Yosemite!

I took the kids to Yosemite for an extended family camping trip (it's annual, but I haven't been able to go for almost 10 years, so the kids have never gone), and while we were there we went on two beautiful hikes. The first was to see the Big Trees. And boy, were they big.

Isaac went ahead with the faster majority of our group, and Alecia and my mom stayed with me, Jeremiah and Danielle. Everything fascinated them. Here's Jeremiah loving slowly walking across a wooden bridge.

Me and Jeremiah in front of the Fallen Tree.

Danielle pointing to show us how big the trees are!
Alecia "hiking" with Danielle.

Two cute kiddos "fishing" in a small stream.

Danielle asked her aunt if she could pick up the big pinecone. And if she asks so sweetly, of course the answer is going to be "Yes." But when she picked it up, it was covered with sap!

Jeremiah hiding inside a tree.

The Grizzly Giant.


Standing with the kids in the Tunnel Tree.


The boys sitting quietly with their sticks while we took a water break. (Prior to sitting quietly with sticks, I'll just say that they weren't sitting quietly with sticks and there were threats involved.)



The other hike we went on was to Lower Yosemite Falls, just me, my kids and my parents.


Upper and Lower Falls.

Holding hands with Grandpa.

Isaac an Grandpa kept getting ahead of us slow pokes, so they missed out on the very close and personal deer sighting. She was timidly grazing in the forest, and then suddenly leaped across the path. Stunning.
An up-close view of the Lower Falls.
Grandpa making Jeremiah crack up: It's getting me! Aaah!


A half-hearted attempt at a family picture.
Touching a huge rock that the path went around.
And Grandma, always at the end, with her princess. :)

Summer Reading Program

The three kids all participated in our library's summer reading program this past summer. We loved going to the library to choose new books and get new prizes every week. I wanted them to be finished with the program prior to leaving for Yosemite and Utah, and they did it! Isaac and I read the first Harry Potter book together, which I consented counted as 5 stars, but other than that, every star he earned was for a book that he read by himself. I read aloud to Jer and Danielle, so, I didn't enter any books for myself. There was a lot of reading going on!

We also had swim lessons for the boys. They pretty much lived in their swim trunks throughout May and June. In their library prizes pictures, you have permission to notice their cute suits and swim shoes. :)

Isaac's Birthday

Was way back in June. He's 6! Has been for a couple months now, and it's treating him well. :) We had a few different birthday celebrations. John wasn't around for his actual birthday, so we had ice cream the morning before, right before John left, and made cute cupcakes (which Isaac helped to decorate) on his birthday (probably not for breakfast but I don't remember).

Telemarketers

The absolute best way to get rid of car insurance telemarketing:

Oh, actually, we don't use a car.

The easiest way to get rid of satelite tv telemarketing:

Oh. We don't watch TV.

And the best part is, those are both completely true!

I think we might be cancelling our landline. We mostly use it to entertain telemarketers and a few collection agencies (not calling for us, but for S. Richardson and W. Robinson, neither related to us). A possible way to not have those telemarketers to get rid of. :)

Isaac-isms

Isaac has been keeping us up with hilarious stories from school today. He was supposed to be going to sleep, but it's difficult to enforce when I can't even try to enforce. So, I'll share!

Isaac had a time-out today. Because he was picking his nose, and his booger hit a kid's eye. No, actually it went by their shoulder, but it was sillier this way. He was just teasing us about the eye part.

I biked the kids home from school today, and since Isaac hasn't been diligently eating his lunch (it takes time away from playing at Lunch Recess), I've been checking it as soon as I can to see if he wants to eat. Today he just had 6-8 grapes left. Me: Isaac, do you want to eat your grapes? Isaac: No, I'm saving them for daddy. Me: Isaac, Daddy's at his school, and he won't be home for a while. Isaac: I just like to save some of my lunch for daddy.*

Isaac and I have been doing piano lessons after school, and he also has to do his music homework, kindergarten homework, and reading time (I read to him, he reads to me), and then he gets to have his 20-30 minutes of computer time. This is incredibly motivating to him. Today he chose "The Dragon Who Lived Downstairs" as the book he wanted to read to me, and silly mom that I am, I warned him that it was really hard and had lots of small words. But no, he wanted to read that silly book. I had read it to him twice last week. He did struggle with some words, but he actually read it very well--smoothly and quickly. Here's an excerpt. (The words he struggled with were daughter, irritation, and slightest provocation.)

