Another calling

I received another (because I am still the girl's camp director) calling a few weeks ago.  And, I must say, it is very strange to be issued a calling by your husband.  He definitely messed around with me more than a “normal” member of the bishopric would have.  He started off by telling me he was going to give me a worthiness interview first.  I said, “no, you can’t do that,” which resulted in him pulling out the handbook.  Anyway…

I was called to be the 2^nd counselor in the Young Women’s Presidency.  I am so excited to be able to continue working with the young women.  I was already missing them from camp!  It's funny though, because after talking with the YW President, I was supposed to be called as the 1st counselor because she wants me working with the older girls (our Laurels and Mia Maids are combined) and wants the current 1st counselor with the Beehives.  She has me working with the older girls anyway, so we will see if they actually decided to change which counselor I am.  I'm not sure it really matters.  :)

But, since I am now in the YW Presidency, I was able to attend a regional meeting this past Saturday that included several stakes in the Tucson area.  All the stake and ward YW Presidencies were invited to a specific chapel where Sister Bonnie L. Oscarson, the General Young Women's President, came and spoke to us.  It was a neat experience to hear from her regarding what is important concerning the youth in our wards.  I was really grateful to be able to be there.

60

My mom celebrated her 60th birthday on the 17th.  Rob, Tina and Christian were planning to go to Snowflake for the weekend to surprise her, and I decided to tag along and do the same.  Nate couldn't come with us, but I went with all of the kids.  It was very fun to surprise her!

We had a great, laid back weekend.  (Well...maybe except for the broken arm part.  But that's another post.)  We ate pizza and Mexican food from Eva's.  I brought my good nail stuff and painted my mom's fingernails and toenails.  We stayed up playing cards.  On Saturday night, after Mom went to bed, we decorated the kitchen and set out her birthday cake and cards.  Dad added a card and roses in the morning and Mom added the presents and cards sent from Christy, Chad and Melanie's families.

I brought stuff to make a birthday cake for Mom.  She requested a double layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, with frosting between the layers.  I maybe shouldn't say this because I am the one who made the cake, but it was Y-U-M-M-Y.  Well, I guess most of the credit should probably go to Duncan Hines.  Though the frosting was from scratch. 

 Everyone singing "Happy Birthday" after we got home from church.

Blowing out the six "decade" candles. 

 

My mom and me.

Seriously, I dare you to find me a more beautiful, younger looking sixty year old.  (And even if you do, I probably won't agree with you.) 

I love my mom.  She is amazing!  I am so glad we got to spend her birthday with her!

Yellow Dress

I'm copying this from a post my mom did today because I want to have it on my blog. 

The Story of the Dress My Mother Made:
All three of my daughters wore this cute little yellow dress when they were somewhere between the ages of 2 and 3. But my mother made the dress for my oldest daughter Christy for her 2nd birthday. She was using a pattern that she had when I was a little girl and the dress was taking her a long time to make. She had taken the dress with her to work one day to show her co-workers. As she was leaving work, pulling out of a parking lot, she was hit head-on by a group of teenagers who were driving too fast and lost control of their car. This accident put my mom in the hospital for 5-6 weeks. When she got out of the hospital, she discovered that there was blood spattered everywhere inside the car she was driving, but not a mark of any kind on this little yellow dress and pinafore!!! Each of my girls wore this dress, and I made sure they each had their picture taken in it. I still have this dress! Sure miss my mother!
--Monja Burgess

Christy

July 1976, almost 2 years old

Cherie

Fall 1986, almost 3 years old

Melanie

About 2 1/2 years old

School

Monday, the 4th was the first day of school.  The kids are excited for the year, and so am I.  From what I have been told, both of them have amazing teachers this year.  And... after years of pretty much nothing but navy blue, the kids can wear red now!  We've made it through the first week and it's going well.

Here are the kids on the first day before being dropped off at school by Nate.  He only takes them to school on the first day.

Natalie, 4th Grade

Mrs. Clapper's class

Kelton, 1st Grade

Mrs. Burke's class

Sometimes when I look at them together it is hard to believe that there is almost a three year age gap between them.  It may not be too much longer before Kelton is bigger than Natalie!

