Family Fun in Phoenix

Having lived so far away from family when we were in Boston, we really came to appreciate having anybody semi-close. Jake's sister Allie, her husband Ryan and their little boy Carson (who's exactly 2 weeks younger than Brenn) lived about an hour away on the other side of the valley while Ryan is attending optometry school.

We have been to quite a few children's museums with living so many places (and visiting family). The Phoenix Children's museum just might take the cake for our favorite (it's seriously awesome). 

The master fort builders

Leave it to Carder to come up with a way to make riding a motorcycle more exciting

The paper mache castle that they let the kids paint has always been one of our favorites, and once again it did not disappoint...

The kids had so much fun exploring and playing with their cousin Carson

...and after being served some of Brenn's pretend food we decided to hit up the Phoenix Public Market for some real food.

When we saw the food truck that was on the Food Network the choice was made for us...po' boys and family, not a bad day.

October Southwest Style

I'm still way behind on our blog. But I figure its October, so posting about last October is semi-relevant right?

Halloween is my all time favorite. Living in Arizona we experienced some fall festivities in a whole new way....like the swimming pool pumpkin patch. 

The kids with their pumpkins (and no Carder doesn't have a black eye). There were all these activity booths set up around the perimeter of the pool and just my luck--the first one he went to was a Nacho Libre one where they gave him a nice faux shiner with ink, so his eye looked like this in all of my pictures (sigh).

You literally jumped into the pool and swam over to your pumpkin.

Once they picked their pumpkins they went to a little booth where they could decorate it, and since stickers are pretty much one of my kids' favorite things in the whole wide world, Carder was all over that action.

It was SUPER hot, so the pool was perfect (though it didn't really give me my traditional fall pumpkin patch feel). The kids loved swimming, playing games and getting their glitter tattoos.

Now that we had the pumpkins, we had to carve them. (Excuse the underwear/diaper, its just much easier to clean pumpkin pulp off their tummies than it is to get the orange gunk out of clothes).

Carder loved reaching in the pumpkins and scooping out all the insides.

Each of the kids picked out a templet online for their pumpkin. Carder's was an angry bird and Brenn's was Cinderella.

We had so much fun making all of our festive treats and packing Carder a special Halloween lunch. Jake and I also got to go to two awesome "adult only" Halloween parties where we rocked Cruella Deville and her dalmatian costumes.

There were parties galore. First we went to our ward party. Carder had picked out a Superman costume this year but Brenn had a few costumes in her stash, so she decided to be wonder woman so I pulled out the ol' Batgirl costume from college and joined in the superhero fun.

We were terrible at snapping pictures here, so we tried to get a group one when we got home and the one on the top right basically sums up how that went...

While the big kids were at school on Halloween there was a little ghost parade for the little people. Brenn decided to wear her witch costume this day; though when you asked her what she was, she would tell you "Pumpkin Princess". 

Halloween night the kids were troopers. The kids almost did an entire neighborhood. (Carder was the one who asked to be done, I think Brenn could have kept going). We went with some friends and had a blast. After trick or treating we went over to some other friends' house for a little Halloween party. Halloween was a big success and once again fueled my love for the month of October!

Here are some pics of the kids in their Halloween costumes....

The Pumpkin Princess

Superman

My attempts to get a picture of both kids looking and smiling at me was a pipedream. However, I captured pretty accurate and hilarious depictions of their personalities.

Kindergarten

After the summer of limbo, Jake ended up accepting a job in Phoenix and we moved our family to Arizona in September.

Jake and I went out a day or two early to unpack our stuff (well the stuff he brought from Utah, it took a bit longer for our things that were in Massachusetts to arrive), and get Carder registered for school, etc. My mom brought the kids up a couple days later and Carder started school that next morning (Arizona was already 6 weeks into their school year.) We were very lucky and found an accelerated public school that many of the kids in our ward ended up attending as well. It was a great fit for him, being both academically rigorous, as well as a little more strict to teach him how to better follow direction/rules.

Of course I had to follow in the footsteps of my Madre and do the annual first day of school photo shoot (gotta love those early morning tired eyes!)

The newest Franklin Firebird

The first couple weeks of school were rough! For some reason just before we moved from Boston, Carder developed this weird anxiety. Like he had to know exactly where I was and if he couldn't see me he'd sometimes freak out. It got so bad that one time I put him in the car and then walked around the car to get into my door and by the time I opened my door he was crying because he couldn't see where I was and thought he was all alone. I have no idea what triggered this, but all summer he continued on with it, needing to accompany me upstairs when I brought up laundry, etc., so he wouldn't be alone downstairs. I had a feeling this could be problematic if it carried over into his starting school.

