Beginning of School + September

School started at the end of August. Of course there were a lot of nerves at new schools but the kids all handled it really well. 

Obligatory first day pictures:

Nate was about as thrilled as he looked. :)

Eve had lots of fun at home while the weather was still nice. 

Drinking from puddles:

Dancing on the ottoman:

Unfortunately we let George's fur get all matted so he got a pretty short cut at the groomer's:

We all thought he looked hilarious.

Sadly, soon after school started Covid struck our house. It started with Nate saying on the way to school one day that he'd eaten a frozen chimichanga the day before that tasted weird. He had some other symptoms so I drove him home instead. We're pretty sure he got it at football practice. He, Eli, Eve, Joe and I all got it within a couple weeks. The kids mostly just had bad colds/coughs. 

Still smiling while watching shows:

There were some sad moments:

Joe and I were a different story. We both got really sick. It was like the worst flu I'd ever had. I didn't really even cough at all but I got terrible headaches and body aches. Being sick at the same time is never fun, especially with a toddler, but we slowly started to feel better. I took these one day I was feeling well enough to sit outside with Eve for a bit:

Because of Covid, Eli and Maddy weren't at school for the homecoming parade so I drove them to watch a little bit away from everyone:

We had fun cheering on Lizzie and Natalie on the swim team float:

The girls got to tag along to Lava Hot Springs with Chris and Regina and their kids to watch James' cross country meet:

They also got invited to a dance held at someone's house and got to dress up for it. Look at these gorgeous girls:

Here are some more of Eve's adventures. 

I'll finish off this post with a beautiful sunrise shot of our yard. I love this view:

The Rest of Summer in Idaho

 The girls got invited to a hang out with James and some of his friends before school started and seemed to have a fun time. 

We took a fun weekend trip to Bear Lake and celebrated Joelle's birthday there. All the brothers except Tom and his family were able to come and it was really fun. We stayed in different rooms at a resort on the lake. We had fun in the water and on the beach, playing on the grass, and playing games in our rooms.

We had some cake for the August birthdays:

On the way there, we stopped in Logan for lunch and showed our kids some of our favorite spots there. We drove by my Grandma's (& Grandpa's) old house and it made my heart so happy to see it again. It looks just the same! The pink pillars! :)

I found this picture on Family Search recently and it made me happy:

I'm not when that was taken but probably not long before my Grandpa died.

Back to some other happenings...

Joe turned 40!

I sent this out to friends and family and we had a good number of people from both sides of the family here. We ate good food and sang some karaoke. I hope it was a good day for him.

We were finally able to take Nate to the temple for the first time to do baptisms. I loved being in the temple again after a long break during Covid and watching Joe baptize the kids.

The girls were super brave and went to YW Camp soon after moving here even though they knew no one. It was just our ward's YW camping in tents. I was really proud of them for jumping right in. The moms came to join them for a day and it was fun to be involved a little bit. They had an amazing fancy dinner including some Jewish dancing! They have some amazing leaders.

Regina and I drove down to SLC, along with her sister-in-law for part of it, and met Jaime at Jody Moore's VIP event. It was a great event and good to get lots of talking time with them. 

I got to meet Christine Cook in person, who works for her, and who coached me privately when I first found out I was pregnant with Eve which really helped me at the time to get some clarity. 

Speaking of Eve, here are some more cute pictures:

She loves her daddy:

Miranda and her family came into town for a mini-Atkinder gathering and she made an amazing meal of shrimp and grits that I didn't want to forget:

It was SO good.

We had a scary night when the girls were coming home from swim practice and Elizabeth turned left onto Pole Line when she shouldn't have and caused a pretty bad accident. Thankfully, no one was hurt and the driver of the other car was SO kind. She was in town helping her daughter and her grandkids while their dad/husband is treated for cancer. She certainly did not need that but she was so kind and forgiving and just was concerned about Lizzie and making sure she was OK. It meant so much to me as her mom. 

The ironic thing was that we had just bought that car for Lizzie a few days before. It was old and declared totaled. We ended up buying a truck instead and let Lizzie drive the Honda. It's been a good decision since we've needed it to haul a lot of things.

We'll finish with this picture of Natalie posing as an Instagram influencer. :)

Nate is 12!

We had a big birthday around here. Nate turned 12! We couldn't celebrate on his actual birthday because he had football so we did it the next day. Nate likes what he likes so we had his favorite cinnamon rolls, roast beef, and pie for dessert. He got some fun things:

This one cracks me up:

He also got a slingshot that he's been having a lot of fun with since then. I took this screenshot from a video of him blowing his candles out:

A couple of days later on Sunday we finally got to give him his birthday wish of a family game of football in the backyard. It got a bit heated and competitive (in typical our family fashion) but Lizzie, Nate and I just barely pulled out the win. It was pretty fun.

This was a big year for Nate with receiving the priesthood and being able to go to the temple, surviving school during Covid, and just barely starting middle school here in Jerome and playing football. Unfortunately, since he started a bit late and then got Covid, he hasn't gotten much playing time but he finally did just after his birthday on defense and did great. Nate also started playing the saxophone this past year and has gotten really good just in one year. He's taking band at the middle school and although he's frustrated to be playing easy songs I think he enjoys it. 

Nate is the best. He's athletic and loves all things sports. I'm excited for him to have more opportunities to play different sports here in Jerome. While I think he liked his after school flag football class in Clovis, playing in masks in the heat was not ideal, and we were sad he missed a year and a half of baseball after it was canceled during Covid. He's super smart and just did really well on the gifted and talented test here. Academic things tend to come pretty easily for him. He's also pretty mechanically minded and did a great job helping to set up our furniture here at our new house. He's also taken on the role of mowing our lawn o the riding mower and does a great job with that. He's also gotten more into reading in the past year and read all of the Percy Jackson books and the Hunger Games books. He's also become quite the chef and can make really good artisan bread and crispy hashbrowns. He also had a scary incident this year where he was jumping onto our pull up bar and ended up falling and hitting his head on the tile floor. He was acting weird and we were so worried so we took him in to the ER. There ended up being a huge wait (thanks, Covid) and so he was barely looked over and given a pill to stop the nausea he was feeling and then we were waiting for a CT scan. We waited there in the middle of the night with him sleeping on me off and on for a couple hours and finally decided to go home since he was doing much better. He was fine after that, too, just had some lingering headaches for a bit. That was the first concussion we experienced in our family. 

Nate adds so much to our family we couldn't imagine life without him. We love you, Nate!