and it begins...again.

Finally it is here...THE.FIRST.DAY.OF. SCHOOL!!!

The wardlings have been less than pleasant to each other for the past few days..weeks...whatever. I was so happy for them to return to a school routine.  Everyone was happy too, except for Jacob.  He had a nervous, anxious morning. It took several tries with the camera to even get him to smile.  He had that long face even when I took him into his classroom this morning.  Josh was like,"you're embarrassing me!!"  Penny cried because she didn't get to stay @ school this morning. Pre-K starts next week for her, but that can't come soon enough. Here's to a new school year!!

erin's FHE

Erin volunteered to have FHE last week. She did a beautiful job teaching!  After her lesson the little wardlings put on a play about Nephi killing Laban to get the brass plates. It was hilarious...

I think the pictures speak for themselves.

first talk

Libby turned 12 last month and was promptly assigned to speak in church. The first time she was asked, she was in Myrtle Beach...whew! The following Saturday we were at a farewell for some friends that are moving to...CHINA...when a member of our Bishopric asked me about Libby speaking...the next day.  Good thing she is such a good sport.  She did great too! We are very proud of you Libby!

football camp

Clyde agreed to help coach football this year.  As a coach, we had to attend his school's football camp. Why they have camp in 100* weather is far beyond me.

I think Clyde was demontrating a play.

The girls helped with a few days of camp, once they returned from spending 2 weeks in Myrtle Beach with Grammy and Papa.  I think this was the first time they had worked in those two weeks. :)

i hate popcorn!

So, one day this summer, I got a crazy notion to scrape the popcorn off the ceilings downstairs.  We have been wanting to scrape them since we moved in. What a terribly messy job! I suckered Clyde into helping out as well.

Some of the popcorn fell off in sheets, while other sections took some coaxing, and other sections took hard scraping, water soaking, and a ton of swearing to come off.

While everything was covered, we still didn't plan very well in the popcorn messes.  We learned our lesson for day 2 of scraping.

The boys wanted to help out and we had them help with a few of the sections that we knew would come off easy.

Better planning and about 6 tarps did the trick for the next day of popcorn removal.  I was barefoot the first day and I learned to wear something over my feet for day 2.

Clyde could see that I was getting flustered and grabbed lunch and made me go to the park. I wasn't happy to leave an unfinished project for an hour or so, but he was right, I needed to get outside. Thanks dear!

Semi-smooth and primed ceilings.  That section right above our kitchen peninsula will take some figuring out to mend.  That section was close to 2-3 inches think. No matter how hard we scraped, it still refused to come down. I'm gonna try to sand it and then putty it to get it smooth...if all else fails we'll add a decorative beam.

penny sassiness

I didn't blog about our ward pool party.  The pool party is such an awkward activity to attend.  Usually all us Mormons are extremely covered up and to see people in their next to nothingness is odd.  The lifeguard left her spot for a minute and Penny was more than happy to fill her seat.  She sat there 'lifeguarding' for  about 10 minutes.  She would blow her pretend whistle (aka her hand) at everyone who swam by. Silly.

This summer Miss Penny has has a major growth spurt.  The majority of her clothes fit...but not her shoes.  She has grown 2 whole sizes! She inheredited my love of shoes, so telling her that she needed new shoes was a fun filled moment! She was more than willing to pass along the shoes that no longer fit, to get new ones.  Clyde took her to buy a new pair of Sunday shoes and she pranced and posed for the camera.  What a sassy pants she is.

cleaning makes messes

For the past week, Clyde and I have been in cleaning mode...not that our house looks clean by any means.  Cleaning stuff out really makes messes. We have been after our wardlings for some time now to clean their rooms.  It didn't happen until this week.  We have spent alot of time sorting, washing, folding, yelling, & crying to get rooms the way they should look.  It felt so incredibly good to pass along 5 bags of clothing/ shoes today.  I felt the weight of our house lift, which felt wonderful. However, it has already begun...the crapping up again.  Last night as we checked on our sleeping wardlings, I spotted them...the swim cover-up and 2 shirts on the floor in the wardlettes' room.  I nearly drug the sleeping princess, to whom they belong...down from the top bunk no less,  to pick up the items. Then I thought that pulling a sleeping pre-teen out of her bed would be taking it to the next level, when I could just simply pick it up.  I did pick the items up, but I put them on her bed and not away for her. Why is it so hard to put things away right the first time? I remember my Mom saying to me that it takes less time to put things away right the first time.  I have learned that lesson, now teaching it to the wardlings is another lesson that I have yet to acquire...patience.