Franklin (Carder's elementary school) had some unique things going on. I guess it used to be a middle school and was converted to an elementary school, anyway, it was off of a main road so you couldn't walk there (plus it was about 3 miles away from where we lived), kids either road the bus or arrived by car.  The facilities had very limited parking (not enough to be able to have all the parents park and drop their kid(s) off), so to solve this problem the school developed a pick up/drop off method where you literally didn't get out of your car. In the morning you waited in line (via car) and once you got to the part of the loop that was the playground your child opened their door and got out, and as for pick up you waited in the car line and once you got to the benches where the aids had the children you told them who you were there to get (until they learned who you were, then you were able to just offer a friendly smile and a wave) and they radioed the other aids letting them know who had arrived and you continued down to where your child was waiting for you down the line. I always teased that I had to go order Carder when it was time to pick up, since it felt like I was placing an order at a fast food restaurant.  

Our first week there Jake hadn't started work yet, so he was able to help transition Carder with school. He took him and walked him to the playground that week and even attended lunch with him every day since Carder was super scared of the cafeteria--since that was the time he didn't have his teacher there and there were so many children. He cried everyday. It was a full day program, they were fairly strict (like there was no floor time, and they had to walk in line with "ducktails and bubbles" (hands behind their back and mouths closed ) and he never got that first day of school where everyone is new and meets the teacher, etc. When Jake started work, I took Carder to the loop, because I wasn't going to be able to find a parking spot every morning and half the time I had swaddled Brenn and buckled her in her seat half (if not fully) asleep to take him to school. My sister was still there so I'd left Brenn home that morning, but when we got to the kindergarten playground where he was supposed to get out, he started freaking out. I drove through the line and fortunately was able to find parking and walked him up to the playground where the classes were starting to line up. I will never forget the look on his face that morning, his wide eyes looking back at me completely petrified. It was like they were saying "You are really going to leave me here?" It wasn't just him playing us he was genuinely scared to death. I kissed him goodbye and assured him everything was going to be fine and left him there in the hands of his teacher. As I walked back to my car I felt my chest get tight and my eyes start welling up. By the time I made it into my car I was sobbing and when I got home I couldn't stop as I recounted my morning to my mom and sister. It was horrible!  

The teachers/faculty were understanding and eventually Carder came around (maybe a little too much because he was then put on a behavioral plan for talking too much/needing to be more focused/do his "jobs" better...fortunately he quickly graduated from that and became a great student both academically and behaviorally!) He made tons of friends and ended up loving school (and even mastered the pick up/drop off loop).

Brenn and Me entertaining ourselves as we waited for Carder in the pick up loop. At first I HATED the idea of the loop (Carders difficulty with it was probably a major contributing factor to that), but man oh man was it awesome. Like if Brenn was still napping or not awake yet, you could carefully transfer her to her seat and she'd easily get another half an hour of sleep in since she didn't have to get in and out of her seat again until we made it home (and lets not forget the fact that I could be in my PJs and no one would know...)

Shortly after starting school Carder was able to be "Star of the Week." He loved making his poster and being able to share all about himself with his class.

Brenn loves to be big just like her brother "Cardy" she is super independent and needed to walk those stairs to/from our second floor apartment all by herself

Another big day was his first picture day. He came home with the greatest school pictures from preschool and I was hoping that was going to be the trend from here on out. He has entered the painful/cheesy smile phase of life, so we did a little practicing before he went to school...

And the result...The one on the left was attempt one. The right is what we got from make up picture day (a little better I guess). Hopefully next year we will get this dang picture day mastered!

 Carder did very well in school. He loved math and caught on to his phonograms with ease. I hardly had to help him with his nightly homework. When he got his report card it was straight As. Krispy Kreme has a program that for every A you earn on a report card they give you a free doughnut, so after school we headed on over there. Carder was so proud of himself as he stood in line and handed his little paper to the worker to "pay" for his box of doughnuts.

We were lucky to get to have my Mom and Jaxon come up for a visit and attend Carder's school's fall festival with us.  There were hallways full of games, bounce houses galore and even a giant inflatable ball that you could get inside and roll around like a human gerbil (the boys found that to be totally awesome).

Aside from the normal academics, Carder also attended PE twice a week, music, Art and computers/library. In his music class they put together a kindergarten winter sing. It was so fun to get to see him perform all his songs.

 

The video of his performance...

