Last week of summer

Our last week of summer has been full of school meetings,open houses, soccer practice and getting projects done around the house. Of course we added a little fun in there too. 🙂

Tuesday, August 29th

Tuesday evening, I attended a meeting with the boys (and little David) at their high school. They are a part of a mentoring group that will be taking part in a program called Hope Squad. It is a suicide prevention program.

I think this will be very beneficial to our community. I am pleased that my boys will be some of the very first students to participate in this program in our state! You can read more about Hope Squad here: https://hopesquad.com/. It was interesting during the presentation because as Dr. Hudnall spoke, my son turned around and whispered, “Do you think he is LDS?” I smiled and whispered back, “Yeah, we’ll talk to him afterwards.” Dr. Hudnall mentioned that he was from Provo which was pretty much a give-away, but you could feel the spirit during the meeting too. We talked afterward, and as it turned out Dr. Hudnall has (on occasion) worked with one of my cousins who lives in Provo. I love when little things like that happen. 🙂

Wednesday, August 30th

Wednesday evening, Emily and I went to her open house. Thanks to my mom for watching Ian and to Jose for watching David. My husband, Carlitos and Ashley were all at Ashley’s soccer practice. At the open house, Emily was able to meet her teacher and drop off school supplies. She saw that there were four kids in her class that this year that were in kindergarten with her last year. She also found out that a little girl named from her soccer team will be in her class as well. I am excited for Emily to have Mrs. Jones this year. We have known each other for a while, we used to teach nutrition classes together, back in 2005 and 2006. Plus her son is on Emily’s soccer team. I guess that is an advantage of living in a small town. I forgot to take a picture of Emily with her teacher, but we did remember to take a picture together afterward in the car. We were having a little mommy-daughter date. We went to the grocery store to pick up a few things, and Emily picked out some skittles as a treat.

Thursday, August 31st

Today the boys were having their open house at the high school. They are old enough to go on their own and get their schedules and pictures taken etc. However, since Carlitos was all dressed up and had a fresh hair cut we decided to take the opportunity to go out and take some more senior pictures. So, here is another sneak peek!

I am really proud of this young man!

I decided to share these two pictures too. You can see that Ian just tagged right along with us. Most of the time he was just within a few feet from where we were. Ian was a good sport during all this picture-taking business. 😉

Later that evening, when it was time to go to Ashley’s open house, Jose watched David for me. (Thanks again Jose ;-)) It was nice because Ashley and I kind of had a mommy-daughter date plus Ian. Ashley is going to a new school this year. All of the teachers who taught there when the boys were there have either retired or moved on. Ashley was excited to meet her new teacher. Mrs. Neal’s classroom is decorated with Disney themed things. Ashley was excited about that. While we were there, Ashley dropped off her school supplies, picked out a locker and picked her desk. She also did a classroom scavenger hunt with her friend Lili and met the principal and secretary.

Of course, I forgot to take a picture of Ashley with her teacher. This time I remembered while we were still in the school, but already out of the classroom. However, Ashley was feeling a little too shy to go back and take a picture. Ashley, Ian and I went out for dinner afterward, so here she is at dinner. Ashley chose to sit at the those tall tables. I think they are called bar height tables and chairs. She always wants to sit in those, but when we go out to eat we usually don’t because of our little David.

Meanwhile, Emily had her very first soccer game ever tonight. Good thing her Daddy is her coach and was able to be there for the whole thing. I was a little sad to miss it, but glad that my husband is an active parent. 🙂

My husband turned Emily’s first game into a daddy-daughter date. Emily chose to eat at Burger King. One of her favorites. She had chicken nuggets and a piece of cheese cake. Carlos said that Emily had asked to eat at the bar height tables too. What a great Dad!

Friday, September 1st

So, school is about to start and all the kids have gone school shopping except Carlitos. He has worked the last few Saturdays and has not had the chance to go shopping. Today, he, Ian and I set out to do a little shopping. Carlitos did not need too much so it was pretty easy. We still need to get him some shoes though. Here we are after shopping. 🙂

Saturday, September 2nd

We spent our Saturday working on projects around the house. This is our last soccer “free” Saturday probably until sometime in November. Carlitos worked that day. Jose had his friend Andy over and then they left later on to stay the night at Andy’s house. The girls and David enjoyed some time in the pool and Ian just kind of hung out.

Here are the girls in their pool. David had been in and out of the pool too, but while I was outside, he did not want his picture taken. Ian even came and hung out with the kids for a little while. I was able to get all the school supplies re-organized, as well as the art and craft supply area. I also got the kids’ after school organization area done. Now that Ian is using the room that we used to have it in as a bedroom, I had to figure something else out. I made small area in our enclosed front porch. Each child has their own colored storage crate to drop their stuff into when they get home from school. Carlos’ projects consisted of replacing our water heater’s thermostat and heating element, adding a water purifying system to our kitchen sink and he finished caulking and painting the trim on our new living room window.

First are the before and after from the inside view. Second and the before and after from the outside view.

The angles are different on the inside view, but from the outside view the angles are pretty close to matching.

Some of you probably already know how the window was broken. It happened on August 1st, by my brother Ian. That was the day he had his first major meltdown / tantrum since he began living with us. I know those of you who actively read my blog already know the story behind it. (Ian not being able to take out the garbage because it was not full yet.)

While, having him live with us has been challenging for at times. I know that we could be going through harder things and we have been through harder things in the past.  Ian’s autism is not the trial for us, but it is the manner of how quickly he came to live with us. We did not have hardly any time to prepare. It is also managing and figuring out ways to do things when he constantly needs to have an adult around supervising him. Ian also is too old for school so he doesn’t really have anything to do during the day. (I am waiting to hear back from the special olympics in our area.) We also don’t have a van that can fit all 8 of us, so when we go places together, we always need to take 2 cars. Since we live in a small town we are traveling out-of-town at least once a week and we are doubling our gas etc. (We already have a loan for a vehicle right now, or else we could get something that has seating for 8 or more.)

I have faith that we will get through this just other hardships that we have in the past. Iknow that it is important to keep our Heavenly Father as close as possible and that we really need to be diligent about remembering to do the little things that will help us to keep him close, like remembering to have family prayer and reading from the scriptures. We want our home to be a refuge from the outside world, not a place where no one wants to be.

I also believe that one day in Heaven, Ian will be made whole again (mentally). Hopefully it will be there in Heaven that my husband & I and our children will embrace Ian and he will be able to speak to us and we will be able to have conversations with him. In one of those conversations I believe that Ian might thank us for taking him in and caring for him. 😉

Well, back to what I had been writing about….our house projects. So, after a long day of getting things done around the house. My husband treated us to dinner. The cutie that works the front counter was not working in that position that day. So after dinner we went through the drive-thru for a little dessert, to say hi and take a quick pic of our favorite cashier. 

This was his last day of work before school starts the next week. We decided it would be better for him not to work during the school year and would rather have him focus on his classes, seminary, sports and leadership…..and being a kid for one more year! He will have the rest of his life to work, but we want him to enjoy his last year of high school.