First day of School 2013

The first day of school has come and gone. On that first day I sent away these cuties:

I was left with these two at home. I wish that I could have gotten a better picture of Henry, but he wasn't happy that James was pulling on him. Henry would have rather been crawling around than sitting on the couch for a photo.

Henry still takes naps (thank heavens) so while he took a nap this is what James and I did:

Katherine on her first day of Kindergarten!

 Jacob 2nd grade.

Mariah--4th grade

Wyatt--7th grade and Bethany 5th grade

Amanda is a senior!! Wow, I can't believe that.

So some may wonder how I can get all these kids to school....simple: I make them ride the bus. I don't like the traffic that occurs around the schools at the start of the day and the end of the day, so I simplify my life and let (make) them ride the bus. I mean how else can I do it when every school it starting at the same time and I have 4 different schools? So I have Amanda at the high school and she actually gets to drive because of early morning seminary. Wyatt is at the Middle school. And then I have these two at another school:

 And these two go to the same school:

 So other than Wyatt and Amanda this year, everyone has a buddy at their school. It works out nice....until it comes to parent teacher conferences!


These are just some cute expressions that James had as I was taking pictures that morning. He is such a ham!!

Picture Day!

This could be any day at my house as the kids are always doing something cute and funny....but I don't take as many pictures as I could or prbably should because you all know what happens when they see the camera....yea, you get the silly faces and then all the spontaneity leaves and it just isn't the same. Something that I really like and will continue to do, I learned from my mother. (Aren't mothers awesome like that?) My mother had (still does) an 8x10 frame for each of us children. They have always been in a prominent place in the house so everyone can see them. Each year when the schools had school pictures she would make sure that we each had our picture taken and we would fill those frames. I always remember the day when it was time to change those pictures. Mom would take down the frames and we would start with the oldest. We would take out all the pictures (at one time she kept all the older pictures in the frames too) and we would lay them out on the table. Then we could see the person as they grew older and changed from year to year. Then Mom realized that they frames wouldn't hold all the pictures and they were starting to stick to each other....so she moved to having all the older pictures in a binder in page protectors and just the new one in the frame. She did this every year until our senior year. This is when the pattern changed. She then had our senior picture there (and it is still there). We bought an extra tassel when we got our graduation stuff and now as you walk down the hall in her house.....all you see are senior pictures with the tassel from the year that we graduated.

So as my kids have been getting older and such I have been keeping up the tradition. I had a slow start with Amanda, as she is the oldest and I didn't take her to the schools for pictures as there was no one to send them home with. But we do have a few of her in her younger years. Wyatt was a different story, and so have the rest of the kids. I remember one year calling the school and asking if they did preschool pictures before the school kids got theirs and them telling me that they didn't think that any of their school age kids had preschool brothers/sisters! I had one year that I brought in my kids (I think I had 3 at the time for preschool pictures) and the photographer asked me if I wanted to do all the kids in one picture.....um, I don't think so because that would defeat the purpose of my trip (although it would have saved me some $$).

I must realize that after this year a couple of things are going to change. First is that next year will be Amanda's last picture....she will be a senior next year!!! And the second is that as soon as this baby is born, I am going to have to find another place to put their pictures. Right now they are all sitting across the top of our entertainment center in our family room....I guess all but Amanda's as hers got knocked off and the glass broken and I haven't replaced it yet. But there is only room for 7 and we will have 8 soon.

But, back to the point of this post today was picture day, at least for one school. That has been another nice thing.....all the schools (and I have kids in 4 different schools this year) have had their picture days on different days and spread out enough that it hasn't messed too much with our budget. Hooray for that!!! Today happened to be Jacob's schools turn. I took Katherine and James and Jacob (he didn't have to ride the bus and the other kids were a bit mad). We went and had the pictures done. Now, with everything going digital I actually got to preview Katherine and James' pictures. Katherine of course was great, and had a wonderful smile. James, on the other hand.....serious as can be. We tried to get a smile, but I am okay with what we got, as the photographer was a stranger, what more could I ask. When we got home, I decided that this was one time when I wanted to do some of my own and pulled out the camera. And sure enough I got the silly faces and the lack of spontaneity. But I did get something that the photographer didn't get out of James....a smile!

Traditions

One of the traditions that seems to have been built at our house, only becuase I was trying to follow a similar one from my mom, is putting things in the hot cereal to get the kids to eat them. I remember my mom putting a piece of cake into our oatmeal in the mornings to help us eat it. I don't usually have cake around all the time so I tried something similar and this is what I came up with:

We put chocolate chips into the malt-o-meal and I make a smiley face. I have tried peanut butter chips, but those aren't such a favorite. I have to make sure now that I have a stash of chocolate chips in the house because if I try and have malt-o-meal and don't have the smiley face.....I get in serious trouble!

My kids

As the years roll by, it is going to get harder and harder to get pictures like these. This is one of all 7 of my kids together. We were at a family reunion for Gabe's side of the family. When we do those, I really like to have all my kids in the same clothes because then I can pick them out of the crowd and if someone says which ones are yours I can say "the ones in the Mt. Rushmore shirts". As you can see from the photo, we are going to have to go something different next time, because James doesn't have a Mt. Rushmore shirt. This one is my favorite. But now that Amanda is old enough to work during the summer, we may not have many more of these. Enjoy.