Kindergarten

When people ask David how old he is, here's how it usually goes:

How old are you?

I'm five.

Oh, so will you start kindergarten soon?

We already started kindergarten.

From here, the grown up will look to me for clarification, and I'll explain that we are homeschooling, so we got to begin the kindergarten excitement as soon as the boxes showed up with our curriculum.

There are a million reasons I have for homeschooling this year. I'm going to take it a year at a time, but this year we are fully committed to homeschool. And we are fully excited!

One of the many many reasons is that David absolutely adores anyone who teaches him something new.

Some of our best moments together in the past few weeks have been doing school lessons together. I see it as strengthening our attachment, and that is a huge benefit in our family right now.

And just so everyone feels official, David asks me to please call him "student" as long as our books are out. He returns the favor by calling me "teacher." It was all his idea. I like it.

The Next Level

Our sweet girl has found a new level to explore.

She was so pleased with herself when she pulled into a standing position.

It only took a couple of minutes, however, to realize that she was stuck. She didn't know how to get back down.

So she called for help.

When it didn't come right away, she put her head down and decided to wait her turn.

I helped her back to her sitting position, and she quickly turned around and crawled on top of the hearth. This is another position where she'll ask for help when she's ready to get down.

Oh dear. Am I going to have a little climber at my house? You can explore, baby sweet, but please do it safely.

The Minners

We arrived back from Seward to find our friends parked on our driveway with their 50-foot rig of a 5th wheel and truck combination. It is their home each summer, and for the second time they have come up to Alaska for their trip. They came up seven years ago, just as we were moving here ourselves. Having worked with Diana just prior to leaving Idaho Falls, it was so fun then to see a familiar face. We invited them over to dinner, and didn't even have a couch yet to offer them a seat. In fact, we purchased a craft table so we could eat dinner on something other than a picnic blanket in our living room. Now those are good friends--someone who will come back after all those hosting snafus! Thank you, Diana and Gene for your wonderful friendship and your uplifting visit.

We went to Eagle River Nature Center for a small jaunt around a board walk. The salmon didn't get the memo that we were standing on the salmon viewing deck. Here are the menfolk chatting:

Meanwhile, I looked over and David was instructing a group of 5 tourists--most of them non-English-speaking--about the tiny fish he spotted in the creek. A minute later, I looked over, and somehow David had convinced his little tour group to get on their hands and knees to look through the slats in the board walk. How does that boy know how to win friends and influence people so easily? Really? A 5-year old getting adults to kneel down on the board walk with him? David is definitely in his element when he is in charge (usually self-declared to be the leader).

Sam 'n Salmon

 Sam embarked on a fishing charter out of Seward last week.

Right at the end of the 6-hour charter, Sam came up with a silver salmon hooked to his line.

Meanwhile, we were the land crew waiting for Daddy's return to Seward. We went to the fabulous park right on Resurrection Bay and spent some time in the Sea Life Center, then grabbed dinner before driving back to Anchorage. I sent the camera with Daddy, so we don't have any photos of our escapades--just memories of a good time together. We even met up with some friends out of Cooper Landing that drove to meet up with us in the late afternoon. It was time well spent to give all of us a bit of an adventure.

Wedding Celebrations

 We helped Vanessa Easton celebrate her marriage to Travis Scott. I did the wedding cake, and the Relief Society in the ward turned into Vanessa's wedding planners. It was a unique wedding in every sense of the word, but I think the couple had a nice time with their very own flair. I did the cake with the theme of "forget-me-nots."

Pardon the dark and blurry pics--we were in a dark gym with just dim lights for dancing. Alina wasted no time and found the beat. Yes, this girl has rhythm. She loves music and dancing, similar to the way David has always loved it.

This is Mylinda, the mother of the bride. She has been either my visiting teacher, visiting teachee, or visiting teaching companion since I moved to Alaska seven years ago. She is special needs, but high functioning enough to raise 2 children to adult hood. Mylinda has a beautiful heart, and as one person put it, "Mylinda is not in our midst to learn how to be more Christ like. She continues to remain with us to teach the rest of us how to be more Christ like." Mylinda has a heart that should have stopped beating years ago by medical standards, but she still lives a full life. For this particular song, she and David had been sitting together near the DJ when I heard the DJ announce that the next dance was dedicated to Mylinda and David. Clearly they're happy with each other as dance partners!

There he goes again--finding a partner more suitable for his size. David tried to spin Evelyn all around the dance floor, just like he saw others doing. Evelyn landed on her toosh several times. Unphased, David would go over, pick her up off the ground, and swing her some more. Evelyn was a good sport about her dancing partner's mishaps until it just became too much and she broke into tears. The parents were watching and laughing as long as the pair seemed to be having fun. We're working with the 5 year old on social cues.

