Snuggles

May 28 was National Hamburger Day. We had spaghetti and meatballs.

Totally unrelated to that, early that morning while I was working on my blog, Jet got up and came to snuggle on my lap with me. Awwww. It's been so long since we've had our morning snuggles. It was so nice.

My Blog is Family History, Funny Family History

I am thankful for my blog where my children can look back at things they've said and done in the past and get a big kick out of them.  

 

I Predicted This

I'm not surprised. 

I felt so good about catching up. I even caught up to the start of September. 

I started a few blog posts to get going with September things. I had 4 posts started about holidays at the beginning of September, Shelftember, "Other September thins", and a post about our garden. But as is the way of things, I started one post like this:

"Woohoo. I made it to the same month I'm in while catching up. You know what that means. I'm going to drop off on my blogging because it always seems to be that way when I've almost caught up. Life is crazy and busy, man. Let's see what happens."

I predicted it. I didn't predict I was going to get super duper sick for a couple days then need recovery time then need time to catch up on taking care of my family and house because you can't get anything done when you're that kind of sick. I'm still working on that part. But I finally cleaned my room today after my youngest decided to get out all the toys he could find and spread them around the room while I was sick. I've been washing bedding all day so I'll have a nice clean bed to sleep on in my nice clean room tonight. I decided I can let myself work on my blog for a bit so here we are.

So here is a picture of the sky again. It's what I do when I explain about why I haven't been blogging. 

 

I Forgot

I'm always telling my children, if I don't write it down I won't remember it. Unfortunately, even when I remember to write things down, sometimes I forget to read what I wrote. Sigh. This happens with my to do list as well as writing down what we celebrated to later blog about.

Here's an example. I wrote this down more than a month ago. Recently I was going through things I had written down to catch up on my blog and completely missed it even though it was right in front of me. I was blogging other things but not this. It's not a big thing but I did intend to blog about it. And here's the fun part about showing my personality while blogging. This whole introduction thing is longer than the whole thing I wanted to share.

 

Tell a Joke Day was August 16. 

On that day, Jeremy said this: Wow. That 30 seconds went really quick. It didn't feel more than half a minute.

 

There. I got it out of my system. And to leave you with another something, as Jeremy was getting ready for yet another trip, Jet wrapped himself in Jeremy's suitcase and insisted he was going. I told him he had to stay home because he had school. His response?

Jet: I'm going on a trip. Daddy's going to school. 

Dancing and Graduating

On May 20, Eliza Doolittle Day, besides eating chocolate, Lucky had his end of the year dance festival.

Great job, Lucky. Can you guess what song his grade danced to?

 

That evening, we went to Jr.'s seminary graduation. 

Great job, Jr. 

During the graduation, they showed pictures of the seniors as babies and as they are now. These are the pictures of Jr. We got the little boy picture of him from this blog from 16 years ago (August 27, 2009). He's still a cutie.

Later that night, since it was also Pick Strawberries Day, some of us ate strawberries. Some people in our family love strawberries, some hate strawberries. I am one who loves strawberries.

Catch Up is Annoying

I don't actually have a lot of time to sit down and blog. Just today, I said I want to take time to work on my blog. We went to a later ward because one of Jr.'s friends was giving a talk before going on his mission.

When we got home...

Oh, my goodness. I can't even write this explanation because one child is going crazy while others are trying to get themselves something to eat before bed. It is not quiet and peaceful like it could be at this time of night. Sigh.

Anyway, long story short (too late), I didn't have time for catching up on my blog today for various reasons- computer not being available, being told by my youngest that I couldn't leave my room (with no computer in my room), kids "making me" play Monkey Island as a family activity, etc.

So here... here is a picture of one of my reasons for not being able to blog. It's a great reason. 

I absolutely love my family. I love my children. I would also like to blog and get caught up. I love celebrating with my family and I would like to keep a record of it for family history.

But this is life. This is what happens. And sometimes I have to say, "Oh well."

And smile when I hear adorable giggling like right now. 

Screen Free Week

I'm so proud of myself. Screen Free Week was May 5-11 this year. I prepared early and had blog posts scheduled for while I wasn't on. Yay. 

Of course, there was a lot of screen time because everything with school is screens nowadays, assignments, emails (including me having to check emails), texts, etc. Sigh.

Back in my day (insert old person speak), we didn't send all our homework assignments over the internet. We didn't even have the internet when I was in elementary school and middle school. Why, I remember having to pull the encyclopedias off my dad's bookshelf to look up information for my report on cats. That's right. I did a report about cats- domestic cats. You know the reason cats always land on their feet? Well, I do. I had it in my report, my handwritten report that I turned into my teacher in class. These kids nowadays... they write a report and the teacher can instantly see it. All this newfangled technology. It's everywhere.

O.K. That's enough of that. This newfangled technology is actually very handy with family history. I was able to have blog posts scheduled and get caught up even when I wasn't on the computer myself. Nice.

 

So... about Screen Free Week.

 

Monday, May 5, was Cinco de Mayo. We had pork salad bowls (kind of like at Cafe Rio). Yummmmmm. I made tortilla bowls to put them in, had rice, beans, lettuce, pork, cilantro lime dressing, and whatever else. We didn't all have the same in our bowls. 

That day was also a rainy day (we've had several rainy days in the last couple weeks) so the snails were out. I actually found one crawling down the van door. That means it had to somehow get up for it to be crawling down. I moved it off before driving as I didn't know what would happen to it otherwise.

I went for a brief walk at the lake. Definitely stormy with all the choppy water. 

