Oct 13, 2016

Milestones

I think one of the reasons I have Hyrum is to teach me to see little milestones that I've never noticed before.  Well one occurred this evening.

Image result for earthI was feeding Eve and Hyrum came in needing something.  It sounded like he was saying "I need the of" and then some babbling with his arm making a large circle.  I couldn't understand, so he tried again.  "I need the of" with more babble and a large arm swing.  I still wasn't cluing in.  Some more babble and then he said, "the planet."  Ahhh!  They have this night light that changes pictures and the kids prefer the one with the Earth picture to the safari or ocean.  He was saying "I need the Earth."  The milestone was that he knew I was trying to understand what he was saying, but because I didn't understand, he found another word that expressed what he was wanting.  

Jul 26, 2016

Back to Blogging

I have felt for a while that I need to start journaling our days.  They have just been zipping by and I need to record our time together.

We have just started our second week (out of four) of summer school.  Rachel has been tutoring at the Intermediate Center (grades 3-5) and Hyrum has been attending the Entering Kindergarten section so he doesn't have to start school cold on September first.

After dropping the two of them off, Sam, Joshua, Eve, and I drove down to Waltz park.  I fed Eve while Sam and Joshua played.  Sam was excited that it was a pokestop.  After feeding Eve, we went for a walk around the block (along with getting back to journaling, I'm hoping to get some exercise in as well).  I guess we'd gone far enough away because the pokestop replenished for Sam.

Then we headed off to get things for Scout Camp (next week for Sam and Ben) and back to school.  I hate that I'm always a few hundred dollars lighter by the time we're done.  I also get frustrated that instead of being happy with a 24 pack of crayons, teachers want a 24 pack of twistable crayons.  Really??!!

We returned just in time to pick Hyrum and Rachel up and go home.  After taking care of Eve, I thought it would be fun to try out letter boxing.  Moroni and Adam weren't too keen on it, but I dragged them with me, anyway.  We first stopped at Cave of the Mounds.  We couldn't find anything there and the instructions said that there were ten more letter boxes, just stop in at the visitor's center and ask for directions and clues.  When I inquired, I was told that they're redoing them, so their boxes aren't currently out.  Argh.  Then we went to the ball park because there were supposed to be two there, but we couldn't find those either.  Then we went up to Blue Mound State Park.  By this time everyone was tired, hot, and frustrated.  We decided to try a geocache and embarked on a trail Moroni, Ruth and I had been hiking on last week.  We were so excited to actually find the geocache.  An older couple was just passing us and stopped to watch us open it.  There were just a couple of stickers in it, but we were so excited to finally find a treasure box, you'd have thought it was Blackbeard's Chest.  haha

We then tried to find a couple of other geocaches, but no luck.  Then we grabbed dinner from Culver's and headed to Volleyball in Dodgeville.  Sam played Volleyball while Ruth, Moroni, Adam, Hyrum, and Joshua played at the park.  I fed Eve.  After Volleyball we stopped to try to find three other geocaches.  Still no luck.  Maybe the good ones are just down hiking trails.  Who knows.  At least we had one rewarding experience.  It'll keep us looking for others.

I think the great blessing today was just spending time with each other.  I'm quite blessed to have children that enjoy being with one another.