brydin could go sit in the chair baby Jaydin ran off my lap and climbed on the chair and sat down with a big ole' grin! He wouldn't move so Billy gave him a little baby blessing too!!! It was so cute! How can you not get gushy smushy about that? LOL!

Wa-hoo!!!

We just got Landin's schedule for middle school in the mail today. He made it into the Pre-AP classes!!! We're all excited. He's in the Pre-AP Writing and Pre-AP Reading. He wanted to qualify for them so badly and kept asking if his schedule had come yet while he was still at Grandma's house over the summer. We'll go meet all of his teachers (7 of them) on Monday. This should be interesting. :)

Billy also pulled out Landin's trumpet yesterday and was goofing around with it. I (the one with no experience with brass instruments) had to tell him how to properly blow into the thing to get noise. :) Then Landin had to try again. He did very well, at least as well as his dad. :) Not bad for no lessons yet. Of course all the noise brought Brydin running and he had to try. I was amazed at the sound Brydin got out of it! He had a clear note and was even able to change the notes. Maybe we'll have musical kids yet. :)

I'm going home today!!!!!

Yea!!! Tentative contract agreement reached!! They are confident enough that they are sending us all home! Yea!!! Boston with my Mom on Sunday was fun. We went to church and thought we had accidentally picked the married student ward. Then discovered that it was simply a normal ward overrun by married students making it an extremely young ward. :) They were all very friendly. We went on the Old Trolley Bus tour and saw all the major sites in Boston while in the middle of a torential downpour. I hope that the weather lets up long enough for my plane to get out and for my mom to go back to some of the sites she wanted to get a closer look at. Now that I'm going home I promise to post more kid pictures. :)

Here's a picture of a gable.....does that make sense now? :)

That part of the wall immediately under the end of a pitched roof, cut into a triangular shape by the sloping sides of the roof
Gable roof: A pitched roof having a gable at each end.

Visit to Salem

Talk about exploiting history for future revenue! We went to Salem, MA today to check it out. Everything there is about the Salem witch trials or something like it. We got to walk through some really cool (real) cemeteries and see some massively old headstones. Some of them had the same last name as one member of the group so he had to take some pictures of course. :) I could not believe all the stuff they had revolving around witches. There were many places to get a palm or tarot reading, the names of the businesses had something to do with witches or magic. It was nuts. My favorite places we went were the House of Seven Gables owned by Nathaniel Hawthorne's cousin that inspired the book and also the local wharf. The wharf was amazing! Again I am missing the use of my camera.

Weekend off!!!

Well, I've spent a week here in MA. In spite of my cranky, whiny last post I really do love this area of the country. I wish my camera hadn't been on its way home from Grandma's house when I left. I would have loved to have posted pictures. Oh well. It should be a quiet weekend. We were told that we had the weekend off and could even go home if we wanted to. It literally takes all day to get home from anywhere when we fly. I strongly considered it but decided to stay in the area. Why would I do that after all my whining? It worked out perfectly that I got a weekend off when my Mom will be in Boston for a class for work. She's never been to Boston so I get to show her around. We're going to take a trolley tour. We're both excited. We'll spend the whole day Sunday together. I'll let you know how it goes. :)

Work Stoppage duty stinks!

My job is an interesting one. I am a supervisor in a Verizon call center that handles directory assistance calls. I manage the team that makes sure we have the right number of operators on the phones at all times. Last month I had nine people that reported to me. As of August 1 I inherited even more people and now have almost 20 reporting to me. Do I get to work on building a rapport with my new team? Nope.....

I haven't seen my family since mid-June...they are home now....Am I there to see them? Nope....

What did I do 2 days before my family came home? I got on a plane to go to Massachussets. Why? Because the contract between Verizon and the Unions in the East expired August 2 at midnight. I had to be on hand in case they decided to strike so that I could step in and do the work. They have decided to work without a contract but could still walk out at any time. I have to sit around until they actually sign the contract. Who knows how long I have to be here.

No one wants a strike. I just hope that they decide what they're going to do before too long. I'm tired of being in limbo. :)

Summer at Grandma's house

So my family ditched me in mid-June to go to Billy's parent's house for most of the summer. They just got home this past Monday. It wasn't until they all got home that I got any pictures. On their way to Grandma's house (Billy's mom) they stopped at Gram's house (my mom) for the weekend to play. They went to all of the church sites in downtown SLC. As you can see, the kids loved having their picture taken at the SLC Temple. Gotta love it.


