August

August started out with a trip to Mona to see cousin June's baptism. We were happy to spend some time with Uncle Taylor and Aunt Jen and family who were in town from China this summer.

Since we only had Jameson and AJ with us we stopped at an Aquarium in Layton for a few hours for some Saturday fun.  To say the boys absolutely loved the Aquarium is an understatement. It was definitely time well spent.

They talked about their visit to the Aquarium for weeks after the fact.

Jenna and Korinne made plans over a year ago to go to Denver with Jenna's BFF Savannah and Savannah's Mom to see "Anastasia". Jenna loves Broadway shows and knew every word to every song in "Anastasia" but had never actually seen it. Savannah loves Broadway as much as Jenna (hence their BFF status). When they were buying their tickets in 2018 they invited Korinne to tag along and she jumped at the chance. The girls saved up and paid for their own trips and had a FANTASTIC time in Denver.  

Savannah's Mom definitely wins the "Cool Mom" award. Savannah is the youngest in her family so it wasn't a big sacrifice for her Mom to go on the adventure. In fact, I think she had just as much fun as the girls. 😀

Back home Adam took Jameson and AJ to the County Fair where the only pictures that were taken were of the boys on motorcycles.  Adam knows I don't love motorcycles so he likes to take pictures of the boys on motorcycles and text them to me just for fun.

AJ got to participate in his first team sport- Kickball.

Here he is with his friend Cooper. These 2 boys are a HANDFUL. They both have the same "no fear" personality and seem to have a real knack for getting into trouble. Naturally they LOVE playing together.

Cooper, AJ, Graham

Is AJ super competative? --Not so much. If there had been dandylions in the field, he would have been picking them.

But he did kick the ball and run the bases when it was his turn.

The Cross Country opening social happened just before school started. As a Senior Britton and the other Seniors boys made up a song and sang it to everyone to introduce the girls team captain. Then the Senior girls do the same thing to introduce the boys team captain. Unfortunately I only took video of the song so I don't have a picture to post. 

The day before school started Britton turned 18 years old. He is officially an adult and old enough to vote!

In true Britton fashion he was busy from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on his Birthday getting everything ready for the new school year to start and running the Freshman orientation at the high school, but he had a small break from 2:15-3:15 p.m. so we took him to lunch.

Britton and Adam played chess while we waited for our Gyros.  

Unbeknownst to us Britton has actually studied chess and knows all sorts of obscure rules which he used to beat Adam. When Adam asked to see said rules, Britton was able to pull it up on his phone. Leave it to Britton to use "a Queen-side castle" which is a apparently a chess move where, if there are no pieces between the king and the rook and neither of them have moved you can change their positions, moving the king 2 spaces over and placing the rook on the other side. See what I mean? Totally obsure. Britton was shocked that neither one of us had every heard of "castleing" before. Apparently we have been living under a rock.

I still laugh when I look at Britton's expression in this picture. It's the look of a kid who knows he has just beat his Dad in chess for the first time. Welcome to adulthood Britton!

That night it was back to school night at the Elementary school. Jameson met his 2 second grade teachers: Mrs. Griffiths (who seriously looks like she is in high school). . .

and Madame Louvierre, his French teacher this year.

August 21st, 2019

First Day of School

Britton and Jenna in their officer sweaters. Jenna is the Jr Class Secretary, Britton is on the Executive Council for the school.

Britton- 12th Grade

Jenna- 11th Grade

Korinne 8th Grade

Jameson- 2nd Grade

Jameson getting on the bus

AJ didn't start preschool for another week, but here he is on everyone else's first day of school.

AJ's first day of morning preschool was August 27th. Here he is waiting for his bus.

He was all smiles when he got home wearing a "I rocked the 1st day of Preschool" headband.

 He goes to a district preschool 4 days a week in the morning and then goes to the child development lab preschool at the University in the afternoon 4 days a week.

Preschool Lab open house at USU

He likes his morning preschool alright, but he really LOVES the child development lab preschool in the afternoons. It is definitely more his style with a heavy focus on self directed play.

At the end of August we went to another neice's wedding. Mckenzie married Cole Williamson in Farmington. 

Mckenzie & Cole with her parents Marci and Bryan

AJ loves all of the attention from his older cousins.

Grampa C, Jameson and AJ

The house where the wedding and reception were held had its own petting zoo, literally. The kids loved visiting the animals between donuts and drinks.

The boys by the animals with the reception in the background.

Jenna was asked to help serve the food at the reception. She was very diligent in her duties.

This was our August in a nutshell. Goodbye summer! Bring on the fall!

July

I've never been this far behind since I sarted this blog in 2007, but "something is better than nothing" so here is my attempt to cover the July happenings of our family.

At the beginning of July we had a little neighborhood party complete with a children's bike parade just before the 4th of July. Jameson and AJ loved decorating their bikes and riding through the neighborhood.

After the bike parade there was a pot luck dinner at the park with game and fun for everyone.

The Hyrum 4th of July parade is a tradition in our family, but this year both Adam and Jenna were IN the parade. This was a first for us. Adam did the parade with a Realtor as a marketing thing. They threw out frozen otter pops along the hot parade route.

