Fun at Elitches

I can see our family spending lots of time at Elitches. We went a couple of days ago and had a blast.

As soon as we walked into the park, the kids wanted to get on the great big ferris wheel. It took Hayden just about 1 minute to decide he did not like it. He held on with both hands as tight as he could for the entire ride.

It was really quite nice that Chris decided to go bald. It was so much easier to spot him out, especially at the water park. His baldness is a result from a moment of shock the day earlier. He was getting ready for church and used a mirror to see the back of his head and saw how thin his hair was on top. He said, "I can't go to church like this, why didn't you tell me my hair is falling out?". So I guess he decided to hide his thinning hair and got rid of all of it.


We had a great time especially at the play area and the water park, we can't wait to go back!


After we got home I was putting Kyrie to bed and told the boys to get in the tub. Hayden came to me complaining that there was not enough water in the tub to wash his hair, and he was not going to use a cup to dump the water on his head like Dusty. Then we hear Dusty trying to explain. They watched a performance of Bob The Builder at Elitches and they taught us about recycling and saving the planet. Dusty was saying, "Don't you remember the show, we are wasting the planet, we have wasted about 5 gallons of water already!" Chris and I went into the bathroom to try to help the situation so that Hayden could wash his hair and we found that there was only about 1/2 inch of water in the tub! Way to go Dusty for trying to save the planet!

Kyrie!

Kyrie has always loved to stick her hand down my shirt. If she is tired or needs comfort, that is what she always turns to. The more tired she is, the further it goes, she will shove her whole arm down there! Sometimes she twists her hand so that it is completely wrapped up in my clothing. She loves to stick her hands up my sleeves as well, long sleeves make it kinda difficult for her. She usually does this to me, but if she is near her dad or brothers she will also shove her hands into their shirts.. One day we were at preschool with Hayden during her nap time, I was busy with some of the kids so she walked up to Hayden, shoved her arm down his shirt and laid her head on his shoulder. It took me awhile to get used to being in public with her hands down my clothing, but now it doesn't bother me at all. It makes me laugh! Some nights I rock her to sleep, with her hands in my shirt. Other nights I lay her down and let her fall asleep on her own, now with her hand in her own shirt! LOVE HER!

Nevermind!

We really don't have minor damages at our house from the hailstorm. And now the strawberries look even worse to top it off ! We have 2 window screens that need to be replaced as well as the rain gutters, water spouts, the chimney cover, the vents on top of the house and the shingles. We have had lots of guys come over trying to get our business and one of them inspected our roof and showed me the pictures he took. Our roof is hammered! So I guess we get a new one! We will get a new door, new lawn chairs, new sand toys, some new sand, new solar lights, new flower pots, and flowers, maybe a new tree, and money to replace the trampoline spring cover thing and money to replace the boys jeep! We have thousands of dollars of damage! I'm sure our friends at Farmers Insurance are going to love us! We have damage to our fence too! But really it's our neighbor's fence but the damage is on our side. What else are we going to find? We keep finding more and more!

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs might have been better than meatball sized hail! Meatballs would've been softer than these ice-packed balls.

These first few pictures are from the beginning of a 30 minute hail storm, before the community alarms went off telling us to take cover for tornado warnings. The hail started out about marble sized, but in the end they were golf ball sized. A friend said she had egg size hail at her house and the news reported of some tennis ball sized hail!
Here is one of them after it had melted some, it was 67 degrees outside! We took cover in the basement for awhile until the alarms said it was safe to come back up. I headed right outside to take pictures.
Chris came home from work and we had some friends houses to check on with them being out of town. So we decided to drive around the neighborhood a little bit to see the damage.

