Last Week of School

I thought this week would never come! Finally the kids have finished with school and having to do distance learning from home. I'm really hoping they go back to school in August. I think all of us like it better that way.

Earlier this week Nikki created her first resume and took in an application to hopefully work along side her cousin Ellie at Subway this summer. Ellie had told her to bring in the application herself and to do it when she and the hiring manager were there. So that's what she did. I drove her over there Tuesday morning and waited in the parking lot while she took it in. She felt it went really well because not only did she get to meet the hiring manager but she had an interview right then and there. Nikki said she felt it went a lot better than her first interview that she had with Sonic a couple weeks ago. She still hasn't heard anything from Sonic or Subway unfortunately and she has submitted applications online to several other places. No luck with anything so far. She really wants a job this summer so she can start saving money for a trip she and her best friend Angie are planning for after graduation in 2 years.

Jack had submitted a video of himself playing the song from Tetris for a school talent show. We found out last week that he was selected to be in the final talent show video. The music teacher, Miss Keller, said she had a lot of editing to do on it to cut clips from everyone's talent videos who made it so Jack has been anxiously waiting to see the final video. We still haven't received the link for the video. Hopefully it will be done by Tuesday since tomorrow is Memorial Day.

Garrett was also anxious this week to find out if he had made it into jazz band for next school year. He had to submit a video audition by the 14th. His band teacher said he would let students know early this week. Well, by Wednesday he was feeling really anxious. And finally on Friday he emailed his band teacher to find out about it. His teacher emailed him back and said "You made it". He was SO excited to get that news and emailed his teacher back and said he was excited and see you in jazz band next year! I told him I expect a lot more practicing out of him this next year. We slacked of this past year because the grading changed in his school to where they were no longer grading his practice time. They just took weekly playing test and see how well they are doing. Either way, he's excited!

This is the drum set Garrett got for Christmas this year. Apparently it's missing another type of cymbal, the ride cymbals. He now thinks we have to get them since he made it to jazz band.

We had a lot of rain this week and my flowers that I had received as Mother's day gifts were loving it.

I really love these flowers and the color combination. I planted these in the spot where our yellow flowered bush died out in front of our porch. Can't wait to see what they'll look like this summer.

This year we received a flower for Mother's day from our ward. It was delivered to our front door. Normally we get chocolate, which I love, but I was actually pretty happy to get a flower this year. I planted this in our little planter box we built on the side of our shed. We haven't really been planting anything there the past several years. The only thing that grows in them are the chives we planted years ago that come back every year on their own. Now that we have a nice patio to go sit on over there we want to create some nicer looking scenery.

On Thursday I saw a post on our ward facebook post that Brother and Sister Lakey were giving away a large table. Our current table is only meant to sit 6 people but we squeeze all 7 of us on it. We have been wanting a bigger table but just weren't ready to make a purchase yet. So when I saw that this table can sit up to 12 people and came with 8 chairs, I jumped on it. This table is definitely bigger than our old one. It's almost a little too big as it is not only longer than our old table but also wider. I was not liking it at first because it's so big and because it is an old table but I think I'm getting used to it. Nikki and Jack are the only kids who say they don't like it. It's hard to complain since it was free though.

Sister Lakey had started to paint the chairs but never finished because Brother Lakey said he liked the natural look better. It would have been nice if they had finished painting the chairs though since they painted half of them already. Oh well.  

Since we finished the patio project we moved on to our next project, a playhouse/play set. We started this the beginning of this month and we're only about half done but it's looking really good. It reminds me of the playhouse my dad built when I was a kid.

The placement of the main posts. Curtis and my dad dug holes and cemented the post in place with concrete.

Starting the floor frame.

Placing brackets for the beams.

Garrett loves helping.

Any chance Garrett gets to use a hammer he's all over it.

Laying the flooring on. We used a special kind of decking that is weather proof and looks nice.

We made it tall on purpose because there's an irrigation thing behind it in the corner that the city guys have to be able to get to every year. So we'll be leaving it open underneath as well.

We got all of the kids up there and then they decided to bring our cat Sage up there too.

She liked it for a little while but then was ready to come down.

This is our concrete pad for the base of the ladder. The night we did it and left it to dry, one of the cats left their mark, or should I say footsteps. Kind of cute I think but they are so light I know they won't last long before they rub off. We're pretty sure it was Stardust.

Yay, the ladder is finished!

The view I have when sitting  up on the edge of the floor of the playhouse. 

Friday night Curtis, the boys and I went to Home Depot and picked up our siding, stain, and other materials. So while Curtis and my dad were working on the wall frames we were busy painting stain on all 9 of the siding boards we bought.

Building the back wall frame, which includes a window.

This is what it looks like now after working on it all day yesterday. I'm so thankful to my dad and husband for working so hard to build this for the kids. 

