What a Morning!

In the mornings, Jorja watches Preston for about fifteen minutes while I run Maysen and Stockton to school. Then I have about ten minutes to get Jorja out the door so she can catch the bus. It has worked out better than anticipated. Except today. Today was crazy. Jorja took a bath before I left. When I came home I immediately noticed a nasty smell. Preston had gone stinkers. Luckily he still had his pull up on. I think he tried to go potty after he was messy. I walked into a giant mess. Somehow the stinkers even got on the kitchen floor and Jorja had stepped in them. YUCK! I cleaned up the floor, cleaned up Preston and put Preston in the tub for extra cleaning. While I was doing this, Jorja decided she wanted a glass of milk before she went to school. She spilled it all over her clothes and her freshly washed hair. I ran downstairs and got her new clothes, I stuck her hair under the sink and frantically tried to comb it, then I sent her out the door running to the bus stop. Whew! I am glad the rest of the day was a much slower speed.

School is FUN!

Preston LOVED his first day of homeschool. He didn't want to start. He was crying and saying school was boring and he didn't want to go. Once we started he had a change of heart. He said, "Why does Stockton think school is boring?" Then he said, "School is fun on your first day when you don't know anything, then it gets boring." I tried to convince him not to be influenced by Stockton's opinions. When I was taking a picture of Preston holding his kite he made he yelled, "School is fun!"

When we opened Preston's Rainbows book, he pointed to the top and read "Up and Down". I looked at him and said, "You can read that?" He laughed and pointed lower in the page and read, "The swing". I was quite impressed with him. He had a grin from ear to ear. Quite darling.

Preston

Mike and Preston made a puppy box tonight. Preston loved it. They went to the craft store and picked out what they wanted to use. He loves the googlie eyes.

When I was putting Preston to bed I said, "Get some good sleep because you have school in the morning." He said, "I don't want school. Only the first day is fun, the rest of the days are boring." Thanks Stockton.

'Homeschool' for the Boy

We got a package for Preston in the mail today! It is his "homeschool" stuff. Hopefully we can start on that tomorrow. I did the Calvert kindergarten curriculum for the girls. It was such a fun, bonding experience. (I did it a little with Stockton, but he was bored to tears, so we scratched that.....he was able to read from chapter books when he was four anyway - he taught himself.) Anyway, I'm looking to having some fun one-on-one time with Preston. I know I get one-on-one time with him everyday now, but this is somehow different. Hopefully he will love it as much as the girls. We shall see..... For my other three kids, I bought the curriculum. I remember it being expensive, but not more than a couple of months of preschool. This time when I looked it up it was crazy expensive! Something like $675. I'm not positive, but it was over $600. I know there is no way I spent that much money before. I was quite sad because I had planned on doing this with Preston, but I really didn't want to pay that much. On a whim I checked e-bay. Someone was selling the entire curriculum for $275. Thank goodness! I know I won't be able to use the computer parts of the program, but I don't care about that. All I wanted was the math and reading anyway. It comes with science and art.... oh how I love science and art.

Frox

Mike has been working with the girls on different projects. Jorja wanted to make a frog box. Thursday they went to the craft store and got supplies. They finished creating him this morning. I told Jorja she should name him Frox, but I don't know what she ended up choosing. As you can see from the below picture, Jorja is thrilled.

Jorja with Frox - at least his name should be Frox

What do you put in a frog box? Frogs of course!

Mike and Maysen have been working on a 3-D version of The Settlers of Catan. They have their sheep tiles finished and have started working on the forest. Maysen is pretty excited about it. I am interested in seeing how the other tiles end up looking. Of course Maysen wants to add optional tiles, like volcano.....I'm not sure how she plans on working that into the game.....

Parry Family Dinner

We had a Parry Family Dinner at my house today. Chad & Heather and their families were able to come for dinner and swimming, along with my dad and Max. Bubs & his family and Glade and Diane were able to come to visit for awhile. They both had weddings to go to, just not the same wedding.

I wish I had taken pictures, but I guess I was too busy enjoying the company. Eden was a brave little firecracker. She talks in this squeaky excited voice. She is excited about everything! She loved going down the slide. Alden even went down the slide on his belly. His mom would catch him of course.

Lily was cute. She was in a floaty, but discovered the water was behind her too. She would lean her head all the way back and turn her head very slowly to get her hair wet. Adorable. Jennifer has the same frog bathrobe as Jorja. It was cute when they both had them on....not sure what Jennifer thought about that though. Aubrey didn't want to leave. (Yay!) I still get a kick of seeing Eric next to Jorja. I remember holding Jorja while I was visiting Aunt Kris. Heather had Eric on the edge of her bed. Eric was probably three months old and weighed more than Jorja - who was about eight or nine months old at the time. I remember Mike was pacing back and forth. Aunt Kris asked if he wanted to sit down. He told her he was fine. She said, "Oh good, why don't you carry a dust rag with you then." Or something along those lines. I thought it was so funny. What made me love it though was I could picture my mom saying the exact same thing. Kris had her mannerisms and her humor. It was a little bit of my mom in the room. Miss her, and my mom.....