This car was pulled over, we saw one that had the windshield and the back window blasted out. I can't imagine how terrifying that would be especially with little kids in the car. We saw lots of cars with busted windows, and dents all over. Mailboxes were smashed in, broken garage doors, tons of houses with shattered windows, trees all torn up, snow plows, news crews, and insurance adjusters were already at work. Helicopters were circling the sky, cops were driving all over and I saw quite a few church vans driving around as well. We could hear sirens all over, I guess some people weren't so lucky. A friend of mine was stuck at an intersection behind 2 semis and sat in the truck with her two kids while her truck was being totalled. When she finally got to leave, she said she almost stopped at my house because she saw a huge funnel cloud above our homes and she didn't know if she would make it to her house or not. Thankfully they are fine! Lots of people have totalled vehicles, roofs, shutters, there was a lot of damage, luckily ours is minor, we have more than I initailly thought though.

Our door is swelled from the pressure of the storm

Broken flower pots and demolished flowers

About half of the sand toys were busted

There are holes like this around the whole trampoline mat

The boys jeep has a few holes blasted through it

The solar lights got holes

and so did the lawn chairs

Our strawberries were trampeled, and this is what Chris is the most upset about. They were doing so good, the plants were very tall and we had dozens and dozens of blossoms and a few berries, now gone! All the blossoms were torn from the blueberries as well. None of my flower plants in the flower garden have flowers anymore, and the new growth and the leaves were ripped from the trees. I have no idea what to think about the vegetable garden, I will probably be re-planting this week. Our lawn now looks like it has been airated. I heard that hundreds of homes will now need new roofs and I'm hoping ours won't be one of them. At first I thought it was fine, but then we noticed piles of granules from the shingles below all of the water spouts, so we will be getting our shingles inspected. So we have a few hundred dollars worth of damage, and possibly more! But I am glad it is minor and I'm glad all of my friends out there are okay. I'm greatful that the funnel cloud above us didn't touch down and that my kids are out of school and were home with me!

I think our tomatoes look pretty good though! I was excited about that. Later last night we had another storm, not quite the intensity of the first though. It brought more rain, wind and marble sized ice - I wouldn't even call it hail, it was solid ice! What excitement and now I have some clean-up to do as well as more planting. The boys are now playing cars that are in a tornado/hail storm, they keep telling the cars to take cover now! Then I hear, "It's all clear, the emergengy is now over".

School's over = summer break!

We are now well into our summer break, in fact a week of it has already passed!

Dusty had a breakfast party on his last day of first grade. Why is it that all of the class parties are all about food? Even in kindergarten and first grade! They get piles and piles of goodies, it kind-of makes me sick!

Josh and Dusty are the bestest of friends at school. Hopefully they will be able to get together this summer as well.
Ms. Berumen was Dusty's teacher this past year. I love that my kids are so loved! Ms. Berumen loved Dusty, she always said she wished she had a classroom full of Dustys. It was an interesting year for us with Ms. Berumen, she is Spanish and it is very hard to understand her broken English along with her Spanish accent. She struggled swith peaking English and we struggled with that! Chris was upset and concerned about the situation, especially since it is such a huge year for reading and writing. But Dusty was able to get past that barrier and did great. School couldn't be let out without a few tears, almost all of the first graders (4 classes of them) were crying when we went to pick them up. Dusty said only 4 kids out of his class didn't cry and he said he was one of them. One little boy was hysterical and had to be let out of the building early. One other little boy was hanging on to his teacher and his mom had to pull him off, it was kinda funny! I guess they all had a great time and are sad it's over, oh well they will all be back too soon.

We have had a fun summer so far, we have been working on a play area for the kids in the basement, we've enjoyed the outside, and time with friends. We got home from the zoo a couple of days ago about the same time that Chris came home with a surprise for the kids. Kyrie was in heaven!

Hayden wasn't so sure about touching it, and Dusty was more concerned about going to the store to buy it a cage and getting it some food. We didn't agree on getting it a cage, but we have been feeding it and it keeps coming back to our yard. We will see how we feel about that when and if our garden produces anything.

