End of School--Beginning of Summer

After the funeral and after I said goodbye to the whole family I had 2 weeks until school got out. I thought I could get a lot done during those two weeks to prepare for summer. The first week I cleaned my house, did some errands, wrote blogs, and did stuff with my mom. All necessary stuff.

That weekend I realized that I had a ton to do and I wished that I had been more productive with my time. I made a list of all the stuff I had to do in the next 2 weeks. It was overwhelming. So I broke it up into what I was going to accomplish each day. Everyday I ran from morning to evening checking things off on that list. I was a crazy woman. But I ended up getting everything done- even if it wasn't on the day that I planned.

The last week of school was upon us. I had to get picture of the kids with their teachers. Chase had Mrs Navarette.

Alex had Mrs. Powell.

I helped with field day- so I got pictures of my 2 youngest kids.

It was memorial day week so we went to my dad's cemetery.

Jaxon only went to school on Tuesday. Basically his teachers said that there would not be anything going on so he stayed home almost all week.

Here are a few more things we accomplished:

We went to the dump! My garage was full of stuff that had to be taken to the dump. It had been piling up all winter and by spring my garage was bursting. Then we were able to clean the garage! Hooray! Then I filled up my clean garage with things to sell at Jaxon's yard sale. It is a fund raiser for band. We sell stuff and it goes to pay for some of his band fees.

I lead the music for primary.
Tanner and Jaxon gave talks in church.
Jaxon got his Eagle paperwork finished!
My brother's family came back to Utah- they had had a planned vacation before all the funeral stuff happened. So we got to hang out with them.
We had a yummy BBQ on Memorial day.
We worked on the yard for the first time for a month. (yes, we mowed- but the weeds were gaining control). And I planted flowers and tomatoes!
I had a lot of Webelos things to take care of and plan because we have a lot of summer things coming up.
Alex's last baseball game!
I got to go to a great Relief Society meeting where we learned about Puerto Rican cooking. Then we got to taste it- and it was so good!
I had to go through everyone's clothes to see what was needed for summer.
We had to get supplies and stuff packed for multiple scout camps.
And there was all the normal stuff like shopping, laundry, going to the bank, taking kids to their activities, etc....
 
So- it was the last day of school and Tanner had a scout camp! He was so excited. He loves these things.

It turned out to be a really fun activity. And the leaders put pictures on facebook. So I grabbed them.

Tanner loves rock climbing. He is pretty good at it too.

Hatchet throwing! Come on- that is cool.

Their troop won a prize.

Practicing scout skills

The had a fireside and they got to listen to Hank Smith! Tanner loved it and told us everything that Hank told them.

That is a great kick off to summer.

Tanner got home at 3:00 and took a shower and we were off to Hale Center theatre. It was my turn to go with Tanner and Alex. Tanner had slept for about 10 minutes the night before so it was a challenge to stay awake. But- he really wanted to go.

It was a good show.

Sunday Andre and I got new callings. Andre is the ward mission leader. He has been this before in this ward- probably a 8 or 9 years ago. I am a primary teacher. I still get to keep my other 2 callings. I think they forgot that I have a stake calling. But I sub in primary constantly. So I might as well be in there all the time. That way I can plan ahead and not spend my Saturday nights planning a lesson or music time. I get to teach the 8 year old class. They are all boys. I know boys. It should be fun.

Monday we sent Jaxon off to his scout camp. This will be it's own blog.


Tanner had swimming lessons Monday- Thursday this week. Tanner can swim, but because I was not consistent on getting him lessons, he never really learned the strokes well. He is almost 13, so I could not really put him in a little kid swimming lesson class. So he had private lessons.  I told the teacher that my goal was for him to be able to get the swimming merit badge. So she worked with him on techniques that would help him swim better- breathing, how to hold his hands, kicking tecniques etc...

This was awesome.

She also helped him learn to dive.

Because of the swimming lessons, the little boys and I went swimming everyday too!

They had a lot of fun.

And because my youngest is a great swimmer and I don't have to be with him in the pool, I swam laps! I was exercising! It was awesome!

So, he had 2 swimming lessons and then we got an email that the scouts were doing the swimming merit badge that night! He said that it was so much easier because of the things she had taught him. So when we went to swimming lessons the next day I told her that my next goal was for him to be able to swim on a swim team if he ever wanted to. So she worked with him on breast stroke and butterfly also.

So we were leaving for our vacation on Sunday. Friday and Saturday were totally busy, so I needed to get everything ready for our trip. This included shopping for clothes for me, getting hair cut for multiple people, wash clothes and pack them, find the car dvd player and gather things to do in the car. You know. Just all the little things that need to be done. The trip was planned but I needed to figure out all the little details. So that was hours of research on the computer.

And the yard sale was Saturday morning. Last year we made almost half of Jaxon's band money in the yard sale. So I knew it could be a good thing. So all week I was cleaning my house looking for more things and organizing and labeling things for the yard sale.

Oh ya. The computer decided to freeze up and crash. My IT manager husband got it back up but we no longer have microsoft software on our computer and we can't find the disks to put them back on our computer. Lame. 

Friday I got to go to a "Webelos Walkabout". It is 7 hours of hanging with 10 year olds! This is a fun day for the boys. We went on a 3 mile hike...

I love it when one of my kids is in my den. I love to see them enjoy scouting.

And learned about creepy crawlies in an adventure called "In the Wild"

They made a terrarium

And they also did a geology adventure called "earth rocks" but my phone had run out of batteries by then.

I got home at 9:30 that night and packed the cars with our yard sale stuff. The next morning at 7:30 we headed to the school to set up. Here is a picture.

So we did make some money- but it was not as good as last year. It was kind of rainy so that probably kept some people away. We didn't have as good of stuff because we sold all of our good stuff last year. Also my parents had moved last year and instead of taking stuff to the DI, they donated their stuff to our yard sale. So it was a good thing for us last year. But we made a little bit this year so that was good since Jaxon will be in band AND choir this next year.

Then we took a lot of the junk that no one bought to the DI. and came home tired. But then we had to finish up the packing and shopping for our trip.  We got it all done (well, as much as we could) and woke up ready to start the vacation!