Bedroom Updates

I've been meaning to buy new, taller bookshelves for both of the kids' rooms for a few months now.  The boys had so many books they were in extra stacks on their closet floor.  Molly's room tends towards mass chaos and I figured a bigger shelf could help.  I finally reached my breaking point with the mess, ordered the bookshelves, and we built them the weekend before school started.

I'm in love with both shelves and wish we had bought them sooner!  Molly was also inspired to do a big bedroom cleanout, and the result of big shelf + big cleanout is that her room is not only the cleanest it has been in years but also should be much easier for her to maintain. Also, she's been wanting to hang her My Little Paintbrush creations for a while and we finally got those up.

The boys have to keep their room cleaner because there isn't much space with the two beds, but the bookshelf still made a big difference.  We switched it with the toy bins to make the books easier to get to.  It also helped the boys to decide to display a few of their stuffies on shelves so they could have some more room in their beds.

Elliott at 7.5

Elliott is seven and a half now!  Here's a little more about what he's like right now:

*Elliott is the funniest kid.  He's always making us laugh.  Sometimes it's because he's trying to be funny and sometimes because he just sees the world in a way that makes me laugh.  He says things like "Mommy, you discomplimented me." He does funny dances.  He's a delight!

*He is such a cuddly little boy and is really in tune with other people's emotions.  He doesn't want anyone to be sad and is the first person to run in with a hug or a cuddle.

*Elliott is in second grade now!  He's such a good reader and can really read just about any word at this point.

*He wants to be exactly like Miles and Molly.  Most of his favorite shows, songs, places, etc. are all of their favorite things.  That's also true of their favorite memes, which was not a category I ever thought I would need for a second grader...

*Elliott is still 1000% obsessed with his stuffies.  He usually has at least his blankie and dino (and possibly also his rocket and several others) with him at home.

*He is such a big kid.  He's passed level three in swimming and does a great job every week in Primary.  We were singing "The Wise Man Built His House Upon a Rock" in primary, and he raised his hand to tell the chorister "They don't mean that you should really build your house on a rock.  They mean that you should build your life on Jesus."  That was not something we'd talked about recently at all!

*He's still just like his younger self in many ways.  Thank goodness, not the messy ways!  He still jumps up and down when he gets excited and is loving and fun.  We love our Elliott!

Bedtime Stories

At the start of 2021, most things were still canceled and I was looking for more things to fill our time.  I've wished we could do read aloud books for a long time.  I worked a very unpredictable evening schedule for about six years when I was on my leadership contracts that made that impossible.

This is the book that inspired me to finally get started:

I saw this at the library and knew that the whole family would like it.  Gerrit had just started getting interested in Dungeons and Dragons and everyone likes funny books and adventure books.  This book was a big hit, and the kids especially like my Thromdurr voice.  I really like doing voices for books!

The next book we read was City Spies.  City Spies is SO much fun.  This is also where I learned the very critical lesson that voices are not the same things as accents.  There a LOT of accents in this book, and some of them were a little challenging.  It turns out that an Australian accent is not my strong suit and I totally gave up on even trying a Brazilian accent.

The Beatryce Prophecy was a huge hit.  It's a fairly short book and reads a little like a fairy tale.  Our favorite character is Answelica, the evil goat.  You may have to read it to understand the genius of Answelica.

Our next read was The Lion of Mars.  It's set on a Mars colony in the near future.  We mostly enjoyed it, but the plot takes a turn at the end that really bothered Miles.  Tortured may actually be a more accurate term. He's still upset about months and months later.  Seriously, if you talk to him about it, he will go into about 30 minutes of detail.

We got Miles's interest back with Daughter of the Deep.  It's extremely high adventure about a descendent of Captain Nemo who is a high school student and so much fun.

We just finished reading Homerooms and Hall Passes: Level Up.  Our adventurers are now in high school and it means a return to my Thromdurr voice :)

We don't do this every single night.  We sometimes go a month or so between books.  We sometimes go a week or more between chapters.  I'm so happy, though, that we started and I was willing to not let it be perfect.  We've had some very fun family memories built on the books!

We also give a quasi-read aloud to The Last Last-Day-of-Summer and The Last Mirror on the Left.  We listened to these on audio during our trip to South Dakota.  They're funny and action-packed!

We have a few books coming up in our queue!  

*I already bought the next two City Spies books to read. I'll have to brush up on my Australian accent :)

*We really want to read The Last Chance for Logan County, the third book in the series we started in South Dakota.

*Miles and I both loved A Wish in the Dark last year, so when I saw that the author has a new book called The Last Mapmaker, I put it right on our read-aloud list.

*One of the librarians recommended a book called Dust & Grim about a girl that inherits the family monster mortuary, so I'm planning to read it for Halloween.