Anyway, enough of the reminiscing. Today was really fun. I love being around my cousins. Nothing earth shattering to report, just a fun - enjoyable day. Mike did hit his head while he was doing a reverse flip cannonball. That was scary and I'm glad he didn't get permanently injured. I guess it was a good reminder of how careful we need to be. Other than that, things were perfect.

Wacky

At 7:28 this morning, Jorja says, "Mom, when is our dentist appointment?" I totally forgot! The appointment was for 7:30 and the dentist is a half hour away! Whoops. I was annoyed with myself because I was so excited Maysen wouldn't miss any school because the middle school has late start on Fridays. I called the dentist and they were able to fit me in at 8:15. Stockton had to take the bus. He said it was better than the first time. That's good to know.

I know there are a million dentists here in Utah, so it is crazy that I drive my kids thirty minutes to see one. But, we are going to see Eric Martin. I guess Dr. Eric Martin. He was Mike's best friend growing up and was the best man at our wedding. I was so excited for him to become our dentist. He has an office in Riverton and Eagle Mountain. It is called the Dental Barn. The kids like watching the movies on the ceiling. Preston was excited because he got a balloon animal even though he didn't do the dentist stuff.

We have now survived the first week of school. Stockton said, "I think I'm going to like Fridays." He should! Middle School is late start and Elementary School is early release. He is in school just over four hours on Fridays.

Jorja was a little teary eyed when we put her to bed. She said she had a hard day. She was disappointed that she didn't earn a Wacky Zingos trophy on Webkinz. You have to get over 600 on the Wacky Zingoz game, but they only give out trophies for that one week a year. Stingy of them. I decided to try to earn her a trophy, even though I'm not very good at that game. After awhile I asked Mike if he would try as well. He got 600 on his first try! I wanted him to get another one so both Preston and Jorja could have one. We sat there and played that game for over a half an hour. Once I got 599.2. That was annoying. Mike said, "How did it come to this? Here it is a Friday night and we are playing Wacky Zingoz?" I was about to call it quits when I hit 600 exactly! There should be a shiny trophy in the Porges dock waiting for her tomorrow. I hope she's grateful!

Back to School Night

I attended Back to School Night at Maysen's middle school. It was nice to put a face to the names I see on her schedule. Maysen has enjoyed her history teacher so far (Maysen HATES history.) I enjoyed her as well. She is extremely organized - no wonder Maysen likes her. It will be interesting to notice if her attitude about history changes.

I thought her science teacher was great too. Especially when he said he doesn't like to assign homework because he wants to make sure the students learn the subjects correctly. He thought the parents would have other interests besides science. Nicely put and I completely agree.

I hope Maysen has a good year. I think she is going to enjoy it at lot more than her time at Mason Creek Middle School. That was a nightmare. They have a new principal this year, so hopefully it will become a better school. I don't know the principal, but his wife was my kids Reading Bowl coach - and she is amazing. Hopefully he is too.

Duke Bob

We have been enjoying playing Dominion together as a family. We only have the Intrigue version right now, but hope to be adding to our collection soon. We now have a Dominion trophy. Mike has rigged it to praise the name of the victor when a magic wand is pointed at it. He did have it praising the name every minute. We had to listen to Maysen's name be praised throughout our entire game once. Mike changed that when I won the trophy. I wanted the trophy on our dresser. Mike did not like listening to the knight praising me ever minute - all night long.

A few days ago, this is what our trophy said:

Now this is what the trophy proclaims:

Three guesses as to who Duke Bob is.

Odd

My brother Mike once told me that Christen likes burnt popcorn. The smell and everything. I find that odd. Love you Christen . . . not the popcorn.

8-6-3

Today was the first day of school. It has been a long time since Maysen and Stockton have been in a formal school setting. I was quite a bit nervous about this. Maysen started 8th grade, Stockton 6th and Jorja 3rd. When I asked the kids to show their grade number with their fingers, Maysen put up 7 fingers. Haha!

Maysen-8, Stockton-6, Jorja-3

Stockton

Maysen

Jorja

Jorja's new backpack

Maysen, Stockton & Jorja

Stockton is taking 7th grade math at the middle school, so he went on Maysen's bus in the morning. I picked him up after class. They are on a trimester schedule and only have five periods a day. Their classes are 72 minutes long. Stockton was SO bored. Oh boy, we are in for a long year. He said the teacher just rambled forever. Hopefully only because it is the first day of school. It didn't help that their bus takes an hour to get to school. I was really worried that Stockton would throw up on the bus. He didn't, but he said he was really sick. That doesn't surprise me. The starting, the stopping, and the turning spell disaster for him. Add to that the fact that he was reading because it was such a long ride. I think I will drive them to school. Hopefully I can get back home in time to get Jorja on the bus.

