Halloween!

We had so much fun today! Here are this year's costumes:

Jess was Hermione and Nat was a Gypsy-- both costumes courtesy of Joy and Brooklyn!

I made Missy's frog costume and Josh was a creepy doctor.
And I was so happy that my favorite costume creation of all time still fit Mandie!
Happy Halloween!

Valiant!

Our primary chorister is SO fabulous. She lets the kids to sign up to sing solos in primary, and bribes them with a candy bar when they do. When they sign up, she picks a song for them and gives them a copy of it, along with a CD that has the song with and without words. (can you tell I really admire this kind of impressive preparedness and organization? I am completely lacking in this area.) She picks short little one-verse songs, which I think is so smart.

Josh did a solo a couple months ago, and it was so sweet! He has such a sweet little voice and can carry a tune really well.
Jessica's turn is this Sunday. She's been practicing her little heart out, and I wanted to share her adorableness: (my camera only goes for 30 seconds so the very end is cut off, but I think her cuteness stands)

Another Pet

Melissa has been obsessed with frogs for a couple of years now. This year for her birthday I got to thinking maybe she was big enough for her very own real live pet frog. I went to the pet store and they had some affordable cute tree frogs, and I bought one before I had a chance to talk myself out of it. It has to be fed a live cricket every day, which means we're always taking care of a bunch of pet crickets too!

I think the look on Missy's face when she opened her present was worth it though:

Missy named her froggy Greenboo, and we decided it's a girl. The best place to play with Greenboo is in the empty bathtub. She can climb around on the walls and sometimes we put in some water to watch her adorable swimming.

Today they got out some tub toys and Greenboo seemed to enjoy them.

Isn't our froggy cute? We like her.

Parties!

I really don't know how it happened, but somehow I was roped into doing a bunch of birthday parties again this year. I made Josh and Missy wait a couple weeks after their birthdays, until my semester was over, and we had their parties on the same day.

Missy's was first. We had her cake on her actual birthday, so for her party she wanted root beer floats.

Missy really wanted a pinata, but I didn't want to spend money on one so I made it instead. I was thinking of making it with a paper grocery bag like I saw on Barney one time (ahem) but I couldn't find the 2 or 3 bags that I KNEW I had stashed somewhere, so instead I used 2 lunch sacks. Anyway, this is what I ended up with, Missy helped decorate it:

It was a very good little pinata. It came apart a little at a time and lasted through quite a few whacks.

Eventually it fell down and the girls took to beating it on the ground.

We also played a lily pad game created by Jessica (it was a frog-themed party, of course)

And went swimming!

Later that evening we had Josh's party. Since he's 10 this year, he got to have his first sleepover party! We decided to have a back yard campout. His friends came at dinner time and we built a fire and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Then the boys played and played and played (turns out Josh has some awesome toys that are a lot more fun with other boys to enjoy them with!) Then after presents and cake they slept in the tent in the back yard.

It was such a fun day!

Bear Lake

Today I'm hanging out in a hospital room all day while Jason has and recovers from his shoulder surgery. Perfect time to catch up on homework and blogging!

In July we had the first bi-annual reunion of the Don and Karen Rowley Fam! We've had reunions every summer for as long as I can remember with my dad's family, but we're finally big enough (age and numbers-wise) to start splitting off into our own little families. We'll do this reunion every other year and still have the big reunion on the other years.

So! Jen was in charge this year (I'm next! I'm so glad she was the guinea pig) and she worked so hard and made everything so awesome! We stayed in a beautiful house right next to Bear Lake. It was so nice and relaxing and fun! The only sad part was that Jason wasn't able to come.

I don't have any pics of the outside of the house, but here's the view from the back yard. Not bad! (and that's Missy posing for me)
We had a hot-tub in the back yard

and a little park across the street. The kids spent most of their time over there, it was so nice!

The floor of the playground was sand, the kids dug deep holes and I helped them bury each other.
My kids totally bonded with their aunts and uncles. This is Mandie and Bryce (Cherise's hub) how cute are they??
Art projects at the dining room table
Watching Bryce fly his remote control airplane-- so cool!
On the second day we went down to the lake! The place we went to had a fabulous little sand bar that was such a perfect place to play! Really shallow water on one side and deep on the other. The kids loved playing in the sand and looking for shells.



The men rented 2 waverunners and everybody took turns taking them for rides. It was so fun!

Natalie even got to drive one!

Here's Josh being pulled-- he and Jessica both LOVED it!
This is me and Mandie on our walk across the submerged part of the sandbar, seeing how close we could get to the seagulls.




The next day we would have gone back to the beach, but we were all too sunburned! We thought we did pretty good with the sunscreen, but apparently not! So on the 3rd day we just relaxed in the lovely house, then on the 4th day we drove home.

Let's talk about ME

First of all I would like to brag about the fact that despite a tonsillectomy WITH complications during the first 3 weeks of a 10-week summer semester, I STILL got A's in all my classes! Bahaha! My perfect 4.0 record (since starting school again) is still unbroken, and my overall GPA is up to 3.84! Also, I have my associates degree now! Turned out I didn't need to get it after all since I didn't end up transferring, but hey, my generals are done! No more math or anything else unpleasant.

As you may remember, I had planned to transfer to USU and finish my degree online. I applied and got accepted and everything, then found out that the scholarships I'd been planning on didn't apply to online students! And since it costs more to go there, I decided I should just stay at SUU even though they don't have many psych classes online. I'm hoping that this will actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise. The psychology class that I took spring semester online was really disappointing. I realized that, being so subjective, theory-, and people-based, psychology is not a subject that works well in online classes. Also, I'm feeling ready to have actual dedicated school time instead of constantly juggling school, housework and kids.

