Excitement For Florida

We are heading out to Florida this summer for a family reunion. My boys are out of their mind excited. Jaxon even wrote about going to Florida twice in school (plus countless journal entries).


This is what his papers say, with his spelling (it is hard to tell in the picture):
1- I am going to florda. It's going to be asam. I am gana go to go in the summr. There is gana be a hug slid. There is a hug room. There are bathrooms.
2- Next sumr I am going to florda. When I get there. I am going to woch tv. I do not no with thr are bathrooms.

If you can't tell, I think he obsessed with the bathrooms at the hotel. He wants to make sure he knows where they are as soon as we arrive to the hotel. To help with the excitement, Grandma Haacke told them they can earn spending money for Florida by saving aluminum cans. So they have asked their grandmas and grandpas (because they drink the most soda) to save all their cans. They have three sacks full so last week we had a can smashing party.


They were all helping to smash the cans, even Kayden. I don't know how much money they will get from their cans, but at least they feel involved and that they can have their own spending money for the vacation.

Silly String

We have a new FHE board that assigns everyone something so everyone contributes. (It was my way of stopping the boy's arguments over who's turn it was to teach the lesson.) A few weeks ago I was in charge of the activity. While at the dollar store, McKay and I thought it would be fun to have a silly string fight. It was fun--until silly string was sprayed in my eye...ouch! In the end we had a contest to see who could make the biggest silly string ball so it would get cleaned up. The boys ask me all the time when we are going to do it again. Gotta love that dollar store!

Jeremy when the fun just began. He had it all over his hair by the end.

Jaxon trying to get me, but I got the best of him! (Evil laugh.)

All of us spraying McKay with Silly String. I guess we kind of ganged up on him here.

Josh couldn't quite figure out how to get his can to spray at first, so when we were all out of our silly string, he was still going strong!

And We Walked and Walked and Walked....

I was invited by Jaxon's teacher to go on their class walking field trip. (Funds for buses are short this year becuase of budget cuts.) We walked from their school to Albertson's (in the above picture Jaxon is just outside of Alberston's getting ready to go in for the big tour) and had a map activity finding different buildings around downtown. (It was the first time that I had seen American Fork City Hall!) I went back later and figured out that we walked three miles that day. Whew! No wonder we were tired!

This was when we stopped to eat lunch at the park. If they look tired here, you should have seen us at the end of the field trip. (Actually it wasn't that bad and the kids did great!)

Sleeping With Hats

So Jeremy and I go in every night and check on the boys before we retire to bed ourselves. One night when we went to check in on McKay this is what we found:


We laughed and thought it was funny that McKay fell asleep with his BYU hat on. We talked about it the next morning and had a good chuckle when McKay told us he did it for our entertainment. That night when we checked in on McKay he once again had his BYU hat on. So Jeremy thought it would be funny if we switched his BYU hat for the Santa hat that he wore for Halloween:


Again, in the morning we laughed about it. So that night when we went to check in on McKay, this is what we found:


This kid does provide us with entertainment and laughter, of which I am grateful!

Jaxon's Puppet Show

Jaxon's head and his puppet for his first grade puppet show (look closely--just above the table in front of all the backpacks).

Jaxon had a puppet show last week at school. He wrote his puppet show with a couple of other members of his class. It was about mountain men who started out as enemies and quickly decided to become friends. It only lasted about a minute and a half, but it was enjoyable and I liked the message. If only we could all become friends so willingly, even if we were enemies first. Good job Jax!

National Teacher Appreciation Week

I love teacher appreciation week. When I was a teacher I loved it and want to pass it on. This is the third year that I have participated in the week's festivities by being on the PTA Teacher Appreciation committee. Out theme this year was "We Think The World of Our Teachers!" It was a travel theme. We had some great things planned out for this year: First we made sure that each teacher's door was decorated for the week.

