Call Home!

Booooooooo! I hate to see the summer come to an end! I’ve loved every minute of it. We’ve had so much fun at the pool and not having anything on our schedule except play time and swim time (well, ok, aside from all the doctor, dentist, and therapy apts. but who counts those, right?). :) All of the kids “swim” without floaties now and their favorite thing is diving for the rings on the bottom of the pool. Kyra has been a pro swimmer/diver/everything-in-the-pooler for a long time, but Mark just learned to jump off the edge into the water AND to swim across the deep end on his own—goggles have made all the difference for him. He loves doing back flips and turns in the water, and playing with his friends in the deep end, I’m SO happy for him!

Darci also likes jumping off the side and going under water to fetch things. She and Forest are amazing. . .I guess spending EVERY spare minute at the pool pays off! We’ve also managed to have Emily and Elizabeth swim enough with us that Emily will “dive” (belly flop) off the side and spend most of her time under the water, and Elizabeth now spends most of her time IN the water (a big step) too. :) Also, both Mark and Kyra have learned to ride their bikes without training wheels, we started on the grass (Irene’s bright idea) and now they can ride on the sidewalk for quite a ways.

You may want to turn the volume down on this one--I was a bit excited! :)

I can’t believe how fast they are growing up and learning new things. We’ve loved having Hobie and Irene live just down the street—the kids are in “cousin heaven” and I’m in “aunt heaven”! Rachel, Irene, and I have stuck with our workout routine for 4 straight months now—it’ll be interesting to see how we work it out during the winter. . .but, let me assure you. . .WE WILL! We all feel great and have at least kept off the weight we lost! I love meeting up with them every morning and working out—I would/could NEVER do it without their support. We had so much fun at the family reunion. Kyra assures me every night that she would pick going to another family reunion over going to Disneyland—if it ever came to that! I’m so happy that everyone made an effort to be there. Even though it gets pretty crazy, it’s awesome and worth all the effort.

We LOVED spending a week with the Jaspersons before the reunion. It was fun working-out with Annette and `Jon to the Wii and having all the kids together to get to know each other! Since the reunion both Mark and Kyra had friend birthday parties AND we had a family birthday party for all three kids. They LOVED having everyone over to celebrate. Mark is 10, Kyra is 6, and Darci is now 4. . .CRAZY!!!

They all do jiu-jitsu with Dave now that Darci is 4. It’s awesome—she’s so excited to be one of the big kids and be a part of “fight school”. Chrissy stayed with us for 3 weeks—it went by WAY too fast, and of course, we had a ton of fun. We swam, shopped, worked-out (well, she watched us. . .or slept in while we did it), went to “the beach”,painted some crafts we bought her for her birthday, had a few “girls’ nights”,ate yummy food, and spent most of the time chatting while doing all the mommy things with the kids together. :)

Irene and I (along with our friend Angie) did a sprint triathlon and we LOVED it! Right when we finished we looked at each other and said “that was so fun, when can we do another one?!” So, we are going to do our neighborhood triathlon this Monday on Labor Day—it’ll be so fun. We’ve also signed up to run a marathon relay with Rachel, and might do another tri in November if it’s not too cold or snowy.

Dave has been training like crazy for the US Open Jiu-Jitsu tournament in October. He goes to the gym every morning at 5:30 to train and then teaches his adult classes two nights a week. He’s been taking all of his guys on big hikes every Saturday too. So far they’ve hiked Timp and Mt. Olympus along with a couple smaller ones. He’s gotten injured a couple times but is still planning to compete.

Kyra started kindergarten and Mark starts school the day after Labor Day—we’re very excited to see how he does at the Montessori school. I’m kind of dreading the tight schedules, short days, not enough play time, homework, and activities—but I’m sure it will all be great. We’ve signed Mark and Kyra up for piano with a lady who just moved into Rachel and Robert’s neighborhood, I’m excited to give Mark another chance and to see how Kyra likes it as well. So, with jiu-jitsu twice a week, piano, and scouts, we’ll have something to do everyday after school. Hopefully it’ll all be worth it. We really enjoyed seeing lots of you at Dad’s farewell party and Irene’s birthday party. We love you all and are looking forward to the holidays coming up!