July 4th

Sadly, this post doesn't have the usual number of pictures.  In fact, this is part of why I have been so eager to catch up on the blog this weekend.  When we got to the cabin for the party this year, I realized that I forgot my camera.  Again.  I keep forgetting it lately.  And I think part of it has been that I haven't been sure they would ever get on the blog anyway.  I used to take pictures with the intention of showing the story on here for my kids to read later, but I just got too behind.

Not anymore!  This is my last catch-up post, and then I can start again in real time!

In the meantime, I can post the pictures from my phone, and some that my sister-in-law sent to me.

This year I didn't have a big project for the craft table.  There were sugar cookies to decorate, and I hear that the toddler really enjoyed the sprinkles over there, but I have found that just setting out all of the supplies from previous projects lets the kids create all sorts of fun things.  The hot trend this year was turning stickers into earrings, probably started by my daughter who is anxiously awaiting her next birthday so that she can have her ears pierced.

Apparently the answer to "how many kids can fit on the swing?" is four.

I am so glad that Christopher found a way to get the shade up.  It used to hang from one of the trees that fell down, so it took some work.  It shades the gravel, food area now instead of the grass, which is great for eating lunch outside and not as good for the dry grass.

It was a great party, though!

The inevitable trailer

It truly was inevitable.

Having known my husband for a long time, I just knew it would happen someday.  He always has a new obsession on the horizon, and he doesn't go halfway on those.  He wanted a smoker, researched everything about them for a month straight, bought one on a Costco trip when we walked in to buy sliced cheese, and has been smoking meat and talking to everyone about smoked meat ever since.  He would also love to tell you all of the details of LED bulbs, training for an Ironman, and the types of wood for a wood burning stove.

So when I saw him shopping online for trailers after the first time he slept in one, I knew that I could either help him pick out one, or he would just show up with one someday.  I quickly found that they are actually really fun to look at.  I even still look them up on the classifieds because I think they are interesting.  I like seeing all of the various layouts, and how the universally hideous fabric has change on the couches over the years.

We quickly narrowed down the layout we wanted, and soon figured out that we weren't alone.  Everyone in Utah has a big family and not a lot of money, and so everyone wants bunk beds in an older trailer.  Trailers in that description get snatched up thousands of dollars over their listed value.  That is good news for resale value, as we found that they essentially bottom out.  As long as everything works, they are worth $3,000-$4,000, no matter how many decades old they are.  A price less than that means that you have to fix something.

I spotted this one, a decade newer than the ones we had been looking at in that price range, with the right layout and the right price.  I texted Christopher, who then called 2 hours after the ad had been posted, and he was already third in line.  When the other two backed out and he drove a couple of hours north to pick it up, there was literally a line of people in this man's driveway who had seen the ad, been told it was sold, and came anyway to see if they could outbid us or snag it if we changed our mind.

So while I might have been on the fence about owning a trailer, at least I know we can resell it quickly.  For a profit, at that.

We didn't even know where we were going to park it when he drove it home.  He just knew he wanted one.  We had been debating on paving the grass by the side of our house, but the steep hill would make it very tricky.  Thankfully, we realized that our next-door neighbor has an empty RV spot since he sold his years ago, and he was more than happy to rent that spot to us.  Problem solved!

It is a fairly big trailer, but thankfully very light and more aerodynamic than the one we borrowed for Moab.  Chris is impressed at how well his truck can pull it.

The dinette in front is our bed.  The table is peeling and chipping everywhere, so that will be one of our projects.

I love that when we go camping, we can have a mini kitchen with us!

And, of course, a bathroom.  The shower leaks a little so we haven't used it yet, but having a flushing toilet is really nice.

This is why this trailer was so coveted.  Double bunks in the back.  This way, the kids have their own spot in the back to play in that is a little tucked away from us.  Four beds means that we can even bring a friend with us sometimes, or perhaps Grandma Skarda might join us for a night or two.

Why are RV cushions always so ugly?  I understand needing a busy pattern to hide stains.  I do.  But who picked this pattern?  Oh well.  Someday, I might get up the energy to re-upholster all 8 cushions.  I know how, but I also know how much tedious work it would be.  For now, I am working on replacing all of the stained curtains and making fitted sheets for the skinny little bunks in the back.  Christopher re-sealed the vents on the roof already, and he might improve the solar panel down the road as well.

We did take it out for one night already, and we've been itching to get out again.  That is always the problem with trailers- finding the time to use them.  Christopher's oldest brother was able to borrow it to take to Yellowstone last week, and I am truly glad.  I want it to get used, even if it isn't with us!

