A Little Family Gathering in Idaho

Fourteen of my closest family members made the trek to our house for one night over Labor Day weekend.

The kids played and made a fort to sleep in downstairs:

Some quality family time (we did play Imaginiff later for some non-screen time):

The whole family (minus my bro Dave and his fam):

Getting ready to tube down the river:

My dad and Kate and I went swimming in the pool while everyone else tubed.  Kate went down this same slide about 40 times:

 Then we went to find everyone:

Kate got a turn too:

The First Day of School 2012: Preschool and Kindergarten!

Well, the first day of Kindergarten has come and gone for Ethan.  I expected to be a little emotional, yet I was so excited too.  Ethan was so ready and excited for kindergarten, and I knew I just had to get through those few moments of dropping him off in his classroom and moving on with my day.  

And in reality, since I had to teach my first day of school, too, Tim got to take Ethan for that first day. I assured him it would only take him a few minutes, but little did I know that he would have an entire activity that he had to do with Ethan, and the parking lot would be crowded, and there was an full page of instructions of what to do with all the supplies. Tim said kindergarten was too hard for him.  :)

Anyway, here are the pics:

Kate is in 4-year-old preschool and she loves every day too!  She has lots of little friends and has wonderful teachers.

My Date with Kate

It all started when Ethan woke up early one Saturday morning this summer and Tim offered to take him on a secret outing to McDonald's.  

Kate heard about it and wanted to go, so she and I decided to have our own secret outing with bananas, donuts, and bikes at our favorite park.  

As the sun rose, we enjoyed our donuts (well, the frosting, anyway):

 Then Kate rode her bike around the long track at least 3 times, which is about 1.5 miles.  As she rode, she sang and sang.  I walked/ran and smiled the entire time.

Next we played on the awesome, huge playground.  Making her laugh on the slide turned into a long game of hide-and-seek.

We sat in the car, finished our donuts, and sang our favorite songs with Kate's Easter CD.  She sat on my lap and we just enjoyed being around each other.

Finally, we went to Bath and Body Works and smelled all the soaps!  What a great summer memory, Kate!

August: Watching our Garden Grow

Love these roses:

 Our first watermelon:

Black-eyed Susans:

Squash:

 Later I tried baking one of the squash and using it in a casserole.  Either I didn't cook the squash right, or maybe it was a gross recipe, OR maybe I'm just not a great cook, but Tim just plain had to ask me not to make squash anymore, and no more casseroles either.  The rest of the squash I'm using as decoration on our table.

Love these colors and loved looking at our flowers all summer:

When I finally picked the watermelon, it was relatively tasty, but had huge seeds, and tons of them.  After trying several of the watermelons, I ended up using the final two as an object lesson at school, and we smashed those watermelons to pieces and had seed-spitting contests.  Very therapeutic and worth all the work of growing the watermelons all summer.

Love these awesome garden helpers!

Summer Fun in August

August was a fun month for us.  One day as we rode bikes at one of our favorite parks, we decided to go see a student of mine who was showing her steer and lambs for 4-H:

We also loved eating our ice cream on the back patio:

Earlier in the summer, Ethan had come home from church one day and announced that we needed a tree house.  He and I inspected all the trees in our yard, and decided on a nice maple tree.  Ethan got his chair and a drawing board and made up the plans.  He showed it to his dad, and for several weeks, Tim tried to look up tree house plans on-line.  Who knew there were so many people who actually make tree houses with walls, window, roofs, and even ROOMS!?

Finally, we decided ours really only needed to have a ladder, and a platform, and of course a pulley, because that's what Ethan's plans included.

 Once the tree house was done, we had nightly concerts with the kids.  Kate used the "egg" rattle, and Ethan used his Africa drum.  Good thing we had the crates on the ends of the pulley to get all the equipment up there!

Kate and I just like taking our picture:

Summer Fun in July

 We did vegetable painting.

A teddy bear picnic at a park:

A "slumber party" in Kate's room:

Homemade ice cream:

And we shared it with some friends:

July: Watching our Garden Grow

Our first zucchini (amazing compared to what we got last year):

 The cantaloupe are growing:

 So are the watermelons:

Our first cherry tomatoes:

Girls Weekend in Boise

 This year one of my long-time friends from college moved from Texas to Idaho.  In July I took a very hot bus ride to see her and we spent the weekend laughing and spending real life together.  We got to hang out with her family on Friday night, taking a walk along the river to enjoy some delicious candy.

On Saturday we experienced the very cool Boise Farmer's Market.  Then she and I headed to a nearby town to spend time with friends from camp and college.  We laughed and laughed.

Chicken Dinner Road (Jen raised chickens to help pay college tuition, I think):

Out in the Vineyards of Idaho:

It was a wonderful, memory-filled weekend.  I cherished every moment of it, and then relished seeing my kids again when I returned (here they are with their baby cousin, Jude):