Clean VS Dirty

We got to take the boys to the Brigham City Temple open house.  It was lovely and beautiful :)

We went to the Dedication with Kaden and, since Andrea's a doll, she volunteered to watch the younger three.  She and Aubrey drove down that day. We had a great time with them.  They're great.

While Jess, Kade and I were waiting for the dedication to begin, he was noticing all the kids around that he recognized from his class and school. Then he said the funniest thing. He told me how cool it was that so many of the kids were Mormon at school. That only 1 kid wasn’t—he told me his name and that this kid had another church but didn’t really go. 

I asked him, ‘how do you know all of this?’ 

Kade said, “I took an inventory” 

HA!  I asked him what he meant. I guess he asked everyone in his class if they were Mormons and what ward they lived in and where they lived.  He said he wasn’t sure if Mrs. Bromley was or not but that she’d heard of the Mormons.  Seriously. I love him!  Oh, and also we had a man with an eye patch sit next to us at the dedication. Kade thought that was pretty cool.

 Rhett. Complete with his stink face and cape!

 Aubrey--not messing around on this game of backyard soccer, and Andrea with her hand-me-down cape.

Luke.  

Here's a video from that day....I should note that Rhett was the last one with my camera and it took me 2 weeks to get it off this crazy fast blurry setting....kids are silly.  (OOOH, and the last second of video clip should also be explained....Kade has a deep hatred for Justin Beiber for some reason.  So one day Jess bought a Justin Beiber poster and taped it up in his room....ahh, good times)

Rhett wanted to catch the leaves....so Jess made it happen.

And dirty.  I could just mention here that we have 4 boys.  Most things are dirty with them through regular 'boy activity'. But the 'dirty' I was referring to this time came from playing in a certain pit in our backyard, spiced up with a little water. :) (Rhett was way worse--i should have kept his clothes on for this...but i was getting them ready to get hosed off! HA!  That's the part that is always fun for us!)

Here is a little of our comings and goings from the past couple months...nothing huge or noteworthy..just things that make me smile from the Winn clan :)

I love this face so bad!  Rhett is POTTY TRAINED! WOO WOO.  One day I bought two giant boxes of Pull-ups from Costco, and the next (literally) he was in underwear and sleeping through the night with no accidents.  He's a champ turns out like that.  He's such a sweetheart. He holds open my doors (which is hilarious sometimes because of the angle he has to hold his body at to keep heavy doors open), he knows most of his letters, he FINALLY has started to sing (he always listened but never sang along). His songs are: I am a Child of God, I Love to See the Temple, Popcorn Popping, I Like to Look for Rainbows, and the last third of the Alphabet song :)  He is just such a sweetheart and loves his brothers and likes to help out in anyway possible at home.

 He LOVES trains, this one. He made this one mostly by himself.

Kade was making Rhett crack up one evening (by running up the slide and pretending to fall back down it)...it made me smile.

" I thankful for shooting out candy" Rhett has added this to his prayers for the past couple of months because of the picture above.  We went to a Pleasant Grove Heritage Festival right? Well, they have this fancy Candy shooting machine! It was awesome!  This man would shove candy into this potato gun type do-hookey hooked up to an air compressor and then WHAM!  All the candy would explode out into the air and just rain down on all the kids. It was so awesome and the kids LOVED it. Especially Rhett apparently :)

Kade is LOVING scouts! His leaders are so great!  (he was on his way to walk to one of their houses to make dinner over a fire in this pic)  Let's see, what's new with Kade.

Playing Red Rover before pack meeting (if I could have played Red Rover EVER recess in elementary school I would have! Such a fun game!)

Kade received his Wolf! Woo woo!  He's such a great kid! I love this one.  He's such a responsible, kind, loving kid.  Tonight he put Rhett to bed so that I could read Harry Potter to Luke--he's nice like that.  I get to teach his primary class. It's a class of 10 boys and I LOVE IT! They are such a great group of future missionaries!

Kade also just finished wrestling which he LOVED and was really good at. Twice a week for an hour he'd go to PG High and the coach there would instruct the kids, and then they'd all separate into smaller groups of 4-6 kids with the PG High School Wrestling team. It was so awesome.  I don't have any actually "good" pictures on account of I never remember to take any with more then just my camera--but there you go :) (He's in the red shorts)

At the PG Heritage Festival again--here they are sawing a log--after it was done, there was a man there who branded them. It was super fun.