When we found out that we'd be moving the hardest thing about it was Carder. Taking him out of a  school he loved and from all the good friends he'd made. He fortunately handled it really well. Below is him with one of his best buds. He was the first friend Carder made at school. On Carder's first day he befriended him and was so great to the "new kid."

To say I was anxious about starting Carder at a new school (and mid-year at that) would be the understatement of the century. Jake had a few days before he started work, but because we had to get two separate things notarized and make it to the county clerk etc to prove our residency to get him into school (ridiculousness!), he ended up starting work before we were able to start Carder in school. We lucked out that our neighbors that live above us are in our ward and actually have little girl who is five who ended up being in Carder's new kindergarten class. He had met her at church a few days before he started school, so it was nice to have a familiar face as he ventured into the unknown. We bundled him up (snow boots, snow bibs, coat, hat and gloves...we definitely aren't in Arizona anymore) and took him to his new school--the Daniel Butler School. We went with him the day before and he got to meet his teacher and was given a little tour of the school (we learned that his school is over 100 years old, I think they told us it was built in 1899).

With the rough start that we had with his last first day of school I was holding my breath all day. We received an email midday from his teacher saying he was doing fine and seemed to be fitting right in. When I picked him up at the end of the day (this is another full day program), he was happy and informed me that he hadn't cried once.  He wanted to go back the next day, so I'd chalk that up to a success! He continues to love school especially math, gym, and art/music (I forget which one he told me was tied as his favorite with gym). He has gotten to celebrate 100s day, brought home a pottery frog face which he got to sculpt, glaze and fire in the kiln, and taught us all about real vs implied texture (which he learned about in art class).

A couple of weeks ago they got to have career day at school where they were allowed to dress up as what they wanted to be when they grow up. I asked Carder what he wanted to go as and he told me either a chef or a scientist that studies the body (I took that to mean doctor). He loved getting to wear his scrubs to school. He has been super interested in the body. A few weeks ago when Grandma Apostol was having gall bladder surgery, I reminded him to include her in our prayers just before bed. That opened the door for all sorts of inquiry which ended up with us on webMD/Wikipedia for the next hour learning all about he functions of the gall bladder, why its needed/what it does, etc. Then because the illustrated diagrams weren't enough for this little boy, we were on Google images for the next 20 mins because he needed to see what a real one looked like.

Brenn has loved picking Carder up at school this year and getting to play at the "playground". She gives me a heart attack almost every time as she pushes the limits climbing all the big kid stuff, but she has learned to hold her own out there (and is surprisingly agile).

Every year the school district screens the incoming Kindergarteners, so the current kindergarteners get a special day off. The local movie theater did a special screening of RIO 2 for the kindergarten kids, Carder thought it was really cool to see a bunch of kids from his class/school at the theater.

Carder had his first field trip this year.  They went to Davis Farmland. Carder had a blast. He came home and told me he had the best day ever. They got to check out/hold all sorts of critters including a real life python (Carder was quite excited to share this one with me and then let me know it was ok because the python was sleeping...eeek!)

They recently had a field day which they call "Color Day." There was a red, white and blue team. Carder was assigned to the white team. They got to play all sorts of fun games, his favorite being the one where you held the ball with the plunger (still trying to wrap my head around that one). Their elementary school goes up to fourth grade (yes that means middle school starts at 5th grade here...just thinking about that gives me major anxiety!) Anyway each kindergartener has a 4th grade buddy (or in Carder's case he has two), they periodically get together and read to the little kids during school. Carder was paired up with his "buddies" for a few of the color day activities.

Carder has been such a trooper starting kindergarten twice. Both of his teachers have let us know what a good friend he is and that he is a bright pupil. Our biggest thing that we've been told he needs to work on is listening to the full set of directions. Sometimes he will listen to just the first part of what his teacher says and jump into the task and not have gotten the rest of what he is supposed to do. We talked to him about this after parent teacher conference and he has come home a couple times letting us know how good of listening he has done and how much easier that makes things. One day he came home and proudly told me, with a grin from ear to ear, that his table was praised by Mrs. Levy at how well they listened to all of the instructions and that they were "like third graders." He is trying hard (Sometimes a little too hard as the last few weeks he has been way too fixated on "following the instructions." He has been constantly worrying about it, praying about it, telling us to pray about it. It was so sad to see him like that. Anyway we talked to his teacher last week because it was just constantly weighing on him and causing him to not want to go to school some days or get weepy at school...anyway we worked some stuff out with her and today received and email saying what a great week he had on her end (as was it at home) so we are hopefully going to end this year on a high note. We are so proud of our little guy!

