General Conference and Hero Week approaching

As General Conference approaches, my Outlook reminder dings "Reminder: Hero Week approaches". For those of you who weren't reading the blog last year, this will be year three where, each year (the week following October General Conference), I post seven blog entries about those who have made a lasting change in my life over the past year.

I love October. General Conference always makes me remember what's important in life and a renewal of energy to try a little harder and put give a little more. It's helpful to have so much spiritual guidance in one weekend to help me realize who is most important to me, how far I've come, and say thanks to those who have helped so much this year.

Stay tuned...

Twins

I've found myself making a few comments lately that might suggest that I wish I had had my children one at a time instead of getting my set of twins. In anticipation of our next baby I keep saying things like "it better just be one in there" and stuff like that. So just to set the record straight I am SO happy we were blessed with our twins, Tanner and Natalie. Yes, two babies are more challenging than one baby and the same goes for two 2-year-olds and so on. But it's so worth it and I wouldn't have it any other way even if I could. I like to remind myself that there are people out there with sets of 3, 4, 5, or 6 kids, which would be WAY harder. I'm writing this now while my kids are playing all cute together. Later on today they will probably fight over toys, throw their lunch all over the floor, and refuse to take their naps. And then, I might be feeling a little less grateful for them. The majority of the time they are just plain good kids though. For the most part, they have learned how to share and take turns because they had to do that from day one. They make up funny games to play together. As soon as one gets hurt the other one is usually right there checking to see if they're okay. Sometimes Tanner will jabber on in his own little made-up language and Natalie will listen and nod in agreement like she totally understands him. And whenever Josh asks "who loves mama?" I always get a chorus of "ME!" with hands in the air. So I'm going to try to do better about complaining less and remembering that I would way rather have these kids, with all the messes, and timeouts, and crying that comes with them, than not have them at all.

Kindergarten

Yay for Kindergarten! Sydney had her first day a few weeks ago. She has really enjoyed it so far. She was excited all summer and all of the sudden had this emotional meltdown the night before school was going to start. I kept asking her if she was nervous about school but she insisted that she was NOT nervous about school, she was just mad because her ice cream melted onto her hand. Right. When I took her to school the next day she was also nervous and didn't want me to leave, but then later she just said she was annoyed because of "all those parents standing around taking pictures of us." She's all adjusted now! It didn't take long.
At this same time she was invited to start a Jr. Tops class in gymnastics. It involved taking her twice a week for an hour and a half. I was a little worried that 3 hours of gymnastics every week was a bit much for a 5-year-old but we did it anyways. It seemed she wasn't going to get better in her regular class. There were too many girls and some of them were as old as 9 or 10 so the class had too big of range to work well. Her new class had girls all her age and size and was great, but apparently it was stressing her out. She stopped trying to get better and kept telling the teacher "I can't do it" when they did cartwheels. I started having to convince her to go every time so we finally decided it was time to take a break. Maybe in a couple years she'll want to get back into it. It was probably just too much with kindergarten and 3 times as much gymnastics all at once. I think it's been a relief for all of us actually.

Alaska

Over a month ago all the boys of my extended family from the Muir side went to Alaska for a guys retreat. I obviously was not on this trip but Josh isn't getting around to blogging about it so I'm going to post some of their cool pictures. I wish I had a good group picture of all the boys. There were quite a lot of them but they all split up a lot so there is no shot of the big group. Thanks Jer for funding this trip! Josh had a blast!

Here is some of my family getting ready to board one of Jeremy's planes. Pretty awesome way to travel! Apparently Josh even got to sit in the cockpit for part of the flight.

Here is Nick, Eric, and Josh ready to a little fly fishing.

It's a keeper! Well actually, no. All they did was catch and release in the river. Poor fishies. They were saving their keepers for the deep sea fishing day.

If you look closely in this picture you can see how this river is filled with fish. The guys said they could walk out in the river and be kicking them out of the way.

Here are the real keepers! They didn't catch as much as they were hoping out in the deep sea but it was still a good haul. We have quite a bit of halibut and it turns out I really like halibut!

Isn't this picture awesome? They nicknamed this old house "the shrieking shack." On top of it are two bald eagles just hanging out.

Ketchikan, Alaska looks so beautiful! Even though we usually opt for sunny beaches on our vacations, I would love to go visit there myself someday.

Backyard camp-out

It's been some time since we've been camping. Tanner and Natalie haven't yet had the pleasure of the experience. All summer we meant to do a practice run in the backyard so we could see if the kids could handle real camping. We meant to do this before our neighborhood camp-out but never did. We figured it was better late than never, so on the same night our neighbors went and camped in nature we made an attempt in the backyard.

Let it be known I do know how to rough-it and sleep on the ground, under the stars and all that. I have done it without complaint in the past. But I'll choose comfort if I have the choice. Our 8-person tent sleeps the five us quite comfortably and allows a mattress for each of us. So we had the girls wing...

The boys wing...

And the master suite, which Natalie kept confusing as her wing...

Since we had no chocolate, marshmallows or campfire with which to roast them, I made up another special treat.

Don't they look delicious? They were. Way better than smores!
It turned it was a good idea for us to have a practice run. Tanner was kicked out of the tent at around 10 pm for being such a loud, noisy boy and refusing to stay in his wing of the tent. I went to sleep inside the house with him. And by 3 am Josh brought the girls back in the house too. I think they got cold. Oh well! We'll try again next summer.