Boxing Day

So all day on boxing day Kyle was acting a little weird about eating, we figured it was just too many sweets and candies. But at dinner he started to cry with every bite he took... so I looked in his mouth and it looked like someone has shoved a pea up under his gums by one of his top teeth. We called our dentist, who as luck would have it had just gotten back into town that afternoon, he told me to meet him at his office in 20 minutes. I took Kyle over there and he looked at it told me that he thought it was an abscessed tooth but that he'd take an x-ray to be sure. We did the x-ray and sure enough it was an abscess up behind a tooth that had a filling that evidently didn't fill in the entire decayed spot in it and as the decay had grown behind the filling it'd caused the nerve to die and the infection (abscess) to start and to grow. So he numbed up Kyle's face (as you can see in the following post procedure photos) and popped the tooth out. The transformation in Kyles demeanor was nearly instantaneous, he went from lethargic and whiny to happy and bouncy, made Carmen and I feel like inattentive parents for not noticing earlier...


I'm not smirking... honest...


Full face smile needed some assistance.


Happy as a lark in our new Christmas jammies, even if we can only get the right side of our mouth to smile...

Christmas

Christmas morning. We did make the kids wait until it was 6am before they could go downstairs to see what Santa had left for them. I know we are SOOOO MEAN to them. It's OK they'll work it out in therapy when they're older.

Putting up the Christmas Tree

Last year at an after Christmas clearance sale we picked up a prelit tree, it was regularly like 200 and we got it for like 50. Anyway the weekend after Thanksgiving here (at least on our street) is the official starting gun for getting out the Christmas stuff. Not to be out done our boys made sure we got ours up and decorated.









Carmen needs to take a photo of the finished decorating and post it. It's pretty clear there was a favored spot for ordainment placement... unless she's already redistributed them...

Tying my own tie

It was stake conference, and for a variety of reasons James hadn't tied Kyle’s tie before we left the house, Kyle asked him how to do it as we drove there in the car. So this is the result of his first effort at tying his tie while following instructions from dad who wasn't even looking at him!


Not to shabby...

Fine Dinning

Tarwater has a day called "fine dinning". It's a lunch event where they sit at tables and the 6th graders bring around serving platters and they eat a "family" style meal. It's an opportunity for them to work on etiquette and I think it's great! They asked the kid to dress up of the event. Kyle wanted to wear his suit to school today. But I didn't think that was the best idea because he had PE that day and the kids would still be going out to resees. James and I were able to talk with him about wearing nice pants and a button down shirt. So both Kyle and Ryan wore tan pants and button down shirts. The cafeteria was changed to look like a restaurant. There were even table cloths, center pieces, light music playing in the background, and nice looking paper plates on the tables. The food was served to the table and was passed around family style. I was able to be there with Kyle’s class.




Now a few years back when the boys were shopping with Nana for their dad for Christmas, and she suggested they get him something to wear to work, they told her that he had to wear tan pants and a blue shirt, that it was his uniform for work. Anyway, when I looked at Kyle and Ryan I knew I had to get a picture of them with their dad... for the obvious reason that they’re all wearing the same outfit! They just have different colored shirts on.



Oh and as you can see in the photo the "rules" on James' uniform have loosened up a bit, I think he may even have some red shirts for work now too...

Soccer

Ryan and Kyle are both playing soccer again this season. Ryan is playing on a team the has moved up to the age group of 6-7 years old even though most of the kids on the team are about Ryan's age I think 2 or 3 might already be 6... Kyle is playing a team with the 8-9 year olds. They are both playing good and learning a lot. Ryan still really likes to play goalie, which is good because he's now not only playing kids who are on average much bigger than him but now they're older too.
Here's a photo of Kyle playing his position and watching where the ball is, he's at that age where they're really starting to get how to play this as a team, how to play your position and watch the ball. A lot less swarming around the ball like angry bees... That week Kyle's team, which has black jerseys, played another team with black jerseys. Luckily the coach had gotten a heads up from the league about that possibly happening so they all wore white t-shirts under their jerseys.

In this photo Ryan diving for the save. He really gives it his all when he plays goalie.

Halloween

The boys each carved their own pumpkins. Kyle and Ryan did theirs at school for the "fall festival" at Tarwater on Friday the 30th. Tylor carved his on Halloween in the afternoon (all by himself!).


