weekly 2014.6.1

Rebekah graduated from kindergarten this week, complete with a cheesy ceremony. School isn’t even out yet, she has two more days, so I’m not sure why the ceremony was Friday…. She’s devastated that kindergarten is ending and is threatening to repeat it next year. In other news, last Sunday, she was playing with Harry and a little car track that he has. The cars are battery operated with spinning wheels. Somehow she managed to wind up her hair into one of the wheels, while it was spinning and spinning, getting more stuck by the minute. After several valiant efforts to get the car out of her hair, we just had to cut it out. Fortunately her hair looks crazed most of the time and we can’t even tell where we cut it out.

Harry is happy happy that school is almost out (2 ½ more days)! He is mister social these days, the doorbell is ringing non-stop lately for him to come out and play. I can’t believe he will be a fourth grader, because fourth grade seems kind of oldish to me.

Spencer organized a bus stop swich-a-roo this week. The kids all leave early before the bus comes and run to another stop in our neighborhood. It seems to be a highly popular activity, for some strange reason, and he’s getting new recruits every day.

Thomas has also been a social dude lately. He is supposed to have Friday night dishes and the last two weeks in a row he’s been off at parties, happy to leave his dish duty behind. He celebrated his 13th birthday this week. I think he had a fun day, but it probably wasn’t his most exciting birthday ever. That night Travis, Rachel, Aaron, and Harry were gone, which makes singing “Happy Birthday” along with your birthday treat, difficult.

Aaron also had a party last night with his friend Grant. I guess it’s party season around here. I’m having trouble keeping up with all the required birthday gifts. And while we are on that subject, what do you buy a teenage boy? The only thing we could come up with is a giant $10 bag of candy.

Everyone is finishing up soccer this week. (yay!) We have four games starting tomorrow night through Saturday afternoon. After Aaron’s game on (last) Saturday, we stopped and bought a new lawn mower, which is pretty exciting news don’t you think? It’s about a million times better than our old junker, so the kids are actually pretty excited.

Rachel has applied for a job all over town but so far no luck.  She is taking great joy in sluffing school the next few days (I don’t even care, maybe it would be more fun for her if I cared and she was being sneaky….) In a moment of uncharacteristic socialness, she decided that she will go to our high school grad night party this Tuesday night which starts at 9pm and ends at 4am the next morning. We are still in negotiations about what time she has to come home….

We started “No TV month” today, something we’ve done every year since 2007. The kids are mildly amused by this awesome tradition!  We finished off our TV watching ways last night with “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” which was, um….quirky? I liked it, but it did get a few mixed reviews around here.

Stick and I just got back from a jeep trip around town, required by the fact that we had to return “Walter Mitty” to Redbox.  I’ve decided that jeepin’ is fun, but I definitely prefer jeepin’ around the neighborhoods looking at houses and yards. There is a bumpy dirt road up on the mountain to the east that takes us right up close the temple, which is neat to see from that above angle. Everything in town is gorgeous green and beautiful right now. I only laughed a little when we were bouncing down the dirt road and the key fell out, and the jeep just kept going. The jeep is a little quirky too. Our jeep dates are fun. I guess we were gone a long time, because when we pulled in, Harry walked out into the garage and said, “Where have you been all this time?!”