Peacemakers at Primary

We were able to hold our first in-person Primary activity since 2019!  We decided to plan our activity around the idea of ending the conflicts in our hearts from President Nelson's most recent Conference talk.  We each planned an activity that either focused on working together or learning to deal with emotions. I planned an activity where we draw our feelings, and then we also had a fun breathing activity, passing water in cup relays, water balloons, and a Finnish lawn game.  At the end, we let the kids throw the water balloons at us and eat popsicles.  It was simple, straightforward, and we had pretty good attendance!

Fun with Nonfiction

One of our favorite summer activities is to read the Beehive Book non-fiction nominees and do activities that go along with them.  One book we read was Screaming Hairy Armadillo, all about weirdly named animals.

I read the kids the names of animals like "Yeti Crab" and "Headless Chicken Monster" and "Bone-Eating Snot Flower Worm" and "Cookie Cutter Shark".  We drew our versions, then compared them to the actual ones.

We also read a very fun book called "So You Want to Be an Owl?" and then came up with our own owl challenges.  Elliott had us play camouflage tag.

Molly had us do an owl flying challenge.

Miles hid a bunch of stuff in our yard for an "owl eyesight" challenge.

Only the Rarest Cars

Gerrit and I are both full speed ahead in our efforts to capture every rare car color out there for Elliott, our rare car enthusiast.

I've never seen anything else in this coral pink shade!

Gerrit caught the following:

Shiny bubblegum pink

Pale mint

Royal purple

A Day with the Dinosaurs

Gerrit's sister Brooke got us day passes to Thanksgiving Point recently!  We were able to see the dinosaurs at Ashton Gardens, take a quick stop to the Museum of Natural Curiosity to see the space exhibit and Elliott's favorite parts of Waterworks and the Jungle, and then go to the Butterfly Biosphere.

The dinosaur did not actually eat Miles.

The hurricane did not actually hurt Elliott.

The cockroaches did not actually attack anyone (Molly was taking a picture of all the ones with a little hidden eraser to get a coloring page).

Miles hurt his shoulder rolling down the hill at the gardens and wasn't very happy.  Elliott wouldn't stand for that and is trying to cuddle Miles's grumps away.

Bear Lake 2022

The extended Stuart family (my aunts/uncles, cousins, and their kids) had a reunion at Bear Lake this year!  We got an early start on the reunion when we got to hang out with two of my cousins, my aunt, and my cousin's daughters on Tuesday.  Molly was SO excited to hang out with Rachel a little in advance of the reunion, and I was excited to talk to my cousins and my aunt :)

After Elliott finished swim lessons on Friday, we drove up to the Idaho side of Bear Lake.  The kids settled into their downstairs bunks and hung out with all of the cousins, and then we enjoyed a tasty dinner and played the "Name That Baby" game I had put together earlier that week.  I didn't think it would be quite as hard as it actually was, but it was HARD.  My aunt Anne got 44 out of 55!  She's spent a lot of time organizing family photos.

That's me!

My dad

My mom

Miles couldn't really guess any of the pictures, so he spent a lot of time drawing this "Hot Cthulhu" picture.  He was very devoted to that picture and took it pretty much everywhere with him all weekend.

On Saturday, we ate pancakes and then headed to Bear Lake for a morning of lake fun!  Minus the parts where my dad got stuck in the sand on the way in and we got stuck in the sand on our way out, it was a great time :)  The kids had a blast playing in the water and I had fun chatting on the shore, and my aunt brought an amazing spread for lunch.

Collecting seashells was a very popular option.

We headed out early to see the Wild West whodunnit play at Pickleville Playhouse.  They always put on such a great show!

We got raspberry shakes after the play.  We tried a classic raspberry and a raspberry brownie.  We also stopped at another place to try this Dole Whip/passion fruit ice cream/pineapple juice float. 

Saturday night, my sister made burgers and dogs, and then we headed to the tabernacle to take family pictures and play games.  My cousin Abby's husband was SUCH a good sport to put on games for the kids, and he even gave the kids who won each round a dollar.  

The theater had a stage, so the kids put on a bunch of plays.  Molly is under that blanket playing the role of a tree.

Sunday got off to a bit of a bumpy start when my nephew threw up in the middle of the night.  A few of the kids (Miles included) woke up when that happened and didn't get much sleep.  My mom and I were in charge of breakfast, so we made sure they got breakfast when they had to leave.  

For the rest of Sunday, we went to church, visited the Paris Tabernacle, visited a house that some of my ancestors lived in, had a lot of time to talk and play air hockey, and had a pinata that night

The house we stayed at was made from several converted older buildings.  The downstairs had a huge bunk room, but also a huge entertainment room with foosball, air hockey, a theater room, shuffleboard, ping pong, basketball games, and an old-school Nintendo console.  The kids were down there almost the whole time!  The upstairs had the kitchen, gathering areas, and several bedrooms.  Gerrit and I shared with my sister and her husband.

The house also had deeply terrifying stairs.

On Monday, we cleaned up the house, chatted again, and headed home.  It was a great time and so nice to see everyone!

Gerrit insisted on stopping at the Paris Historical Museum before we left.  Is this a dead bird? Is it a hat? IT'S BOTH?!?!!?!