Memorial day 2012

This is the first memorial day with Wyatt's bench in place. Thank you again to EVERYONE that helped us in getting his bench.  We continue to remember each of you as we visit his grave.  So grateful!  Also grateful for all those that have sacrificed everything so we can live in this free and wonderful country. 

 Love this flag!

Not too many butterflies around but this landed on our back patio for a long time this evening.  Usually by the time I get my camera for something like this it's gone.  Not this one.  It stayed around so I could take lots and lots of pictures.  Then it flew off.  I felt like it was a gift from my son. Wyatt continues to be aware of his family.  We love you and miss you Wyatt!

SLC

We went up north to pick Ty and his cousin up from EFY.  While we were there we decided to spend the day in SLC going to the Tabernacle Choir broadcast and walking around the new shopping mall "City Creek".  What an amazing shopping center.  Love the creek that runs through it.  The Tabernacle choir broadcast was awesome!  It was the memorial day broadcast and was so good.  I love patriotic songs.

We also went to Brigham Young's grave.

 There were some beautiful flowers.

 

EFY

Ty started his summer off early and missed the last few days of school to go to BYU for EFY.  Great experience for him.  He really enjoyed it and learned so much.  Well worth the money!  We had challenged him to play the piano if there was ever an opportunity to do it.  They had a talent show and so he played.  He said it didn't go very well and was kind of embarrassing but we are so proud of him for trying.  That is not an easy thing to do and he did it.  EFY was great success and he made lots of new friends.

His counselors.

This picture has nothing to do with EFY but thought I would put it in.  This is Ty's group of friends he hangs out with.  Such great young men!  So grateful he has these boys in his life.

Violin awards

 This year Em and Hay both participated in the Southern Utah Performing Arts Festival with violin.  They both did an amazing job.  So proud of them.  It's not easy to stand up in front of a judge and be scored on your performance. Hay ended up getting an award.  She was extremely excited.  She is definitely our most competitive child.  She won some money at a music store where she bought herself and ukulele.  Her Grandpa J. has been teaching her how to play it. 

 Em had a terrible cold that day and did not feel good.  As you can tell by the picture.  She did such a great job on her song and did it perfectly with a vibrato that she learned by herself.  Her teacher is always amazed at the fact that she learned that by herself and learned it correctly. So very proud of her.

 I love this picture...Hay is so little next to all the other award recipients.  So proud of her!

Summer Ideas

Wyatt's Garden starting to bloom.

I have so much to blog about but I wanted to post this first just in case someone out there is wanting a few ideas for summer.   I LOVE summer and I'm getting so excited for it to begin.  I love having my kids at home with me. :)  I decided we would keep a lot of the ideas that we have done in the past but added a couple of new things I found on Pinterest.  Above is a picture of some of the fun ideas I've come up with, to do this summer.  My plan is to try to do one of these activities each day.  We may or may not get through all of them but at least we will do some and that's all that matters.  Creating memories is my goal.

This is my summer planner page to help me stay organized and hopefully fit in our fun summer activity each day.

 This is the schedule we have used in the past and I'm going to continue it this summer.  They will still have "areas" that they will have to clean each day for their jobs along with reading, writing and practicing their instruments.  Here is a post I did a few years ago that explains more about it.

I found this cute idea for a reading log so I made my girls each one.  My goal as always is to get as much reading in as we can.  I've bought a few fun incentives for the girls to earn and hopefully motivate them.   Ty will get some golfing for his reading this summer.

One of the first things we are going to do is make up a Summer Journal.  I found this cute idea and decided we will cut out each of these and paste them on the page and it will give them something they can write about.

The girls wanted to do Handipoints again this summer so I've set up their daily jobs on it.  They will earn points to play with on Handipoints.  It really is a great free chore system with incentives when jobs are done.  At least for my girls they have loved it.  Having a virtual cat to buy clothes, play games and have a house to decorate has been fun for them. 

 Here is our magnet board all ready for the summer.  Now school just needs to get out.

Graduate Gift Idea

 I saw something similar to this on Pinterest and decided to make up a few for some of the graduates we had gotten announcements from.  Thought I would share this.

Ty awards

Ty recieved the Diamond Shield at school this year.  As you can see only 12 people in the entire school got it.  It was a lot of hard work and lots of service.  So proud of what a hard worker he is and how Ty excels in all he does.  We had no idea he was even working for this award until we got a letter in the mail saying he would be recieving it.   He also received the Math department award this year.  Only 2 kids received this award.  He also got 100% on his end of level Math testing and only missed one on the other tests.  He is a hard worker and we are so proud of him.

Holding all his certificates he got at the awards night along with his medal from math. 

Ironman

Every year for the past couple of year the Ironman has come to town.  Each year I've wanted to volunteer for it but it just never happened.  This year I decided to make it a priority and signed us up to help with the running portion of the race.  It was a great experience. We went at 10am in the morning.  Our shift was suppose to end at 1pm.  The first few hours we spent helping them set stuff up. We decorated the porta potties with paper...had no idea we would be doing that and set up all the different water, food stations. The first runners in the race came around the end of our shift.  That is what we wanted to do the most was to help the runners out so we stayed. They actually needed our help since some people didn't show up.  The kids at first were a little shy but by the end they were way into it.  Helping in so many ways.  We handed out cold sponges, water, gatorade and goo and anything else that the runners were wanting.  We ended up staying until 7pm helping with the race. It was a lot of work and we were very tired at the end of the day but it sure was a fun and memorable day. So proud of the good kids we have and the hard workers they were.  We had a few comments from some of the people over the station at how impressed they were with how hard our kids worked. 

 I hope the kids learned how fun service can be and the good feeling you have when you do it.  This spring there hasn't been as many butterflies around.  In fact it had been a few weeks since I had seen a butterfly but this day during most of the day as we volunteered a butterfly would fly by.  I just had to think that Wyatt was letting us know how proud he was of us and what we were doing as a family and that we were doing it together and creating some lasting memories.  That was a tender mercy for me that day.

She was sooooo excited when the first person took her water.  It took a few people until that happened since she was the smallest kid there but when it did she jumped up and down with delight.  So fun to see her excitment.

We had a neighbor girl staying with us for the week so we signed her up too.  That made it that much more fun.  She has since moved and we sure do miss her! 

The theme of the station we worked at was "Hollywood".  They had all sorts of stars and even a red carpet that the runners ran on.  I had no idea they did that kind of stuff.  It made it that much more fun for us especially since we got to help decorate it.

Handing out the gatroade...it was so good for my kids to have to get out of their comfort zone and speak to and cheer the runners on.:)

After we got done volunteering we walked to the finish line and watched as some of the Ironmen finished.  Quite amazing!  So fun to be a part of.  Look forward to helping out next year.