Ha ha--this picture makes me laugh. At the festival there was a tee pee set up for everyone to look at.  We all went inside and there was a legit mountain man....turns out legit mountain men can talk and talk and talk--and not necessarily about things that may be interesting to non-mountain-men.  The boys had these 'fascinating' expressions on the whole time...just waiting for us to get them out of there.  ha ha--funny.

We had extra pudding and pie filling in the fridge...so dad decided to learn how to make a pie crust that day. I just liked that...and the boys are doing their reading for school....(amidst the squashes that were harvested that day.)

Ahh, our happy little Max-y!  We love this guy!  He's 7 months now, and just awesome.  He's our happiest baby by far, and so calm and easy and...just great!  He's sitting up, and gets onto his belly all the time which he doesn't so much love.  He's starting to try and stand up on things and he's starting to take bottles occasionally again which is nice, and also is waking up less in the night to eat which is rad....I love him. 

His brothers love him, and take such great care of him.  

Rhett was potty training :)  Hence the undies...but I loved how he is looking at Max like, "hey buddy!"

wo-wo-WO! (falling backwards)

Luke is SUCH a domestic kid! He loves cooking, and is always the first one to tie up an apron and help out in the kitchen! Here he is making zucchini cookies with Grandma.  When we asked the boys what 'extra-curricular' thing they'd like to do, he picked "Chef Class". I loved it! They've made such cool things too. It's still going on, but the first day, they made, Carmel Popcorn, Root beer Floats, and Sloppy Joe Pie. But get this--they made their own crusts and everything! Woo woo! I'm way impressed.

The next week he made a mummy calzone, hot cocoa with eye balls (marshmallows with chocolate chips in the center) and frosted a Frankenstein cake.  (he has two weeks left.)

Along with his 'domestic' side, when we were watching conference he saw me sewing patches on Kade's scout uniform and asked to learn how to sew. I loved it! (I love that I get to pass along skills even though there are no Winn girls. :)  

Kade asked to learn as well, what makes me laugh is that Kade said, "don't tell any of my friends I'm doing this." Right after Luke said, "mom, tell my friends about this for sure!" ha! Silly boys.

We love living so close to our families!  Here's some pics from one of our trips to Jess' family!

George flying kites with the kids.

Julie giving Rhett loves.

Saturday night it was raining a ton!  Jess said since it was raining so much, they may as well shower outside.  They took him pretty serious.  (Luke may or may not have ran outside--in the nude--with a bar of soap. Rhett stayed a little more modest.)

Julie has been giving Kade mini lessons while we're there.  He loves them.

Picnic of lunch-ables.

We went to a parade up there--and it was A MAZE ING!  Because of one main reason--CANDY!  When was the last parade you went to that you filled a plastic grocery bag.  Look at Kade's face below--ha ha--love it!    Those clowns were spraying kids and throwing out otter pops. Good times!

We all made a little stop at temple square on our way back.  Aren't they so cute!

Back to school--VALLEY VIEW

 AHHH! Back to school!  The boys had an EXTRA long summer since their school in Georgia got out in May and the schools in Utah don't start till the end of August! Wowza!  They were so excited to go to Valley View--and why shouldn't they be--it's sooooo great! Go Valley View Hawks!

A#1--They walk to school! YAY!  The love that (we'll see how they like it in the cold--but for now it's the greatest thing ever.)  And the idea that they'll get to ride their bikes there is blowing their minds!

B#2--The school has an INDOOR BRIDGE.  Yup folks--an indoor bridge--so cool.

C#3--2 recesses!  one official one, and the other is lunch-recess.  I have fond memories of rushing my lunch so I could get cool playground equipment--ahh--lunch-recess.

 So here they are! So handsome.  Also, they don't like polos--or I would totally dress my kids in polos--they're so attractive! But nope, t-shirts it is. :)  We walked to school together this morning--all 4 of us. It was such nice weather. They'd met their teachers the night before and were just giddy with excitement. Jess gave them Priesthood Blessings.  I'm so thankful for the blessing of the priesthood and for a loving Heavnenly Father who has blessed us with it on this Earth!

Luke's Description of school so far:

SCHOOL

Walking to school:

It’s really fun.  I get to climb the church tree, you know, the one that’s by the church, but that’s by the gate?  I climb that and I can see the flag next to walmart.  There are tons of great sights.  You get to see dogs sometimes and bees, and sometimes I see lizards.

Walking home from school:

Tiring and hot! Walking home with my friends is AWE-SOME.

Lunch: 

Awesome—great foods (they get school lunch) So good that I want to eat it all day.  My favorite so far is…I dunno—I’ve tasted tons of foods and I can’t decide.  I liked the chicken sandwich that we had today, the chocolate milk, the pizza—it’s good, and..that’s all

Recess: 

There is a jungle gym, some monkey bars that are crazy…my favorite thing to do is climb the jungle gym cause I can touch the very top and then just jump down into it.