This is Jaxon's first grade teacher's door, Mr. Engles

This is McKay's computer teacher's door, Mr. Moffitt

Monday
We started off the week by showing up to the faculty meeting that is held on Monday afternoons after early dismissal. We made smoothies and had little umbrellas in each one. We also had some fantastic giant sugar cookies, made by my friend Jessica Lund, that were in the shapes of a palm tree or a pineapple. We decorated the table with cute balloons and leis that the teachers got to wear. We started door drawings that afternoon. We had enough prizes so each teacher would win one, thanks to local businesses and parents who donated fantastic prizes. We drew 13 names the first day. We also placed in each teacher's mail box two pieces of See's Candies and had a note that said, "We travels the Seven "See's" and found no teachers better than you!"

The table we had all set up for the kick off.

Tuesday
We put Crystal Light that was in a cute bag in their mailboxes and had a note that said, "It's crystal clear we have the best teachers!" We drew 12 more names for door prizes after school.

Wednesday
We showed up at the school extra early and made breakfast burritos for the teachers. They were tasty! Then we put Chiclets Gum in their mailboxes with a note that said something like, "We "chews" to appreciate our teachers." (I can't remember this one for sure.) We drew more names for the door prizes after school.

Breakfast was a Mexican theme with tasty breakfast burritos.

Thursday
We made an Italian lunch for all the staff. Parents brought in a lot of salads, pasta dishes and desserts. We decorated with cute travel stuff. We put a bag of thank you cards in each of the teachers' mailboxes with a note saying thank you in several languages. We drew the rest of the teacher's names for door prizes. The luncheon for the teachers:





Friday
We put chocolate dipped fortune cookies in the teachers' mailboxes. We placed the fortune cookies in a Chinese take out box that had "thank you" written on it. We went to the school and displayed all the extra door prizes and allowed the teachers to enter their names for the chance at winning another prize.

It was a great week! They teachers were so excited about the daily give-a-ways they received and about the door prizes. They all told us thank you through out the week. One teacher, the music teacher Mrs. Miller, gave each a nice gift to show us her appreciation.

She has written out, in calligraphy, The Proclamation on the Family with our family's name on it. It is beautiful and I can't wait to get it framed and up on my wall. What a successful week!

Kayden's Wiggles

You know I have posted about The Wiggles before. But Kayden really loves them! Recently he found a Wiggles shirt he likes to wear to bed and then he discovered his brother's old Wiggles slippers. He was in Wiggle heaven!

Play Group Woes

This is Josh's play group (Josh is the Black Spiderman). We meet every Monday after lunch at 12:30. Josh loves playing with his friends.....when they are at our house. Lately, he has been fighting me every time play group rolls around. He claims that he doesn't like girls (there are two girls in his play group). I have recently found out that one of the girls in his play group likes to kiss and that is one reason he dosen't like play group any more. So I told Josh to hold up his hand and say "Stop! I am not allowed to kiss until I am 21!" But needless to say, he still won't go. I guess it is good that the summer is about to start and play group will end. Hopefully this nonsense will stop!

Meet George Lucas

McKay had a school project the last few weeks where he had to do a report on someone famous. Being the Star Wars and Indiana Jones fan that he is, he decided to report on George Lucas. After writing a report and presenting an informational poster to his class, he had to dress up as George Lucas and step out of the "Time Machine" and tell everyone about himself. He started by having his teacher play a few seconds of the Star Wars theme and then he dove into telling all he had memorized about George Lucas. At the end of his presentation, his teacher played the Star Wars theme music again and he took a bow. It was one of those proud parent moments.

George Lucas....I mean McKay and his teacher, Miss Udy. She is a fantastic teacher that loves her job and we LOVE her.

McKay's class. McKay is in the middle row on the left end. There was a Butch Cassidy, Helen Keller, Anne Sullivan, Neal Armstrong, Bruce Lee, Albert Einstein, Cleopatra, Bill Gates, and many others. All the presentations were excellent and the kids did a good job. It was a fun program to watch.

How can you pose for a class picture without posing for a silly one? Most of the kids were busy looking at what each other were doing, or what Miss Udy was doing, instead of posing silly. As you can see, McKay had no problem being silly.