 

A picture Kelton brought home on his first day:

 



Last Saturday of Summer

Last Saturday was the kids' last day of summer break.  We wanted to do something fun, so we took them into town and went to a kid's workshop at Home Depot.  They each got to build a pencil box.  The whole thing was a lot of fun.  The workshops are free and each kid gets a kit and an apron.  When they are finished, they get a pin to put on their apron.  Some of the kids there were seasoned veterans with about 20 pins from projects they've done!  Our kids loved it and can't wait until the next one comes around.

All finished with their pencil boxes.

Then we went over to the zoo for a little while.  The tiger is one of my favorite animals at this zoo because it comes right up to you.  It's so cool to be an inch away from a tiger.  Well, one that can't hurt you, of course.  The kids found it scary and exciting.

This is random and doesn't fit with the rest of the post, but this last week, my friend Rebecca came over so I could make carseat canopies for her babies.  Yes, babies.  She has little six week old twin girls!  I got a little glimpse of what life with twins is like.  Those babies are sooo cute but definitely double to work.  At one point I held them both at the same time--one on each shoulder.  If you think holding one cute little newborn is fun, you should try it with two!

Finished canopies.

Brooklyn and Eden.  But maybe not in that order...

Movie Night

I was moving some pictures to my computer today when I realized that I missed some pictures from the summer.  These pictures are some of the ones that were still on my camera from June.  We have a family movie night every Friday (unless something else comes up), and the kids often times look like this.

Last Friday we watched the movie Beethoven.  That's the one that was made back in the early 90's about the big dog.  I remembered liking the movie.  The kids thought it was hilarious!  I spent most of the movie laughing at the kids who couldn't stop laughing at the movie.  It was fun.

Our summer

Every summer I have grand plans for the kids... grand plans for lots of fun and activities, jobs, piano practice, reading, and individualized help with math and school stuff.  And each summer I fail to even come up with, let alone put into practice, a schedule to make it all work.  About 90% of what I want to accomplish doesn't get done.  And I feel bad about it. 

 

But... then I realized, that my mom never did any of that crazy stuff to keep us entertained or up to date scholastically.  And I survived.  Actually, I had fun in the summer and I somehow ended up still being smart in school.  So, I'm letting myself off the hook.  :)  I've decided that I like the laid back, do nothing-ness of summer.  No, my kids didn't do many jobs around the house.  But they did some.  I think I went over a few times tables on maybe four different occasions with Natalie.  I didn't do anything with Kelton.  Somehow, I think they will still survive the upcoming fourth and first grades.  Anyway, I'm always complaining about how, during the school year, they never have time to play because they are at school all day and then come home and have to do more homework, and jobs, and piano practice, and then go to bed early because they start early in the morning... and they don't get to play!  So, this summer, I just let them play!  No structure, no schedule.  They will have all of that back soon enough. 

 

Anyway, here is what we did do this summer.  We bought tickets to the summer movies at the Harkins Theater.  For $5 per person you get a ticket to watch a different kids movie each week for the months of June and July.  The kids love doing this.  Even Arie liked to watch the movies.

 

Arie also liked to sneak into the isle from time to time to watch.

On July 10-12 I went as a chaperone with the YW/YM in our ward to a stake youth conference in Safford/Thatcher.  Chrissie Hancock was going to go but wanted a break from being gone from home.  So she switched with me.  I went, and she watched my kids during the day while Nate was at work.  While I was at the youth conference, she sent me this picture of Arie napping.

Monsoons finally hit at the beginning of July and cooled our temperatures.  So much so that we hit an incredibly freezing 78 degrees.  Good thing the kids had access to these clothes so they wouldn't die of exposure when we had to brave the outside conditions to go to the store.

Arie loves to dance and has leaned some awesome hip action this summer.

 She also woke up one morning looking like either Pebbles from the Flintstones or a Who from the Grinch.  Take your pick.  Either works.

Damon got to go to a birthday party for Eugene, one of the boys who was in our Joyschool group.  The party was Angry Birds themed and Eugene loves the color green.  So here is Damon modeling the present I made for him, while demonstrating his best "angry" face.

On July 19th, Natalie got to go to an all day basketball camp here in town.  There is not an organized basketball league of any kind here, (which makes me so sad!) so I was glad to find out about this.  Natalie said she had a lot of fun.