Just for the memory

I just wanted to post a few things for our memories sake.
*Last year we had our first experience with a tornado warning and it was quite frightening for us. The community alarm went off and told us to take cover so we headed down to the basement. Dusty almost had a panic attack, he was crying uncontrollably and was very terrified. Hayden, on the other hand, was as calm as could be, he had no fear what-so-ever. He said he knew we would be okay because the Holy Ghost is real.
*Hayden asked me the other day if I knew what was more powerful than lightning, his answer-Jesus.
*A couple of weeks ago Dusty had told me that one of his primary teachers had broken her foot and had a cast, but now she is better and doesn't need the cast anymore. Hayden said, "You know why? Jesus, it's the only way".
* Tonight we had a big thunderstorm with rain, hail and more funnel clouds. I looked out the window and mentioned that I should have gone outside to take our flag down. Dusty said, "You are not going outside like that, that weather is dangerous, Mom, think about it, what is more important to you, you or the flag? You better not go outside right now." (Cute huh!) Then Hayden asked, "But do you know who is more imoprtant to you than you?" - his answer - Jesus!
* Tonight we headed upstairs to get ready for bed as the storm raged on and Hayden said, "We are not going to be safe until we say a prayer".
*And another cute one, Hayden made a knecklace at preschool the other day and when Dusty got home from school he said, "Dusty, I didn't think that I'd ever say this, but look what I made FOR YOU!"

Hayden cracks me up! He is an amazing kid, and what faith he has! My kids teach me so much, I wish that I could be more like them!

Bitter-sweet

What cute boys! Today Dusty had a field trip/picnic at a nearby park and I was able to be there for the last half of it. These boys are some of Dusty's best friends. Pictured here is: Dusty, Daniel, Josh, and Gabe. I love this picture of the 4 of them. Things like this make me sad when I think of the possibility of another job transfer sometime down the road, hopefully a long time down the road. Wouldn't it be awesome if they could grow up together and be friends all throughout high school? They have a lot of fun together and I guess all we can do is be greatful for what we have and enjoy it while it lasts.
Today was a bitter-sweet day, it was Hayden's last day of preschool. He had school 4 days a week, 3 hours a day, and what a wonderful thing for him and our whole family. When I first arrived at school this morning this I what he was doing during free time.

We celebrated with pizza, rice krispies and icees. We watched a slideshow that Ms Jillian put together, made a craft, and did circle time for the very last time. It was really sad to see such a wonderful thing end. Hayden's teachers and class have made a HUGE impact on him. His class was the best, he loved it and so did I. I loved being a part of it. I went in to help a lot and really loved the other students and all of the teachers. I almost wish somehow there was a way to keep him there in that same group forever. His teachers are absolutely the best and I will eternally be greatful for them. I don't know how I could possibly tell them thank-you enough. But this is a two-sided situation here, you see, Hayden's teachers want to keep him forever too! Ms Jillian raves about how wonderful Hayden is, that he is the star leader of the class. The kids fight over him, they want to play with him, and sit next to him. Ms Jillian said he makes her proud to be a teacher. She also said if she ever has a son, she hopes that he is just like Hayden. Wow! I am so lucky that he his mine!

Here is his class, minus a few.

This is Ms Missy. She has been his speech therapist for the last year and a half. We love Ms Missy. She is so much fun to play games with and has found the perfect and very interesting ways to help Hayden produce the very hardest sounds. She has worked so hard with him, and has helped him make lots of progress. We will definately miss her, she has become a great friend.

And this is Ms Jillian. She moved to Colorado all the way from New York to teach this year at Henderson. She moved alone, away from her whole family, but I am so glad she did! She did so many wonderful things for the kids, I don't know how she did it all. She is so fun and so cute!

This is Ms Jill

and Ms Ronda giving Hayden a kiss! Seriously these people are like heros to me. I eyes get tears thinking about them and the huge positive impact they have made for my little guy. I love them and consider them all my friends. We have been so blessed by being here in Colorado. I love and miss Vernal. But the move was worth it just for Hayden's experience with this years preschool. It was just what he needed, our whole family has been blessed by it. It is hard to say good-bye to something so good, but we will forever have fond memories of Ms Jillians class.