School Updates

I figured I'd better do first day of school pictures before we hit November!
Hanna has taken on a new adventure with school. She attends Kimber Academy which is a private school. There are many reasons while we chose to try this route this year, which I won't share here, but she is enjoying her new school and the exciting opportunities it has brought. We do alot more activities at home, which is what we took a picture of above. The girls are exploring an owl pellet. I purposely didn't tell them what it was until after the exploration was over:) Last week Hanna's new class went to the vet and dissected a rooster and looked at all the organs during their physiology lessons. She also takes extra spanish classes (which was the deciding factor for me with the private school) and a drama class during the week. Her school does include religion and intensive history classes which are pretty amazing.

Alizah and her friend Halie and teacher, Maestra Jasmine. Alizah goes to AIM school where she also goes to Spanish classes during her kindergarten day. Alizah THRIVES under her new schedule. She's the type of kid who lives for structure and sets her clothes out a week ahead, completes homework every night without being asked, and asks to go to bed cuz she doesn't want to be tired for school. She loves her friends and has even decieded to be interested in "fashion"- (meaning her clothes actually match this year)

Piper was not so thrilled to start her school experience this year. I tried to put her into a class that accomodated the rest of the families' schedule, but as you can see in this picture, she really wouldn't have anything to do with that class. She wanted to be in her best friend's Collin and Beck's class. So, she wins and mom runs crazy most of the day getting the kids to their right classes. Piper loves her class mostly because her favorite aunt kiki teaches it. She is so lucky. her first month inluded boiling foods to make paint, painting feet, and exploring life size skeletons. She is speaking more spanish than any of the girls did at this age.

The girls and I are settled into our schedules now and poor Brandon just struggles to keep it all straight. He calls everyday and says "what happens tonight?" The girls each have their after school activities which include gymnastics of course. Hanna is also doing her church activity days, dance class, and a pottery class. We have bounded right into the school year and I can't believe it's almost Thanksgiving.

Finally.....a kitchen!

A little recap for everyone....we, started on June 11th with our demo of the kitchen from a tiny leak behind the fridge. A month ago, boxes arrived in our kitchen and they started, but discovered that one of the cabinets were broken from shipping. So we wait again and finally three days short of FOUR months we get to move in....
Then we look like a mess for another week as I wash every item that has been in a garage for that long of a time.....and TODAY we look like this!
YEAH!! We have running water, a DISHWASHER:), and a stove. We are working on the broken oven-repair man should be here any minute..
This is my favorite part. The deep granite composite sink and sprayer faucet. I love it! I was never a fan of the two part sinks and love how DEEP it is!
And this is Alizah's favorite part. We had a lazy susan before, but for some reason she shows everyone this cupboard when they come to our house. "Look", she says, "a spinny cupboard!"


I know that many, many things have happened since I posted last and I will catch up, but all my family has wanted me to post pictures of my kitchen so this is what you get first! I'm excited to be moved in and am working on decorating and organizing still, but I'm not too excited about having to do my laundry myself!! No more time to read, now it's back to dishes and laundry, but that's real life right???!! I'll be posting more about the girls' new school classes and our life for this school year. We've had some major changes and I'll catch everyone up, I promise!

Broadway Jr Week

Broadway Jr. Camp was another camp that Hanna participated in this summer. She absolutely loved it! The kids did a mini-play of Mary Poppins. Hanna was Jane and her friend Reili was Michael. She had lines that she memorized and songs that she sang. They even had a choreographed dancing number for the chimmney sweep part of the movie. It was really impressive! I wished I had gotten it on video. I was running the music so was unable to get too many pictures. She can't wait until next year.

This week has been a throw-up week at our house. Korbi's family got it first, then it came to our house. We started Wednesday night and it has made it's way through 3 of us up until today. I'm praying I don't get it! We are still out of a laundry room, so I've made multiple trips to the laundermat with disgusting smells coming from the bags of blankets, pillows, etc. I've lysoled the house every five minutes. I hope it makes it's way through before Hanna's school starts next week.
My Grandpa Beck is also in the hospital this week. He's been very sick and we are all praying for him. I hope to be able to talk to him today. He's almost 99 in a few weeks and he is one amazing man! I have a book of stories he has written about his youth and views of the world and really enjoy going through them. I hate being so far away.....