One day while shopping, I found the perfect shirt for Natalie. 

Another thing I was very excited about was swimming lessons!  The YMCA came to the not-open-to-the-public (long story--don't get me started) school pool here to do *almost* free swim lessons.  I signed Natalie and Kelton up for the first four weeks in July.  Unfortunately, Damon couldn't do it because he isn't five.  Lessons were Monday-Thursday for half an hour.  I didn't feel like the instruction given was as good as it could have been (you get what you pay for), but the kids had fun and I was grateful for the opportunity the kids had to be in the water, since we don't have a place where they can swim.  Kelton can even swim a bit now!  He couldn't at all beforehand.  This is a major accomplishment because in previous years, he loved being in the water, but would get very upset when the water touched his face at all.  But this year he was ready.  He will put his face in and actually swim!

The last thing we really did this summer was go to Snowflake for Pioneer Days.  Cue next post...

Pioneer Days

We took our annual trip to Snowflake for Pioneer Days on July 24-27.  We got there Thursday night and went straight over to Grandma and Grandpa Webb's house so we could visit and eat dinner with them.  Then we went to my parents' house, where we were staying.  Melanie's and Rob's families were there too.

On Friday morning all of the guys and Melanie went to the golf tournament and were gone most of the day.  Tina and I took all of our kids out to Shone's Dam.  The idea was to hike and explore for a while.  It didn't turn out quite like we had hoped, mostly because it was pretty hot, there was no shade, we didn't take nearly enough water with us, and, well... we are raising a bunch of city kids.  We took this picture from the top of the dam.

We hiked down to the bottom of the dam.  It was steeper than I remember, but that's probably because I have never done it with little kids in tow before.  At the bottom, there is a cement tunnel that goes under the dam.  I was hoping to take the kids inside, but it had been trashed by people.  All of the somewhat empty beer cans and food wrappers had attracted too many gnats and other flying bugs.  I tried to go in anyway but it just wasn't working out.  The kids were disappointed.  But they did get to yell inside the opening and hear the cool echo.  After that we walked around for a few minutes before deciding to hike back up. 

We got home, had lunch, and then let the kids play outside on the slip-and-slide and in the blow up pool.

Kelton

(I wish you could see his face better.  He has a huge smile in both of these pictures.)

Natalie

Damon

This was the only way he would do the slip-and-slide.

Saturday morning Dad, Rob, Tina, Melanie, Tyler, and I got up to go do the 2 mile Pioneer Run at 6:00 a.m.  Melanie, of course, won overall for the women.  I was really happy with my time.  I usually run at an average pace of 9:40 per mile.  I know, I am slow.  I will never admit otherwise.  But my time that morning was an average of 8:50 per mile!  I was pretty impressed.  That's faster than I've ever gone.  (Side note:  it was so much easier to run in the cooler, non-super-humid weather.  Even though the altitude is twice what I'm used to, I think those other things made the difference in my time.)  I actually thought I might get third place in my age group, but I ended up in fourth.  The girls who got second and third both passed me in the last tenth of a mile.  I had no desire to speed up at the end, which was uphill.  I just held my steady pace.  Although, if I would have known that it was for a medal, I might have tried harder.  However, the girl who finished third ran and walked, then ran and walked, then ran and walked some more through the whole race.  I personally don't think that should count.  :)  If you want a medal, you should have to run the whole thing without stopping.  So, by my standards, I got third place.

Then at 9:00 we went to the parade.  Before it started, a parade official volunteer person came by and told us the kids couldn't sit on the curb because of safety reasons (horses, mainly).  What's funny is, while she is telling us this, everyone around us on both sides of the road has kids sitting on the curb.  So we waited for her to move on and then put the kids back on the curb.  I get it, I really do.  But some things just aren't practical.  After the parade, we all came home with bags of candy larger than what the kids get at Halloween.

The people next to us had a dog with them.  Arie was super happy about it.

After the parade, the kids went swimming again.

 Later either that evening, I took Arie and Damon out to swing. 

One more, because she's just too cute.

I told Damon to give me his best smile face.  This is what I got. 

Fun weekend.  Ended too soon...