An un-scheduled summer

Before school let out, I was debating about how I wanted to handle this summer.  I knew about a lot of summer camps that I could sign the kids up for.  And one of my biggest debates was about making some week-long sewing classes for Kaitlyn and some neighbor girls.  I have a lot I want to teach her, and putting that all into structured classes would be a great way to do it.  I've had a lot of people ask if I would teach their daughter someday.  But it just didn't feel right.  I made the fliers and planned things out, but never actually gave them to anyone.  And I didn't sign the kids up for much, either.

In the end, I am really glad I didn't.  I was still basically bedridden the week that I was planning to teach a class, so that turned out for the better.  And it has been really nice to do things at our own pace each day, without anything we have to do.  My kids are not the "I'm bored" type, thankfully.  They would watch TV and play on their Kindles all day if they were allowed to, so it is mostly about finding things for them to do and peeling them off the screens.  We got our summer passes to the pool and skating places, and we have used those a lot so far.

We went on a hike as a family on Memorial Day.

Daddy took Tyler on the "Fathers and Sons" campout, and I think they had a lot of fun.

We went to a birthday party for Tyler's old classmate, and wow, this mom went all out!

I took Kaitlyn out by herself a couple of times, too.  We went garage sale-ing (I'm making up this term) one morning and caught the end of the Fireman's breakfast.  We got to watch the life-flight helicopter take off, which was really cool.

Another time, we went down to the booths at the Strawberry days carnival, got a funnel cake, and had fun in the park.

Christopher has a brother that is always finding crazy deals, and he managed to hook us up with vouchers to go see a movie.  Since the vouchers were good up to $13, I went ahead and booked $13 seats in recliners for the newest cartoon.  They were so awesome!  The kids were in love with the buttons that made their head and feet move.

One weekend, I left everyone else at home and drove to Las Vegas for my nephew's mission farewell.  The funny part is that I took lots of pictures, but I borrowed my brother's SD card to do it and so I don't actually have any of them.  I took this picture . . .

But my mom and I aren't even in it.  It was a wonderful trip.  I thought it was a bad idea as I started the drive by myself- it was 12 hours of driving in two days.  Seeing my family was totally worth it, though!

Let's see, what else did we do . . .

Kaitlyn decided to adopt a snake she found in our garden.  Thankfully we talked her out of that after a day or so.

She had to show it off to all the neighbor boys first, of course.

We went to a cousin's birthday party last week.  They are all obsessed with Minecraft, so for his birthday, all he wanted to do was having everyone come over to his house and play Minecraft on their tablets "together".  This was, it turns out, the best idea anyone ever had for a party, somehow.

Oddly enough, Tyler hopped right in and made friends with everyone else, chatting away with the other boys about the game. And Kaitlyn was the shy one that day.

She eventually warmed up to everyone, but she was just a bit nervous at first.

We also spent a week at the cabin trying to potty train Miss Jasmine.  The first time I tried, she nearly fell in once and thus wanted nothing to do with it for months.  I tried again last summer, but she was very against anything I thought was a good idea, and when she got off the potty and went right over to squat in a sandbox and pee, I knew it wasn't going to work.  This time, she was absolutely thrilled about becoming a "big girl".  Once I put "un-a-wear" on her, she wanted nothing to do with the diapers ever again.  However, for the first week she seemed to have no control over the situation.  It came when it came, and she couldn't make it happen on cue.  Thankfully, after a very LONG week and a half, it finally clicked into place and we have hardly had an accident since then.  In fact, she is my first child to get upset when she does have an accident.  The couple of times that it happened, I would find her screaming her head off in the bathroom, standing in a lake, and holding the stool she was trying to drag over as quickly as she could.  Almost made it!    I truly hate potty training, so I am glad to hopefully have most of it behind me.

On our good weeks, I've made sure the kids follow their "checklist".  They have tasks to check off every day, like reading and math, cleaning their rooms, etc.  I even taught them how to clean a bathroom properly, and cleaning their own bathroom is one of their tasks now.  That is my favorite part about summer- I get to have things in "Mommy school" that we just don't have the energy for during the school year.  I'll admit we haven't been perfect at maintaining the checklists, but it is good to have those goals.

And also good to ditch them when summer fun pops up. :)

The end of First Grade for Kaitlyn

Kaitlyn truly had a wonderful teacher this year.  She even sent home pictures that she took of her class all year, and it was really nice to get that peek into the "other half" of my daughter's world.