Here are the kids in their costumes on Halloween. One of the things we've done is hold onto costumes year over year, anyone need a size 2T Tigger costume? Anyway it's made it so that when one of the boys decides they don't want to be what they said they wanted to be, or even what they were at say a Halloween party THE DAY BEFORE! they can pick something out of the costume box. So originally both Kyle and Ryan were "white ninjas" from GI-Joe or something I don't know we haven't seen it but they tell us that's where it's from -because it's tribal knowledge at school evidently... Anyway for the ward trunk or treat on the 30th both Ryan and Kyle were white ninjas... But then at like 4pm when we were starting to get ready to go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood (as if we didn't get enough candy at the trunk-or-treat) Ryan decided to be something different... So he was a soldier instead.

(Trunk-or-Treating Costumes)


(Trick-or-Treating Costumes)

Fall festival

Each year the elementary schools here do what they call a "fall festival" around the Halloween time. This year at Tarwater it was on Friday, October 30th, at Tarwater the kids in each class get to carve a pumpkin. Then that evening at the "fall festival" there are games, food, and other activities to do. Plus they light all the pumpkins and you can walk around and look at them all. The kids enjoyed carving their pumpkins. I went to the school to help Ryan and Kyle carve their pumpkins.




Here Ryan is trying his hand at baseball, they had a vent at the top of that cone in front of him and the plastic ball would "hover" there for the kids to hit it. Here Tylor and Kyle are playing a football game with each other. Where you had to try and get more "yardage" than your opponent... We didn't stay very late into the evening mostly because the ward was doing the annual trunk-or-treat tonight too.

James' Mission Reunion and a Quick Trip to The North Rim of The Grand Canyon

So a bunch of the elders and sisters that James served with under Elder Anderson in France, decided to have a 20 year mission reunion as it's been 20 years since Elder Anderson was called as the mission president of the Bordeaux France mission. Anyway James decided that he wanted to go, so we drove like mad hatters ok, maybe not like that as it took us 2 days -we don't do late night driving, in fact when we rolled into Kanab at 10pm we were toast and didn't want to deal with the fact that due to tour buses nearly every room in the town was rented out. We got lucky and got a room at a local place that was apparently in the middle of remodeling and was renting out rooms that were almost done... yes almost done. Missing moldings here and there things in odd spots, it was great!
So we got up to Salt Lake City on Friday at like 2pm or so, the reunion was at 6 down in Draper but we were staying with my sister in SLC proper about 30 minutes from the reunion according to Mr. Google... but due to traffic coming into town and having been in the car for the better part of 2 days, and the fact that my sister has a nice sized house with a nice yard and a trampoline. Well factoring that in with the bonus of getting to wear dress shirts and ties and all three boys opted out of going down to the reunion. Which I guess was good as it was like a dinner then fireside sort of thing that went from 6 to 9pm. It was fun to meet people James knew on the mission and he loved reminiscing and harassing people he hasn't seen in nearly 2 decades! We then spent all day Saturday with my sister and her family and watched conference. Sunday we watched the morning session with them, they fed us lunch and we hopped in the car and listened to the afternoon session as we drove south, hoping to get to Kanab before the tour buses so we could possibly get a little nicer room... Luckily we made it. Ate dinner at an over priced western themed restaurant/novelty shop called spurs or boots or some other western iconic item.


Our motivation was to go visit a sight that people come from half way around the world to see and we've lived here nearly 3 years and have been within miles of but have not gone to see yet; that being of course The Grand Canyon. So Monday morning we left Kanab and stopped off at the north rim of the Grand Canyon. We were able to spend pretty much the entire morning there walking around finding a vista or two and just enjoying a natural marvel. Ryan is however, not really that much of a fan of heights. He wasn't particularly jazzed about going out onto the sun deck of the lodge and you can forget about the little point that was out there 20 yards or so. So James took the other two boys and they walked down there, and then along one of the trails that goes along just below the lodge to another point on the east side of the lodge.

Here is a shot from the lodge's sun deck of the pont they walked out to. You'll have to make it big to see the people standing on it in this photo.

Here's the one James took of Ty and Kyle out on the point. They took some others of the view but this is a family blog not a view blog so...









Here's the view back up to the lodge from the point. And the zoomed in view James took so you can see me and Ryan watching them.



I asked Ryan if he wanted to walk along the path that they would be coming up as they went away from the point and surprisingly he agreed. So we meet them at an intersection and the sign said it was like a quarter of a mile to Bright Angle Point. We hiked out there; Ryan did fine for a little bit. But once he realized that the mountain went down on either side of him he was done. Here's a photo at the end of the trail for Ryan...


