True'isms

I'm not a fan of overscheduling myself.  Definitely not one of those people who is happiest when she's going a thousand miles a minute.  I'm usually reminded of this, though, when I'm feeling very overscheduled.  As in, currently.  Makes me want to crawl in bed and watch a movie.

7th grade teachers aren't as hard-core as I feared.  I'm even receiving several e-mails a week from a few teachers giving updates on what they're covering in class and what is due when.  Hallelujah.

Buying an alarm clock for said 7th grader was a great decision.  He's up on his own and in the shower without any interference from me.  I'm usually awake anyway but it's still a good thing.

I've never known as much about kitchen appliances as I do right now.  I never walked into anyone's kitchen and thought, "Love that duel fuel range & oven combo!  Check out that 48" cooktop.  And the french door refrigerator with auto-shelves and dual evaporators is fabulous!"  It's a little bit ridiculous.  We're making more educated purchases now, though, that's for sure.

Packing up a house is slightly overwhelming.  Just sitting here thinking about packing up a house is overwhelming.  Bed. Movie.

I'm a huge fan of having a preschooler at home.  And she's a big fan of having me all to herself.

School clothes shopping

Mom! Can we have these????

Ummm .... NO.

My 1st day of school

I mean, my day on my kids' 1st day of school.   My 1st day of a new school year means much quieter days and more Elle time.  She's already making plans for us.

Christian escaped out the door without getting his picture taken.  Jr. high schoolers are apparently too cool for that kind of stuff.  But my girlies obliged me...

5th grade and 2nd grade respectively. Not the 1st day of preschool yet for Elle but she didn't want to be left out. Of course.

Here's Paige & Cameron up at school, waiting to go into their new class together.  So glad that boys & girls still play together at this age.

After the school festivities were over, I hosted my girlfriends for my annual back-to-school breakfast.  The party lasted until 10 minutes before school let out and we all had to rush out the door for carpool.  It's one of my favorite mornings.  And next year, I'll have more room for everyone.  Can't wait. :)

When the kids got home, I read through and signed 40 gazillion papers from them all - as always.  And then to continue the fun, we had a bbq on the front lawn to say goodbye to summer.

The hit of the bbq this time was Steenblik's cotton candy machine. The kids were all bouncing around from a serious sugar-high.

Dumbledore and his wand.

A bearded unicorn.

Farewell, summer. Darnit.

Pie eating contest

A few months ago, Mike & I went with Dave & Steph to a friend's wedding reception. Well, sort of. They picked us up and we drove to the reception center, where we were surprised that the parking lot was not jam packed with cars. This family knows everyone in Bountiful and we were fully expecting the line to be out the door. We grabbed our gifts and walked inside the reception center, only to be greeted by blaring rock music (not the classy reception we expected from them) and a small wedding crowd .... and not a single person we recognized. We got a few strange looks while we smiled and backed out the door. Since neither of us had the actual invitation on hand, we checked another reception center but no go. After calling our kids and having them read the invitation, we realized that the reception wasn't until the next week. How Steph & I both missed that, I'll never know. Since the groom's parents are great friends of ours, we all drove over to their house - gifts in hand - and laughingly explained our error.

So, when Steph called me earlier this week about another friend's reception last night, she asked me to double check the date (no way we'd ever make that mistake again!) and then agreed to go together to the reception. I checked the invite - yep, they were getting married on the 20th. We wrapped our gifts and drove to the home where the reception was ... except no reception. Seriously?!? There had to be a mistake! So we checked the invitation (which of course I brought this time) and sure enough, the wedding was on the 20th ... but the reception is on the 27th. I'm not kidding. We  I did it twice. I'd say it was a blonde moment but I'm a red head. We just shouldn't be allowed to go to receptions with Dave & Steph ever again.

The good part of both evenings, though, was that we went out for dessert instead. The first time was ice cream, last night was pie. Lots and lots of pie.

9 pieces of pie to be exact. One piece of every kind they had left.  And we ate them all. As Steph kept insisting, though, "That only turns out to be 2 1/4 pieces each. That's not that bad!"

Some seriously good pie, too, at a little hole in the wall kind of diner. Come join us for a wedding reception soon and we'll go have pie together instead.

