School, School, School!

This picture is from the last day of Kindergarten with his teacher, Mrs. Hugelier. She was wonderful. She is totally in the right profession for her. She is kind and caring and has very good, creative solutions for dealing with crazy kids. Ha! Evan truly loved her and so did I.

He completely exploded in his reading around the middle of the year and over the summer he read all 46 (47?) of the Magic Treehouse books. Plus all the research guides. Plus probably 15 more chapter books and tons and tons of picture books. It's been hard to keep him in books and to find ones that are at the right age level that are interesting to him that he hasn't read. But it's exciting!

This is from his first day of first grade! This picture totally cracks me up! They wear uniforms and part of that is no Crocs. Well, that's about all Evan would wear if he could so we actually had to get him some socks (thanks, Sarah!). So here he is with his socks meeting up with his shorts. And even better than that...his church shoes! I was in complete and total denial that school was starting so soon and I didn't have him try on his shoes from last year (that literally just about never got worn) until the Sunady before school started. They didn't fit very well and I wasn't able to go get him new shoes before the first day of school. With my level of denial, it's a wonder I had his school supplies, lunch packed and the right clothes set out. Ha!

So he's going to a Spanish immersion charter school called Arco Iris. It's a small school, only first through fifth grades, with smaller class sizes than the rest of the public schools are sporting right now, it seems. I'm happy about that. I'm also happy that he's learning Spanish. I think he and Michael are really going to enjoy this together. Plus, it's a challenge for his brain. As he stated, "Mom, I haven't learned anything since preschool." Unfortunately, that's pretty true. When he has hard days at his new school I just remind him that at least his brain is being challenged right now. I also like the philosophies of their math curriculum, Singapore Math. It's been a rough start to the year (seven hours in school instead of only 2 1/2, the Spanish immersion is really hard and frustrating the first couple of months) but I'm hopeful for the rest of the year.

The Magic Penny

Maren swallowed a penny (accidentally!) this summer. Thank goodness I'm married to Michael. I figured we needed to take her to the hospital but he said we just had to search through her poop. Oh, whew. And, luckily for me again, Michael has no aversion to doing it. It took four days to make its trip out (which worried me a bit and I was getting ready to call the dr.) and we had a nice little family celebration about it. I think Michael enjoyed donning his work gloves and digging through the poo a little too much. I don't think Maren will be doing that again any time soon. As a side note, we've been parents for nearly seven years now and this is the FIRST item swallowed. Not bad, eh?

You've always wanted to see something like this, haven't you? Truthfully, it's pretty cool...lots of neat colors. So interesting what goes on inside our bodies.

Blog Time Out!

I deserve a time out for my lame-o blogging this YEAR. Ha ha! But I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks trying to get some stuff up here, for posterity's sake, after my work is done in the evenings. I actually finished all of my work this afternoon so I've had since 9:00 tonight off. Got the dishwasher running, toilet cleaned, carpet vacuumed, family room cleaned...feels good. I wish I could do this every night. We could actually have a clean house!

Anyway, what's been keeping me away lately? Stress. And busyness. Between my last post in May and now, I became a licensed Zumba instructor and have taught as many as nine classes in one week (that was only once and it nearly killed me - but once I realized I was pregnant that made a lot of sense). School ended and we made the most of summer. Did we have a big vacation? No, we sure didn't. But we hit the library and parks a lot. We got together with friends and family. We went swimming, to the beach twice. I don't know what else but it seemed like we never stopped going. It was really, really, really awesome. I LOVED not having school to worry about and getting to spend all day with all of my kids. I really did! I wish it was always like that. Everyone gets along so much better and the kids enjoy their time together. Anyway, we also had the stress of starting at a new school (for Evan) with a longer day and uniforms to purchase. And work. Lots of work. How about some beach pictures? They don't need any captions. Just to enjoy...





Parker wins for most pictures. He was just so dang cute playing in the sand!

Mysterious Answer to Prayer

Well, I can't believe I that the last time I blogged was four months ago. I have a list of about 50 pictures to put on here and some catching up to do. Maybe I've lost all my readers (ha ha - this may be a joke in itself). That would be okay this time because this one's pretty personal but I can not let this go without writing it down.

The short story is that I had a miscarriage four weeks ago tomorrow. Here's the long story about how a miscarriage was an answer to a prayer:

Shortly after Parker was born, I wanted to know whether we were done having kids or if we should have one more. There were many, many reasons to be done but I am a mother with strong maternal voices going on in my head. I wondered if we could have a sister for Maren (my sisters are so important to me!). I figured that if we were going to do it, we should just get it done soon since we weren't getting any younger (surprise, surprise). I prayed about it. I fasted about it. I took it to the temple. I talked to the bishop (can you believe he wouldn't tell me if we should have another child or not?!?! Ha!). And you know what? I never felt like I had an answer. I have never been so confused about anything before. Finally I told Michael that we needed to just make a decision. It didn't take a whole lot of thought to decide to be done. There are a whole lot of things that make this the right decision. So that's what we decided. And as much as I knew that was right, I have had "what if" questions in my mind for the last year or more. I wasn't sure I would ever be able to be 100% content with our decision. Plus, I never felt like I had the confirmation from Heavenly Father that we had made the right decision.

Michael and I found out I was pregnant on August 4th. It was a surprise, considering our precautions. And possibly miraculous? I don't know. Anyway, I never thought I could find out I was pregnant (this was the 6th time!) with anything less than pure joy. And it was very, very strange to me to find that I didn't feel joy. I felt fear and anxiety. For the next 6 days that I was pregnant I worried about 100 things. Although I figured that I would come to acceptance within a day or two (I mean, we were having a baby! That's something to be excited about!), I never really did. That's why when I had the miscarriage on the 10th, I was actually more relieved than anything. Now, before this experience, I may have assumed that anyone who was relieved about having a miscarriage was something of a monster and must not really love kids. Not so with me! I was shocked to be a witness to my own emotions.

And then I realized that before that happened, I looked at my friends who were pregnant or with new babies and I was jealous. I wanted back in the club again. I wondered how another baby would affect our family and our future. I thought about sisterly love. But after the miscarriage, all of that went away. Seriously, it went away that very day. I no longer have any "what ifs" go through my mind. It no longer bothers me that my sister has a new baby and I don't or that my BFFs have more kids than I do and I'm not quite measuring up (delusional thoughts on my end, not theirs!). It's gone. And then I realized that the miscarriage was the answer to my prayer. If I hadn't had that experience, I would've been asking what if for probably the next 20 years. Now I know for a surety that we have made the right decision for our family and, you know what? Our family looks that much more beautiful to me now. I could not be more grateful for the Lord's mysterious workings in my life. What I struggled so long to understand could not have been understood any other way. I am grateful that Heavenly Father knows us better than we know ourselves and he will send us the trials we need (and it was a trial even though it was a relief!) to understand answers to prayers and to grow and understand his power in our lives.