The girls are loving it but all of the kids are excited. The boys were talking up there saying how they can have a clubhouse up there. We're planning on getting a couple of hammocks to hang up underneath and Nikki's excited for that. I'm not going to lie, I will be excited to use them too. Then we'll have a slide on the right side of the balcony. I can't order one right now due to the COVID 19 restrictions so not sure how long before we get to add it. We'll also have a post coming out the middle for a swing set. It's turning into a much bigger and more expensive project than we originally thought but I think it will be worth it. They will have so much more fun on this than they did the trampoline. We gave away the trampoline last Fall to our niece Aubrey because our kids were hardly ever using it. That's when we got the idea to build a playhouse instead.

Today was a nice day. We did our usual Sunday services at home in our front room with Curtis blessing the Sacrament and our son Garrett passing it to everyone. We have been using medicine cups to serve as our sacrament water cups. Who knew we'd be using them for things other than medicine. After our short meeting we quietly did other things while Curtis put our pork in the Instant Pot so that we could enjoy some delicious pulled pork sandwiches for our dinner later. Right after dinner Curtis and I decided to go on a walk but we wanted to drive to a path to walk on. It happened to be over by where his parents live so after our walk we stopped in to talk and play a game. I also got to see the door for the play house that Curtis's dad is making for us. It's a split door where the top and bottom can open separately. It looks really nice.

Nikki had her bird, Neptune, out of the cage and put him on my shoulder. He started to nibble on my hair and my cheek so I took some selfies with him. It was cute.

Curtis and I drove to a path neither of us had been because we wanted some new scenery on our walk today. We saw parts of town we had never seen before. We have both lived here our whole lives and this was an older part of town. It's called Stoddard pathway and a big portion of it used to be railroad and was now a gravel walking path. The first part of the path was the prettiest with an asphalt path and long tall grass and trees. We walked from Greenhurst Rd clear over to 2nd street and back.

I look forward to going on walks together without the kids where we can talk and keep walking without stopping multiple times. It doesn't happen as often as I would like so I enjoy while I can.  The weather was nice too. It started off with a nice breeze but on the way back the breeze died down and we started to get hot and very thirsty. It turned out to be about a 3.5 mile walk.

This was a really beautiful spot.

We watched a Book of Mormon video and had a small discussion for our Come Follow Me lesson this evening. It's hard to do too much when you have kids who have short attention spans. Today we watched the video about Alma the younger and his conversion. Now we're going outside to enjoy another little camp fire on our new patio.

Owyhee Virtual Adventure Camp

Normally the 5th graders at our elementary school get the opportunity to go to McCall, Idaho to Camp Ida-Haven for 3 days on an outdoor science field trip and this year it was supposed to be Jack's turn. Well this year everything has been cancelled due to COVID-19 so the teachers had to come up with an alternative. For the first and probably only time they had Owyhee Virtual Adventure Camp instead. The teachers put kits together that we picked up at the school, each class coming on a different day and at a specific time. We just had to drive up and the teacher brought the materials out wearing a mask and gloves. Anyway, the camp started on last Wednesday the 13th and went until Friday. There were lots of activities for them to do each day, some as a family. Although, Jack did most things on his own or with the help of his older brother Garrett because I was usually busy helping Charlotte with her school work.

Jack originally had set up a small tent in the backyard and was going to do his virtual camp out there but it pretty much rained the whole 3 days so that ruined his plans. Instead he created his own little corner that was his cabin/bunkbed since that's what he would have been sleeping in if he were in McCall. He pulled up the cushions around the foos ball table to make it dark in there.

Each 5th grader was surprised with their own camp t-shirt.

This is a science book that came in the kit the teachers provided. He also hung his little camping light up that he received as a birthday gift this year.

Great alternative when you can't have a fire outside due to the rain. Yes, they provided chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers to be able to have a s'more. Jack ate his chocolate separately since he preferred his s'more to be just marshmallow and crackers.

Jack and Garrett made this paracord bracelet together watching a video as one of their camp activities. He then gave it to me, which I love!

So it wasn't the big outdoor adventure that he would have liked to experience but I think he still had fun doing the activities. It will be several years before we have another 5th grader and I'm hoping we'll still be at the same school so that Charlotte will get this opportunity because not many schools in Nampa do this. I remember going to this camp when I was in 5th grade and I loved it!

Ground Raising and Patio Project

For the past two months while we have been ordered to stay at home during the COVID-19 pandemic we have been working on several backyard projects. The first was raising the ground up around the back and sides of our house so the water won't drain towards the house anymore.

We raised the back up with sand and packed it down. Then we filled the rest with dirt dug out from the area our new patio will be going. We had to make sure the dirt was packed down to slope down and away from the house. 

Then we placed bricks on top of the sand to help keep moisture away from the foundation and to make it look nicer.