Come on Stockton!

Maysen!

Finally! Stockton & Maysen

Stockton & Jorja

Jorja took the wrong bus to school. I didn't know if she would have a new bus number or not. I asked the school, they said to check the district web site. I did that, but the information said it was current for the 2010-2011 school year. I walked her to the bus stop. A bus stopped and about twenty kids got on it. About one minute later, I saw Jorja's bus from last year drive by. It stopped and no one was there to get on it. Jorja said it took her over an hour to get to school and they were late. She said the bus driver was new and was stopping for everyone. She started getting worried they would take her to the wrong school. I wasn't too worried. I figured with 20 kids on the wrong bus, they would find out where they belonged. Too bad she had to be late her first day. That's never fun.

Jorja

Maysen took the wrong bus home. She didn't know her bus number and wasn't sure which bus to get on. She asked one of the drivers and he said he drove past her stop, but this wasn't her bus. He took her home anyway - thank goodness!

I think Maysen had a pretty good day, except for lunch. She didn't like the chaos in the lunchroom. They only have 30 minutes for lunch. No backpacks are allowed in the lunchroom. The seventh graders get out five minutes early, so she has no chance to not wait in a long line. Hopefully it won't be so bad.

Jorja seemed to have a good day. She loved her English class. Chinese is hard.

Stockton did not have a good day at all. He was quite miserable when he came home. It will be nice when he becomes more familiar with the schools routines . . . and when he gets to know more people. Hopefully it will help if I drive him in the morning. It will shave off about 45 minutes of his day.

After school we picked up the Color Me Mine projects the kids did. They were so happy with the results. Everyone loved theirs. The look on Stockton's face was so cute when he saw his outlet cover. He loved it! We now have it over an outlet in his room.

Stephanie, Preston, Stockton, Jorja, Maysen

Stephanie's

Preston's

Maysen's

Jorja's

Stockton's

We also had Little Caesar's and played Dominion. We had a three way tie. Maysen, Stockton and I. Now our trophy hails all of our names.

Your Body is a Temple

Your body is a temple, so treat it with respect.

Eat healthy to give it nutrition that it will expect.

You would never paint graffiti on the temple walls, so choose

to keep your body clean & pure & not pierce on tattoos.

Keep your body healthy & do not take up smoking

& don't drink either, 'cause if you do, your voice will start croaking.

If you take care of yourself, you'll be your own best friend.

I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

--Stockton

**Other notable items*** Mike spilled his water all over Preston's head during the sacrament. Pretty funny. Mike also told Preston to think about Jesus. Preston started saying (really loud) "I love Cheez-its!"

Jacques

Mike was excited about the fencing class he took with Maysen today. They were able to work with an electronic score thing . . . I really should make him write it because I can't remember all the details. That reminds me, in primary I heard Preston tell his teacher that he "can remember things because I'm not old. When you are old you forget things." So true Preston, so true.

Last night Mike stayed up really late to fix our printer. He was so excited and had it fixed around midnight. I guess when he was putting the case back on something very wrong happened. Black smoke was involved and now our printer is dead. Quite disappointing. Maysen has a project due the first day of school, so we headed down to my dad's house. My dad also needed help setting up his new Wii he bought off of Shannon. He also made us waffles.

We had fun playing in the pool today. After about an hour, Mike and the older kids got out and Jacques came in. Preston and I had fun watching him work. We have missed Jacques very much. He broke at the beginning of summer. It took over two months for them to send him back. Our pool is much, much cleaner when he is around. The difference is incredible.

Jacques

I now am the proud owner of the Dominion trophy. It has been reprogrammed and now says, "All hail her royal highness Queen Stephanie! Current Dominion champion!" I couldn't think of a cool name like Lady Yakima. If anyone has a cool name, feel free to send the ideas my way....

I'm Not Tickleable!

That is what Preston told me when I asked him to pick up his blocks. Random, but it did make everybody laugh.

Mike had the day off. I love it when that happens! He actually was scheduled to have Tuesday off, but I asked him if he could switch it to Friday. I had two places to be at the same time and no idea what I was going to do about it. Luckily they said that Friday was even better than Tuesday.

Mike and I took Jorja to The Old Spaghetti Factory for lunch today. She had a free kids meal award that she was given when we first moved here. It expires in a few days, so we decided to live it up! We were able to eat in the trolley, and both Mike and I enjoyed our time with the Porge.