Elle's new favorite chore

It's almost like having a Roomba, those robot vacuum things. She seriously vacuumed the front room for about an hour. Every time I asked her if she was finished, she'd say, "Not yet!" I'm thinking that the odds are that she vacuumed everything eventually, right? I'm gonna take advantage of her enthusiasm for vacuuming while she still has it. :)

Fashionista

My poor kids inherited my poor eyesight. I had to get glasses when I was 8, and so far Haley & Paige have beat that record by 1 year. My cute Paigie got her new glasses today ....

Why, oh why didn't they have glasses this cute when I was 8? Neither Paige or Haley seem to mind having glasses because they are so cute! Polka dots? How fun is that? Here's her other pair:

I love the pink on the inside. And it cracks me up that Paige wanted to change shirts and hair clips to match each pair of glasses before she'd let me take her picture.

Elle likes her glasses so much that she asked when she could get her own pair. :)

Nobody tell her that I'm hoping she inherited her daddy's eyesight.

New toys

Mom & Dad got new iphones as soon as they got back from Africa. And this has been the scene ever since ....

They didn't know what they were missing. Glad I'm not the only one who's addicted.

Homecoming

Grandma & Grandpa Mayfield finally returned from their mission in Zimbabwe. It was a massive greeting at the airport...

The Big 2 was a reference to Africa's Big 5 -- elephant, rhino, leopard, lion and tiger.

Great Grandma White was definitely happy to see her daughter back safely.

Paige wore this blue skirt to remind Grandma & Grandpa of Victoria Falls, which they were lucky enough to visit.

So Elle followed suit and wore an African- inspired print, too.

And here they came ....

I absolutely love the sheer joy on mom's face!

What a great moment. We've spent the last week having cousin sleep-overs, a massive campout at Grandma & Grandpa's, listening to them give their report in church, a swimming party and spending lots of good quality time with that side of the family. It's definitely good for everyone to have them home.

Last Child Syndrome

This is what happens when the youngest child gets to go to Lagoon alone with mommy. Mommy suddenly becomes a little less stringent with the "Please can I get my face painted?!?" and "Please, can I have ice cream?!?!?"

We might be in trouble in 10 years if this pattern continues. Gotta reign it in.

Been to the zoo lately?

These mechanical, roaring, life-like dinosaurs even impressed Christian. Which is saying something. The fact that he agreed to even go to the zoo in the first place was a stretch, so thanks to Hogle Zoo for making it even more fun for my skeptical pre-teen.

Look at this baby...

Isn't she yummy?? This, my friends, is my adorable niece, Leokadia. And that's her daddy, my little brother, Thomas. Unfortunately, they live way across the country so I don't get to see them, or Leo's wonderful mom, Katie, very often. But they texted me this picture yesterday and I'm dying to get my hands on her. Seriously.

Homeless

Believe it or not (I'm still in shock a little bit), we sold our house. :) Technically, I guess we haven't sold it yet but we're under contract with a nice family who are transferring here from California. We close next month, just a few days from when we close on our new house. Since we want to update the new house a bit, though, we won't move into it right away .... which is where we become homeless for awhile. Good times. :) I suppose we could always move in with family (you'd love that, huh mom? haha) but since the kids will be in school and involved in lessons and stuff, we need to stay here close by. So we're on the lookout for something short-term. Wish us luck or we might just wind up on one of your doorsteps, begging for a place to stay.

Hogwarts

The other day, I walked in on this Potions class, conducted by Professor Christian...

The best part was the names of the ingredients they were using to make the potions... troll boogers, unicorn pee (nice), dragon blood and water from Durmstrang (a fellow wizard school). Apparently, he also took them to Olivander's wand shop (the front yard) to choose their wands (which were plucked from the branches of our trees). These girls adore their professor. And this headmaster does, too.

Tea parties galore

We've been having tea party heaven around here lately. Sydney spent the week with us while her parents jaunted around Europe (whatev...). Haley, Syd & Paige threw 2 fabulous tea parties for Elle and her friends -- all with no help from me, trust me. They took this tea party business very seriously.

Here's the food and the cute girls who were lucky enough to attend...

I love the tiny weed that became the centerpiece.

Love it already. But then the big girls decided that visits from princesses/characters would be the perfect entertainment for the party-goers. I could hear lots of giggling coming from the bathroom/dressing room while they got each other ready. And trust me, the little girls were in absolute heaven.

Truly, a real Sleeping Beauty.

I should seriously hire these girls out, huh? Our little friend, Brooklyn's mom told me that she has been begging to go back to Elle's house ever since. Yeah, no kidding. :)