TWO middle schoolers!

The summer has felt both long and short to me. We had so many camps to juggle for Amy, it felt like every week was really busy. Of course Reed did a whole lot of nothing, but that's a different story.

After vacation, we had a few more days at home to relax and get ready for BACK TO SCHOOL!

Of course we did our annual tradition of having breakfast for dinner the night before school starts, complete with name and grade pancakes. (P.S. wouldn't it be great if one day Reed and Amy have their own kids and continue this tradition?!)

Amy was well prepared for middle school after attending the "Lion's Leap" orientation, but she was still pretty nervous for the first day – excited, but nervous. It's a big adjustment, going to a block schedule, with "A" days and "B" days, plus two lockers (one regular one, one for PE), lots of new kids and all new teachers. Reed was nonchalant about starting eighth grade - middle school is old hat for him. Honestly, though, I think even he was ready to start school again.

Hope it's a great year for both of them!

Good times out west

We got back last night from a long overdue visit out west. We stayed with Grandpa Larson in Spearfish, SD, for six days, and in that time we drove nearly 1,100 miles. Keith's got a great condo (really it's a small house, I'd say, since it's not attached to any other condos) with two bedrooms and two bathrooms - we were very comfortable there (Reed slept on a cot in the garage! he was happy to have his own space, I think).

On the first day, we had a great surprise when Martha showed up with her granddaughters Harmony and Dalila, who we'd never met. We also got to visit with Pete and Nubby, plus their son Jeff and his family (who were in town from MN). Then we went up to the cabin that Keith helped his brother Pete to build, up on a hill outside of town. The boys all go up there in the evenings and have a few beers. It's a great spot! Kenny's son Sam came to town in the afternoon, on his way home from Texas where he had a summer internship, back to college. We went to town to see the shop where Martha sells the clothes she makes, and then visited the fish hatchery.

The next day, the weather was cruddy (like 55 degrees and rainy) but we made our way to Mount Rushmore. Afterward, Sam and Keith headed back to Spearfish and we hung around for a while. Tod and the kids did a ropes course / zip line park. Reed started strong, but halfway through got to a part where you basically walked on a wire...and he was out. There was a less-than-cool extraction via ladder. We aren't going to talk about that much. LOL. Amy and Tod continued on and did a couple of more courses, and suprisingly, Reed decided to do the main zip line thing - it was so long and so high! I could hardly believe it. It was pretty cool to see. I got videos of that and of Amy and Tod doing the shorter zip lines that were part of the ropes courses.

The next day, we drove to Gillette, Wyoming, to visit Tod's nephew Derek's family. We got to see Derek's oldest son Larson (age 10) play his first football game of the season. Then we hung out at Derek's place for a while, where we were joined by Tod's sister Jennifer (over from Billings) and then Martha too when she got off work. It was really fun to get to see where they live and get to know their kids (Larson, Tensley and Blaine) a little bit. Tod taught the older kids to make para-cord bracelets too - hopefully they'll remember that!

The next day, we drove basically back almost to Gillette again. Stopped at Devil's Tower on the way, which is an amazing national monument. We walked its circumference and then headed to Keyhole Dam for some water sports. Derek has a boat and tubes, so there were several boat rides. Martha brought her kayak, which Blaine in particular loved. Amy and Harmony enjoyed just floating in the water. The spot was quiet and uncrowded - we nearly had it to ourselves. Martha cooked a "low country boil" on a propane grill, and we had watermelon and cookies and a general good time!

The selfie stick really came in handy!

The next day we drove through Ekalaka, stopping at the cemetery and driving through town, on our way to Baker to visit with Kathleen. It's been quite a while since we've seen her, and she's had a really rough go of it. I know she was really happy to get to spend a little time with all of us - we had a nice lunch together. Jed was there as well, and joined us for lunch, then showed us around some of the concrete jobs he's done around town.

For our last day, we had a visit to the High Plains Western Heritage Center, where Keith volunteers. It was neat to see a different kind of local history than we see here in Virginia. Well the backlighting isn't so helpful in this photo at right, but here's Keith and Tod with a buggy like the one Keith and his siblings would ride to and from school in, bringing the day's water for the school with them. Wild!

And of course most days included Skip-Bo, as tradition dictates!

An all-around terrific trip, even if a bit exhausting!

It's good to be the parents of the big kids

This past weekend, we finally got to officially welcome Nikki AtLee to our family as she and Stevie married! Hooray!

One of the best parts of our wedding weekend at the hotel with family was that somehow through the magic of the passage of time, we are the parents of the Big Kids. You know, the kids who can help out with the little kids. The ones that you can let go visiting in the hotel lobby or in another room. How amazing is that!? It was great. And as if we wouldn't have appreciated that enough on its own, we also got those first-hand reminders of how very intense life with babies and kids under age 3 is. It is exhausting even just to watch! Our kids had a lot of fun with Kyla and Mitchell, and maybe even more fun with Sierra, Colton, Crosby and Jay IV (Aly is practically a grown-up, so I'm not counting her as a kid anymore). I realize this is the last big family event that we'll all travel to together – the last of the Mitchell kids to get married, and they've all graduated college. That's a little bittersweet. But hopefully there will still be trips to the river, and maybe even vacations to new places too.    

What just happened?!

It's 9:07 a.m. and Reed just woke up.

I can't begin to explain how unprecedented this is. I think he's maybe never in his entire 13.5 years slept that late. I was actually sitting her thinking I should check on him in case he was sick, or in case he'd snuck out during the night! He is generally up by 7:15 at the latest, even now in the summer time. We keep thinking that whole "teenagers sleep late" thing will kick in, but not so far. Maybe other teenagers don't have a 10 p.m. bedtime.

