First Day of School

The kids are back in school! Or at least the oldest three are. Breanna will start Kindergarten a week from Monday. Taylor is now in 8th grade. He was SO excited for school to start and asked about going to school everyday the week before it started. He loves riding the bus and seeing his friends in Miss Billie's class. I'm enjoying him being in middle school this year. Next year we have to do the big scary transition to high school (yikes). Ashlee is in 6th grade and started middle school this year. She was really excited and a bit nervous about the big school change. So far she really loves it. She has a great core teacher, and she'll start going to her other teachers on Monday. Lindsey is in second grade and was also excited and nervous about the new school year. She loves her teacher, Mrs. Whetman (who also happens to be our bishop's wife), and had great first two days of school. Breanna will have Mrs. Ekker, and she's so excited about that. Lindsey also had her for kindergarten and Breanna would go with me to help in the classroom, so she's familiar with her new teacher. Her cousin Logan will also be in her class, so she's excited about that, too. The kindergarten teachers here spend the first 7 days of school doing one-on-one assessments of their students, which is why they start classes 7 days later. A first day of school picture of Breanna will be coming next week!

Tim also started school, of course. He's teaching fourth grade again this year. He has 31 kids in his class (yikes!), and a new principal, but so far it's going well for him, too.

So after a really great summer, we're ready to get back to a schedule again.

I need to finish updating our summer activities. Tim's brother Ken and his wife Nancy and their 7 children came to visit in July. We went to the Green Show at SUU, the 24th of July parade, and hiking in Zion's National Park. The cousins had a blast playing together, and it was so fun to have them here! I'll have to post pics of our fun time together when I get the camera back from Tim (it's in his classroom). We also went back to Zion's as a family and took a little hike to Weeping Rock. Then a few weeks ago my brother Greg and his family came through Cedar City. We went to the lake with them and my sister Kristine's family. The following week they came back through on their way home and we had a back-to-school luau in Kristine's back yard, complete with yummy Malibu chicken, hawaiian music, tiki torches, and hawaiian potato sack races. The back-to-school luau has become a yearly tradition with our family and Kristine's and is always a great way to end the summer!