SO, this semester I'm actually GOING to most of my classes! All 4 of the big kids are now in school all day (!!!!) and since Mandie's 3, I figure daycare a couple hours a day will be fun and good for her. She'd be bored at home with only me all day anyway. PLUS, my school has a daycare grant that pays for most of it! I have 2 classes MWF, and one Tues/thurs, after which I'll stay another hour on campus and have some dedicated homework time. We found a lovely little daycare that Mandie's really excited about, and that's on my way to school.

So basically I'll be getting everybody, including me and Mandie, up and ready nice and early, then we'll all head off to school, and Mandie and I will get home around 11. Then we'll have some time to play together, have lunch, then she can take a nap and I can do homework until the kids get home. Then I can concentrate on being a mom till bedtime, and after they're in bed I'll be working on our business. Of course it'll only be that simple on days Jason doesn't have doctor appointments....and he's averaging about 4 appointments a week.

We moved our business out of the store and back into our house over the summer. We're hoping I'll have enough time to run it as long as we keep it simple. On one hand, I would much rather do it myself than pay someone else. But on the other hand, the idea of trying to do it in addition to everything else is freaking me out! In theory it should work out fine, but we'll see what actually happens!

Jason has been feeling a little more alive lately, and has been able to help get the business set up in our house. He goes to acupuncture twice a week and really feels like it helps, and we're finally to the point that we like all of our doctors and feel like we're getting somewhere. He has surgery scheduled for his shoulder next week. It'll be so great if we can at least get ONE thing fixed, I sure hope it works! He still hasn't been able to get on disability, but according to the lawyers it almost always takes this long. He's been denied twice, and the next step is a hearing, where most of their cases are won. Unfortunately you usually have to wait over a year for a hearing date. Siiiiiiigh.

Okay! I think I'll shut up now. Someday soon I'll try to do posts of the fun stuff we did this summer!

Kindergarten Grad!

Missy had a very cute patriotic kindergarten graduation. She loved kindergarten this year and did so well. Now on to first grade!

And speaking of Missy, here's a picture of her displaying her one true love: the color Green.

Fwee!!

Mandie had her 3rd birthday on May 17! On her birthday we took her to wal-mart to spend her grandma money and got the cute little big wheel that can be spotted in the background in this first pic. Then we made her cake, opened presents, and went swimming!

notice mandie's artistic additions to the sides of her cake:

Amanda is such a fun 3-year-old. The way she talks is so adorable, putting together long involved sentences but mispronouncing everything. I will be so sad when I don't have baby talk in my house anymore. She gets to start preschool this fall because mommy has to start going to actual classes! She's not too keen on the idea, but I think it'll be really good for her. She's pretty spoiled being the baby of the family, so I think it'll be good for her to be around some other little kids. Plus Missy's in 1st grade, so she won't have a playmate at home anymore!

Culinary Creations!

So one day Melissa had this idea for a snack. She wanted to take graham crackers and put peanut butter on them, then use the peanut butter to stick on some other stuff. Fun! It worked great and the girls were very proud of their creations.

Then a few days later she wanted to do it again. This time she was trying to come up with some more creative ideas to add, and she came up with, of all things, vienna sausages. For some unknown reason I let her use them. Here is a picture of a snack gone utterly wrong.

Best of all, she ate them.

Then one time Natalie made a cake (from scratch!) for her dad. Her idea for decorating was to divide it in sections and each kid would decorate part of it. This is the completely FABULOUS finished project:

Nat has this little kit she got from a book fair for baking teeny tiny things. One recipe is for fondant that you put on tiny little cakes! The fondant wasn't very easy to work with (made with marshmallows and powdered sugar) and the little cakes she made were kinda falling apart, but it just so happened that I remembered seeing an episode of Martha Stewart where they showed you how to work with fondant YEARS ago, and I sat down and instantly became a fondant genius. Then I passed on my genius to Natalie. Oh, I also used some remembered play-doh skillz for the roses. Nat and I each decorated about half of these. Ta-dah!

3 Random things that I love.

Thing number one: The leapfrog Letter Factory DVD. It's a cute, fun 35 minute video that all my kids love to watch, and it has an AWESOME method for teaching each letter with its sound. Each letter is a little character that does something active while making its sound. Like the F's that fly and make the sound FFFF as they flap their wings, or the A's that scream "AAAH!" when they see a purple monster. I turned it on for Amanda (who is not even 3 yet!) about a week ago. Now she asks to watch it a few times a day, and SHE KNOWS ALMOST ALL HER LETTER SOUNDS! In a week! I highly recommend this video, it's a great start in phonics!

Thing number 2: 4H! I am finally starting to unravel its mysteries. I signed Natalie up, and now I get emails twice a week detailing all the available activities that she can do. Some are free, some are just a few bucks, some are ongoing clubs or classes, some are one-time things. You just choose the ones you want to do and sign up. I'm signing Josh up too! Right now Nat's doing a cooking class, and Josh is going to try the shooting club. They're doing a bug club and a gardening club soon too. I'm excited to have some fun activities for them to do without signing them up for long-term or expensive stuff.
Thing 3: Crayola Watercolors! This little set is so cool! My little ones LOVE to paint, but paints are such a mess. Not only the mess they make when they're painting, but the blackish-brownish mess that the paints themselves turn into after a few uses. I was considering getting them some of those expensive color wonder paints for Christmas, but then I spotted these for only $3.98! It's a really cool little system. The brushes are kinda like markers, and see that long white thing? It's like a sponge to clean them off, it totally works and when it gets filled up you just rinse it off. The paints themselves are held in sponges in the little pots, so they can't spill. Very cool!