August 2013

August marked the end of another summer for us :(, but we managed to have a little fun before another school year started.

Autumn had a very intensive month of dance in August!  The first 2 weeks were her studio’s in house convention and she danced for several hours every day with guest dance instructors in all genres of dance.  She loved most of her guest teachers and learned a lot from all of them, even the ones she didn’t love. :)  The last 2 weeks of August were her choreography weeks, which means that she worked long hours learning all of the choreography for the dances they will compete this next year.  She learned new jazz, musical theater, hip hop and ballet competition pieces and loves them all.  Here’s to another great season of dance! This picture is of her Youth Ballet Company.

Bryce and Seth went on a boating campout with Seth’s scout troop and really enjoyed a weekend on the lake, especially since they didn’t have to backpack in.  It was a nice “reward” campout for all of their hard work this summer in scouting!

Devin went on his first date with a good friend of his and has decided that dating is quite a lot of fun. :)  Megan wrote him a nice, long letter from Houston giving him all of her dating advice from a girl’s perspective since she can’t be here in person. It’s good for him to have that older sister advice, for sure.

The kids all started back to school on August 20th.  Devin is a Junior this year and is loving all of his classes so far, except for maybe computer programming because they still don’t have a regular teacher 2 weeks into the school year, so here’s hoping that gets resolved soon.  He loves being able to drive himself to school!

Seth is an 8th grader and couldn’t think of a single thing to be excited about when he was going back to school.  He likes most of his classes and teachers and has decided that his favorites are PE, Foods, Choir and Theater.  He says Math and English and Science are okay, but he definitely prefers having hands on classes.  After having auditions for his Theater class’s Fall semester production of “The Hobbit”, Seth was pretty excited to find out that he has been cast to play “Bilbo”, the lead character.

Autumn is in 5th grade and was definitely the most excited to go back to school.  She loves her new teacher, loves seeing her friends each day and loves learning new things.  She has recently become very interested in learning how to cook and spends as much time in the kitchen helping to cook as she can.  She is an especially good buttermilk syrup maker!

Seth worked super hard and  accomplished his goal of having his Eagle project done by the end of summer!  He had lots of his friends and fellow scouts come help him scrape down and paint all of the fire hydrants at the Utah State Developmental Center (23 in all) and then he and Bryce also created a stencil out of plywood to paint a fireman’s cross with an “H” in the middle on the road in front of each hydrant to make them easier to find.  He has since completed all of his paperwork, gotten all of his letters of recommendation and last Thursday passed his Eagle Board of Review, so he is officially done!!  He was excited to find out after he was done that he is officially the youngest Eagle scout in our ward ever. If you know Seth, you know how much he loves to break records, so he is pretty happy. :)

Bryce and I celebrated 21 years of marriage and I celebrated yet another birthday.  The cake was made by 2 of my former Laurels and the 13th birthday thing is a long story, so…

Megan is still doing well in Houston and working hard as a missionary. You can follow her adventures on her blog. :)

Happy September everyone!