September Wrap Up

 Here are a few highlights from September:

Austin loves standing on his head and is getting really good at it. He does this all the time throughout the day. Without thinking he'll just start standing on his head. It is so fun and we love watching him. 

Caleb and Austin sliding down the neighbors driveway. 

Caleb and Lydia cuddling. 

Here is our summer bucket list. As we watched the summer burn away without many of the activities we love due to COVID-19, we decided to make a bucket list to make sure we still did some really fun things. It included doing popsicles and movies all day, a Temple drive to see as many temples as we could, going to Morgan and Wyoming, a cousin sleepover in the basement, family mario night on the wii, a bike ride, raspberries and a splash pad and "Not back to school day."

Lydia got to watch our neighbors dogs (go over a few times a day to take care of them and play with them) and she and Lucy were both in Heaven. 

The kids trying to help me move our new entertainment center into the family room. They were able to push it in, but it took a lot of work, but I love the three of them lined up. 

One Sunday afternoon we took a drive to see the leaves changing in the canyon. It was beautiful and so nice to be outside. 

insta-september

9.6.20

"Like the sea that never will be moved am I,
Like the stars that time will never alter.
All my trust will be, O Lord, in Thee.
In Thy love, my faith will never falter.
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Like the mountain standing firm and true am I.
Like the tree the wind will not be bending.
I will still be found on faithful ground.
In Thy word my hope is never ending."
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I spent the week studying with my children about the signs of The Lord's birth and the faith of those who saw the signs and stood steadfast. They are building their foundations and I am strengthening mine. In this world filled with mighty storms and whirlwinds - I find peace in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. My worry and fear turn into faith and focus and I echo the words of this song: All my trust will be, O Lord, in Thee. In Thy love, my faith will never falter.

9.9.20

Same dress. Seven years apart. My girls. ❤️❤️❤️

9.10.20

Happy HALF birthday to our C.S. - He's been anxious about when his next birthday will be and was so excited when we told him his half-birthday was soon. He asked if he could have a "Bump-ed" cake and the answer clearly had to be yes. So, happy 3.5, Caleb. You're independent, funny, suffocatingly loving, and want to do everything the big kids are doing. You're also .almost. potty trained which makes you practically perfect

9.17.20

We recently went through and pared down our board books so that the piles and piles of books would stop taking over Lucy's room. I kept only our favorites and stacked then prettily on her book shelf (not pictured) and on top of her dresser in her bedroom. Rocking her before her nap time is bringing me joy as I look over at that beautiful pile of messy, ripped, well-loved books. I love them even more for their worn covers and torn spines. I treasure the moments of sitting with my kids cozied up in my lap; reading to them and enjoying this life we live together. 📚❤️

9.18.20

This week our amazingly talented friend, Amy @_thebakeaholic, was hired to design and bake a large number of cookies for the Church's Global Missionary Department. She was telling us about her design plans and had brought sample inspiration pictures. (I love talking cookies with her! 🍪) we were discussing wording for one of the cookies and Lydia was giving her input as well. After a few minutes she went off to design a cookie herself to help Amy come up with ideas. I didn't realize at the time, but Amy took that little slip of paper home and after making a giant order of the-most-impressive-cookies-ive-ever-seen she MADE Lydia's cookie, exactly as Lydia designed it. She brought a few extra Missionary cookies and the "Missions Rock" design of Lydia's. It was amazing and thoughtful and so so fun. Amy never ceases to amaze me with her talent and it absolutely made Lydia's day!!

9.19.20

You guys, I was going to post about our great Saturday (awesome book sale, homeschool dreaming/planning/sharing with my Homeschool Hero @alimiddleton , and a successful lawn project completed -plus one of our first real dates since March on the docket for tonight, thanks @leahreetta!) - but I can NOT stop laughing at this series of pictures from our Saturday breakfast this morning. The boys (C&A) were in charge of making the pancakes and they made a HUGE pancake (with sprinkles of course- it is Austins birthday week after all). I snapped a photo and these are the best I got. It's killing me! 😂😂😂 I already want them to recreate this photo in 20 years. 🥞😂

9.22.20

Posting mostly for the grandmas. @suepeaden @lwalker23. Lucy loves getting in the tub and anxiously waits for her turn while her brothers get clean. She starts squealing and tugging at her diaper in her excitement and stands on her tiptoes trying to get in. (Of note, she absolutely can get in by herself if she tips herself over, so I am careful to keep a close eye on her while she plays outside of the tub.) She equally loves being in the tub and I'm so sad that our summer was such a bummer and she didn't really get to go swimming. (I'm also sad that Caleb missed this year of swimming, he would have loved it!)

