Important-Urgent

John was making and organizing his to-do list. I decided to use the old Covey method to help him. The 2x2 of important/not important, urgent/not urgent. 8 were in the important-urgent square, 1 was in the important-not urgent square. Hmm. Not so balanced here, I think.

He was so helpful, and just colored in the 2x2 for me. The things I do are either important-urgent, or not-important-not-urgent. :) Like decorating our blog...not-important-not-urgent. I'm not certain where cleaning, cooking, preparing, transporting, and such fall. Those are things that always can be done and should at some point, but dishes have more of a gray area between important and not, and urgent and not. I think my life sort of falls in a box around the intersection of the 2x2.

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...