Once upon a time, in a kingdom far away, there lived a king and a queen and their little daughter, Princess Mildred. As kingdoms go, theirs was a small and rather poor one, for although the king and queen were royal, they had very little money. This was a source of great irritation for the queen, who came from a long line of royalty. As a matter of fact, upon the slightest provocation, she would tell you how she was a second daughter of a second daughter of a king, who, in turn, was the second son of the second daughter of a king, and so on as far back as anyone could remember.

He's enjoying school. His favorite parts are recess and lunch recess.

*John's also been checking Isaac's lunch after school, and eating any leftovers. Since John enjoys eating Isaac's leftovers, Isaac now makes sure he saves some food for his daddy.

Time Flies

...even with only one kid at home all day.

This morning, I woke up, got dressed, got the boys clothes together, made chocolate chip pancakes, made up two lunch boxes, biked the boys to school, came back, drank tons of water, internally moaned on the couch for 20 minutes, did some dishes, biked Danielle to the church so I could practice the hymns for Sunday on the organ and learn something for a special musical number, biked her from the church to our local grocery store and went grocery shopping, got her some lunch, read her two books, and put her down for a nap.

I'm supposed to have also accomplished cleaning the living room and finishing up the dishes and preparing dinner in the next 30 minutes when John will be back with the boys.

Here I go...

Biking, Day 2

John and I thought that transporting the boys to their school, which is 3 miles away, would be a great idea. Save on gas (we really don't get good gas mileage), mandate some exercise, do our small part to help the environment, be healthier examples for our children. And so on.

This is Day 2. Last night we had Meet the Teacher Night, so we had a nice practice ride when we found out how long it takes to get there. About 35 minutes, including getting the kids out of the apartment and into the bike trailer. Driving would shave off about 15 minutes.

Ow. Biking hurts.

I have bruises. I have scratches. I drew blood. I know which shoes not to wear (that little metal clasp that's so cute hurts!). And I have very very sore muscles.

I like to think I'm a runner. Really, I'm not. I used to be, but I'm not anymore. I do try to run 2-3 miles a few times a week...which results in running 2-3 miles a few times a week once a month. Slowly.

We've ridden 14 miles in the last two days, I'm about to go pick up the boys alone. John's pulled the trailer until now, and I need to find out how long it takes me to ride the boys to Kindergarten solo so we can stop squishing 3 kids into a 2-kid trailer. I think it will be longer than 35 minutes.

I hope that day 20 doesn't hurt so much. :)

Helmets

"Where's my bike??!" Jeremiah happily started looking. He had seen helmets in the kitchen. Four helmets, two matching, bright blue with red spiders. He didn't find his bike in the kitchen, or the living room, or the hallway, or the bathroom, or his bedroom. "Where's my bike?!"

Well... He doesn't have one. We have a new (Craigslist-ed) bike trailer, and are planning on biking the boys to Kindergarten, which is about 3 miles away. A little too far for a four year old to ride. Especially as he doesn't know how to ride a bike yet. But, we figured, as responsible parents, that the children should each wear a helmet as they ride in the trailer.

He also discovered his new, fancy, zippered Spiderman lunchbox. "It will go in your backpack, and at lunchtime you'll open it up and there will be a sandwich and an apple and a juice box in it! Won't that be fun?" So, of course, now he wants an apple.

I've been trying to implement the idea of going to school again in his cute blond head. Your teacher's name is Miss Wilson! No, my teacher is Miss Rachel. My teacher is Miss Erica. You are so big, you get to go to Kindergarten [next week, in two days]! No, I'm all done with school. I'm all done with school!! You get to go to a different school soon. Won't that be fun? I'm all done with school.

One of the hard things for me with Jeremiah is simply that he is so completely literal. His preschool had a graduation, his teachers told him he was all done with school. So, as noted above, he believes he is all done with school, never to return. I did take the kids around their new school, and the play equipment is definitely the winning factor. :)

Going Potty

Note: This post contains potty language. If you are morally opposed to reading such, you have the power to not read this post.

Danielle is informally potty trained. Meaning, every few hours she hollers "Mommy! I have to go potty!" until I respond and take her to the bathroom. I only help her with pulling everything up again, she essentially goes potty by herself. I'm slowly backing away from helping her (we don't need to hold hands to enter the bathroom anymore), but for now, I'm quite content to let her call out to me that she needs to go, and only have dry pull-ups to throw away (they get wrinkly and funny shaped after 24 hours).

The boys start Kindergarten on Tuesday. Sometime after that, Danielle will learn to go potty all by herself.