9.23.20

This sweet Austin boy is SIX today! His one Birthday wish was for a flying helicopter and opening a drone last night as an early birthday gift was a huge win. He loves to do headstands, talk about the things that are on his mind, and has a super-sweet tooth. He also loves Wild Kratts and requested a Tortuga cake. After one cake overflowing and burning in the oven, we successfully made his dreams happen. I want to say that the cake looks better in person, but I'm not sure that's true. 🐢🚀Luckily he declared it "perfect" so I will take that to heart. ❤️ We love this boy.

Basement Update - September

 Our basement progress is slow and steady and we made a bit more progress on those last to-do items. Actually, for how "small" the items were, it makes a big difference. The doors needed to be trimmed because now that carpet is installed, they were a little too long. We did not want to put on the door handles, until we did that. 

We finally went and Shantel did an amazing job trimming the bottom of the door. I was impressed with how straight she got it. Then we rehung the doors and were able to put on the door handles. It looks so much nicer and is so great to have doors finished. We are getting so close to done! The basement feels awesome. 

Spicy Chicken Sandwich Taste Off

I love Chick-Fil-A. For a lot of reasons. First, I think there food is just really good and there are so many good things on the menu. A few years ago I had a bad experience the first time that I tried Popeye's (which is right by our house) and have never wanted to go back. A couple years ago Popeye's introduced their Spicy Chicken Sandwich and it was all the rage, but I was just not interested. Finally, some co-workers who really love Popeye's convinced me that I needed to at least try it. So Shantel and I finally got a couple of sandwiches to try. Shantel loved it! I really liked it, but was not on board with putting it in the same class as Chick-Fil-a spicy chicken. This kicked us off into a month long Spicy Chicken Sandwich taste off.  

Us with our Popeye's spicy chicken sandwich. 

When Jenna was staying with us we decided to do a full on test comparison, including fries. This was a determination: 

Best Customer Service (4 points): Chick-Fil-A. CFA won this by a mile. CFA employees are so friendly and make you feel good just for coming by. In addition, they are so fast. Even if the line is a mile long, you get through it just as fast as a short line at Popeye's. Popeye's employees sound like they don't really want to be there. 

Best Bun (3 points): Popeye's wins this with a fluffier and overall better testing bun. 

Best Value (4 points): At $3.99 Popeye's is less than the $4.29 for CFA. In addition, the bun and chicken are both bigger, so Popeye's wins for value if you just want the most food for least money. 

Best Fries (2 points): CFA wins here. Popeye's has some cajun fries that look good. But in the end they did not taste better than the CFA waffle fries which were perfectly salted. In addition, the Popeye's fries were soggy and even when we tried heating them in the oven, did not get much better. CFA waffle fries stayed warmer and crispier and longer and had the better taste. 

Mac and Cheese (1 point): Popeye's does not have Mac and Cheese, and Chick-Fil-a has delicious mac and cheese, so they win this one. 

Chicken (5 points): CFA wins this as the Popeye's chicken is a bit dry and CFA the chicken was perfectly moist. 

Spice (5 points): Shantel would call this a toss up, I would give the victory to CFA, since I'm writing the post, I'm calling it, CFA scores the points. Shantel liked the spiciness of the Popeye's best, I liked CFA better. However, CFA has spiciness in the breading and Popeye's just adds a spicy sauce to their regular chicken sandwich breast. For me, that is a deal breaker because it is not a proper spicy chicken sandwich. Even so, I prefer the spiciness of the CFA sandwich because I feel like it is slightly spicier, but then I get to dip it in the CFA sauce and that creates a perfect taste profile. 

Breading (3 points): Shantel and Jenna voted for Popeye's here for their thick breading. But I don't love the breading so thick, but we'll give it to Popeye's. 

Pickles (3 points): This one goes to Popeye's who have fancier pickles. I don't like pickle's, so I'm not swayed. 

For me, I feel good when I go to Chick-Fil-A and the taste is amazing. I liked the Popeye's sandwich, but it is not fair for any sandwich to be compared to Chick-Fil-A. 

Final Tally Overall:

Chick-Fil-a: 17

Popeye's: 13

Final Tally Sandwich only:

Chick-Fil-a: 10

Popeye's: 9

We had so much fun with the taste off! We can definitely agree that Dr. Pepper is the soda of choice to go with it. 