After dinner, we had Family Home Evening. Our activity since it was Screen Free Week was going to the Orem Library and picking out a book each (and some of the kids picked out a board game as well). 

Libby the Librantula was out so I said, "Hi," to her while we were there.

 

Apparently nothing of significance happened on Tuesday, May 6. The lake was still choppy. 

Wednesday, May 7, was a busy day. Both Lucky and Jr. had performances that day. 

Lucky joined a whole bunch of 5th graders to do "Hope of America." See him in this picture? Right there. Right there in the red shirt. 

Actually Jeremy could point out which one he was because they were there early enough he could see him before all the seats got filled and memorized which row and how far in he was. The students made an American flag.

And here they are all shining. 

 

Jr. had his last orchestra concert that same night. I went to watch him in that.

He also got a couple awards. One for being "Most Consistent Cellist" and a paper plate award for being "the beautiful newsboy" since he played in the pit orchestra for both Beauty and the Beast (twice) and Newsies.

 

Ha Ha Ha. Now that Screen Free Week is over, I haven't had as much time on the computer for blogging. This is all I'm able to blog about for now. I'll talk about the rest of Screen Free Week later.

 

Jet: Can I write for a little bit?

This is his typing (abbreviated by me).

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Other Narch thins

Sometimes on my phone I will make a note of blogworthy things or just ways we celebrated. Besides the holidays, I wanted to talk about some of the other things we did in March so I wrote on my note quickly "Other March Things" except that it came out "Other Narch thins." It doesn't matter if I have typos on temporary notes so I left it but then as I was about to start this post, I thought it was funny so now I'm permanently putting it on my blog. Tee Hee.

So... other Narch thins:

I did RootsTech online again to get some ideas about family history. Someday I'll actually put into practice things I learn.

This is me joining in with the "selfie" in one of the presentations.

Tee Hee.

Lucky did outside service for a school thing.

I try to menu plan in advance and sometimes there are last minute changes based on schedules or how tired/motivated I am to make dinner, etc. etc. Sometimes, however, there are last minute changes because I see a recipe that I just want to do so I set aside what is on the plan to do what I want.

In this case Our Best Bites posted about Cheeseburger Salad Bowls on Instagram and I wanted them and they were a lot quicker than what I was going to make and I do not regret it. I had the ingredients so it was easy to toss together. I will definitely make them again.

Jeremy got some things shipped in a couple of BIG cardboard boxes which Jet loved. He and Lucky had some fun playing ("Pop Goes the Weasel" Jack in the Box- you know the one) and it was a good "nest" for watching movies. Jet even fell asleep one night in a box. 

My niece had a birthday in March and Jet insisted that we make a cake to celebrate. We put one candle on and whoever wanted to got to blow it out. Then we sent the video of us singing, "Happy Birthday," to my niece. She got a kick out of it.

Jr. and I went to an event at UVU and got a picture with Willy the Wolverine. Man, I'm short.

 

Some of our kids were having trouble with school work so Jeremy set up an area complete with snacks to create a comfortable environment for them to work in.

 

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Jet wante6d to help 5with 2/t8hi7s2/ 92 blog post.

 

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Catching Up on July Holidays

OK. Here we go. Sigh.

July 25 was National Chili Dog Day and National Refreshment Day. We had chili dogs (with homemade chili) and refreshments. Done. Blogged.

July 26 was Talk in an Elevator Day. A few of us got a picture of us talking in an elevator the day before. So we celebrated it observed. Done. Blogged.

 

July 27 was National Sleepyhead Day (in Finland). I totally missed it this year even though I was thinking about it just the day before. Sigh. Told you we were busy. Check out how we've celebrated that one in the past, though (starting with last year's celebration while we were in Washington). Done. Blogged.

July 28 was Milk Chocolate Day. We had chocolate milk. Done. Blogged.

July 29 was National Lasagna Day. We had lasagna. And I learned how to do "baked" mashed potatoes in the Instant Pot from A Season of Family Meal Plans, volume 3. Done. Blogged.

July 30 there were a lot of holidays I didn't celebrate but I should have. Paperback Book Day. International Day of Friendship. Father-in-Law Day. National Cheesecake Day. Sigh. I must not have been feeling well that day because someone made me breakfast and Jr. helped make dinner that night. 

He decided to gather all the ingredients needed for the dish in a bowl before making it. Heh Heh. Done. Blogged.

July 31 was National Avocado Day. We had avocados in our salad (yet another recipe from A Season of Family Meal Plans, volume 3, by Jordan Page) as well as cucumbers. 

Jr. took the bowl of cucumbers I had just cut up and made this comment:

"Man, this cereal's the best."

He doesn't particularly care for cucumbers so we talked about other ways to use cucumbers besides eating them like cereal (though I love eating cucumbers). Done. Blogged.

And just like that, I'm caught up on the rest of July holidays. Go me.

Done. Blogged.

Birthday Goals

We reached the last day of school. I remembered to get last day of school pictures of the boys.

Last month I got a picture of Nichole while she was taking her last final. So I got her last day of picture, too.

When I told Jeremy that I got last day of school pictures of the boys, he sent me a "last few minutes of break" picture so I could add that to the collection. I love my husband.

I also celebrated my birthday.

When Jeremy asked me how birding had gone, he asked me if I'd spotted anything rare. I told him, "Nothing rare. Juvenile robins and starlings." It gave him the impression that those were the only things I'd seen. I had to quickly mention that I had seen a lot of other birds but those were the ones I don't see as often. I did see Western Tanagers for the first time this year. It was relaxing going birding that day.