She adored the field trips, of course.

They even got to see a play that our neighbor and favorite babysitter performed in- I can see the skirt that I hemmed in this picture as well as my goofy daughter!

And a true highlight was performing in the class play.  She still has every single word of that play memorized, and will start reciting at the least mention of it.

Beyond that, she had a wonderful year learning lots of amazing things.  She was the top reader in the class, and did very well in the rest of her subjects, too.  She has gone through withdrawals this summer, because her favorite part was spending time with friends.  We rarely make it a day without a plea for me to call a friend to come and play with her.

I'm going to miss Miss Hull next year!  Hopefully we also have a good teacher for 2nd grade.  Either way, this little lady just seems to soak up everything around her quicker than I can blink.

She also had a lot of fun at gymnastics again this year.

Her favorite part is getting a medal each year.  Those are truly treasured in this house.

I nearly didn't make it to this show- I was really, really sick still that day.  But I couldn't miss the big event!  I remember I ended up just laying down on the mats while the other kids were performing. I'm glad I didn't miss that toothless little grin, though.

The end of Clear Horizons (for us)

I have truly loved Clear Horizons over the years.  I think we are the only people who only went over the summer, but each year I just couldn't bear to send him to the public summer school (not even the teachers recommended it) and then I would wait to see if the teacher was good that year before sending him to the expensive school.  When public school went so badly for us that last year, I have to admit I was a bit excited to finally be able to try out Clear Horizons full time.

Unfortunately, my husband was never fully on board, which made this year rather uncomfortable.  The charter school that opened this year called three days before school started to let me know that they had a spot for Tyler.  At that point, I was too excited about CHA.  We had already met his teacher and signed all of his forms and everything, and I was never sure that we wanted to go to a school the first year they open.  I didn't even know anything about the charter school at that point.  I had put his name in the lottery, seen how far down the list he was, and assumed that they would never call us.

So I told them no.  Christopher wasn't in town or in cell range, so I just made the decision.  And the whole year, he wished that I had said yes.  In my defense, they did have a rough few months at that school getting things sorted out.  Opening a new school will do that to you.

I've always known, then, that our days at CHA were numbered.  One year, maybe two.  So when they announced in late winter than they were changing almost everything about the school and nearly doubling their cost, I knew it was over.  The school was founded to work with a program called DIR, which focuses on the in interactions with the child first.  Most of the research is with ABA, which just didn't click with Tyler, so I have really been grateful for the DIR method over the years.  But the school closed and became a "treatment center" over the summer, teaching ABA instead.  They hope to be able to have their students pay with insurance money.  I don't even want to think how much hassle getting insurance and Medicaid to pay for school would be.  To be honest, I am really quite mad with them for blindsiding all of us with the huge change.  They weren't concerned with the students or what we wanted, they just fired a long list of people and went for it.

My only regret is that I never figured out a way to be in the classroom more this year.  My favorite thing about CHA is that I could (finally!!) come and help out in the classroom.  I was so tired of not being welcome in his old classrooms.  But I never figured out a good way to take care of Jasmine.  I had a neighbor to trade with, but I had to be home too early to make it worth it.  My mother-in-law was too far away.  And now it is too late.

He had a good year, though.  It was a bit less structured than I thought it would be, but I think that was good for him in its own way.  He progressed a lot in reading and writing, which was my main hope.  And he made a much better connection with the other kids in his class than he usually has, which was awesome, too.

Our last event with them was a field trip to the Zoo.  They have always been awesome about letting my whole family come to any field trips, which basically gave Kaitlyn twice the field trips.  She loved that.  The zoo day landed on a rainy day, but we still had a lot of fun.

Daddy was even able to make a long lunch break and come join us, which was great.  He hadn't seen the zoo in years, so he was curious.

I'll miss everyone we knew at Clear Horizons, but apparently it was time to move on.  So next year Tyler will be at the Spectrum Charter School that opened last year.  Daddy is thrilled: I am nervous.  I don't like how low the ratio of teachers to students is.  At least I know that I like one of his teachers, since her daughter was in Tyler's class last year.  We'll just have to see how it goes!

How the flu nearly wrecked my half bathroom

On the Wednesday before Mother's Day, I happened to make another off-handed joke to my husband about the tile in our garage.  We bought the tile two years ago with the intention to re-do the powder room on the main floor of our house, but just never actually got around to it.