After the taste off we decided we really wanted to try a couple of competitors (Slim Chickens and Super Chix) to see if they could compare. 

Slim Chicken's had some good dipping sauce, but was not particularly memorable or special. Super Chix Nashville hot chicken sandwich was a little too spicy. I'd still rather take the CFA any time and Shantel would rather have a Popeye's sandwich. 

Either way, it made for some great date nights and we learned one thing for sure - we love spicy chicken. 

Sadie and Lucy

When Jenna dressed Sadie for church this week I had to go dig through my boxes of clothes to find the matching dress for Lucy to wear. (They are both size 2T so Lucy's is still too big on her) But if there is one thing I love about dressing my children - it's matching outfits! 

These girls are such sweet cousins, and even though they are small now - I have high hopes that they will be good friends to each other throughout their lives. I hope so, for them, and for me. 

#cousinsmakethebestfriends

September Homeschool

We started homeschool in August - but the Haderlies were staying with us, so we didn't start our normal homeschool routine until September. The Haderlies still joined us for most of the fun things that we did (we LOVE having them live in the same state as us again), but we were excited to do some of our back-to-school traditions and start getting into our routines. 

Lydia- Grade 3

Language Arts. Math. Science- Biology 1. Family History. Piano. World Art Appreciation. Procreate Drawing/Illustration. Spanish. Bird Study. History through Literature. 

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Austin - Kindergarten!

Language Arts. Math foundation. Process Art. TECH/STEM. Family History. Spanish. Poetry memorization. Cooking skills. Science through books and activities.

We moved the homeschool room out of the guest bedroom and into the sewing room off of the laundry room. We got a few fun school supplies/new clothes/reading pillows and set them out for our "First day" of school. The kids were thrilled and it was a great start to our "official" school year. 

We finished our zoo unit with animal cookies...

...and a trip to the zoo with our neighbors the Wards. It's the Ward's first year of homeschooling and we are thrilled to have the joining our neighborhood homeschool community. With Covid, we now have several families right on our street that are homeschooling and it's going to be an AWESOME year! 

We went to a meetup with another homeschool coop group to see if it would be a good fit for us. Our very best homeschooling friends, the Middletons, are heading up this new coop and I wanted SO badly for it to be a good fit for us. But after the meetup I felt the strongest impression telling me "Not for you, not this year." I'm so grateful for the partnership of the Lord in helping our homeschool stay focused on the things that are the most important and in guiding my decisions and purposes. 

However it was a lovely day of sunshine and playing in the dirt. (And we made the Middletons promise to still hang out with us as much as they can possibly stand it.) 

One story that I want to remember is that there was a large group of kids that were throwing rocks at the ducks. Lydia tried to tell them to stop but they wouldn't listen. So Lydia and Austin left the group and walked all the way around the lake. I was keeping track of their progress and when I saw Lydia come back and get Caleb to join them I was so grateful for such good kids. The three of them sat on this little dirt bench area right by the lake for a really long time. They were talking and soaking in the nature around them and I realized that as long as they have each other, they're going to be a-ok. (I originally was like "Why are they leaving? We are here to socialize." But when I realized it's because they were choosing to leave a bad situation and standing up for themselves I couldn't have been more proud.) 

-The Haderlies came down again and we built Home Depot wooden craft kits. 

-When you're a homeschooler, your library haul looks like this. 

(Both of these pictures are from the same haul.) 

And speaking of books, our FAVORITE used book sale was this last month. You get a bag for $10 and you can fill it as full as you can get it. I let Lydia have her very own bag and then I got a bag to split between books for me and books I was grabbing for Jenna. It was the best thing in Lydias life to be able to fill an entire bag of books just for her. We got between 100-200 books in total and it was THE BEST. I was so proud of Lydia because of the types of books she was choosing. We love books around these parts. 

The books below are the only photo I have of two separate planning meetings that I've had with the gold-medal Ali Middleton. We've been doing some homeschool planning together and it's been the best. One day she came to my house and we just talked about things, the second time we went to her house and let the kids play and planned out all our memory work for the rest of the year. Someday I'd love to go on a girls weekend with her and plan out our years together. It's a homeschool dream. 

Another Haderlie adventure: The Salmon run at Strawberry Reservoir. The river was full of salmon and it was so cool! I didn't realize the salmon migrated here in Utah. We watched the salmon then ate a snack while we read some books about Salmon. A homeschool field trip for the books.