First Day of School!

The first day of school came way too soon this year.  I wasn't ready, and the kids definitely weren't.  We were ready with the school supplies and clothes and everything, but the summer seemed even shorter than usual this year.  They are all off to a great start, thankfully!

Emily, Junior

Andrew, 8th grade

Daniel, 7th grade

My two middle-schoolers

Jonathan, 5th grade

Papa's Visit

We had a great visit with Papa.  He got here late Thursday night.  On Friday, Emily had to be at the school as a mentor for Freshman orientation.  She's going to be a Junior!!  While she was gone, the boys did their chores and Dad and I worked on his personal history.  I interviewed him so that I can start compiling it.  It was cool to find out some things about him that I didn't know before, like the fact that he used to be in plays in high school.

Once Emily got home, we all went to lunch.  Michael was able to meet us.  We planned to go bowling, but it was so crowded and the wait was at least 30 minutes so we changed our plans and went to the movies.  Well, we stopped for cookies first.  We went to see Toy Story 4.  When we got there, the theater was empty.

It was a good movie.  It was better than I thought it would be.  After the movie, we headed home.  We stopped at Safeway for fruit on the way home, and then relaxed at home for a little while.  We ordered takeout for dinner and then we all played Pictionary.  Emily and I won. :-)

On Saturday morning, we got up and ready for the day and went to the movies again.  We went to see The Lion King.  It was amazing!  The kids still love the original the best, but the new one was really good.  When we got home, the kids finished their chores and played some games with Papa.  Papa, Emily, and I all went to the car wash to get her car all clean and ready for the first day of school.  When we came back, we went swimming.  Emily had to finish her essay for Honors English, but Papa and I got in the pool with the boys.  Michael had to work on his Sunday School lesson.

After swimming, we got ready for dinner.  We went to Osaka and had teppanyaki, then we drove to Golfland to pay mini golf.  Papa won. :-)

When we got home, the kids all went swimming again with Michael, and Dad and I finished up his interview.

We love you, Papa!  Thank you for coming to visit!!!

Camping Trip

Guest post by Emily: (yay it's me lol)

We all got up at about 5:30 in the morning on Tuesday. We still had a lot to pack into the camper, so we didn't leave for another two hours after that.

Before we left:

We stopped in Payson for breakfast at McDonald's and then got gas in Pinetop/Show Low. It took us a total of six and a half hours to make it to the campsite because there was a bumpy road that extended for 12 miles and did not agree with the camper. We felt like the whole camper and everything in it was going to fall over!! We passed by a few other campsites on the East Fork before stopping in one called Aspen. It wasn't far from the campsite that we stayed in a few years ago. When we stopped we got right to work.

This was what the campsite looked like before we set up:

After we were all set up, we went fishing, relaxed, and did pretty much whatever we wanted. We had steak for dinner, but it was so dark outside that Dad couldn't see how much the steak was cooked. Some ended up under-cooked, others were seared and burnt. We had a hard-earned lesson that we had to start dinner much earlier. Of course, we also had s'mores. The camp quiet time started at 10pm, so we were in quite a hurry to get everything clean and get all of us ready for bed. 

On Wednesday, me, Daniel, and Andrew did not want to get out of bed at all; Jonny was absolutely dying to go fishing. He kept bugging us and Dad to take him, but it was 6am. We had chocolate Eggo waffles and sausage for breakfast. 

Us chilling around while Dad made breakfast:

Some pictures of the campsite and scenery:

Nothing special happened: we fished a lot, we played games, walked along the stream, and just existed in nature pretty much the whole day. 

Daniel looked weird in his hat so I took this picture lol:

We had bagel bites and microwavable popcorn for lunch and hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken, and corn for dinner. We did start dinner while it was still light outside, but it was quite the ordeal to get everything cooked on the campfire. We ended up having to just cook stuff on the propane stove. The food turned out really good, though. Getting to bed was easier too since we had more time. 

On Thursday, we had pancakes and bacon for breakfast. I'm so used to having a big counter to prepare pancakes on, so it was a lot harder when I only had about a couple square feet of kitchen space. They got easily burnt, and so did my thumb for touching the hot stove. The food turned out pretty good. After breakfast, me and Andrew went for a walk to (hopefully) burn off some of the calories from all the junk food we ate. I ate way too much!! 

A couple pictures I took on the walk:

We fished even more, but no fish were interested in eating our bait. We didn't catch a single fish the entire trip, but it was still fun to be by the stream. 

Just chilling at camp:

We didn't really eat lunch, but we did have leftover chicken, steak, and corn for dinner. More s'mores too!! We played a bunch of this game called Telestrations, where you pass along drawings and you have to guess what it is. It's really funny when it gets to the end and the last guess is nothing like the original word. We played like 8 rounds. We had some problems with the camper's water pump, but at least we got it fixed and saved ourselves $35. We cleaned up around the campsite after that and went to bed.

On Friday, we gave ourselves some time to get ready for the day and eat breakfast. We didn't start officially packing everything up until about 9am. Our camper was a pigsty that morning, but by a miracle I was able to clean it all. Dad and the boys worked mostly outside to clean up. We left a little after 11am. 

About to leave:

Once we got off that super bumpy road, it was smooth sailing from there. We ate lunch at another McDonald's and got gas in Pinetop. We didn't stop again until we got home. We drove through Globe instead of Payson this time. 

Finally home!!:

We relaxed a little bit and then cleaned up that entire camper in only a couple hours. We had such a fun time!!

Michael's Birthday

Happy Birthday, Michael! 
He spent the day getting ready for the camping trip, but we went to dinner together on Saturday and had Mexican food--his favorite!

Top Golf

Andrew finally used his Christmas gift--a trip to Top Golf.  He invited three friends and they had a great time hitting golf balls and eating snacks!  It was hot, but the fans and misters helped a lot.