Back to School Night

     Last night I got to go to Back to School Night at Pierce to meet with Haylee and Mackenzie's teachers.  I spent about 25 minutes in each of their classrooms learning about what they'll be doing for the year and also getting to look at the stuff they had been working on lately.
     I went to Haylee's class first.  She has recently been working on a project about the digestive system.  She told me one of her requirements was to give a 30 second-1 minute speech about the digestive system.  On the paper it said the speech needed to be memorized but she insisted that it did not.  Last Thursday, she told me after school that she had already given her speech.  It wasn't really due until Friday, but the teacher had asked for volunteers.  I had been hounding her to get her to memorize the speech.  I wanted her to write it down, learn it, then give me the paper so I could test her to see if it was memorized or not.  She did not feel like that was necessary, although she did write the speech down.  Well, when I found out she had already given her speech, I asked her if she had memorized it before she did it.  She informed me that she had not, then, with a proud little grin on her face, told me that the teacher had said, "Sounds like you practiced a lot!"  I know she felt like she had won by getting a good grade without having the speech memorized.  But actually, she had practiced a lot.  It was just a little different every time she did. :)
     When I sat down at her desk last night, I found the grading sheet for her digestive system project.  It was divided into three parts: Her oral presentation, the written report, and the diagram.  She got a perfect score on everything except the diagram.  She got 40 out of 50 for neatness and 45 out of 50 for labeling.  I was really anxious to go find hers on the wall and take a look at it when the teacher finished his presentation.  Haylee tells me that art isn't really her thing.

 I have to agree with her that her digestive tract diagram isn't the neatest artwork I've seen come home from her.  This self-portrait she had drawn was very nice though.

 "About Me"
     My name is Haylee Hardy.  I am nine 1/2 years old.  I was born in Lancaster California on March 31, 2003.  My favorite thing to learn is about is math if rounding.  My favorite hobbies are playing basketball and swimming.  If I could have one wish for the world it would be for everyone to have enough food to eat.

      The kids painted a desert landscape in art class and they were hung around the room.  I found Haylee's even before I saw her name on it. :)  (Go Cougars!!)

      While I was sitting at her desk listening to the teacher, I was thumbing through some of the things she had written and I thought this one was really sweet.  Maybe a little bit of an exaggeration, but still very sweet.
     "I remeber when I gave my brother a pushing helicopter.  He loved it so much he was pushing it all over the house and now since the top broke off he throws it around the house every day until it's time for bed."
     She's writing about the helicopter she gave him for his birthday.  He does still love it and he does also throw it sometimes.  And it is definitely too big for throwing!

     Next I went to Mackenzie's class.  Mackenzie's class had also made self "portraits" and written about themselves.

 This is the cute girl that Mackenzie made and this is what she wrote about herself.

 "My name is Mackenzie Hardy.  I was born on March 10, 2005.  I have one brother and three sisters.  My faverit subject in school is reading.  At recess I like to play bascitball.  When I'm not at school, I like to watch Pair of Kings."

     It's so fun to see the things the girls are doing in their classes and I'm so glad they have such great teachers!

Fast Sunday

     Last Sunday was fast Sunday and it reminded me about the fast Sunday we experienced in August which was a significantly more meaningful experience for our children.  So I thought I would write about it so we could always remember it.
     My little brother, Jonathan, has a son with a heart condition.  His name is Tyler and he was born March 6, 2009.  That was the year before I started blogging so I'm not sure that I ever mentioned it.  Tyler was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome.  Because of this, he had to have his first open-heart surgery when he was only a few days old.  I believe he was about 4 months old when he had his second, and then about 2 when he had his 3rd.  The "fix" (I use parentheses because it's not a perfect cure and he will still most likely need a transplant eventually) for his heart is this series of 3 surgeries, but he has some other procedures to try to help him as well.  I'm sure I'm not getting everything exactly right.  I know he sleeps with oxygen at night to give his heart a much-needed rest.
     Well, in July, Jon and Jamie were very concerned with how Tyler was doing.  He had just had a procedure that was supposed to help but they said he actually seemed worse after it.  They took him to the doctor and the doctor was concerned as well, so he ordered some tests.  Jon and Jamie were worried that Tyler was in the early stages of heart failure.  The next Sunday was fast Sunday and his tests were scheduled for a few days after that.  So we all fasted for Tyler.
     Usually, this is what I hear from the kids on fast Sunday (and only our 2 baptized children even try to fast): "I'm starving!" "Do I have to fast?" "I've decided I'm not fasting today." etc...  The Sunday we fasted for Tyler was completely different.  Not only did the children not complain, but Mackenzie decided that she wanted to fast too.  We only have the kids fast for breakfast at this point, but that's a big sacrifice for Mackenzie.  She usually eats breakfast and still gets hungry during Sacrament meeting an hour later.  Not only did they all get through church just fine, but I knew they felt good about sacrificing something to help their little cousin.
     We remembered Tyler in all our prayers that day, and continued to pray for him over the next few days until his tests.  We were SO happy when Jon gave us the news of the test results.  On facebook he posted, "Doctor says Tyler's heart function looks great! Thank you for all your prayers and support. We feel truly blessed."  When I told the kids, they cheered and their faces were just beaming.  I knew they felt like their fasting had made a difference, and I was so happy for them to gain a testimony of that.
     This last fast Sunday, I noticed that things were kind of back to the usual complaints.  We hadn't thought of a purpose to fast for and I know that made a huge difference.  But it reminded me of the sweet experience we had last month so that I could write it down and also hopefully do a better job of making each fast Sunday a special one for our family.