Other than the dancing and music, Alina's highlight was finding balloons all over the floor. Thankfully, none of them popped in her face.

KateLee is 8 months older than Alina, but somehow the two of them hit it off and crawled around together for some time. Kuddos to Kate's social skills for meeting her playmate at her level!

We had a grand time. Like I said, it was a wedding to remember. The moment that tickled my funny bone the most was when the bride came out of the temple by herself. Without her groom, who was waiting for her in the coat room. Vanessa walked out of the temple, and stood there feeling beeeuuuuutiful while photos were snapped. I finally realized that nothing was going to change without someone prompting her, so after she got a few "bridals" I went up to her and said, "Vanessa, you'll want some pictures of you and Travis coming out of the temple together. So let's go back in and you can come out again!" She happily went along.

My other favorite part was that Mylinda, in all of her purity of heart and intention, did not want to miss practice for her Special Olympics bowling team. So between the wedding and the reception, she snuck away with her bowling friends. Like I said, it was the ward that was putting on this wedding. I think I will forever smile when I think of this wedding. I wish Vanessa and Travis bliss and happiness in their marriage.

Renewal

Last week, our back sliding glass door went from these beat up and scratched old sliders:

to gorgeous new french doors:

Tim Later was the skilled professional we hired to replace the two windows and a door. He was amazing at the skill. I told Sam that working with Tim was not so much about the process of installing as it was about the opportunity to watch him troubleshoot. Incidentally, he used to do construction in the Teton Valley and knows my bil Logan as one of the partners at Headwater Construction. Tim was moving out of state right after he finished our work. In fact, he left our house at 8:30 on Wednesday night, and went to the airport at 10 pm the same night. Now that's cutting it close for finishing the project!

We were quite the sight--I was doing a wedding cake in the kitchen while Sam was helping Tim install the doors and between the two of us, we kept track of the kids. We had a few late nights due to pounding and power tools, where the kids didn't fall asleep until we all went to bed together. I'm not sure we've slowed down enough yet to fully recover from that lack of sleep at the start of the month.

We'll be grateful, especially this winter, for warmer doors and windows.

Soccer Wrap Up

Our Summer of Soccer was a Success! Definitely planning to do it again next year, based on the turnout and the fun time the kids had.

Just a few pics with the whole team:

Coach Joshua Swift with the "older" group: David, Julia, Alina, Matthew, Adam, Braiden, Ethan, Kai, Griffin and Dalton

The whole group--Back row: Ulric, Coach Hannah Moses, David, Alina, Matthew, Julia, Adam, Braiden, Ethan, Kai, Griffin, Dalton, Anya and Coach Larissa Williams. Front row: Nathan, Mei-mei, Skyler, Hunter, Christian, Jonathon, Resse, Kiana, Jimmy, Aikens and Paxson.

My Workers

 This is our first summer in our new home, and it feels like the summer season is too short for all of the projects that need our attention during these months. One thing I've done is build a small flower garden in front of my house. Alina was a good helper.

This girl loves to feel pretty and dolled up. Her favorite outfit is a fluffly skirt. But then she also allows herself to get dirty when the occasion calls for it.

Here's the wall I built with Alina playing in the dirt. I intend to put on one more layer of brick, then add enough top soil and mulch to fill it, then add a few plants. I'll at least get some bulbs in the ground before it turns cold--maybe next summer I'll put in some perennials and annuals.

Who needs flowers when someone this pretty adorns my garden?

The rocks behind Alina are the ones that line our creek. Oh, how I love that little creek!

Alina was grabbing dirt by the handful and throwing it behind her.

She eventually made her way over the wall completely.

Then she took a break to help David gather weeds.

We have a very weedy lawn. I've tried to tackle it--and I have a small patch of weed-free grass for my efforts. David is a good helper with collecting weeds that I pull out. Sometimes he'll grab our dandelion picker (behind him in photo) and uproot a couple dandelions himself--but usually he gets easily distracted and doesn't do more than two or three at a time. He's better at focusing on a pile of already picked weeds that need to go into his bucket.

 Kind of funny--between the next two photos, Alina high-centered herself on the brick wall. She figured it out eventually, but she was puzzled when she couldn't pull or push herself out of her predicament.

I hope we get a few more sunny days so I can finish my little garden spot with my workers at my side!

August feels so busy, just by looking at the calendar. I went to find a date night for Sam and I to go out this month--just once--but the entire month was full. Some of our days are busy, but mostly it's the evenings and weekends that fill up so quickly. So I intend to finish my little garden before it turns cold.

I'm not sure how many other projects in the yard will get our attention, but we're doing some fun updates on the house as well.