Back to School 2012

                                         S has to leave for school before 7am...
                                     notice how much darker it is.

The rest of the crew, ready for their first day.

 

Yesterday I sent five children off to school, and then Miss N and I set off for the PX and Commissary with every other military mom in a 25 mile radius.  (Seriously....the carts were lined up, up and down two isles to check out!)

 

This is school #4 for the older three kids, but they continue to amaze us with their resiliency!  Everyone was very excited to get back to school.  After the move from a school that gets out mid-May, to a school that starts after Labor Day, everyone was ready to get back into a routine and spend some time with kids they aren't related to.

S is in 7th grade this year, and in middle school.  He is such a mature and independant boy.  I offered to give him a ride to school with all his stuff, but he decided to walk.

 

L is in 6th Grade.  He was very excited that his teacher has a lot of the books that he likes to read...even though he has already read all of them :)

 

G is in 4th Grade.  I think she would still cling to my leg and cry, if she didn't have to sit on the floor to reach my leg!  She had a great day though.

 

J is in 2nd Grade.  Her favorite part of the day was "Everything."  She met some new friends, but couldn't remember any names :)

 

And this year B is in Kindergarten!  He is so excited! He met two girls, Kate and Katie, at his table.  Apparently his favorite part of the day was lunch.  He told Daddy that "there was a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich and popcorn and kiwis in it!"  Well, I am glad that it was a hit!

 

We celebrated the beginning of a new school year with cupcakes after dinner.

Miss N enjoyed them too :)

   

 

Look at all the produce I got for TEN BUCKS!

This is the second time that I have been to the Market on the Move, it is "rescued" produce from Nogales Mexico. They set up in parking lots all over the Phoenix and Tucson areas on Saturdays (because most of the lots are at churches), you pay $10 and get whatever they have that week....this week it was A LOT of tomatoes! I got two spaghetti squash, an eggplant, two restaurant-sized bags of spring mix salad, and huge slicing tomatoes, roma tomatoes, and big sweet grape tomatoes. The other day I made and canned sweet tomato relish with all the big ones, next I have to do something with the romas...probably black bean and corn salsa, but I ran out of canning lids!

Cardinals Fans?

We've never really been big fans of pro-football; college football, yes, but not the NFL. But, for the past year and a half we have lived about 5 miles away from the Arizona Cardinals stadium, and this season have been able to attend three of the home games. We have truly enjoyed the games, but yesterday's game was the topper! Not only was it a great game, with the Cards defeating the 10-2 49ers, but we had the pleasure of enjoying the game from the box of the local Toyota dealership! Drinks, gourmet pizza, sandwiches, munchies, and cookies as big as the baby's head! No hiking the stairs when someone has to go to the bathroom AGAIN, everything you need is in your room! I think we are all spoiled now! Thanks to our fantastic neighbors, we were all decked out in Cardinals jerseys, well, except the baby. We are now considering buying jerseys for the whole fam this year! We always pick up something new every place we live (many times it's been a baby, or two!), so becoming Cardinals fans may be what we take with us when we leave the valley of the sun.

The season of candy has officially begun! I swear that the constant stream of candy through my children's bloodstreams begins at Halloween, and doesn't stop until after Easter. I really dispise that aspect of this time of year. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE FALL! I love pumpkins, gigantic beautiful mums, football games, the crispness in the air, the changing leaves (although we don't get many of those things here in AZ), I just don't enjoy the candy struggle. I do enjoy the things that I can bribe my children to do, when I promise them a piece of that candy though...hey, I am not above bribery!! For example, today #5 was way tired, after being awakened at 5:45am by #3's alarm clock, that happened to still have the scary noises CD in it from Halloween. Yep, that pretty much guaranteed that the 4-yr-old was not going back to sleep! So, at 12:30 when he was fighting me about a nap, I may or may not have made the promise of candy...


Anyway, here are some pictures of how everyone looked for Halloween.

Sweet Baby Girl in her "poodle skirt girl" costume. Big sister didn't quite get it. How do you explain a 1950's costume to a 6-yr-old?



Here's the next morning, "sorting".

BUSTED!!

Banana "Ice cream"

One of our new favorite treats is banana ice cream, it is super-easy, and healthy, because the one and only ingredient is BANANAS! Whenever I get bananas on sale I buy several bunches. The first time I did, I thought that Daddy was going to have a break-down over the amount of bananas in the kitchen! He kept telling the kids to eat a banana, and he himself ate at least 4 bananas a day that weekend! Thankfully he went back to work, otherwise we wouldn't have had any tasty ripe bananas for ice cream! Here's how to do it: Slice and freeze ripe banana slices (the brown-black skinned ones like you would use for banana bread are the best since they are really sweet and they have reached the point that no one wants to eat them because they are mushy).

If I leave them in the freezer too long, they start to disappear off the tray, as you can see by the circle shapes in the wax paper :)

Once the slices are frozen solid, place them into a food processor and blend with the chopping blade, until the bananas are completely pureed.

Almost there...

The little dark flecks are a Hershey's bar that jumped out of the cabinet and into the food processor :) It's really tasty with peanutbutter too!

Shirtless Boy

I don't know where he got it, but about two weeks ago #5 began taking off his shirt whenever we are at home. I began to notice the phenomenon when, every time we got ready to go somewhere, I not only had to track down his shoes, but also his shirt. No, Daddy does not tend to walk around the house without a shirt, and the big boys pretty much keep theirs on as well. If Luke starts out the day without a shirt, he would probably stay that way, but he doesn't take it off once he has one on. But #5, no matter how many times we come and go during the day, will remove his shirt when we are home.

Hmmm, kinda makes me remember #2 and his habit of running around shoeless when we lived in Okinawa. He once even climbed into the van without shoes when we left for a three day vacation to Oura Wan on the northern end of the island. If it had only been a beach trip it wouldn't have mattered much, but we had plans to go to the zoo too, so we had to make a stop at Jusco for some over-priced Japanese shoes. He still prefers to be shoeless, but our last three warm-weather assignments have allowed him to do that....I have just become better about checking him shoe situation before we leave the house!

Just as I was about to click "publish post", #5 came to me and asked, "Can you take this shirt off?" I asked him, "Why do you take your shirt off all the time?" and he said, "Because I get too hot, sweaty" Okay, you go for it dude, 'cause I can't afford to turn the air up any higher!

A sad day in our house

This morning, as he does most mornings, Luke woke and went straight to the guinea pigs' cage to tell his little buddies, Bugsie and Spike, good morning. The next thing I heard was crying...the poor little guy had discovered that Bugsie had died during the night, and he was heartbroken.

Bugsie has been Luke's constant companion since his birthday last year. They have had many

adventures together over the past year, and many games of hide-and-seek for the whole family (FYI guinea pigs love to hide, and 3-4yr olds are not very good at keeping track of them). The first thing that Luke does when company walks through the front door, is to get Bugsie out of his cage and bring him to say hello...whether the guest was an animal lover or not!

Before leaving for school, Luke told me "Now I know what I want to do with my birthday money. I don't want Spike to be lonely." Spencer then said that he thought all the kids should help to buy a new guinea pig. It's amazing how sweet they can be to eachother when they really need it. I love my sweet, tender-hearted boys! Even though they can be mean and nasty to eachother at times, they can be super sweet when the time is right.

It was hard to send him off to school, but I think he needed the distraction. I emailed his teacher to give her a heads-up. Hopefully his day goes well. Tonight we will have our first ever (unless you count the fish burials at sea) family pet burial. Wish us luck...oops, there goes Spike, running away from Brendan under the buffet UGH!! The guinea pig adventure continues...