Evan's Birthday

Evan had his 5th birthday last week. We celebrated by going to Sky Zone, the trampoline place. He celebrated his 4th birthday there, too, but wanted to go again because it's just so much fun.

Birthday cake on Tuesday night with just the family:

After jumping on Friday with cousins and a best buddy:

My silly 5 year old!

I celebrated a little in my own way. Yesterday I took the baby locks off of the cupboard under the kitchen sink, the one where the garbage can is kept. No more babies when the youngest is 5. I can't bring myself to take out the outlet covers though. Baby steps.

Wipeout Training

Drew and Dean training for a future Wipeout episode at our local indoor pool:



Evan couldn't pass the swimming test needed to qualify. After being pretty sad for a few minutes, he got a coach (Dean) and started training on his own. Little cutie.

Labor Day, NorCal Style

This is my 15th year living in Northern California. I've lived here longer than anywhere. And yet this is the first time we've been swimming in the American River. It's what people do here. Like Southern Californers go to the beach to swim, and Utahns go to the lake, NorCal folks swim in the river.

Of course, being Labor Day, it was a little crowded. But that's ok. It's a big river. We can share.All the kids liked it except Evan. He was pretty nervous about the fish and sharks that he was sure were in the water, no matter how much we tried to convince him otherwise.


Lots of fun! It's something we'll definently do again.

The last First Day of School

First, Evan had his first day of school last week. Then I had my first day of school on Monday. Now today, Wednesday, we had our last first day of school for the year.

Dean is in 5th grade this year and was assigned to the new teacher's class. He came home with a great first impression of her, so we can breathe easy.
Drew is now in 7th grade. Actually, I get a little sick if I think about it too long. I mean, he was just in kindergarten yesterday...wasn't he?...
And Edie is in 2nd grade. We know from experience she got an excellent teacher. She whispered in my ear as she came out of the classroom today, "It was awesome!"

Back to School? Already??

Summer went by much too fast. I am not ready for the structure of the school year yet, I much prefer the lazy summer days. But this summer wasn't all that lazy. It seems like we were home only long enough to do laundry and pack for the next trip. We went to San Bernardino twice and then there were those trips to Austrailia and Brazil...

But like it or not, school is here. Evan started last Tuesday. He's in a pre-k program in the next school district over, hence the different start date. Pretty cute, no?
He is having a great time there. He already brought home a project for us to try: Monster Toast. He instructed us and they turned out pretty good I think:It's basically painting on slices of bread with colored milk. The colors brighten when you toast it. We had to paint monsters, or face Evan's wrath, but you can do what you want. I won't tell on you.

Everyone else starts school this week. Even me! I'm taking 3 classes this semester at the local JC. Just trying to get some prereqs done to apply to nursing school at some point in the near future. It's amazing all the free time you end up with when the baby's in school!

I hope I remember to come back this week with pictures of Drew's first day of 7th grade (??!!?!?!) Dean's first day of 5th grade and Edie's first day of 2nd grade.

Pinterest

I am really enjoying Pinterest, a new-to-me website. It's a place where you can pin images from the web that you like, or that you want to remember. And you have friends and you can see what they pin too. (Just FYI, if you join and Nathan Fields is your friend: He likes poop)

I was on Pinterest a few days ago and found something I thought Evan would like. You know Evan, right? My video game loving boy who only ever eats 2 bites in one sitting? Yeah, that one.

If you saw my pin, you know the original was cuter. But Evan sure likes this one!
And yes, he ate all of it!

Psych

At least one of my children was very impressed by my amazing detective skillz today. I kinda felt like Shawn Spencer.


Who took a bite out of Dean's leftover birthday cake?



OK, OK, I guess it doesn't take a psychic detective to figure that one out.

Everybody Loves Marcia

My mom is recovering in the hospital right now. My mom, the healthiest woman I know. She excersises regularly, eats salad for lunch and has only stayed in the hospital to have her 8 babies.

