Premiere Night!

Each year, Carly uses her mad skills to create a family video, chronicling the past year of each member of the Erickson family.  Given some crazy circumstances with health and moving, it has been two years since we had a video, making this year's rendition extra long and extra awesome.  We had the premier party tonight where we all view the video for the first time-always a fun night, and I'm sure a nice culmination for Carly, who puts hours and hours into this project---she always does such a great job!  This year we met up at the Adobe building for a nacho bar dinner and the video.  We surprised mom afterwards with a birthday party for her, and a traditional double layer chocolate cake that I made.  Mom didn't eat any of it, but I am going to toot my own horn-it looked beautiful, and it was pretty darn good!  Once again, my camera did an awful job capturing the evening.....sigh.  I so want a nice, new camera so I can better catch the memories that I do not want to forget, or for my kids to forget.  Oh well.  Eventually I'll be able to replace this one.  Regardless, we had a great time, once again enjoyed hanging out with all the family, and truly appreciated the family video.  On an unexpected note, Karianna won an award for her dance to "Chandelier", Jordan won an award for sacrificing his body to do "the worm", and Jared and I won an award for most effort, or something like that....we recreated "the sprain" from Saved by the Bell, complete with JD and Jordan catching my crutches, and Jared spinning me around until I kicked him onto the ground and poised my broken ankle on his shoulder for the final pose.  It was pretty hilarious.  James cracks up everytime Jared's recorded voice says "You guys are awesome!"  Lots of good memories made, that's for sure!

 This kid sat by me and ate a ton of guacamole!  I was so surprised!

 The three musketeers!

 A little cautious, but he still gives Steve knuckles!

 These boys and their pokemon-instant connection as a result!

 Look, I got a baby to hold!

 Karianna photo bomb......

Night Owl Pride

I don't often take pictures of myself, but I had to when I got my new WGU shirt!  We always get new shirts in July/August when the annual academic meetings take place.  I actually got an award this year for the Evaluation Department, which was pretty cool, as well as a fantastic bonus-always nice! I love wearing my WGU apparel...mostly because I love WGU and am so proud to work for such a fantastic organization.  Jared kept mentioning very early on how amazing it was to work for a non-profit; the focus is really on the students, and not on revenue.  I see that everyday, and it makes me so grateful to have the job that I do.  I get to stay connected to a field I love, engage in constant professional development, and really help students because fabulous teachers.  It takes a lot of work to balance the kids, the house, the husband my my job, but we make it work, and it has really blessed our family in lots of ways.  Super proud to be a WGU Night Owl!

A Premature Birthday Party

With most of my family in town, we decided to do a family birthday party for Karianna and Makayla, both turning 11 this year.  Karianna wanted a cousin party, which we just don't do very often anymore, so I thought this was a perfect time-plus, we planned to do night swimming, which makes it even more fun!  No sun!  

We swam for quite a while before diving into root beer floats with chocolate syrup.  Sara, bless her heart, dumped literally about 2/3s of the bottle of chocolate syrup into her cup.  She said she didn't know.  I was just shocked.  Needless to say, she didn't finish hers. ;)  The kids all got back into the pool for a while, and then we opened presents right as the Hammerquists arrived (they got caught in major traffic).  Karianna is always such a great sport with presents, I am grateful for her grateful attitude and quirky poses (as seen below).  We had a second round of root beer floats with the Hammers and then jumped back in the pool until about 10:30 when everyone finally headed home.  It was a busy, but fun night, all the moreso because we all got to hang out together, which is unfortunately so rare these days.  The kids had a blast together, which is another huge plus.

I really, really dislike my camera right now.  Some of these shots are terrible, but I am going to post them anyway.  :)

 Goodness gracious, the ghosts!

 So happy early birthday to my budding pre-teen!  I'll have more to say as we do birthday party #2 for her (with the Lautens over Labor Day weekend), and then her actual birthday on 9/16.  Love you nana!

Beautiful Lady

This is Sara's second day of school outfit that she picked out from head to toe.  She is SUCH a miniature Karianna!  Super gorgeous!

The First Day of School, 2015-2016

 Karianna: 10 years old, 6th Grade, Mrs. Karles (homeroom)



JD:  9 years old, 4th Grade, Mr. Rague (jump for joy, it's a boy teacher!)

 Jordan: 7 years old, 2nd Grade, Mrs. Cox (by his request-she gives candy for cleaning)

 Sara: 5 years old, 1st Grad, Mrs. Cawood

 James:  3 years old, No Grade, Loves to take pictures anyway!

 Jackson: 1 year old, No Grade, Has to do everything his siblings do!

 The whole crew before we left the house...

....and the whole crew when they were ready to catch up with their friends!

Happy first day of school, guys!  Love you tons!

And Then There Were Two....

Well, that's it.  Four of the kids are goners, and I get to hang out with these two goofballs all day!  Given that Jared is working form home, I have to be extra interactive to make sure things stay relatively quiet.  So I get up early to work a few hours, I work the two nap hours when they are both resting, and I work 3-4 hours in the evening once Jared is done or dinner is done-whichever comes first.  That makes it so my mornings are free to hang out with these rugrats, my afternoons/early evenings are free to hang out with the big kids, and I still get 7-8 hours of work in each day.  These boys are great helpers with the household chores, and they are generally good playmates.  James will tell anyone Jackson is his best friend.  We love to sit at the piano together and play/sing songs.  Playing ball is obviously a big hit all around.  I have some preschool activities ready to go and we play school every morning.  In my efforts to keep the house quieter, I will probably start morning outings pretty regularly-the splash pad park, the regular splash pad by ASU, mall play area, KrazyAir kid time (hopefully), story time at the library, and museums/science centers whenever we can score culture passes at the library on Tuesdays. The latter frustrates me because there are so many restrictions on culture passes....oh well.  I'll play the game if it means I can expose James to some cool things.  We still have a few months before we can really start to hit up parks, but once that rolls around, we will be doing that frequently.  

All in all, I think we will have a lot of fun this year with our time together.  Having James go to preschool most likely in January will make things more interesting too.  I am certain Jackson will feel weird when that happens!

So with those ruminations, I should go pick up the kids from their first day of school-it went by so fast!  Even though we didn't do anything super special today, being the king of the house apparently wore James out, as this is how I found him maybe half an hour into nap time.  Yes, that is a sock on his right hand.  No, I don't know why.  :)

Back to School Blessings!

Ah, the last day of summer break....seems so odd!  We had a great day, living up the last few carefree moments, picking out first-day outfits, packing lunches, arranging backpacks, etc.  As always, we ended with our traditional back to school blessings, which is always a sweet experience for our family.  The kids did great sitting for all five blessings, and we felt a great spirit in our home.  Jared gives beautiful blessings with the most humble spirit; it is always a wonderful experience for me as the mom of the home! 

 He looks like a teenage to me, and then I realized his feet aren't touching the floor!

 James can never ever pass up the chance to do something his older siblings have also done!

 He tried SO hard to keep his eyes closed, cute boy!

 A classic doggy pile hug afterwards!

 And even though Jackson didn't seem to care about getting a blessing, he sure did want that hug!  Love my family, and super excited for school tomorrow!

Acrobatics!

 Jackson has always been pretty crazy in the physical department.  He has watched his brothers climb and scale so many things, those same skills just come natural to him.  As of late, he has been into tumbling and balancing on one leg, as the pictures below depict.  He thinks he is so cool, he will hold this pose for as long as possible before crashing to the ground.  In this situation, the other kids were doing a handstand context, hence his level of involvement. Super cute!