The previous owners had put up wallpaper, and then sometime later, someone wanted to get rid of that without actually taking it down.  So they put a spiky texture on top.  It was so spiky, in fact, that it drew blood the first time I leaned against it as we moved it.  We sanded a bit and painted it, but otherwise put it off.

The vanity was also a bit large for the space.  The kids couldn't reach the sink, so they had to have a step stool, and that stool was constantly in my way.

Sometimes the details would get to me.  They hung the doors upside down.  Why?

And they didn't take off the light switch to texture the walls.  They just went around it a bit, and called it good.  You can see the "orange peel" texture from the rest of the house peeking there.

So when I made that joke, for whatever reason, my husband decided that he would renovate it for me.  In time to be my Mother's Day present.

I need to back up, though.  When my mom flew into town, she didn't actually see my husband for a few days because we had him quarantined upstairs.  He had a fever of 103 for five days straight, unless the Tylenol had brought it down temporarily.  His back ached, he was exhausted, and he was just miserable.  I honestly can't remember the last time he got sick before that.  Usually, the kids will bring home a bug that keeps them down for a day, skips my husband, and puts me down for a week.  So seeing him down that badly made me pretty nervous.

After five days of that fever, he was finally feeling better.  Finally able to function again.  And that is when he decided to rip apart the bathroom.

And right after that is when the second wave of the sickness hit him.  First comes the fever, then comes the congestion and coughing.  At one point he was so congested that he couldn't taste or smell anything for a week.

So it took a lot longer than he thought it would.  He often would come home from work and try to get things done in there, but after a half an hour he would have to lay down and accidentally he would fall asleep instead.  My mom and I had fun picking out all of the finishes while she was in town.  And eventually, once my husband was recovered, our bathroom looks amazing!

I tried to go with a different color, but I ended up just toning down the blue color from before.  I like the blue too much!  We have a new toilet that won't clog all of the time, a new vanity and mirror that fit the space, but best of all, we replaced the rotting laminate for tile.

The laminate was peeling up in a lot of places because laminate just can't handle water very well.  The subfloor actually had to be replaced because it was bubbling from all the water.  And now the tile is my favorite part!  We had five tiles left over from when Christopher did the front entry ten years ago, and I wanted to incorporate them in to tie them together.  (You can see the entry tile at the bottom right corner.)  Thankfully we found a tile that was just different enough and yet coordinated with it.  Christopher wasn't a huge fan of installing the mosaic, but it just looks so awesome!

And now the texture even matches all the way around, after hours of skim coating and re-texturing.  We also installed a timer on the fan, because those are really handy.

Of course, the sickness did end up hitting me two weeks after he got it.  Instead of five days of 103, I was at 101 for 9 days.  Instead of back pain, I had severe migraines for nearly two weeks.  The congestion and coughing that never ends were the same, however.  I barely made it through the last week of school, and the next week I was too sick to enjoy the first week of summer vacation.  I had a family meeting with the kids at the beginning of the week where we discussed what food they could have on their own and what activities they could do on there own, and then I basically crawled back upstairs and left them to their own devices for the week.

The kids were great about it, thank goodness.  Kaitlyn even came up to show me a puppet show she made up to cheer me up.

I'm just glad that sickness is behind us!

Visit from Grandma Jones

I love when my mom comes to visit me!  She keeps pretty busy, so I'm glad that she carves out some time to come out here.  And we keep busy while she is here, too.  There was a list on the fridge of all the plans, and we crammed every single day and still didn't make it.

We always do a lot of shopping, it seems.  We did an outlet mall, and a craft boutique.  We found these new curlers there, actually.  Kaitlyn's curly hair is growing in only half curly, so we are trying new things.

She always helps me get my garden planted, too.  This year, my dad sent her a hanging plant for her birthday/ Mother's Day, which was actually a present for me, too.  I'm terrible at keeping plants alive, but I have been trying my best to keep this beauty going!

My kids aren't too focused on whose birthday it is.  They just love having something to celebrate!  With cake, of course.

The most picture-worthy thing we did was go to the Thanksgiving Point Gardens.  I've been meaning to take her there for years, because I knew she would love it.  It really is the most massive, well groomed place!  And I never come home without  dozens of flower pictures on my camera.

Jasmine loved it, too.

My mom said that, when she was growing up, her family would always take her picture by the lilac bush on her birthday because it was in full bloom and made a beautiful backdrop.  Since it was actually her birthday the day that we went there, we continued the tradition!

We had such a wonderful week!