Labor Day Weekend

Megan spoke in Sacrament Meeting for the first time! The topic was how she is preparing for marriage. Her response: “I haven’t really thought about it because that seems like such a long long long way away”. She did very well. She spoke clearly and slowly, looked up at times, and even got the timing right on her joke. Just a year ago she was mumbling through talks in primary so I’m not sure what happened to give her confidence to speak in front of 300 people.

She is settling into school and has had her first math, social studies, and orchestra playing tests. I’ve been trying to make math fun as we do homework by describing the variables in her math equations as actual things. Like p stands for purple pineapples and q stands for queer bats. This usually results in lots of eye rolling and attempts to keep a straight face.

This last week I got to go and meet with Andrew and Anthony’s teachers to find out what they will be learning this year. Andrew’s teacher likes to sing. They sing while they are at lunch, sing on the way to the library in the halls, sing during class work time and Andrew says she even gets out her Guitar to sing to them. She’s all about making learning a fun and non-stressful time. He is learning how to spell all those three letter words right now and got 100% on his first spelling test.

Anthony’s teacher reassured me that the kids get plenty of play time. I had just read an article about how kindergarten teachers are now spending a lot of time testing students because of the “no child left behind policy” and this is leaving out valuable play time resulting in stressed and depressed kindergarteners who feel like failures. So she relieved me of those concerns and also said Anthony is doing really well.

I’ve actually been out of the loop with Zach. Last time I talked to him he was at home on a Friday night getting ready to watch some movies. I did hear that he is now officially a Life Scout.

We went out to visit Noah and Catherine for the Labor Day weekend. Their house is very nice (considering I was expecting a shack what with the real estate prices out there) though Catherine misses her house back in Tennessee. I was excited for the kids to see the ocean and play at the beach. The boys have never seen the ocean and Megan had a rather dismal view of it on her 5th grade Oceanography trip. They got to walk to where the grass met up with sand and look at a piece of seaweed. They were not allowed to step on the sand. And it was very overcast and everything just looked gray.

So Saturday was sunny and warm and a perfect day. Everyone got sunburned of course and everyone was covered with sand. I forgot how nasty salt water tastes. I’ll put some pictures up on my blog so you can see everyone playing in the surf, building a sand castle, and burying Megan in the sand. We came home for dinner and watched the play by play on Yahoo (Jason monitored the computer) and ESPN (I monitored my blackberry). It’s an interesting way to “watch” a football game. You have to constantly refresh the screen and it’s a race to see who can call out the next play. Then when there is an injury or a timeout nothing happens for a few minutes and you go crazy wondering what’s going on. Jason and I were both ecstatic that BYU won. (Army also won which pleased Noah). So of course we went out to celebrate and had dinner (fish) at the pier. But first we went to the local fish market and got to see all kinds of fish, squid, clams, and other fishy smelling items.

It was fast Sunday and I appreciated hearing Noah’s testimony about the Book of Mormon and how much he loves his family. We went up to the LA Temple after dinner for a picnic dessert of brownies. We stopped at the Manhattan Beach Pier on the way home because I wanted the kids to hear the ocean at night. It was a little chilly and Megan and Ashton shared a hobbit? Or maybe it’s a wizard? Cloak…I did get a picture of it and also a video of them skipping together down the sidewalk singing songs.

On Monday we went out to Santa Monica pier and the kids enjoyed riding the carousel, roller coaster, giant ferris wheel, and other carnival rides. They all claimed it would have been the most perfect day if there had been time left for the beach. But unfortunately, all good things do come to an end. We ate dinner with the missionaries and then headed home. We got a little lost leaving LA but managed to make our way home at about 3am. Jason drove the whole way since he knew I had to work today. (Thank you Jason!!!) We really packed a lot into the weekend and Catherine and Noah fed us very well as usual.

Megan made it to school in time to hear President Obama speak (I’ll have to get a reaction from her later). The boys slept a little longer and so missed the president’s speech. I don’t know if they would have been able to sit still for ½ an hour anyway.