i'm itchy

In sacrament meeting on Sunday, Penny made note of a very pregnant lady taking her daughter out of the chapel.  She just kept telling me that the lady had a baby in her tummy.  After sacrament meeting, as Penny and I were walking into Primary, we saw the same pregnant gal and Penny looked up at me with her chocolate brown eyes and said, "Mom, my tummy is itchy for a baby."  Sweetheart, that'll be an itch that you can't scratch for a L-O-N-G time.

jane austen's fight club

Clyde showed me this youtube video and I thought it was adorable. One of the girls is the daughter of a prominent member of our church ward.

a baby blessing in the mountains

This past weekend, we traveled to the mountains, to participate in the blessing of baby Zayda. Our boys were visiting at Bubbie and PopPop's house and thus didn't go with us. Thanks Mom and Dad!!  When we learned of the new baby, my request was to gift the baby's blessing outfit. After some careful thought and a trial run, below is what I came up with.  The dress turned out so cute.  I even crocheted a big flower...of my own design no less... for her headband.  Zayda made the dress beautiful.

The Ward/Sholar family after sacrament meeting

Of course there were some who didn't want to share time with the baby...lookie but no touchy!

Just some pretty girls after church.  Papa and Grammy were in grandbaby heaven.

The below pictures were taken @ our hotel the night before the blessing.  Once we arrived and got settled, we swam in the pool.  Papa and Grammy opted not to get wet, but Erin and Libby had different plans.

Clyde loves to make the Wardlings fly...

fun times!

slim jim catastrophe

It is never a dull moment at the brown house.  Bubbie came for a visit last week.  While I was showing her the beginnings of knitting a sweater, we heard Jacob calling for Erin from the kitchen.  Erin walks in and begins to yell, "Jacob's bleeding!"  Knitting needles hit the couch as Bubbie and I ran to the kitchen, where indeed, Jacob was bleeding.  He had a palm full of blood that was running down his arm and beginning to drip on the floor.  I grabbed him and ran him to the bathroom, where I began to get the blood off of him and to examine the wound. It was a deep gash.  I knew that he would need at least a stitch or two.  Thanks to a member of our ward, that supplied me with a wicked kick rear first aid kit for the trek, I was able to put a blood coagulator on the wound, sealing it.  What happened you ask??  Jacob doesn't have any front teeth and so he thought that since he couldn't open a slim jim, beef jerky stick, with his fingers or teeth, that a pair of nice sharp kitchen shears would be the next best thing.  Needless to say the shears won and we were off to the urgent care.  There, after waiting and waiting, the coagulator stuff had to be washed off, he had to be cleaned and numbed.  The doctor didn't want to traumatize the wee lad and stitch him up.  He simply put some surgical tape on the wound, had a nurse wrap him up and sent us home.  Once we were in the car and Jacob's nerves were settled, he did get to eat the slim jim.  We almost made it a whole season without needing medical attention.almost. As you can see from the above photo, he is healing nicely...of course we owe all the healing and cleaning to Bubbie.  Thank YOU!!!

We were waiting for the numbing stuff to work on Jacob's hand.

He obviously wasn't too traumatized.  He loved spending time with Bubbie and she even made him his favorite food...popcorn!

didn't blog about...

Libby's final spring band concert. She plays the clarinet and is in first chair.  Let me tell you, she can play a mean ode to joy and duelly duelly det on the clarient.

or the time the wardlings had a competition to see who could catch the most lightening bugs.

or simply about the long days of summer in the back yard of the brown house.

or the day that we made the wardlings wait to jump in the pool, to allow the sunscreen we sprayed on them to dry.