June 2015

June isn't quite over yet but if I'm sitting down to blog I better do it now rather than later...meaning never!

We had a lot of fun in June. It's been nice to make a few friends here and we have gotten out to do some fun stuff. We've had a lot of days at the park, we've been hitting up free lunch at the school right behind our house, we've gone to the high school track to walk/run with joggers while the kids play on the bleachers, we've been hanging out with friends sometimes too. I love summer! Especially with us living in the teeny house we're in right now, there is not a lot of room for playing inside, it gets messy and it's so small it's just no fun. (more on the house situation later) 

Collin worked in Gooding until mid-June and then has been out of town here and there for wrestling clinics he's been doing, so we haven't actually all been home together much. I have signed up quite a few new piano students and now I have 10 that are doing summer lessons and 9 of them are continuing into fall. That is fun because now I'll have enough students to do group lessons in the fall, and have regular-sized recitals. :) Plus I realized that whether I have 5 or 30 students I end up putting the same amount of prep time into lessons and activities anyway, so I might as well be doing it for more students!

Seriously most of my time in June went to planning for camp! Holy CRAP that was a lot of work! When I accepted the calling I was thinking, "this will be so FUN!" And probably 8 weeks out I was over the whole fun thing and really stressed and sick of it consuming what felt like ALL of my spare time! I spent multiple nights up late every week working on stuff for it, and every time I looked on facebook or my phone I would have so. many. messages from the leaders I was working with about this or that. Coordinating all that stuff was a huge job. Still nothing like chairing Sonatina Competition, that's for sure...but still it was a lot! It was ward camp, which I've never even been to, much less planned. I'll post more on that later!

 And then we found out that there's a lapse between his paychecks in August-September, which was a not-welcome surprise! We've been brainstorming how to get that month's paycheck together so we're not having to use credit cards that month if possible. The lamest part of that is that we have been working HARD to pay off the remainder of debt we had from Europe/moving last summer/adoption expenses and we were scheduled to be completely paid off in August! And now instead we're scraping to get money together to cover the missed paycheck! Part of me wishes we had just been saving that money we had put towards the debt and not just paying it off...because then we'd have no problem. But what could we do, we were doing what we thought was best and who knew this would happen. Anyway, yet another awesome thing about my wonderful hubby is that as soon as he found this out, he went to work figuring out what he could do to make sure we could make ends meet. He called up a family we've gotten to know in our ward who farm and asked if they could put him to work. They were so kind and signed him up to drive tractor! woot! I laughed when he told me that. I guess if we're gonna live in Jerome we might as well learn how to farm, ha ha. So he has been putting hours in driving a cultivator through corn fields! Here is a picture he sent me of his view:

After the rainy, rainy May, it was so nice to finally have the sun shining! We busted out the ol' wading pool and I picked up a few little squirt guns and water toys for Ash to play with. She loves the whole water gun thing, it's cute. Sadly our little blue pool (I think we've had it at least the last 2 summers!) finally sprung a leak. We were out of a pool for a couple weeks (because we live in a small town and Walmart was sold out of pools that whole time!) but we finally got a new one, and it gets used every day!

Ashlyn has been really intrigued with the idea of doing dance class and has been asking to do dance for the past few months. I gave her the choice between continuing gymnastics classes through the summer or trying out dance, and guess what she chose. I was wondering if she would be totally not into it once she actually went to class and learned what "dance class" really was. But so far she has loved it! There are 4 other little girls in her class and it's a tap/ballet combo class. She LOVES the tap part, no surprise there. So far she's liking it a lot. (makes Mama just a little proud ;) ) I figure in the fall we'll again give the choice of dance or gymnastics and see what she wants to do. And oh yea, she looks absolutely adorable in her dance clothes! :)

First day of dance!

We had a "stay in bed at night" chart for Ashlyn and the prize at the end of getting 14 stickers was ice cream. We had a coldstone gift card and we all enjoyed going out to ice cream together! She was just a little excited, if you can't tell. She got "blue" (cotton candy) ice cream with "fruit snacks" (gummy bears) in it. blech, not one I'd choose! 

Yeah that's more like it. Speaking of, I can't remember if I've mentioned that Collin and I are participating in a fitness challenge with my siblings/in-laws. Collin has been absolutely kicking everybody's bums. SO annoying to me! :) Who invited an All-American college athlete to participate, anyway? As y'all know my family isn't exactly the competitive/mentally tough types! He's a different ball game, that's for sure. Oh well, good for him. Anyway, the worst part is that you get points each day you don't eat sweets, like, a decent amount of points. So that means that on "treats cheat day" we go a little overboard! That's why this Coldstone trip was so monumental!

Uncle Tyler came and visited for a weekend, that was fun! He and Collin had a lot of fun hanging out and watching wrestling videos, talking wrestling, and doing general brotherly stuff. We went to Dierkes Lake (or as Ashlyn calls it, "The Beach") one day and it was so fun. 

I took a picture of what's on my nightstand because it's so, so special to me! These are the best things to see first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Love these special spirits that have been sent to our home.

We went on a quick day trip to the Boise Zoo with some Jerome friends! First time I've gone over there and didn't hang out with my Boise buddies. Is that some sort of moving milestone? I hope not....but I will have to have another trip over for Boise buds soon!!! And it was really fun going with Jerome friends!

These 3 in the back of the car--we had 5 kids between us 2 moms, with a friend of mine here, Megan. It was fun getting to chat the whole way there and back. 

Most of the kiddos for our zoo trip

In ALL our years we've been to the Boise zoo...like a hundred times.... this was the first time Ashlyn rode the carousel! Lucky her. She loved it, of course.

Playing with my sweet buddy.

Father's Day wasn't anything spectacular for us this year....sorry Collin. I was honestly just trying to get through the day without crying, a lot. I was blessed to be pretty busy getting ready for camp that day, and it kept my mind off missing my Dad for the most part. We did have some yummy treats for Collin and a card made by Ashlyn too. Hopefully he felt special, we tried to make it that way!

A post I put up on Father's Day. We really miss our Dads so, so much. Those holes in our hearts.... don't think they'll ever go away.

We have made a few trips to the Jerome Rec Center pool, I love it! Last summer we went once, and the wading pool was closed so it was not super fun because the regular pool is too deep for Ashlyn. But we've had better luck so far this summer and the wading pool is big and PERFECT for Ashlyn. I can sit on the side with Elan and it has been great! 

This big guy turned 4 months old.... he weighs 17 pounds now and is sleeping almost 12 hours at night! 

Buddies at the pool

House stuff. Oh the house stuff. We've had so much of that going on this month. We discussed putting our house on the market a LOT with our realtor.... in the end she did a walk-through and said she didn't think it would sell or even be worth showing with how the people living in it right now were keeping it. Great. She suggested trying to find some more responsible (*less sloppy*) renters, since we have time, and then think about listing it in about 6 months. So we have given our renters notice that they're out when their lease is up (end of July), and we've got a couple of much better families very interested, we need to just get over there to show it to them to get that all set up. So we will soon be doing a quick renter swap. Hopefully we can sell it sometime before too long. It would be SO nice to be rid of that burden!