Hanna's Woodward Week

Tye Dye Project during arts & crafts....

Silks with Olympian Kristy Powell during Open Gym......

Learning to play drums during Rec time.....

Showing off her Olympian autographs from Kristy Powell and Alicia Sacromone....

Rock Climbing after dinner....


All of these experiences were new for Hanna this year at her gymnastics camp at Woodward West in California. We went in July with 8 of her teammates. This year another mom came with me and it was alot less hectic week. I actually coached at the camp, so I didn't even get one gymnastic picture of Hanna! She did do over 30 hours of gymnastics that week plus all these extra activities. She made some new friends and learned some new skills. She is growing up and I love having the opportunity to have fun right along side her!

More vacation pictures

I know it seems like a long time ago (my vacation), but I'm still slow on posting. Or, maybe I'm pretending I still want to be on vacation!! Anyways, here's about the ONLY picture you'll ever see of my girls acting in way, shape, or form....like tomboys. We bought them slingshots that were carved into the shape of Yellowstone animals in West. I loved it! Alizah of course got into it the most and was pretty good at it! This is funny to anyone who really knows my girls, because they are the type that will see a rock on the ground by a stream and ask if they can pick it up to throw it in. Now, their boy cousins see rocks and see what car or person is nearest for them to throw it at! We just spent an amazing week with all their boy cousins and absolutely loved having them around our house. They went on walks and explored their secret hideout and picked unripe grapes at the neighbors. I'll post more later, but I just have to say, we really miss you guys!!

Are We There Yet?

The only picture of Piper....sorry I know it's terrible, but I had to document her so she knew we didn't leave her home.

Alizah being silly!

Hanna is extremely thrilled to see the moose! Can you tell how enthusiastic she is???

Alizah was the only one who enjoyed the ride....

So here are more pictures from our vacation in Yellowstone. We went on a float trip with the girls and saw two moose as we floated down the river at Mack's Inn. This was the ultimate example of "Are we there yet?" For some unknown reason Hanna hates boating. She has been like this since she was a baby. The river was so low that for most of the trip you could hear the bottom of the boat slide along the bottom of the river. Everytime dad shifted his weight and the boat rocked, screams shot out of Hanna and then Piper would follow just to get a reaction! It was the longest two hours...A funny story happened yesterday. I wore my Yellowstone shirt to work and someone came in to check out our gym and register for classes and my shirt got us talking about Yellowstone. Traci had just moved to Moses Lake from Utah, but her parents own the candy store in West Yellowstone where we go every visit. They make homemade taffy which I had brought back for our coaches. The coaches were telling her how good it was! She was so excited because she has had a hard time moving to a small time not knowing anyone. It was so funny how many connections we had. It's such a small world!

Catch Up...

Chase & Taya and the girls resting on a hike to LookOut Point at the
upper falls in Yellowstone Park.

Our "Jr. Wolves" that wanted to join the pack in West Yellowstone.

Feeding the bears in West. Alizah was so excited because she was old enough this year!!

It's been forever since I've posted. I seem to go through spurts of run, run, run, then play catch up for a few days, then off to a full speed run again. I'm at a slightly resting point meaning I'm home and no major event happens this weekend. We are down to two weeks until summer is over and I'm already getting set into panic mode. I have so much more to do for the summer!! I hope to pack a kitchen remodel, more tanning time, walks with my kids, and book reading into the end of this summer... We have one more major Idaho trip and a flight back to Moses Lake to fit in and a little school shopping. It hit me the other day that I have THREE kids to "school shop" for. AHHH, the backpacks are bought and it's kindof freaking me out a little. So I finally downloaded my pictures and will slowly catch everyone up on our past few vacations and summer camps. We'll start with fun pictures from Island Park where we actually had a real vacation of sightseeing, family time, runs in the mountains, bear feeding, and games. The cabin always creates such wonderful memories and everytime I go, I wonder why it took me so long to get back there. I'm already wanting to go back and wish it wasn't so far away. We did a tour of Yellowstone and had a few days with friends to add to our trip this year. I'll add more great pictures and updates quicker this time!