weekly 2015.8.30

Rebekah is still thrilled with school and loves her teacher. She had her birthday on Thursday and her party yesterday morning. I feel immensely relieved to have all the birthdays and parties over with! She had fun basking in all her birthday glory.

Harry had his first soccer game on Thursday with our neighborhood team. Our city league teams change in 5th grade to include 6th and 7th graders. We realized that Spencer could play on his team too. Spencer is also playing his comp team but is usually available on Thursday nights for the rec games.  It’s fun that they can play together. Their team won, something like 6-0.

Spencer is also doing amazing on his comp team. I was hosting Bekah’s birthday party and missed his game on Saturday except for literally the last 3 minutes. Nice of me to drive over just for that last 3 minutes, no?  When I got there one of the other soccer moms starting telling me all about an amazing goal that Spencer had scored, along with telling me how happy they were to have him on the team. Today he was able to pass the sacrament for the first time and we smiled to see that he was the tallest deacon. Ha! The cute Deacon’s quorum presidency came over to welcome him and he was positively tongue-tied! All he could do was sit there smiling with his dimples in action. It was amusing to see since he never seems to lack for words. He also went with his neat group of friends to the temple Friday morning before school since they have Friday Late Start.

Thomas is tolerating high school but is so happy about his woodworking class. He is planning on building a blanket chest in class and got permission from his teacher to include a secret compartment. He along with Aaron both informed me today that they need new church shoes. Growing boys! They’re going to start passing down things to Stick pretty soon. Thomas already has bigger feet than Stick.

Aaron went over yesterday to help his Teacher’s Quorum advisor put a roof on a newly built shed. They didn’t get quite done so he’ll help again another day. He was happy to earn some $ with his new carpentry skills. He and Thomas are deep into planning a joint venture wooden puzzle box that they’re going to build together. I like to see them collaborating, talking and laughing (about things that I don’t understand! Or even want to understand.)

Rachel seems to be happy at BYU. She made me get SnapChat insisting it was the only way to communicate with me. So every once in a while I get a little video or picture of her shenanigans. She’s done some of the orientation activities but also missed some because of work. She starts classes tomorrow and I hope it won’t be a total shock to her system. College is hard and a lot of work, if I remember right. My friend Jan reminded me that it was exactly 25 years ago this weekend that we were freshman at BYU. How can that possibly be?!!??!

Rachel is taking Religion (BoM, I think), several design classes, American Heritage (I think), beginning guitar and get this……beginning ballet. I’m unreasonably excited about ballet, I’m not sure why. My neighbor who danced all her life said that when people see Rachel in that class they will assume she is a ballerina already, because she’s built like a ballerina. She also said that she’d be sore in ways she’s never been sore before. I sure hope she enjoys all her classes.

Rachel says the dorm food is great, but it’s annoying to eat because all the other girls are on diets and she usually has three donuts and a cookie on her plate. HA!

We had our annual neighborhood block party/potluck last night, which is always enjoyable. It was a little more sparsely populated than usual, but it’s always fun to get together and chat. I love all our neighbors.

We have been harvesting peaches this week. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen Stick giddy, but if I ever did, it was this week. He’s been giddy over our peaches. We’ve had lots, they’ve been big, and oh so delicious. It’s taken six years to get peaches, probably explaining the giddiness. Fruit trees are not for the impatient, that’s for sure.

Over and out.