Ethan had his county report due this week. He has worked on it the whole time we were off track so that he could get it done before the due date. This is a project all 4th graders get to do. He also had to make a poster all about his county. As you can see he got Grand County which was great because that's where Arches National Park is so he knew all about it. With my girls I was super involved in their projects and it felt like so much work. Ethan did the entire thing himself. It won't be as good as all the kids that had lots of help- but it's all his work. He was very proud of it and it was awesome that I didn't have to worry about it.
We are going on a cruise soon with Jeff's entire family so my sister in law came up with a system to teach all the kids manners so we'd be ready to eat in the dinning room on the ship. She called it High Five Dinner Etiquette. Each finger on your hand stood for a different thing the kids needed to remember. 1.Stay Seated 2.Good Manners 3. Polite Words 4.No Complaining 5.Dinner Voices. The kids could earn a point every time they demonstrated these at dinner at their homes. At the end they did a big dessert dinner where the kids got to practice what they had learned. They also earned a reward for each point they had. Here are pictures from that night. It was so fun and I think it is really helping because the kids were awesome! We have one more family dinner before we go so we'll see if they can keep it up. It was actually a really good lesson for Jeff and I too because I never realized how lax we were with our "proper" manners at home.
I went with Ethan on his field trip to the Natural History Museum.
The other day there was the most beautiful rainbow in the sky and the best part was you could see both ends.
I drive by this field every time I take Whitney to gymnastics. I have to stop at a stop sign right here so I snapped a picture. It's just one of those scenes that makes me take a deep breath because it's so beautiful. It's like time stand still for a moment. I know it doesn't look like much but it's gorgeous in person.
Speaking of gymnastics we spend a lot of time there now that Whitney's on the team.
I bought my first pair of Croc's. When the first Croc brand shoe made an appearance on the style scene I thought they were the ugliest shoes I'd ever seen. They weren't the ones pictured here but the clogs that looked like the should only be worn in the garden. I remember getting so annoyed that people would wear them in public- I just thought they were way too casual. Then they slowly started coming out with new styles and colors. I tried on a pair my mother in law had in Hawaii and boy were they comfortable. So I decided to break down and join the Croc's club. I think these are pretty cute and they are super comfortable. I still wouldn't wear them somewhere nice but out and about or at the grocery store I think they are just right.
I had one more gift for Jeff for Father's Day and that was to clean out our garage. He was out of town all week so it gave me the perfect opportunity. This is a before picture that doesn't even do the mess justice because this was already when I was half way done. It was a disaster. I don't think we have ever cleaned it out the entire five years we've lived here. What I thought would be an afternoon project turned into four day straight. It was so worth it though and it looks great now. Someday we'll get some better shelves but it works for now. All the shots below are after shots.
While cleaning out the garage I found a box of my grandma's old shoes. Some of them were so dang cute but we only kept two pairs because the rest were so old that the soles and straps were disintegrating. My grandma had some great style. This picture is our only memory of these darling shoes.
Here are the Selfies of the Week. My nieces and nephews were over and Ashtyn went to town with Phoebe. I was laughing so hard at these.
This is a picture of me and my girls when we were all in 6th grade. I wanted to see how much we looked alike. I don't think we look that much alike. There are features of both of them that I can see they got from me. They sure are cuties!
We went to Jenacee's volleyball game on Saturday. I didn't think to take a picture at the actual game. She is pretty dang good and it was fun to watch their team play.
After the volleyball game Kristy and I took the girls on a shopping spree for the cruise. They have all been saving up their money to go. These girls know exactly what they like and it's pretty much the exact opposite of what Kristy and I like- ha ha. I had a less than stellar parenting moment when I flipped out at Ashtyn at the register at Forever 21. She had tried on a lot of things and when she showed me all the things she wanted I told her that she would have to choose because she was running out of money and we were only pitching in a small portion. She tried to bargain with me for more money(which I hate)- but then I thought she had finally decided. I went to pay for the items and mid-way through she changed her mind. We were running out of time, there were other customers, they had already started my transaction and so I got annoyed a made a little scene. I was super embarrassed that I had embarrassed her so we had a little talk afterward. She told me that the reason she changed her mind was that she really just wanted to get the most for her money and it was stressing her out to try and decide. I just thought she was being a brat. It reminded me that I need to "seek first to understand and then to be understood". We made one more stop after there and had a great time. They all got some pretty cute stuff and Kristy and I had fun joking about buying acid washed mom jeans(seriously they sell those again). I can not keep up with the world's fashions!
