September Fun!

Garrett had his first marching band performance of the season. He's once again in the pit. He was disappointed about that because he wanted to march with the snare drum but at least he's doing some different percussion instruments this year.

It was hot that day so fortunately they didn't have to wear their uniforms, just the band t-shirts.

They have another game next Friday night (Homecoming) and their first competition the very next day on Saturday. 

On the Saturday of Labor Day weekend (Sept 3) we woke up early (5:30am) to go see the Spirit of Boise hot air balloon launch. Unfortunately, they weren't able to launch into the air because of wind conditions but they did inflate them on the ground at least. It was still awesome to be so close and this was the first time we had ever gone to this event. I've been wanting to do it for years and we finally made it happen. After the launch, we took the kids out to breakfast at KJ's (formerly JB's). It was fun but Curtis and I were so tired by the time we got back we laid down on the bed immediately and took a 2 hour nap!

Jack was given a frisbee from an activity at school and ever since he's been addicted to throwing it. He's really enjoying it and is really good. We like to go next door to my in-laws to throw the frisbee because there are less trees in the way.

We were doing it on Sunday after church so that's why Charlotte is wearing a dress.

There's Jack.

I recently discovered that our public library has some fun kits that we can check out that have activities and books in them. I decided to try one out and the kids enjoyed it.

She's using a magnet design board. You use a magnet to pick up the pieces inside and move it to a spot on the board. She built a house.

They had several of these shape boards where you fill in the pictures with shapes made out of plastic or tangrams. Of course she picked the one with the horse and barn.

I have been letting Charlotte go to activity days in our old ward because our new ward wasn't doing anything. Our new ward has only done one activity since we moved in. I also take her so that we can see old friends again. They recently painted shirts, which took two days to finish. I love the creativity shown on Charlotte's shirt.

It's a holiday shirt (New Year's, Valentine's, Halloween, Christmas). She added dots on the sleeves for fun and I told her those could be fireworks for 4th of July.

Some days I just want to take pictures of my cute kids. I love that Alice likes to wear skirts. She looks so cute in them!

Charlotte was invited to a birthday party already by someone in our new ward. I thought that was so nice of them to include her! It took place at a place called Urban Air Adventure Park in Meridian last Saturday so I went with her and stayed to watch. There are lots of fun things for them to do such as trampolines, rock wall climbing, mini golf, etc.

Running on a trampoline.

Ninja course

Climbing hill - climb up and slide down.

Rock wall climbing.

Getting ready to do the sky ride (I don't actually know what it was called). She would start high on one end and basically go down a zipline but it wasn't always a straight line. It would curve around and then come back to where you started.

Doing the ropes course. She had so much fun at this place that she wants her birthday here. Well, we'll be in Washington by then but maybe they'll have something similar. We'll see.

After getting back with Charlotte from her party, Garrett really wanted to go thrift store shopping to look for things for his costume. He's going to be Link from the Legend of Zelda video game. So I took  him and the two girls. We looked at D.I. first and found him a belt. I also picked up some new Sunday clothes for Jack because he had outgrown his. He's growing so fast! Anyway, then we went to Savers. I found another pair of pants for Jack there but that was all. Then we decided to check out the Halloween store since it wasn't far. The kids had fun looking at everything. They have a lot of scary things there but it didn't phase my girls (thank goodness). We didn't buy anything there but Alice wanted a picture in front of this display. On the inside it had vibrating floors.

My first Relief Society lesson was on Sunday. Over the past couple of weeks I spent a lot of time listening to the talk it was about, which was President Nelson's "The Power of Spiritual Momentum" and I said lots of prayers. I also went to the temple with my dad, Laverne (mom) and Grandma last Wednesday. I wanted to increase my spirituality so that I could follow the spirit when teaching the lesson. I listened to the talk and other talks on Thursday while I worked on apples. But I decided on Friday I better spend time preparing the lesson because I didn't really have anything written down yet at that point. I stressed over the lesson ALL day Friday. I tried to break it up with a nap in the morning and a walk later but my mind kept spinning in all different directions thinking of different ways I could do this but then I also worried about leading a discussion and whether my questions would be good enough for adults.  I went to bed that night not feeling good at all about my lesson. I spent all day thinking about it and didn't make much progress. I wasn't able to work on it again until Saturday evening and again Sunday morning but finally I was getting things written down. I ended up with over 3 pages of notes for my lesson. I was shaking when I first got up there but after awhile I got more comfortable with teaching. The ladies in our ward are good with talking and we had lots of participation. So much that I only got through half of my lesson, but that's okay! I feel it was a great success. I ended the lesson with a song "Peace in Christ" and it really helped people to feel the spirit. My mother in law told me she felt it and that she loved that I played the song at the end. I have received many compliments on my lesson saying that I did a great job. Lets hope that next month it will be a little easier to prepare.

I was so relieved after church I just wanted to relax. That evening we did go on a walk on the greenbelt near our house to show the kids the tree swings we found a few weeks ago. They loved it!

Ever since then Charlotte keeps wanting to go back to the swings. I signed our family up to do the Harvest Classic Fun Run on Saturday and so we have been going on several walks this week to prepare (at least with the girls). There was an option to do 1 mile walk/run, 2 mile walk/run or 5 mile run. We are signed up for the 2 mile walk race. Charlotte wants to go back to the swings every time we walk now but we decided to walk different parts of the path instead. We'll let her go on the swings again, just didn't want to do it every time. I'm looking forward to the race on Saturday. It's the first time we've ever done it and we all get a t-shirt and prizes for participating. 

Here are some pictures from our walk we went on last night. We found a couple of goats. It's things like the swings and animals that make the walks much more enjoyable for the girls.

This guy was cute!

Of course now Charlotte wants a goat.

There's the long straight path we walked. Now heading back that way. This is the south end of Stoddard Pathway.

And I just want to post one more cute picture of Alice. I had braided both the girls' hair the day before. Charlotte wanted to keep her braids in a 2nd day. It looked a little frizzy but not too bad. Alice's hair was coming out more so I told her I needed to do her hair. I didn't have time for braids again so I put them up in pig tails and she loved them! And she was amazed at how fast I did it.

One last thing to end this post. This morning I was able to go to the Meridian Temple again with Dad, Mom (Laverne) and Grandma and my great aunt Joyce. We did two sessions back to back. That's the first time I've ever done more than one session in a day. We had to hurry after getting done with the 1st session though to make it in time for the next session. It was so good to see the temple sessions filled. Last week the one session we did was very small. I'm so glad I was able to go again today. The temple is peaceful and it feels good to do ordinance work for our ancestors. I made a goal that after school started I wanted to try going to the temple once a week now that all kids are in school all day long. It helps that I don't need to drive any kids to school anymore. They all ride the bus or walk. My in laws work in the Boise temple on Wednesdays so I'm thinking of switching off going to do one every other week.

Joyce, me and Grandma