Filling in the spaces with the sod that we had cut out.

A few weeks later and it was looking much better.

These pics were taken about a month ago but it looks even better today.

Then we immediately began digging out for a new patio. Since we had closed in our previous patio a few years ago and made it into an office the only patio we had left was the little 4' x 6' pad outside our sliding door. It was barely big enough to hold our garbage and recycle bins. The new patio is approximately 18.5' x 11' and we are really enjoying it! We started these two projects on March 21st and finished the last weekend of April, which was Charlotte's birthday weekend (she turned 6).

Cutting out the grass.

Watching daddy break up the small patio pad.

This was actually when the boys were breaking up dirt to get dirt for out first project but we also had to dig up this area for the patio so it was really for both projects.

Both Jack and Garrett had fun using this tool.

Curtis's sister Shauna and her husband John came over to help set forms for pouring concrete.

Before we could do concrete we had to bring in some gravel and pack it down. Renting machines for this project was totally worth it!

We borrowed my grandma's trailer to bring in the gravel. I love how hard the 3 oldest kids worked on this project. It was a blessing in disguise being forced to stay home because of the pandemic. These kids are learning to work!

Packing down the gravel.

Towards the end of packing gravel when we had most of the gravel off the trailer  (we used the rented to trailer to get more gravel after we ran out) the two girls jumped in to help shovel gravel into the wheel barrow. They were so cute!

Last minute we decided to dig out the grass right here by our garage and add more concrete pads for our dumpsters to sit on.

Pouring day was April 24th!

My dad came prepared to get dirty.

It was fun to watch John work and to see how this whole process is done.

Nikki had the honors of leaving our mark in the concrete.

Nikki is definitely our artist. I love it!

Done with concrete, now to wait for it to dry. Thank you John and Shauna!

Concrete was poured on a Friday and so the next day we took off the forms and spent the day rerouting and fixing the sprinkler pipes.

John came over and cut the line into the concrete two days after we poured (it was on Charlotte's birthday).

We love our new patio! It's so much bigger!

We're so glad we added these pads last minute.

Mother's Day 2020

I have to say that I'm regretting having not done a blog post for so long! I have missed documenting on so much! I do feel better knowing that I posted on Facebook during that time but the big difference is that I don't really write out everything we did when I post on Facebook. It's mostly pictures with some captions. Sometimes I explain a little but not as much as I do on blogs. It's also easier to look back at my old posts on here than it is on Facebook. My son Garrett loved looking at some of my first posts from 2008 and reading about things he had forgotten about because he was so little. He was loving it and told me that I needed to keep blogging. I was wanting to get back into blogging anyway because I feel like it is journaling with pictures and now that he said that it gives me the extra desire to keep up with it this time. So here's my first blog post in 4 years:

This year for Mother's day I woke up to the sounds of Curtis and the kids working in the kitchen to make me breakfast. I'm not going to lie, it was nice to be able to sleep in. We have been having church at home for the past 2 months because of COVID-19 and so we slowly wake up each Sunday and have church when we're ready, which is usually around 12 noon. I think it was around 9:30 or 10am when breakfast was finally ready and I was pretty hungry by then. The kids made me a couple of plate size flower shaped pancakes (which I failed to get a picture of) and some scrambled eggs and grape juice. All of it was delicious! They even went to the trouble to put our  nice red table cloth to cover the table and make it look a little fancy.

When breakfast was over I proceeded to go shower and get ready for church. I was mostly ready (just waitiing to for my hair to dry) when I came out to see what everyone was doing. I was pleasantly surprised with all the kids dressed and hair brushed and everything set up for church. On the bar counter was a card, some new flowers for our yard and a decorative calendar made of metal. It is made to flip over each month, day, and day of the week. Once again I failed to get a picture of that yet. Also, on the kitchen table was makings for s'mores, including some Reese's peanut butter cups.

After our church services everyone found quiet spots to relax and read or take a nap. This is unusual for us. Normally the 3 younger kids are running around making lots of noise and we have to continually tell them to quiet down. So this particular Sunday was rather quiet most of the day and it was nice.

The evening was filled with some nice activities: kabobs for dinner made of steak, green peppers, mushrooms, and red onions cooked on the grill outside on our new patio. Then we drove over to the Lake Lowell dam where we parked and walked across the dam and back. Afterwards we played some Uno outside on our picnic table and then we built a fire and ate s'mores. It was a very relaxing and nice Mother's Day.

We were heading back across the dam on our walk by this time and the rest of the family was up ahead of us. Both Alice and Charlotte said they were tired so this is how I solved the problem. Curtis took a picture when we caught up to the rest of the group.

Enjoying our first fire on our new patio and roasting s'mores. It was the first time I tried a s'more with a Reese's peanut butter cup in place of the usual chocolate bar. It was yummy but I think I still prefer the usual.