Britton and Korinne helped and rode in the truck.

This was AJ's 3rd 4th of July parade so he knew the drill. There was so. much. candy. I don't love dealing with candy handovers, but don't feel like I can ban them from participating in the fun.

Grandpa P

The Ballroom team walking to the next start point

 Jenna danced the Lindy Hop all the way down the parade route. That takes a lot of endurance!

Bags are full, time to go.

Korinne, Britton, Jenna and I went to West Side Story at the Opera and Musical Festival in town. The cast was great, but I had forgotten how depressing the ending of the show is. 😜 I love that my kids love theater as much as I do and jump at the chance to catch a show with top talent.  In fact, Jenna has taken things to the next level and loves all things Broadway. She listens to Broadway soundtracks constantly.

July 6th, 2019 will live in infamy in our house and will forever be known as the "Great AJ/Orange paint disaster". AJ found orange spray paint we purchased months earlier to paint some fun picture frames for the boys' room in the garage. He proceeded to spray it on EVERYTHING, the car, the garage doors, bikes, doors, the brick and driveway. It is still a mystery as to why it never crossed his mind that maybe he shouldn't do this. AJ lives in the moment and has a hard time thinking about the future. . .or consquenses. . .or anything besides having fun right now.

As I drove to the store to buy every bit of "Goo Gone" I could get my hands on I thought to myself, "Someday I will laugh about this, but today is not that day."

We were able to get most of it off after a lot of scrubbing but you can still see it on the brick if you know what to look for. Even though it has been a few months since it happened, I'm still not laughing. . .

In July we were able to get together with a few other Adoption families in the valley. The kids always enjoy seeing and spending time with their friends.

Jameson, Eli and Pheonix

We had a big group together to watch "Newsies" at the Musical Festival mid-July. It was the first time most of them had seen it and it was a great show!

We really loved having Uncles Mckay and Taylor and their families in town this summer!

Mckay and Taylor with bikes.

Kids playing with cousins

Cameron, Jessica, Britton and Jenna

AJ, June and Preston

AJ had summer preschool for 5 weeks over the summer and it was absolutely perfect for him. Here he is on his last day of summer preschool.

Fun swimming with cousins.

Mckay had already left town, but here are 3 P sibs together.

Britton's club soccer team, The Wolverines, won the La Rocha soccer tournament on July 20th. He is on a really good team this year and they have had a lot of success playing together.

Britton is a defensive player so it is a big deal that no one scored on them even once during the entire tournament. Great job Britton!

Korinne and her friend Cara got to go to Camp Oakcrest from July 22-26.

They LOVED it and had a fabulous time. I'm glad Oakcrest allows open enrollment campers to come so both of my girls could have the experience of going. Yes, my staff picture from 1995 is still hanging in the lodge. 😀

Another parade, yipee skippee. 😝 I was thankful that we found some shade to sit in for the 24th of July parade which doesn't start until noon.

This summer Jameson participated in a children's musical theather camp where they put on a production of Frozen, Jr at the end of the 2 week camp.

There were several friends in our neighborhood that also participated. Jameson was the Butler and was in the chorus of a few of the musical numbers.

Tyson, Johnny, Locklan and Jameson in costume before the show.

Other neighborhood friends in the play.

I think he really enjoyed the experience.

Britton had another soccer tournament at the end of July in Park City. This one didn't end as well as Britton got hit really hard and had to leave the game early to get some stitches. The kid that hit him also ended up at then same Instacare getting his own stitches. 

We weren't that upset that his team didn't make the finals because we had a family wedding that was at the exact same time as the final game and it would have complicated our lives. With the Wolverines out of the tournament we were all able to go to Cassidy Nelson's wedding at the Mt. Timponogas Temple. It was the first time Adam and I had been back inside the Timponogas temple since our own wedding there 19 years earlier!

Gramma and Grampa C and Cassidy and Husband

Cousins

Britton and Uncle Josh

Jenna and her "Why are you talking a picture of me?" face.

Jameson and Korinne

AJ and Jenna

Cassidy is Adam's sister Kirsti's daughter. It just so happened that all 10 siblings were together for the event. It doesn't happen very often so we always take a picture when it does.

The Men: Josh, Adam, Micah, Stephen, Loren, Dave

The Women: Bonnie, Kirsti, Marci, Bethany, Jaclyn and Kim

Jameson and AJ stole the show when the dancing started. AJ got in the center with everyone watching and danced his little heart out. Jameson saw how much attention he was getting so he jumped in with some cool moves I didn't even know he had. Did you know Jamo could do the worm? Neither did I, but he nailed it. Other cousins jumped in and before we knew the party was on.  The kids were having so much fun we didn't leave until 10 p.m. and had a 2 1/2 hr drive home. Ouch! That was one late night.

July was full of fun and family in town. I still taught English classes online 5 mornings a week so I was super careful about getting to bed early. Adam let the boys stay up a little later so they made the most of it. Britton worked a lot of hours doing landscaping, and Jenna did a lot of babysitting all summer. Korinne started taking piano lessons again once Britton had to quit because his schedule no longer allowed him to take a weekly lesson. I will say that in July there was never a quiet/dull moment at our house.