Wow! can you believe that we are at the end of August? That went really fast and I was busy every second of it.
Confession: sometimes I was busy to the point of breaking. I just went from one thing to the next as fast as I could. The problem being that I was so worried about getting everything done, that I was not enjoying the things that I was doing.
Goal: I want to enjoy the things I am doing and not worry about everything. I might not get to slow down and do less, but I can make sure I get to do what I want to do every once in a while. I want to go to the temple and have lunch with friends periodically and be able to work on the family history project that my mom and I are working on. All the other stuff has to happen too. But I don't want to forget to enjoy life. Because I have let myself get really grouchy lately and I don't like it. Time to change.
Anyway... back to August. A lot of august was on the last blog post also. These are just the things that I didn't post last time.
Remember Jaxon was doing this most of the month.
Remember Jaxon's eagle project? It was done in April and Jaxon has been working on the paperwork all summer (it is not his favorite thing). It is finally done and guess what came in the mail?
Jaxon is a proud owner of a cell phone! Hooray!
This was super exciting for me because I can text him or call him and he can know what is going on in his life instead of us figuring everything out for him.
I don't have pictures, but August is the start of Webelos starting back up. We take off July (except for camp) because everyone is on vacation. So I had to get that organized and started and had to try to help a few kids who needed help finishing a few requirements before their birthdays. Also, Young Women volleyball starts up soon so August is the month to organize that. We had another Bartlome family move into our stake. We are not related to them and she got called to be a ward coach. So I will work with her! Funny.
The other super exciting thing about August is that this little sweety was born.
Jill's little girl! She is adorable.
My mom spent most of the month down there in Arizona helping with these three cuties. They had three adults and three kids and they were exhausted! Jill will have them all in a few weeks when Jimmie goes back to work. It makes me tired thinking about it.
Because of that I got to water my mom's plants and eat her zucchini and tomatoes!
While my mom was gone, I went over and started working on our family history project. I started scanning pictures. These are pictures of my 2nd great grandpa Carl Willis Dean:
He is the driver of the water truck above.
Seriously these are great pictures.
I also got to spend a lot of time with Joanna. Because once her school starts, I won't see her for months (exaggeration). It was fun watching movies and working on cutting first grade projects and just hanging out with Joey.
Because we had 2 birthdays the same weekend- and it was the same weekend that Andre was leaving, we had to spread out the birthday celebrations. Jaxon had his birthday dinner first. He is a meat eater- so he chose a barbecue place. It was awesome!
Then we just had a couple of days until school started. The boys just wanted to play video games and watch their weird videos and I let them do that knowing that screens would be very much limited when school started. We watched a couple of movies, relaxed and didn't really do anything big for the last few days of summer. That was what they wanted.
Then it was the day- first day of school!
third grade
fifth grade
(so happy to get pictures)
But he loves his mom- Eight grade
They all chose red shirts- I think it is a favorite color.
The first day of school was good. Jaxon was still home for a couple of days so it did not seem like the end of summer for me yet.
Tanner is a huge fan of fruit and one of the things we did for his birthday was buy and freeze a bunch of fruit so he could have smoothies when ever he wanted. This has been the after school snack every day for a week! We have a freezer full of frozen peaches from our tree so it is ready at any time.
Then it was Tanner's birthday! They went to see a movie. It was kind of fun. They also had recliners at the theater. Seriously. Awesome.
We went to dinner for Tanner's birthday- He chose an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. Oh yum.
I forgot to take pictures until we were about ready to leave so this is what you get!
Then Andre went to St. Paul, Minnesota for a work business trip. He had fun in the evenings seeing a minor league baseball team and seeing some old friends of ours that he worked with in the 90's.
Jaxon and Tanner and I had a fireside Sunday night and Joanna brought a yummy dessert. We had them blow out candles. This was the day in between their birthdays.
Then it was Jaxon's birthday! He celebrated by going to his first day of school. Then going to 3 hours of band practice after school. We picked him up and took him to his favorite drink place- Fiz- and got him a giant drink.
What did I do on my first free-from- kids day? I had so much to do. But I had a table full of peaches.
I spent hours cutting up peaches
and putting them into bottles.
On Tuesday I had the boys pick some more peaches for me and we filled the table again.
I worked all day Tuesday blanching, cutting and filling more jars of peaches.
I also made more jam, and cobblers, peach crisps, pies and anything else I could think of.
Andre got back and we were still surrounded by peaches. This is Chase doing homework.
Which reminds me. School starting makes my days less crazy because my kids are not home. But it makes my evenings exponentially harder because homework happens. I have to remember so many more things that they have to do. It makes my head crazy. We have not started all the after school activities yet so we will get crazier coming up.
Friday Chase had his school friends over. I meant to invite them over all summer but I didn't get around to it. So it was a back to school type party. Can you guess what they did with water balloons?
Oh yea, Our family is kind of getting obsessed with extreme croquet. So Chase showed them how to do that. (he had already finished in this picture.
Then we had marshmallows and generally had a good time.
Saturday came. I had already done all the canning and peach picking that I wanted to do. The night before I had finished all the peaches in our kitchen. And our neighbor had come over and gotten all that she wanted to can. So we decided to pick all the peaches off the tree. They were ripe and falling off.
Andre is a master at picking.
But we had to get Tanner for the really high ones.
You would not believe my kitchen. It was covered in peaches! Way too many peaches,. And I didn't really want anymore of them. So I started texting people to please come and get some. People would come and take 50 peaches and it would not even look like anyone took any.
Sunday the missionaries came for dinner and we had the ward walkabout -with one of the stops being our house. So we invited anyone that came by to take our peaches home with them. That was great! Monday Andre took hundreds too his work and someone else came and took hundreds. We currently have about 10 peaches left in our house. I need to make fruit leather today with the cut up peaches I have in my fridge. Wish me luck!
Sunday was also a big day for Jaxon. He was ordained a Priest! What a great kid he is. Next week he might bless the sacrament. Awesome! I need to remember to take his picture in his suit.
August is Andre's busiest month at work so he had a lot to do with year end stuff and reporting to the government and board meetings and auditors and stuff- and the business trip. So he is glad that most of that is done now. Jaxon has a lot of band stuff but it will just get busier for a while and he has a few harder classes- so he needs to work hard.
So to sum up- August was busy!
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