September Wrap Up

Here are a few highlights from September:

We celebrated Memorial Day at the Rencher's house. 

Lucy is so much fun right now. She wanted to have a little store one day to sell things (cookies and treats). She also is learning to ride a bike. Shantel took off her training wheels and she was doing so great riding the bike. 

Caleb has lost a few teeth, but he really doesn't like to have them pulled out. He just wants to wait for them to fall out. You can see that very front tooth was literally hanging by just the tiniest bit and so it was all twisted around, but Caleb still insists that he doesn't want it pulled out. (It finally fell out the next day). 

We bought tickets to the first season of The Ruth. Hale Center Theater Orem is closing the Orem location and moving to a brand new beautiful theater. We have loved the Orem theater and will miss it so much, but we are excited for the new season and can't wait to go. 

Lucy and Caleb helping in primary. 

The kids really love playing with Ward kids across the street. They have developed a system to ask if they can play. You can see our kids hung a sign in the window asking, "Can you play?" Then the wards can hang a sign in their window with the response. 

We did a game night with Lydia and Austin and did an escape room in a box. They have really wanted to do this for a while and we had a ton of fun.

I had a work trip to Madison Wisconsin this month. It was my first trip to Madison. It was pretty busy every night, but one night we went to do dinner downtown. We got there and were able to walk around the capitol building (which was so beautiful) and it was really fun. I really enjoying getting to see something when I'm in a new city. 

Shantel and the kids came into my office for flu shots. Whenever they come in, I let them choose a drink to get from our Soda fountain and it is so fun. 

Shantel September

September is my birthday month, which I always love. This month here are some of the extra things that I did just for me:  

(Other favorite things from this month are posted in other areas, like the hike to Mt. Raymond with David, Arsenic and Old Lace with Kevin and Amy, and loads of adventures with my kids.) 

This was my last Stake Primary Leadership Training meeting. My presidency and I hosted a beautiful night of training, encouragement, and testimony. We focused on "filling our buckets with joy", served a delicious dinner from Pizzaria Limone, and had a round-robin training exercise where we talked about women and the priesthood, updates to the handbook, and teachings from President Nelson. I'm so happy with the way that it turned out. I didn't know at the time that it would be my last official primary training meeting, but I felt prompted to share some tender thoughts. First, how beautiful it was that I had seen each one of them embrace the call to serve in their ward primary presidency, stepping into the stewardship with faith and courage. Second, how much I have loved serving as the Stake Primary President, so much so that it has become a part of who I am, but that upon reflection I want the defining characteristic of my life to be that I am someone who chooses to serve the Lord and I will serve the Lord wherever he needs me. We sang one of my favorite Primary songs "I will Choose to Serve the Lord" and it was beautiful. This was a tender mercy for myself because I feel that it prepared me for the meeting with President Gardner just a week later informing me that I would be released in the next couple of months. I will write more about this later - but I wanted to note this personal feeling of comfort and of determination to serve the Lord wherever he needs, and of peace that "Stake Primary President" doesn't define me "Servant of the Lord" does. 

-Ali Middleton and I started a Mother's of Influence group for homeschooling mothers over the summer but I feel like we are just getting into our groove with our meetings matching our vision and the relationships between the women deepening. We switch off each month as to whose house the meeting is hosted at and I'm so grateful that I get to host but don't have to host every single month. I'm also so grateful for this group of women who strengthen, uplift, and support each other in this homeschooling community. 

-I finished up some of my travel watercolor artwork this month. I was introduced to the concept of "travel watercolor" and I have a little travel journal filled with paintings from places that we have gone: Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, the pier in San Diego, Stone Bridge in Minneapolis. However, I often start working on the painting while we are there traveling but don't end up finishing it in the time that I have. So I flipped through my book and finished all the paintings that weren't quite finished. I love the way this disneyland photo turned out- and finishing this painting of my sisters at the ocean in Mexico made me want to go back with them so bad! 





Even though we couldn't make it back to Mexico this month (ha), we did get together for Sisters night. We went out and ate tacos and then came back to my house to practice with gouche paint and do a waterfall tutorial. I am grateful for such wonderful sisters. 

Homeschool September

The start of this homeschool year has been everything that I have ever wanted homeschool to be. Our schedule is much more strict than I've employed in the past.  We are up at 7 am for breakfast and Come, Follow Me. Immediately after they are responsible for doing their handwriting and then they have the rest of the time before 8 am to get dressed and do their morning jobs. At 8 am we start our "Family Studies" which I am loving SO much. It's been the missing piece for our homeschool, because math and language arts are important but the heart of the homeschool is through learning and doing fun activities together as a family. This year we are doing Fairy Tales, Nature, Country Study, Poetry and Music for our family studies. Also, I've implemented a "Project Time" hour in the afternoon plus some afternoon scheduled time. It's just been so fun and so beautiful and our whole family has found so much joy in this schedule, even though it is a big more structured than we are used to. 