When he walked out of his room, he was totally disoriented and asking if the world had gone mad. He woke up and wondered why it was so bright outside. Weird how that works when you sleep 2-3 hours later than you usually do!

Well here's something new

Amy decided on Sunday to try being a vegetarian. So far, five days in, she's sticking with it. I don't think any one thing prompted it, but she's trying it on for size. We'll see how long it lasts!

Summertime and the living is easy

Well Reed has an entire summer of nothingness ahead of him. We couldn't interest him in any camps, and figured it wasn't worth the money or the heartache to force him to go to a camp. So his summer will be filled with video games, I guess. He spends some time listening to music and podcasts as well. His friends Alex, Robbie and Harrison (or some combination thereof) sometimes come by to get him to go on a bike ride, which inevitably ends up at someone's house (usually Alex's) playing more video games. Reed also does solo bike rides, and his chores have ramped up some for the summer. More dish-doing, more dog walking, so he's pretty happy about that! But it's the cost of being home all day.

Amy, though, likes to do stuff. This week and last, she's been doing the schools' "Summer in the Arts" program, where she's doing two Harry Potter classes, a cake decorating class and a digital drawing class. She's really enjoying it - wish they offered it for more than just two weeks! Then she gets a week off, and then it's off to a new Girl Scout camp called "Filmtastic" which (shockingly) has a movie theme and includes archery every day. Then it's Camp Crossroads again (aka "Harry Potter camp") which she's really looking forward to. Last is "Lion's Leap," which is the Lunsford camp to help sixth graders get ready for the start of school. Maybe we'll throw in a week or two of tennis camp there at the end, we'll see.

I really wish I could remember what I did to fill my time in the summers I was our kids' ages. I remember when I was 10 and Mom and Jim just got married, we spent the summer in our new house on Pepperidge Place. I think I watched a fair amount of TV (as much as I could stand, in the days when daytime TV only meant game shows, soap operas and reruns). I'm sure I listened to a lot of music, stayed up late and slept in. The following summers I know I spent some time with friends I'd made in the neighborhood, and of course when I was 15 I got a job at Roy Rogers. Ah, youth!

School's out for summer!

Somehow the first quarter of school goes by interminably slowly. And then - WHEW - made it to winter break. Throw in a million snow days and that smooths the way to spring break. And then you blink and - BLAM - the school year is done. I'd like to talk to Doc Brown about this whole space-time continuum thing.

We're done with another school year, and unbelievably we are also totally done with elementary school.

First and last days of 5th/7th grade - they're growing like weeds!

Both kids had terrific years and great grades. Let's start with the oldest. Reed ended the year with almost all A's, just a B in algebra for the fourth quarter. Overall for the year, he had all A's. And this with having nearly ZERO homework throughout the year - maybe a project or three that he worked on for a half-hour or so each. He said he did his homework in Resource (in the olden days it was called study hall) but who knows, he probably did it all during class. But I guess you can't really question his methods when he gets great results...while we wanted to tell him to work harder in Algebra, because we know he's capable of getting an A in that class too, it was pretty hard to do. "Hey kid who's getting great grades, they should be even better!" It's not the A that we wanted, it was just for him to do his best, maybe set a goal and work toward it. But he had a great year and had so many teachers that he enjoyed - Mr. Payton for Biology (had him for science last year too), Mr. O'Rear for Latin, Mr. Bauer for US History 1865-present. He even enjoyed the "Family/Consumer Science" (aka Home Ec) class, and definitely enjoyed Tech Ed. He kept his same small group of pals (Robbie Webster, Alex Arriza, Harrison Hill) and continues to prefer to just be at home hanging out by himself. This summer is a lazy one for him - no camps, no nothing. Just a lot of being around the house. He of course still loves video games and watching Netflix on his iPod Touch. He doesn't read much at home, well barely at all. Well I guess he reads the comics and the sports page of the Washington Post every day...that counts, right?

Way to go, Amy! So proud of you!

Amy also had a super year and again earned all A's. She has said all year that fifth grade is hard, and I think maybe a little of that has to do with already worrying about the adjustment to middle school next year. But she worked hard when she needed to (spelling tests are a challenge) and though she still wasn't totally happy with her grades throughout the year, we were all in for a surprise at the fifth grade promotion ceremony. She got the President's Award, just like Reed did! We were not expecting it at all - the school has a new online grading system so you can sort of see their grades, for the elementary school kids it's not really accurate and doesn't show a true, overall grade. So our best guess was that she had some Bs and wouldn't get the award. Plus when Reed got the award, his teacher Mrs. Bedrowsky (who is also Amy's teacher) gave us a heads up that he'd be getting it. She didn't mention it this time. So when they started giving out the awards, the first class only had a single person who earned it. Next up was Amy's class and they named probably 3 or 4 people before calling her name. What?! Yahoo!! Jim and my Dad were there to cheer her on too. Socially, Amy continues to be friendly with most everyone and well-liked by all. She still doesn't have that one true bestest best friend, but I know that will come soon - hopefully in middle school where she'll have the opportunity to meet a lot more kids. She still enjoys hanging out with boys, where I think a lot of girls her age have fallen out of that. (She also had her first crush, a boy in her class named Justin.) While she also enjoys do-nothing time at home, Amy continues to like to be out and about doing things and going places. She is so wishing that she was 12 this summer so that she could go to the pool on her own (meanwhile we can't get Reed to even consider doing that, and he's been old enough for a year). She has two weeks of "Summer in the Arts" through the school system, two weeks of Girl Scout camp and one week of "Lion's Leap," which is to get ready for middle school. I think she'll have a great summer and hopefully won't make herself too anxious over starting middle school in the fall.