Friends: 

you know that girl from Georgia?  She’s the monkey enemy. (?) At recess—she’s the enemy, but after—just regular.  My best friend is Ty. He’s got a great personality, fun, and nice.  I sit next to Kate at lunch cause she’s fun.  She has home lunch, she always has grapes! I love grapes.

Mrs. White: 

She is nice, smart, and she can read our minds!  She knows what we’re thinking and says it outloud. It happens every day!  When I was thinking about ‘when is this gonna stop’ about school…guess what?  She read my mind and said, “Lucas is thinking about going home.’ And she was right, I was.  She does stuff really fun, and today guess what? She let us make staircases out of BLOCKS—all the way to our heads! 

But there is not much to do…when we have free time. There’s something to do it’s just not that interesting.  I’d rather play my ds—but all we have to do is play with blocks or something.  I have a book baggie in my desk and I can keep 2 books in it at a time. I get to read them during silent reading—every day.

FAVORITE:

 It’s VERY well organized.  Like, every time I go in, it feels like I’m in a mansion because it has so many cool things in it—there’s a big cafeteria, and so many choices to choose from in there.  And theres so many kids in there—like there’s a family of 85 in the mansion, that’s why they had to have their house so big.  I like the library! It looks so cool because there are so many books and decorations.

LEAST FAVORITE:

It’s too long! (the day)

SOMETHING SPECIAL:

 It’s just new to me J

September 6, 2012

Walking to School:

My favorite part about walking to school is………I just like it.  It’s cool.Because I always used to go on a bus, but now I get to walk. So I get to see a lot more details and stuff like that.  It’s like an extra recess where I can play with my friends and the whole walk is like a gigantic playground.

Mrs. Bromley:

She’s super nice.  She’s always willing to give you another chance…even though I don’t need that.  She knows what you like and she knows what you haven’t done and puts it into what you have done and makes it even better and cooler.  She makes things that you’ve already done new for you. Like with multiplication, I’ve already done it, but she teaches it a cooler way.  I like show and TELL!  My favorite part is Show and Tell and I get to do it every Thursday! Today’s Thursday and I brought speed stacks.  I got to show them and do it at recess. I did a demonstration of one cycle during class and during recess I made a giant crowd came. Cause they don’t do it here so even when I do it slow…they say, ‘you do it soooo fast!’.

I like where I sit because I’m sitting next to two of my best friends—Adam Bodily and Hannah Butterworth, and Mary Meline.

Friends:

My friends here are Adam Bodily, Hannah Butterworth, Mary Meline, and Logan Jex.  They’re all in my ward.  Adam's one of my closests.  I like playing games with them, walking home.

Recess:

We used to play this game where we were 9^th childs, so we could turn into different monsters in a book of mine.  The 9^th children were illegal because they were able to turn into monsters—and we ran away cause it was illegal, and were going to return when it was okay to be a 9^th child.  We each had monsters that no one else could turn into.  Mine was the Hippogriff, Mary’s was the Thunderbird, and Adam’s was the Rabid Werewolf.  But we abandoned the game cause we didn’t like how it was going. 

So now I play four square and soccer.

Lunch:

Anything that I’m too full to finish, you’re able to throw away.  We couldn’t do that before—we had to eat everything.  My favorite things to eat are cheese pizza, chicken patties, and hamburgers.  I like school lunch better because when I get too full to finish…like my sandwich I don’t have to finish it.  The best part is that we get an extra recess if we finish early.

Walking Home:

I like walking home from school better then walking to school.  We all leave at different times getting there but leaving school we all get to walk together.  But walking there is cool cause it’s kind of like ‘Brother time’ where you just get to walk with your brother, like Lucas. I’ve learned a few of his secrets that way. (like who he likes in his class…well, who he likes that’s not in his class, but I can’t give that up.)  But Lucas has choir on Tuesdays and Thursdays so sometimes we get a ride to school so we can get there early for him.

Riding Bikes:

I like riding bikes cause you can get to school really early and play on the playground longer, and practice speed stacking.  Nothing else.  I don’t like riding it home.  Ever ever ever ever.  I remember that one fateful night when I had to have a trial run to make mom sure that we could ride to school and back on my bike.  Oh, a dark day for the United States it was. Oh the terror. It was easy on the way there, but on the way back it was TERRIBLE.

FAVORITE:

The Library!  Because you get books and it’s cool.  The end.