September 2020

 We did a picnic lunch and swim the Saturday of labor day weekend.  I expected the pool to be crowded since it was a holiday weekend and the pool was closing after the weekend but we had the pool to ourselves for almost the whole time we were there.  It was so fun.

Soccer season started up.  Jaron had a great season and has really improved this year. He's more aggressive and has really good ball handling skills.  He was on a the team with his best friend Graham. The girls got on a great team this year with a great coach and had a lot of fun.  They both scored goals this season which always makes it more fun.

Jaron lost his first tooth.  It was weird because one night while we were eating dinner he started crying and complaining he had a popcorn kernel stuck in his teeth and that it hurt.  Since he hadn't had popcorn recently I took a look and behind his tooth was a new tooth already growing in.  When I wiggled his tooth it was pretty loose.  So he wiggled it and about an hour later he pulled it out.  All my kids pull their own teeth out.  He was so happy!

The Pace's bought a house and are moving back to Utah!  They bought a house in Provo and although they aren't moving officially until January we stopped by to check out their new house and help them move some stuff in.  We took a walk down to Will's Pit Stop which is just down the street and got slurpees.  Welcome back to Utah Paces!

We took a drive up the canyon one Sunday to see the fall leaves.  The canyon was soooo super crowded, it was nuts, so we didn't last a long time but still pretty to see.

We got a new piano.  The kids have been using a keyboard for 2 years and it was time to get something a bit nicer.  We got an electronic piano but it was all 88 keys and they are weighted so it feels just like playing a real piano.  It's been nice to have a better quality piano and the kids love it because it came with headphones that they can plug in and I can't hear them practicing so I don't know when they've made a mistake or if they've played all their songs enough times.  Now I put rules in place when I want to hear them play.

The Girls turn 9!

 Siena and Aria turned 9 this year.  I have seen so much change in them this last year.  Their legs have grown a mile and I can tell they just aren't all little girls anymore.  They have their own opinions, emotions, likes and dislikes.  Sometimes they say things and I take a step back and just look at who they've become.

Together they are still best friends and fight just like sisters do.  One minute they are mad at each other and the next they are laughing hysterically.  They love their guinea pigs and although it's a struggle to get them to clean the cage and no leave a mess down there, they make them costumes, make videos with them and are constantly borrowing my phone to look up how to train a guinea pig or take pictures of something cute they've done.

Siena has taken up sewing a lot this year.  She sews stuffed animals, finger puppets and anything else that she thinks of.  She loves to craft.  She is still taking piano and is improving a lot.  She recently started learning Fur Elise and it's fun to listen to her play that.  She is great at school and helps her teacher a lot when she gets her work done early.  She loves computers as well and wishes I would sign her up for a coding class.  She is constantly creating slide shows or any thing else she can do on a computer.

Aria still loves horses and unicorns and wishes I would sign her up for horse riding lessons.  Actually she wishes we would sell our house and buy some horse property so she can own her own horse.  She is really creative and really good at drawing and can draw much better than I can.  Aria loves to read and will read and read and read.  She is consistently reading way over the minimum number of minutes she's required to read at school.

I put them in different classes for school this year.  I debated a while about it, and even with changes due to Covid, wondered if I was doing the right thing.  Both needed a chance to shine in their own ways and progress academically at their own pace without worrying where their sister was at, what level they were on and who got more right on math tests.  It's also helped that they've had different homework so they weren't complaining who got down faster.  Both have done great and although they were resistant when I first told them about it last spring, they were fine when school started.  I'm glad that they still meet up for every recess and play together.  Both have adjusted great and don't seem to have any issues which I'm so happy about and I can't wait to see how they each shine this year without being in the shadow of their sister.

They went to school on their birthday but after school we took them to Classic skating because they got rollerblades for their birthday.  It was really quiet there so no worries about social distancing or covid, we felt very safe.  It was a fun afternoon and that night we came home ate dinner and had cookies and sang to them.

The next night we invited their friends over for a birthday party.  We did a pj, late night, breakfast for dinner party.  The girls thought it was so fun.  We ate pancakes, made a craft, opened presents and then they played ghosts in the graveyard outside.  They had so much fun and were seriously so loud.  12 screaming 9 year olds.  I had to text the neighbors and apologize for the noise...luckily they were just laughing at the noise and didn't care.

August 2020

We got to watch cute cousin Lilly get baptized via zoom.  Although we were sad we couldn't be there in person because of Covid, we were glad we got to watch.

We got to get one more trip in before school started back up.  My friend and roommate from BYU, Heidi Hart invited us up to spend the weekend at her house.  They live just outside Couer d'alene ID right on Hayden Lake and have a little apartment above their garage they rent out and it happened to be free one weekend so she invited us to come stay.  We had so much fun!  They live on this gorgeous lake and it's so beautiful up there.  They have 4 kids, 2 older than my kids and then a girl Siena and Aria's age and another girl Jaron's age.  They all played so well together and had a blast.  We played on their dock, watched a movie on their deck, ate outside every night, went on a hike/picnic lunch and when the kids were playing, Heidi and I were able to catch up.  They took us out on their boat one day.  My kids had never been on a ski boat before and they had so much fun.  We put them on the tube and they loved it and were smiling from ear to ear the whole time.

After we left their home we took an extra day and spent 1/2 a day in Glacier National Park.  We also stopped  at Kootenai Falls Suspension Bridge which was a fun short break. It was fun but a long drive for 1/2 a day.  We went on a few short walks and the one long hike we wanted to do was shut down due to bear activity.  We did see a mountain goat and funny prairie dog.

We were happy to find out this summer that school was going to open in the fall like normal.  After doing home school for 3 months we were all excited for that news.  Not knowing if it would last or we would have to do online school for part of the time, we decided to get the kids some desks.  

We took a Sunday drive up to Silver Lake at Brighton resort.  We used to go there a lot but hadn't been there in years so it was fun to go up there again, although it was super crowded.

And then just like that, it was time for school to start.  The governor mandated masks be worn in school all day long but the kids didn't care, they just wanted to be in school.  Our district decided to have early out every day to help the teachers with their online students (you could decided if you wanted to do in person or online school) And I've never seen 3 kids more excited to go to school, see friends and have a normal routine again.  And even though they get out an hour earlier every day, I was just as happy to have some time to clean my house and get some uninterrupted work done.

Aria had her first official violin recital.  She worked all summer getting her songs just right and did a great job.  We had it at our house with just us, her teacher Lauren and my parents.

Another big event this month was that we got to go back to church in person for the first time since church shut down in March.  Masks are required and only 99 people are allowed and everything feels different there and yet it was so good to be back and see people, feel the spirit and feel the familiarity of being at church.  We have and are still enjoying our home church Sundays but I don't think we'll ever take for granted going to church again.

We got in our last swims for the season and lucky for us Christy was up dropping off Eliza at BYU and so Emmy got to come swimming with us.

We got an updated picture of the JLO's, the cutest 3 boys there are born 2 weeks apart.

And the best news of all, Jaron graduated from his speech therapy!  He has been in speech therapy for almost 3 years.  When we got him evaluated 3 years ago he had 54 speech errors and was in the 3rd percentile.  It's no wonder why we couldn't understand him.  He's worked so hard to get all his sounds just right and is so excited he doesn't have to be pulled out of class any more.  Great job Jaron.

Kids think they are guinea pigs and so funny when actually they are just crazy.