On Sunday evening she was driving to the church taking food to a Young Women's dinner. Something happened to cause her heart to completely stop. We don't know what happened yet, the only thing they can tell us is that it wasn't a heart attack. She went unconscience and crashed the car. Immediately police and firefighters and EMT were there and got her heart going again and rushed her to the ER. The doctors decided on a hypothermic therapy, something that would greatly increase her chances of recovery. They made her really cold (33C!) and kept her that way for 24 hours. We had to wait and wait to see what happened when she woke up. Yesterday afternoon, after she was warm again, they turned off the sedative. She woke up quickly and was responding to us right away. What a relief! She was happy to get the breathing tube out and we were happy she was still with us!

It's been a rough couple of days, and we still have a ways to go to figure out what happened in the first place, but I have learned some things. First, everyone loves my mom. And I mean everyone. It's been so cool to get messages from so many people wishing her a speedy recovery. So many people. It's pretty cool.

Second, I've learned that hundreds of people praying for the same thing makes a difference. Mom's friends of all different religions, and some who claim no religion, have been praying or meditating or sending us positive energy and thinking about us. And we have felt it. I haven't really experienced that before. It's really cool.

Third, it's possible to feel peace in terrible circumstances. Ask me about that one sometime. That's been the most awesome thing of all.

Snaggle-tooth

Edie lost another tooth today, #6 if you're counting. Four on the bottom, now two on top. But, look which two!
She looks like a jack-o-lantern!

We had to take a quick picture before that lonely tooth in the middle fell out. It's loose too. And then I don't know what she's going to eat!

Bunny Buns

Dean came across this recipe in the Friend magazine and really wanted to make them for General Conference this morning. We had all the ingredients on hand (when does that ever happen??) so we tried them.
I absolutely love the fact that my kids can actually help in the kitchen now. Instead of the toddler "help" I had for so many years!
All the bunnies were rolled out by the kids, even Evan did the balls. Here they are with the scraps that are just as much fun.
Edie and Dean put the faces on the bunnies.
YUM! I can see this becoming an Easter tradition similar to our Christmas sweet rolls.

April Fools!

Spring is here! Hooray! After a long, looooonnnnnggg rainy season, the sun is back. I'm so glad, I even felt like celebrating April Fools Day. I saw these sneaky cupcakes on OurBestBites.com and decided to trick the kids. I even made real mashed potatoes and peas and carrots so the kids would be really confused when I put the fakeys on the table. And it worked! So fun!


But Dean got me good. It all started when I went to pick them up from school. Edie jumped into the car first and announced, "Dean got a citation!" all happy. I thought it pretty sad (but realistic) that she was excited to see her brother get in trouble. I was stunned of course. Dean is the least of my worries when it comes to school behavior. Dean came a minute later and didn't say anything about it, so I asked him. He said that yes, he had been given a citation today. And then fished this out of his backpack:

Authentic, his teacher really did write it. It sure fooled me!

New van

Finally! After about a year of thinking it was time for a new mini van, we bought one. Not exactly new, but new-to-us, and that's just fine. It has 2 slider doors, one of them automatic! It has a remote lock! This is quite the feature if you know what was involved in opening our only slider of our last van for the last half-a-year.

It is a lovely gray/blue color. It has way more space in the back behind the seats for cargo. And speaking of the back seats, they fold down and disappear, no more struggling to lift them out!

It has 15 cup holders! I'm not sure why, but who cares!

But my most favorite feature is that extra seat in the back. A total of 8 seat belts! You wouldn't think that would make such a big difference, but oh, it does. I love my new car!

(I wonder how many exclamation points is too many?)

Wrestling

Drew just finished the wrestling season. Wow. That's all I can say. How boys can think that arm-twisting, head-smashing, neck-pulling sport is fun is something I'll never understand. But Drew loved it. Over the last three months he learned a lot, got much stronger and leaner, but didn't ever win a match. He's ok with it, I think. He understands that most of the other guys had years more experience and that everyone has to have a first year. He's already looking forward to next year. Of course, it helped that his team won the league championships this week!

