School Year Wrap-up

We finished up another school year.  It was a great one. The last one with all of my kids in elementary school (even though it was two different ones).  It really did work out fine and the kids learned a lot.

First, preschool! One of Eli's friends moved, sadly, so we were down to just two kids. They still had fun playing and doing activities. 

We went on a walk collecting leaves and then sorted them by length:

My friend took these pictures at her house and I loved them so much!

I just love that smile so much.

Of course I had to do my favorite magnet string trick in the preschool lessons:

We finished off the year with a trip to the Jelly Belly factory. Some other friends joined us, too:

Sometimes Eli is difficult about pictures:

Posing by myself instead:

Natalie had a great year of 5th grade.  She loved her teacher, Mrs. Kerr, and learned a lot.  Unfortunately, I don't have many pictures of her.  Here's one her teacher sent out:

She was so sad when she ended up sick on the last day of school. :( We had a yucky bug cycle through the family.  Joe and Eli were the only lucky ones who didn't get it.  It was miserable!

I don't have any pictures of Nate, either, sadly.  He had a great year.  He had a really fantastic teacher who I loved.  He made lots of friends and became an expert tetherball player.  

Elizabeth had a great year of 6th grade.  I have a lot more pictures of her because of the milestones.  The first was science camp.  It was so weird having her there for 4 days and not being able to talk to her or know what she was doing!  She loved it, though, and got to room with her friend. We all missed her while she was gone.  

Welcome back hugs from Natalie:

They love each other, even though they fight a lot. :)

The rest of these pictures are from her 6th grade assembly.

Her class:

Two of her good friends, Tuyet and Lucy:

She was on the honor roll and also got the citizenship award that her classmates voted on! She is so funny--always surprised that her classmates like her so much. I'm never surprised! She has a real gift for staying out of some of the drama and just being nice to everyone.

Some more friends that wanted a picture with her:

With her teacher, Ms. Barrientez:

It was a great year!

Moving Yet Again

It was another summer, another move for us yet again.  This time, we just moved down the street.  We had some serious issues with our landlords and our house so we decided to move when our lease was up.  This whole thing absorbed so much of our time for months but I'm not going to get into all of it here.  Thankfully, we were able to find multiple houses in the neighborhood we wanted to be in (where two of our friends live) and even received multiple offers.  It was a tough decision between two homes--one that was bigger, and the other that was more updated and in a better location.  We settled on the smaller one in the better location and we've been really happy here.  We love the home and especially the neighborhood.  There are lots of kids and families around and the boys have been in heaven running around playing with their friends (there are tons of little boys here).  

We moved at the beginning of June.  We thought it would be great only moving down the street but of course that made it more difficult in some ways.  The whole process was dragged out a bunch more.  We had a ton to do at the old house to get it in good condition, specifically with the huge backyard.  Our landlords had a very different opinion of what the backyard looked like when we moved in, and unfortunately we didn't document it, so we tried to get it looking really good.  Joe put in hours of backbreaking labor shoveling dirt, spreading gravel, laying weed protector, and spreading mulch.  I helped some, Andrew helped a lot, and our Elders Quorum pitched in, too.  Finally, it was as good as was it going to get and we turned over the keys.  The drama was not over, though, because we had a ton of back and forth about how much they withheld from our security deposit.  We were ready to take it all the way to court if necessary and they returned the amounts we asked for, thankfully, which closed the chapter on all of that.

Our kids comments about the house were funny.  They mostly just didn't like the fact that we constantly were dealing with ant problems so they were happy to move.  I think they do miss the yard but they were excited to have stairs again. :)

Joe took this during the walk through:

None of us were sad to say goodbye to that house although we do have happy memories there, too.

Some of the work Joe put in on the yard:

Now, I'm trying to stay focused on setting up the house and hanging pictures.  I have a hard time not dragging that out forever.  I'll get there.