*Colorado and White Family Reunion

     We made it to Colorado on Saturday July 16.  It was fun to see Nathan and Kyla together since they are so close in age.  Grandpa Hardy hadn't been doing well and had been moved to a nursing home.  The next day we went to go visit him after church.  While we were there, we sang some songs in the common room for the other nursing home residents.  It was hard to see Grandpa doing so poorly but I know the kids wanted to see him again.  We knew he didn't have a lot of time left.  I had thought I would take pictures of the kids with their Grandpa one last time, but he looked so different I just couldn't do it.  I didn't want them to remember him sick like that.

Nate and Kyla

Cousins after singing at the nursing home

     After visiting Grandpa in the nursing home, the White Family Reunion officially began with dinner and games at Uncle Dean's house.  The kids played in his huge, beautiful yard for awhile.  They especially enjoyed his swings.  Then we played all sorts of different "Minute to Win It" games.  Afterwards, the kids made a video called "St. John leaves St. Johns."  Years ago, the cousins had made a video acting out this important story from their family history.  So now we re-filmed it with this age group of young cousins.  The story is about Daren's Grandpa White, Floyd White, when he was a baby.  A brief version is that his parents lived in St. Johns, AZ and it was such a hard life, they and another family finally decided to leave.  They started out travelling together but when the other family wanted to travel on the Sabbath, the Whites decided to stay behind to keep the Sabbath Day holy.  So the families ended up travelling separately.  The other family ended up having a bunch of hardships and the Whites ended up passing them and reaching their destination first.  Nate got to play the part of baby Floyd.  Too bad I can't put videos in the blog book because it was quite adorable.

Kelsey and Diana, unseperable.

      Natalee enjoyed playing with these little tiny frogs.



Haylee, Caleb Fleming, and Kelsey in the canoe on Uncle Dean's pond.

Kelsey really liked the canoe!

Daren's cousin Valerie has a daughter named Jamie Hulen who makes awesome cakes.  She made Julene's wedding cake and she made this cake for the family reunion.  It has a flag to show where each person in the family is currently living.

 Minute To Win It games!

Haylee and Spencer doing cup stacking.

Sadly, I don't know who all these kids are.  But Mackenzie is in the bright blue trying to pull all the kleenex out of the box one at a time in under a minute.

She didn't quite finish within the minute deadline, but she was still excited she had accomplished the task!



Kelsey back in the canoe with cousin Grant Fleming.

Uncle John on the far right, trying to stack a certain number of cookies on his forehead.  Sadly, I don't know the names of the other contenders.

And down came the oreos! (John Hardy)

Julene and John Kohls (Daren's cousin Carla's husband) trying to move an oreo from their forehead to their mouth without any hands.

Daren trying to get the oreo in his mouth with no hands too.

Baby "Floyd" finally tuckered out and fell asleep in the "wagon."

 

      A favorite sight to see whenever we're in Colorado is the wild deer roaming around Grandma Bobbi's neighborhood. :)
     There was an activity planned for each day of the White Familiy reunion, but not everybody went to every activity.  Most of them were a little bit of a drive (about an hour or so) so we didn't feel like we could travel every day and have the kids enjoy it.  It's always hard when you have little ones that still need their naps.  We definitely wanted to make the trip to see the Box Canyon waterfall though.  Daren had told me how beautiful it was.  First we climbed up a metal walkway to get to the waterfall.  It wasn't too far and it was such a cool site to see the waterfall coming down inside the canyon.  Then we went back out and went up a trail to the top of the canyon.  There was a bridge to cross and a little tunnel on the other side that you could go part way into.  It was such a beautiful view on the bridge with a river down below.

Box Canyon/Black Canyon Trip: July 20, 2011

Box Canyon waterfall-the picture doesn't do it justice.

Diana and Kelsey, best cousins!

Another waterfall that we could see from the trail.

Nathan enjoyed riding in his little backpack.

Natalee and Kelsey

View from the bridge.

The kids inside the little tunnel.

Beautiful Colorado scenery.

      Our next stop was a canyon called Black Canyon.  I was slightly panicked that one of the kids was going to be risky and fall off the edge.  But everyone managed to survive. :)

Daren and the girls.

Haylee

Mackenzie

I always try to capture the view but it's never quite the same on the camera as it is in my eyes.

Cousins, L-R: Kelsey, Diana, Grant, Mackenzie, Caleb, Natalee, and Haylee

Just the girls!

Girls + Nate