So we waited for them to go out to the point take some photos and come back.













This one is just one of those interesting views that I guess we had to break our own rule and put it in this post...

James said that while they were walking Kyle asked why Ryan hadn't come along and when James told him Kyle said, "yeah, I'm scared of heights too" as he walked along the very edge of the trail looking over the railing, then followed it with "I'm afraid I might accidentally jump, without a parachute". Apparently we've got an X-games athlete on our hands... great...

I don't know does it look like he's thinking about jumping here? I hope not...


We then followed a trail that went back up into the woods and circled around to some 1000 year old Indian ruins, which turned out to be like 30 flat stones in a rectangle that made the foundation of an Indian house(?) lodge, whatever some thousand years ago... Anyway, walking back towards the lodge we spotted this doe feeding within 10 feet of the trail. She ignored us for a while then decided to move into the shade when she felt we and the other tourist had taken enough photos of her...

We drove from the lodge over to a vista I think it was called Royal Point or something and James was walking with Ryan up ahead of me. They turned the corner and the path went down a set of steps to an overlook on a precipice point. Ryan said to James, "Is that a point?" James said yes, Ryan said "Does the fence go all the way around it?" James told him it did. Ryan said, "Then I think I can go down there." So I was going to take a picture of the 4 of them and a tourist from Florida offered to get a picture of us all. We were and still are so proud of Ryan for facing and maybe even conquering (a little) his fear of heights!

I'm going to have to talk James into making a slide show of all of our Grand Canyon Photos to put on here...

Student of the Month

Both Kyle and Ryan got student of the month for the month of August. Congradulation to both of them.

Bogle banner

Laura and I made one of the banners for Bolge Jr Highs "teams" (they divide the kids into groups of about 100 kids for some activities and the kids then figure out what kind of a banner they want.) My friend Laura signed up to make a banner then she asked me if I would help her make it. The banner that she was assigned ended up being the team that Tylor is on. I had fun helping out with the banner. Here is a picture of the banner.

Play in a day

The stake put on the play in a day activity for the youth. Tylor was able to participate in it. There were 6 different plays to choose from, Tylor choose to be in the Mary Poppins themed play. Tylor played Michael, a speaking part! Not sure if that was 100% his idea or if he was just more amenable to the requests of the director Annie (James' friend Jonathan's wife). At first he said he didn't want to go, because that was the prevailing opinion in deacon’s quorum the Sunday before. But after the play he said he enjoyed being part of the play in the day. So that was good.

Patriotic Performance

Ryan's class participated in Tarwater Elementary School's Patriotic Program on September 10th. Here's a couple of videos.

Yankee Doodle.


This land is your land this land is my land.


Proud to be an American.


Yankee Doodle Reprise.

Star student

This weekend Ryan came home from school with the star student bag. It had a blue monkey in the bag along with a poster that the kids are to fill out. Part of the assignment is that over the weekend the child is to do an activity with the monkey and write a little bit about it in the class journal. Or the parent writes what the child said.

So some of the star student poster questions got some unexpected responses from Ryan, others well weren't all that surprising. The top of the poster has a spot for his name, how old he is what his favorite color is (blue) what his favorite animal is (a cheetah currently) and his favorite food (mac and cheese! yummy!). There's a spot for a picture of him and one of his family. Then a spot for his favorite place (he said Disneyland). A spot for what he wants to be when he grows up (A zoo keeper). A spot for his favorite thing to do, which is play with Legos. And the parents and teachers favorite response to "if I had one wish, I'd wish for..." he said -every day was a school day.

Ryan's activity with the monkey was to play cars with it and have a race. He then drew a picture of the monkey to put in the class journal.

First Day of School

We had several firsts this year. Ryan started kindergarden! Tylor started the 7th grade at Jr High! And Kyle had a first this year too, going to a new school. Although we moved at the ended of last school year, I was able to keep the kids at Basha Elementary as there was only one month left of school. So this year Kyle and Ryan started school at Tarwater Elementary and Tylor is at Bogle Jr. High.
Another first is that all three kids get to walk to and from school. I walk with Kyle and Ryan to school everyday, yeah I'm not ready to let them do it totally on their own. I do let Ty walk to school alone, unless he asks me to come with him and take his picture in front of the school sign. Like he did the first day.