All we got was a cell phone photo. :(

No school today

The kids didn't have school on this President's Day Monday, and Dean has a 4th grade California missions project due soon, so we took a trip to Sonoma today. Dean decided (with much persuasion on my part) to do a photo essay of a mission, instead of the traditional build-a-model. Or rather, the traditional watch-your-parents-build-a-model. I think it's way more educational to actually go and see it. And then I don't have to build a California mission. Win-Win.

We went with Dean's buddy and his family. We got there around lunch time so our first item of business was a tailgate party picnic.
We found the mission San Fransisco Solano and the boys had lots of fun taking pictures of everything. And I mean everything. That's going to be one detailed photo essay.
The other kids had fun too. Drew, being the oldest and a little bit of a show off, tried to pick one of the prickly pears from the ancient cacti growing on the grounds. He had to then hold still while our friend removed the cactus spines from his hand. All this after we had discussed why playing with the cactus was a bad idea. I suppose some things you have to experience to learn. :)
Lots of fun!

New Calling

I'm back in Cub Scouts! :D
Bring on the knot tying and the bottle rockets and the learning to be a good citizen! I'm ready.

The Holidays, in a Nutshell

Has it really been 2 months since my last post?? It is amazing to me how fast time is going lately. I can't blink without a week passing, it seems.

I'll try to remember what happened...

I guess the first 2 weeks of November were uneventful because I don't recall anything. Pie left for China mid-month and stayed until the day before Thanksgiving. It was a field trip of sorts to finish up his MBA program. Better pictures of his trip are on his Facebook account, for some reason I only have this one of him at the Olympic Bird's Nest.

Parent-teacher conferences meant a week of mini-days (not my favorite). We ditched school that last day to get a head start on our vacation! We drove to Utah on Friday for a huge Johnson family Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. Grandma Nielson wanted to get the whole family together and spent lots and lots of time in the kitchen getting ready. The dinner had to be held at the church because we wouldn't fit anywhere else. Grandma J was there and even though she was moving kind of slow, she was very alert and talked with everyone. (Pie had the camera in China during this time, so anyone who has pictures, please send me some!) We drove to SoCal from Utah for Thanksgiving Thursday at Karin and Bryan’s and again on Friday at Stewart's. Three Thanksgiving dinners this year- I think that’s a record!

We made it home in time for school to start again and in time for Evan’s 4th birthday. This year he invited cousins and friends to Sky Zone, a wall-to-wall trampoline place. Very fun!


And then December started. Christmas is a busy time of course, and although I was pretty tired at the end of every day, it wasn't much to take pictures of! We did get to go to Drew's first Boy Scout Court of Honor. He received the Fingerprinting and Music merit badges. Way to go, Drew!

Christmas Eve we had our traditional fiesta with our Fardanesh cousins. Tamales, etc for dinner and opening the presents from each other. Always very fun.



Christmas morning we woke up early to see what Santa brought, opened the rest of the presents and then jumped in the car! Off to Grandma and Grandpa Stewart's house in San Bernardino. Katie and Ryan blessed little Odin the next day in good old 2nd ward. We also found out that Grandma J passed away that day, Dec 26th. So glad we made it to Utah at Thanksgiving to see her one last time! Instead of driving home as planned, we drove to Utah again for her funeral. It was very, very cold there that week, and us unprepared in our California clothes! Cousins came to our rescue by lending us plenty of snow gear. Good thing, too, because I’m sure I couldn’t have kept the kids from playing outside in the snow even if they were in shorts and flip flops!



Grandma J’s funeral was very nice, lots of good music and good memories. And a large lunch party at the end. We will all miss her.

So now we are home again. School and work and wrestling and scouts and callings and everything else will keep us busy until the next time we can get together with our extended family!