Mike took Maysen and Preston to Maysen's orthodontist appointment while I took Stockton and Jorja to meet their teachers. All of their teachers seemed really nice. I think Stockton's teacher, Mrs. Ramey, will be perfect for him . . . I hope. She loves math, although she won't be teaching math to Stockton. She didn't seem to be bothered at all with the fact that Stockton will be late every day because of his math class at the middle school. He won't be too late on Monday - Thursday, just about 45 minutes. But on Friday the middle school has a late start, so Stockton will be at least and hour and 45 minutes late. There were two names on the class list that Stockton recognized. At least he will know a few faces the first day of class. Also Josh is going to be in his math class at the middle school. He lives one street up from us and is in Stockton's primary class. He also is a 6th grader, but goes to a different elementary school. I'm excited Josh was put in the same class as Stockton.

Jorja is officially in Mrs. Wu's class. That is because she has Chinese the first half on the day. She will go to Mrs. Redd's class for English. Every month her English and Chinese class will be switched. Luke and Will are in her class, but Ashley and William are in Mrs. Redd's class. At least Jorja will be able to see them at lunch and recess. I was really hoping she would have class with Ashley.

Jorja & Mrs. Wu

Mrs. Redd & Jorja

Stockton & Mrs. Ramey

Mike ordered a Dominion trophy. He has spent quite a bit of time adding sound to it. As we were playing today, every minute it would say, "All hail Lady Yakama! Current Dominion champion!" Lady Yakama is Maysen's 'name'. We were teasing Mike that his voice sounded like Kermet the Frog. Too bad Maysen won the game again, so she gets to keep the trophy. I got to get it back from her! Wait, I never owned it . . . but I will, oh yes, I will.

Happy Birthday Mom!

My mom would have been 64 today. That is hard to imagine. It would have been awesome. Jorja wanted to make a dessert pizza, so we decided to make this lovely creation instead of cupcakes.

The recipe called for peanut butter, but we put nutella in instead. In retrospect, we should have let the pizza cool a lot longer before we ate it . . . it probably would have stayed together better. I'm guessing I would have liked it a lot better with the peanut butter. I'm sure my kids liked it better this way. Weird that none of them like peanut butter. The younger two can stand it, it just isn't their favorite.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun cooking with the Porge. We ran to the store to get nutella and she wore her apron and hat. So cute.

Jorja

Jorja, Stockton, Maysen, Preston

Mike made the most delicious hot dogs for dinner. He grilled tomatoes from our garden, pineapple and the hot dog of course. It was fantastic. Grilled tomatoes are my new favorite.

After dinner we watched Gnomeo and Juliet. Once the kids were in bed, Mike and I ran to my mom's grave. It was pretty dark, so we took Maysen & Jorja's finger lights. Worked perfect. I carried flowers and a small balloon, Mike carried a water bottle for the flowers. I like being able to run to her grave when ever I feel like it. I wanted to have a picnic at her grave, but that didn't work out. It was very relaxing to lay on the grass, listen to the crickets and look at the stars. Although I would prefer playing Boggle with her instead. I guess I'll just take what I can get.

Frog - Dog - Cat - & Outlet Cover?

I took the kids to a ceramic painting studio today. Jorja chose a frog (surprise), Preston a dog (surprise again), Maysen a cat and Stockton chose an outlet cover. He said we needed one - which is true. We spent two hours there, and the kids were great. I was worried at first, but I ended up being worried over nothing. Thank goodness.

Jorja

Preston

Maysen

While we were at the studio, the middle school called and said they approved Stockton to take math there next year. I just needed to come in and fill out some paperwork. I did that and he now is officially on the schedule. He has the same math teacher as Maysen - just at different times. The plan is for Stockton and Maysen to ride the bus together, then after first period I will pick up Stockton and take him to elementary school. He will be a little late, but it shouldn't be a problem. I hope this works out and is a good decision to do his schooling this way. I guess only time will tell.

I also got Maysen and Stockton's CRT results. They received 4s on everything. I wasn't sure what that meant, because a 4 out of 10 wouldn't be the greatest result. I asked at the office and was told that 4 is the highest. I expected them to score high on language arts and math, but I have no idea how they pulled a 4 out of science. I'm 100% positive they get their test taking abilities from their dad.

Maysen and I made dinner for Bubs & Ange today. We made macaroni & cheese, stuffed peppers (thanks Stouffer's), and a fruit pizza. We spent the most time on the pizza because it was fun. I wish I had taken a picture of it, I even mentioned this in the car as we were driving up there. Just now when I was looking for my camera, guess where I found it . . . in the car. I am very intelligent.

After stopping at Bubs', I wanted to take the girls to Red's Yogurt. I remember loving it when I was in high school. We followed my gps to their location, but there was no yogurt store. I guess I have to update my maps. We decided on Iceburg instead. Jorja got a cookies & cream milkshake. She didn't like it because there was a slight peanut butter flavor. I asked at the counter if that was normal. They made her another one. She got mint and HATED it. She said it tasted like toothpaste. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.