So Cal Summer

The rest of the summer we spent at my parents' house in Southern California. Having a backyard of their own to play in, the kids were in heaven! The backyard was equipped with all the things these little people could dream of (pool, tramp, scooters, etc.) so they basically wanted to be out there 24-7.

Having friends to get "creative" with, the kids thought of all sorts of ways to entertain themselves (including running through the neighbors' sprinkler contraption on the front lawn)

Swimming was definitely one of the kids favorite things to do this last summer. We had Carder swimming on his own a bit when Brenn was first born and we were living in Las Vegas, but not being around a pool for the next little bit we never got him 100% swimming safely on his own. After Jill bestowed some of her swimming magic, and seeing Jaxon swimming on his own, Carder was determined. We were in the spa one day (which my kids call the "hot one") and Carder was watching as Jaxon was swimming in what they call "the cold pool". He sighs out loud and says, "I just gotta learn to swim in that cold pool!" Well, a few days later he was joining Jaxon jumping off the bridge, the rocks and swimming all over the cold pool.

Brenn mastered those floaties of hers, she could totally keep up with the big kids. She would come and stand at the side from time to time and you'd think she was going to copy the big kids and jump, but would always decide against it. (silly girl, but I'm glad she decided to be cautious at least once in her life!) Her favorite things were to have the boys push her around on a pink raft in the pool which she called "the pink boat," to meander back and forth across the bridge and to throw rocks in the pool from the stream (there was lots of time spent in time out for that one).

Carder became a jumping machine. Jake, Carder and Jaxon quite enjoyed making up all kinds of creative/strange ways to jump in the pool. Brenn decided to join in the creative/strangeness with her crazy outfit choices we did a little photoshop action on these to make them PG :) One afternoon she was nakey wearing only her floaties and some goggles and continually carried around a pink water balloon.

Aside from swimming at Mimi & Poppy's house there was a lot of:

Dress Ups...

Which we used to our advantage to score some free food at Chick fil A :)

Bath Tubs (always more fun with friends or in Mimi's kitchen sink)...

Consumption of the three food groups (pizza, popcorn & popsicles)...

The girls were told to eat their popsicles in the kitchen. We found them with their popsicles upstairs in the bonus room standing on top of the Little Tykes kitchen...I guess they had a little bit of a different interpretation

And lots of projects with the friends. 

Pudding paint was quite the hit...though I think Brenn enjoyed tasting the paint more than drawing with it.

Box Airplanes...I don't know if I'll be doing this one again. I think that day I spent more time making those planes than the kids spent playing with them. Fortunately we left them out on the fireplace and they were used periodically through out the summer for "Fly" in movies etc. Almost made up for the hand cramps I got from cutting cardboard. 

This sidewalk paint was actually pretty awesome. Pretty low key to put together (just some water, corn starch and food coloring), but it painted on really vividly and dried to look just like chalk. Super fun time until Brenn mixed all the colors and we only had brown.

Once the Johnson's got back from living in London for the summer my Mom wanted to get a family picture done. It had been quite some time since my entire family was together (and who knows when that'll happen again) so it was a noble attempt. Sadly hardly any of the pictures worked out (the top right one here is the only semi-ok one and that one took me 3 days of head swapping etc, to get everyone to be just looking in the picture). After the photographer left, I busted out my camera and took the opportunity to capture some pics while everybody was still dressed up...

These are the faces I get from Carder to get one or two normal-faced pictures...silly boy! (and yes that is him Tebowing)

Brenn is so bad at looking at me when I want to take her picture. I always say "Brenn look at the circle" and almost every time she puts here little hand up and draws a picture of a circle in the air. I'm glad I caught her doing this for the capturing the memory, but I probably need to rethink my strategy

Aside from all the fun we had a Mimi & Poppy's house they had all sorts of fun stuff planned out for the kids that summer:

One day we went to a place called "Pump it up" which was essentially an indoor bounce house park. I am not sure who had more fun there the kids or Jake?

We also visited the local children's museum...

Picked our own blueberries: 

And had lots of beach days... (this is the only one I documented. We had a little bit of a rough summer at the beach--namely Carder. One trip he was running back from the surf and stepped on and got stung by a bee which had been in the sand. On another trip he came out of the water crying and come to find out there was bits of jellyfish in the water that day and some had gotten inside his swimming suit. After those experiences he wasn't the keenest on going back to the beach. But fortunately our last trip was a successful one with no injury :)

Jake in front of the "Top Gun" house. It has always been a fun thing to pass on our walk down to Oceanside Beach, but we noticed it was all boarded up this last time, so who knows how much longer it'll be around?

Ellie and Brenn were cracking us up "laying out" side by side on their towel

We also made our first visit to Legoland...