 

We've also been implementing and relying on our new digital calendar: the Skylight. All of the kids have their tasks outlined for the day and it's helping us stay on track. I love it so so much! 

Highlights of this month included:
-Family studies on Light, Stars, Fairy Tales, and Argentina.
-Utah history focused on State Symbols.
-Taking time to rest when we weren’t feeling well.
-Taking a trip to see David at work for Flu Shots.
-A Mothers of Influence meeting with a beautiful community of women discussing what it means to prepare a “Grand Buffet” for our families.

I have LOVED our family studies this month. We explored stars, light, and constellations and have done a lot of fun, hands-on activities. I have particularly enjoyed learning about Argentina, the country and the culture. I planned Argentina as our first full country study because Thanksgiving Point had an Argentina Exhibit at the children's museum - and we had a really fun time going to explore the exhibit there as a way to expand on the things we were learning about Argentina at home. 

 

Blue Moose Cooperative (Middleton Coop) 

This month the kids all started their Thursday Coop classes. I love that our homeschooling community is growing along with our kids. Last year Lydia and Austin both went to a mentor-based coop run by the Middletons. This year to meet the growing needs, Ali initiated a "Middle School Coop" in addition to the "Elementary Coop" and gave it a new name "Blue Moose Cooperative". To make things even more exciting, one of the teenage daughters in our community decided to host a "Preschool/Kindergarten" coop during the same hours. That means that all of the kids are going to coop from 9-2 on Thursday which is allowing me to go to the temple, run errands, and do homeschool planning for the coming week. It's going to be such a beautiful gift this year and we are all excited. The kids will get valuable classroom experience without having to be gone 40 hours a week, and I will have the time needed to make our homeschool activities well-planned and thought out. 

First Day of Coop! 

Lydia's Middle School coop schedule is a little different than before. We are going to pay 3 different teachers to come in and teach specific classes to the 16 middleschoolers, plus outside time, a morning meeting, and study hour. The Elementary Coop will focus on science, cooperative learning, and specialists coming in to teach a different subject each week. Lucy's coop is based on the Well Educated Heart rotation and is going to be amazing! 

COI

I'm grateful for the different homeschooling groups we are a part of, and one of the groups that I'm trying to put extra effort into this year is the "Children of Influence" group connected to the Springville MOI group. All of the children gather for an activity, a service project, and a character trait study. I loved helping with this activity teaching about HOPE. I especially loved that I got to do the Olive Branch station because I am planning an Olive Tree study in April. 

Field Trips 

Everyone knows that field trips are one of my favorite parts of homeschool. This year I am planning 3 weeks worth of field trips (two Utah History Field Trips and one general field trip open to the homeschooling field trip group) and I’m letting the kids plan a field trip on the last week that is just for our family to go and explore together. They are so excited and have been planning all sorts of fun things to explore. This might become one of my favorite things from the year.

Utah History Field Trips: 

Beehive State Honey Farm

We learned about State Symbols then came to this family bee farm and learned about beehives and making honey. 

Utah Capitol Building

We saw approximately 6 billion beehives and almost as many sego lilys. Another Utah History field trip in the books.

Salt Lake County Library 

This was a bonus Utah History Field trip because I had reached out to them at the beginning of the year and when they got back to me we decided to just squeeze it in. It was so fun to learn about how the library works, see the book return, and get a full tour of the library. (Note for if we do this again in the future: I wish I had brought some paper and had the kids design their own libraries at the end of the tour.) 

Gloria Falls Hike

This was our general homeschool field trip for the month. The hike was beautiful - but Caleb ran ahead with some other boys and I couldn't catch up with him. I was so worried because the waterfall is so steep that I left Lydia with the other kids and ran up the trail to find Caleb. The trail splits off into several separate trails and they had gone on a different one than I had but I was yelling for them and on verge of full panic when I found them at the falls. I yelled at all of them and then sat and cried holding on to Caleb because I had been so scared. I felt bad about it afterwards but seriously - you can't just run ahead without stopping when the trail splits and waiting for the group. I am so grateful that they were safe and that no one got lost in the mountains or fell into the river. Caleb is so quick to forgive and move on, that it didn't ruin our trip. We loved the waterfall and enjoyed the hike back. 

Clark Planetarium

This was the "Kids Choice" field trip and was definitely the Homeschool highlight of the week: finishing our month learning about STARS with a show in the dome theater at @clarkplanetarium. This is my kids favorite place and we love exploring here!