School is Cool

All excited and ready to go!

Yesterday was Roger's first day of Kindergarten. He had a blast! It was his Smart Start day(the day they only go for a few hours with a small group of kids from their class). Tuesday will be his first full day. Roger loved it. Allen was bored without Roger, but I took him to story time at the library so it wasn't all bad. Here are some pics of Roger's first day.

Roger getting ready to enter his first day.

The classroom. He is part of the KIDS program where they have school at a portable at a local high school, and they get to have high school helpers to work one on one with.

When Roger came home he had lots to say about everything he did. He absolutely loved it! I think he was a little tired though because he opted for a nap while Allen took his(it was a short one though). Allen was glad to have Roger home and they have been playing school ever since. The game should actually be called "Let's go to school" because they walk around the house packing their backpacks and going from room to room to "go to school." It's kind of funny to watch, but they are happy as clams.

In case you didn't know, my children love to wear matching clothes.
They pick out matching outfits all the time.

Although Allen wishes he could go to school, he is happy to have Roger's old backpack.

"Oh it's pear canning time in Vancouver..."

My little helpers

"Oh it's pear canning time in Vancouver."(There is actually a tune to this line, and I don't know what the original song was, but growing up it was a common song for us to sing in the garden or canning or working. Eg: "Oh it's peach canning time in Oregon City," or "Oh it's cherry picking time in Oregon City." You get the idea, so I am passing the ditty along to our kids.)

Check out these tasty looking jars.

Roger asked if he could take a picture and I said yes, hence the closeup.

Roger and Allen were troopers and helped out. Allen had a hard time peeling, so his job was to fish the peels out of the sink while Roger peeled the blanched pears. I canned with the boys on Wednesday and got 14 quarts. Today my sister came up to help and we finished off the boxes I had gotten and got 20 more quarts. Whew! That's a whole lot of pears! We will divide them with my sister and they will be much enjoyed. :)

These are the 20 quarts from the second day of canning.

I should also note that I learned a valuable canning lesson today. Despite many warnings, I finally broke a jar in the canner. :) I generally pour boiling syrup over my cold fruit, so sticking the jars into boiling water has never been a problem. Well today, my syrup wasn't quite hot enough and a jar broke when I put it in. Oops. We salvaged the pears, but I've learned a good lesson. :)

Wednesday afternoon, after all the boys hard work ;) they spent some time skateboarding out on the patio. They got so hot and sweaty that I made them take a 10 minute reading break. They opted to take their books outside, and I looked out the sliding glass door to find them thus.

Boys are so fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A Busy Week

So I got really busy this week. I was going to post every day, but well...

*Monday, we went to OC to get ready for the garage sale.
*Tuesday we had to run errands and we kept an eye on the chickens(we got them last weekend) and then Roger got sick. Will also installed the bathroom fan this night.
*Wednesday we stuck around the house for the invalid and I tried to get cleaning and organizing done.
*Thursday we cleaned house and everything to get ready for Friday, then that night my sisters family came up so her husband could help Will do the wiring for the bathroom fan.

*Friday the boys' cousins came to stay the night during the garage sale. Then Allen got sick and went to bed early, while all the rest of the boys had a slumber party in the living room and watched Kung Fu Panda(cute movie). Today we will be installing insulation and having more fun with a house full of rambunctious little boys. Here are some pics of our week.

Chickens wating to be let in the yard. Black/white one was a chick this year. Her name is Potpie. The red one was our friends hen, who raised the chick. Her name is Red Raspberry.

The boys watching the chickens(quite fascinating for kids who've never had pets).


Allen's beautiful "smile for the camera" look. He's gotten better so that not all pics are like this.


We gave the chickens our corn cobs when we were done and they picked them clean. Yummy!


Oh it's apple eating time in Vancouver. :)

Swinging at the park for a few minutes before the rain.

Bedtime after a long day of playing.

The Laughter of the Children

When I was a teenager my mom had these silly smiley face dolls that vibrated and laughed, followed by a, "That's funny!" I always kind of wondered how they got the laugh to sound the way it did. Now I have come to realize that that is just how a kid laughs(or at least mine).

Today I moved our couch farther back in the living room to make space to lay out quilt blocks for a RS project I am working on. After I had picked up the blocks, the boys had fun with the space and just ran around in circles. For some reason kids really enjoy simple pleasures like that. The pictures aren't near as telling as the audio clip. (Ok, I can't figure out how to put the audio clip on here. My camera doesn't have audio, so I recorded it on my Sansa. If I figure out how to get it on here I will update this post.)

Running...

running...

then jump on the couch! Hooray!

Later the boys wanted a treat and Roger came up with this idea. :) Yes, it is mini marshmallows and chocolate chips. I like that my kids are still easy to please(or at least they were tonight).

A happy day.

Kitchen Reorganization

The last few days have found me in the kitchen reorganizing. I was getting fed up with my unorganized approach that I've put up with for too long, so I started over. Everything out, and reorganized, then put back in again. I've got to say, so far its looking pretty good. I got lots of help, from everyone at home, but also from a few sisters who give good advice from afar. I look forward to enjoying my time in the kitchen with everything under control and helping me be a better homemaker.

Here's a few before and afters of the upper cabinets. :)

Note the empty canning jars, overflowing bottles, and all those spices!!!

These corner shelves were empty because I had taken out all the canned food that wasn't fitting.

Too much space for so few dishes.

A place for everything and everything in its place.

I ended up moving the spice rack to the counter, but now the rest fit in the cupboard.

Now I can see what canned foods I have. My main objective!

Thanks to everyone who helped me. For some reason, I can clean and organize spaces I don't own, but mine just overwhelm me a bit. As I look at this picture I can see that my bulletin board needs some attention, but one thing at a time. :)

Uno mas...

Something we love to do as a family is play games. Now that the kids are getting old enough to play games with us, we like to have some family time together playing Uno. Last night we had dinner done on time and there was some family time after scriptures, so we decided to play Uno. Sometimes we lose Allen's attention, but it is still nice to have something fun we can all easily do together as a family.

Note: Allen didn't last long in the rocking chair (he kept moving around in it and bumping the table so we got something more solid for him to sit on), but he is smiling for the camera nicely.

It's About Time

I figured it was about time I start blogging. I had a blog for my calling at church, but since I don't have that calling anymore, I passed it along to the next person. So now we will have our own family blog. I'm hoping this will be incentive to be more productive online, and also to take more pics of the kids and document our family life a little more. Also, I can now link to my friends who have private blogs so they don't have to send me invites anymore. :)

I'm still a beginner to the blogging world. You can make it as simple or as difficult as you want it to be. I found a great article with some great tips here. You can do an internet search to find helpful sites and tutorials as well.

See you round the internets.