 Carder and Jaxon drove their own cars and earned their very own drivers license

They have a part of the park that is water. It is the wettest log ride(ish) ride I have ever seen in my life. Literally people were coming off just dripping. Carder, my Dad and Jaxon wanted to do it, but we hadn't planned and didn't bring them an extra pair of clothes (and I could just see our day going down the drain once they were walking around in wet shoes and totally soaked everywhere else). Fortunately I was able to talk Carder out of going (he would have had a melt down seeing how soaked people were coming off the ride), but my Dad and Jaxon still did it and came out like they had just jumped in a pool. Next to the ride there were these human sized hand dryers (in this case body driers), so they tried to recover in those (and of course Carder was happy to join in that part as well).

  We went to Disneyland...

I let Carder do the driving on Autopia; Heaven help us all if this is any indication of what is going down in 10 years!

I don't know what happened to me, maybe its just getting older but spinning around and around is not my favorite thing anymore (actually I kinda hate it). When the kids insisted on the tea cups I rode with Carder. He tried spinning it (which fortunately he wasn't too successful at), but was laughing hysterically as I would half jokingly say no spinning and how it was going to make me sick.

After I earned my mother of the year award last time we were at Disneyland by making Carder go on Space Mountain and Splash Mountain (probably scarring him for life), I let him sit out this time. It's probobally a good thing too because I have never got that soaked in my life on that ride (as you can see in the pic on the top right literally one sliver of my grey shorts is dry).

We had such a fun day with Mimi & Poppy, the Johnsons and Kelsie who made the drive down from college in Santa Barbara to meet up with us :) (We even inherited a 3rd child for a while--my kids were more than happy to acquire Mr. Jetty Jet Jet)

The best part of the day though was when we went to Toontown. Before I always thought it was a waste of time, especially standing in line for the characters, but Brenn really loved Minnie Mouse, so of course we stood in line to check out her house. The kids had a blast checking out all the fun little gadgets while we were outside and especially once we got in Minnie's house. And then there is the paramount moment when Minnie herself came in and you got your picture with her in the last room. When Brenn saw Minnie in the door way she literally ran and jumped into her arms and hugged her as tight as her little arms could. It was awesome!

I so wish I would have captured her reaction to Minnie on video, but instead I only got a few pictures none of which capture the pure elation this little two year old exhibited

As well as spending time with the Familia, we also got to catch up with some old friends...

The year Jake and I met/dated/got engaged there were four of us girls who were super close as roommates. Raechel got married this summer and we had so much fun getting to attend her reception. We were only sad that we didn't have Miss White Whitney to complete the Roomie photo (we were happy we got to visit her and her family in Galveston earlier that summer though).

The kids loved getting to play/swim with Miss Harper who is the daughter of my childhood best friend/college roommate Whitney (pictured above), and had so much fun attending Sawyer's birthday party (My friend Sabrina's son...she took the discussions at my house and was baptized my freshman year of college). It was so fun to see the kids develop relationships to some people (or rather their offspring) that are so special to me.

Brenn really liked getting to visit Poppy at work and play with the cool toys they had there.

And of course there was the inaugural BYU football game of the season where we make sure those children learn to bleed blue (wouldn't be any other way at the Watkins family home). I thought my Dad was pretty die hard all growing up (we went to every game whenever the Cougars came to Southern California), but with the additions of Jake and Leon to our family things have definitely been taken up a notch...

The kids loved putting on all their Cougar gear and cheering on the team (Carder and Jaxon actually made posters and put them up all over the house). They lasted a little while watching the game and then succumbed to the temptation of playing in the backyard...

After Jake graduated from law school, he took that summer to take/study for the Nevada bar. (This summer he took and studied for the CA bar, which we found out a few months later he had passed). Anyway Carder was the same age as Brenn and made his mark by making all sorts of 2-year-old trouble (getting ahold of Kelsie's razor, drinking some Orange Glow, etc). Not to be outdone by her older brother the little Miss made her own unique mark on Mimi & Poppy's house by getting into Mimi's makeup, showing off her sass with her notorious grumpy face which was often coupled with a leg stomp and a "No Mimi" (Jaxon got quite the kick out of this one and promoted it whenever he could), would squeeze her little body into any little space she could manage (many times you'd find her in one of these yelling "I stuck?"), letting us know the only interest she had in wearing a pull-up was on her head (even a "lella" <Cinderella> one couldn't sway that girl), making a mess of herself at basically every meal and running through the house nakey anytime she got a chance. Gotta love that 2-year-old trouble-making phase (sigh).