Of course, it could possibly be that they were beginning to not feel good because they ended up staying an extra 2-3 days at Gram's house because they were all massively sick. All four kids ended up with something. Poor Billy was the only one that got sick. Of course, Gram loved it because Billy had some time to do some minor repairs around the house that she doesn't have time or knowledge to do herself. :)

Once they finally made it to Grandma Daniels' house the kids had so much freedom they didn't quite know what to do with it. Jaydin (not quite 2) quickly took to the dirt pile like a pro. Grandma has 10 acres right next to National Forest land.
In addition to an awesome dirt pile, Grandma's house has plenty of room to ride the dirt bike and 4-wheeler. The boys were set free with them if they promised to go slower than dirt to give baby brother a ride. Jaydin of course was in heaven the whole time. Billy said after a while he knew how to get right on them and knew where to push for the throttle. Luckily for daddy, Jaydin hadn't figure out how to turn it on or the little turkey might have hit the throttle and made daddy chase him! :)Part of the trip was spent travelling to get Billy's Grandma and bring her back to Daniels' house. While they were at Great-Grandma's (or GG) house they met up with various other family members. I don't know who this lady is, I think she's Billy's step-aunt or something....are they step-aunts or just aunts when they are the second wife of the uncle? I don't know. Either way, she let the big boys ride the horse and they thought they were hot stuff.

This is back at Grandma's house. Kierstin loves to pose pretty.

Hammocks are the best too! Kierstin and Jaydin had a blast playing in this thing. Too bad they wouldn't use it to take a nap! :)
They are all back home now and are happy to have the dog to play with again. When Kierstin was talking to me from Grandma's house she told me that she wanted to come home because she missed her puppy....not mom, the puppy. Oh well. Who can blame them when there's so much cool stuff to do at Grandma's house?

Disney pics a month late

Okay, so we've been home since forever and I have yet to post pictures. In my defense, I did not take the digital camera and had to finish out the disposable camera before I could get them developed. :) Anybody buying that excuse? Oh well....better late than never. Believe it or not, this first one is from the first day. Landin was irritated that Brydin insisted on taking his picture.....little brothers!! :)

Brydin was going strong with the pictures. I had to remind him to leave some for when we actually got to DisneyWorld. :)

Here's one of the plane ride......literally...

The boys both thought that our hotel was massively cool looking. They both had to get a picture of it. I'll spare you and only post one. :)

There are the 5-star luxury resorts at DisneyWorld and then there are the decent resorts (a.k.a. hotels) that are of lesser cost and luxury but still very decent. These are all All-Star resorts and have different themes. We were at the All-Star Sports resort. All that means is that our buildings had a sports theme. We were in the Touchdown bungalows.

Every morning we would meet between the buildings so that we could head to the park on the itinerary as a group. We were extremely hard to miss as every day we had a different color of the same shirt. Other vacationers noticed and began to ask what color tomorrow's shirt was so that they could coordinate with us and join the group. :) Here is Brydin waiting patiently. Of course it took a little bit of doing to get the boys to actually put on the PINK shirts and wear them for an ENTIRE day. :) It was all good though. :)

Around the corner from our hotel was the COOLEST McDonald's I have ever seen. Landin absolutely had to have a picture of it and I couldn't blame him. All the tourists were taking pictures of it. Of course, the windows on the bus don't open so it didn't turn out very well. Hopefully you can see it.

Brydin concentrated on taking pictures of people. We went to two different restaurants that had the characters come around to each table and talk to the people and pose for pictures. I'll spare you the pictures of the princesses that were taken for the benefit of little sister. I was shocked when I found Brydin absolutely excited to have his picture taken with the characters from Winnie the Pooh. I would have thought him too old....apparently not. Even Landin wanted his picture taken with Tigger.

We found Stitch at one of the Waterparks and Brydin was ecstatic!

After you get off of most of the rides they exit into a gift shop. Very good marketing technique I thought. However, when you get off of the test track ride (I forget the name, it's the one where you are the crash test dummy) you go into a show room of all the new cars. There are lots of cool ones. The boys sat in a Hummer, and this neat little red sports car.....

Landin was more interested in taking pictures of the stuff. He took several pictures of the landscaping where they had shaped the bushes into characters. I thought Stitch turned out the best.

Well, now you have the long narrative and the million pictures. Hope they were worth the time. :) Sorry for the formatting, I'm still new to this blogging thing.