229: harvest time

Azia shredded & froze five giant zucchinis from Gwen, Zayda and I hate broccoli from Mom's garden for lunch, and the boys picked five gallons of huckleberries. One of these days we'll actually plant something of our own, but we get by pretty well on the generosity of others for now.

224: a bunch of my favorite 7th graders

A few of Azia's friends won't be in Mission for school this fall, so they all wanted to hang out a little before people started settling in to their new places for the new school year. She has such a great group of friends–hopefully some of them end up back in her class again.

216: The "Librarian" look

She claims it's a good look for cleaning. So far, I've seen no proof of this.

212: Swimming Sisters

196: Lounging at the Lake

It's the beginning of our family kayak fleet. We just need a few dozen more boats.

193: busy summer Saturday

Such a fun, crazy day! Azia is 12 today!

We started the morning at the Missoula Kids Marathon. After Zoran and Lex ran, we were back over to the softball fields for Azia's game. After the afternoon game, Azia had cupcakes with her team,  slightly destroyed tie-dyed cupcakes she made last night that sort of survived the morning and riding to Missoula with Lex, but birthday cupcakes still. She wanted Chinese food for her birthday lunch and then we took everyone over to Splash Montana to cool off. Azia was off sliding with her friends and girls from the team so I didn't actually see her much (so I have a picture of Zayda the fish who loves the water!)

When we got home in the evening the kids were ready for more swimming at the Dam, Azia & Jenna were bike riding and planning outfits for church in the morning, and after some moon watching and more ambulance calls,  I was pretty excited about not having to get up early in the morning. Another busy week ahead!

192: Last weekend of softball!

The state tournament started today. So, once again Azia will spending her birthday tomorrow on a softball field! At least this is one of her favorite things to do and she gets to spend it with girls she likes hanging out with.

This is her last weekend of softball and Israel has just one more week. The first of August will be the first time in months we have a few days is a row with nothing scheduled (rather than multiple things in different towns nearly every single day). Hopefully I'll have time to get our lives organized a bit before school starts again.

191: facepaint makes daily chores more interesting

Or it's just another way to avoid them completely. 

I came home from the store today and found Lex and Azia sitting at a little table of the middle of the kitchen painting each other's faces. The kitchen wasn't very clean, but they sure looked festive.

182: July 1st.

After Israel's double header in Polson we found a pretty nice spot by the lake to change Zayda into pjs for the ride home.

It's been a little hectic the last month and it seems like we haven't even had time to do any real summer fun sorts of activities. But there have been some great moments in there for sure.

Looking forward to a few more over the next couple months...

111: my catcher

 I think it's growing on her...

95: Azia's First Softball Game of the Year!

92: "Don't sell my hand-me-downs!"

I've been trying to clean out closets and get things (at least a little more) organized.

Zayda likes some of her sister's bright clothes. Too bad they're a whole decade a part and we have no garage (or even an closets) to store things.

89: back on the mound

Except girls don't have a mound, but same idea. . .

87: "Hey is my sister in there?"

Azia has been so busy lately–practicing with two softball teams, practicing everyday with a group of sixth graders who are playing in a basketball tournament this weekend, doing a pretty good job keeping up with all her schoolwork and projects. Today she went from school to basketball, to softball, to jiu- jitsu, and then home to work on her movie project.

Now if I could only convince her to fill in annoying band practice time sheets... repetitive paperwork and bookkeeping tasks are not a strong point for any of my children. I do not think they are on a path to being helpful administrative assistants. (Azia's lowest grade is in band because she can't remember to keep the practice log; I think once in September Zoran wrote down time on his reading log.) Clearly these sorts of tasks are not my strength either since I can't seem to follow through on making my children get them done. (My excuses: There are so many of these kids! And so many logs for so many different tasks!) I've compensated for my flightiness in this area by having a job where others will do much of this for me at work...now if only someone would supply an employee to handle all my home office paperwork deadlines.

64: relaxing

Azia's showing her constellations...in the ceiling texture. And she's paying attention. I think she like's having a big sister.

61: celebrating snow...and an already announced 2-hour delay for the start of school tomorrow

I did shovel a path from the other door, but it was more fun to "swim" from here over to the hot tub.

59: Snow Day #2 for the Week!

Everything shut down around here today!

I don't remember having so many things closed. Ever. Mission kids already didn't have school scheduled for the day, but all the Missoula schools were also closed.  The tribal offices were all closed. SKC shut down at 11:00. The UofM had a snow day for the first time in decades. The local schools cancelled all sporting events for the evening and weekend, and our boys basketball team stayed overnight in Hamilton so they wouldn't have to travel. The Mall in Missoula closed early, and the church even cancelled Skate Conference which was supposed to be this Sunday. There was so much snow in Missoula they even had an avalanche in the Rattlesnake. It slid down the mountain, took out a house, and trapped an 8-year-old who was outside and the older couple who lived in the house. All three were alive when they took them to the hospital, but it took 3 hours to find them all and gt everyone out.  Avalanches are not common around here either--at least in town. It sounds like this one came down right onto Van Buren Street. A few hours after the avalanche they diverted some of the rescuers to look for two skiers who were lost up at Snowbowl.

We did get a ton of snow, too. We measured this afternoon and it was about 17 inches. A few of those inches were left over from Monday, but in many places in the yard it's twice that deep because of drifts. It wasn't too cold in Mission, so the kids had fun playing outside and just generally not being at school.

And, It sounds like we're supposed to get yet another storm Sunday. Apparently we're really having winter this year.

57: hand-me-down books

Gwen cleaned out their books today and sent Zayda home with the board books her girls had outgrown. I actually threw away most of the ones we had a few weeks ago because they were so beat up and destroyed they were hardly books anymore. Last time we had people this size I had about a dozen of them around every day--we read our toddler books to pieces!

54: piano

I meant to have my kids take piano lessons. And then suddenly they started growing up before we got around to it. Maybe with this youngest one...

53: tending to the birds

Gwen gave Lex the job of taking care of her birds while they are in California. I'm not sure why you would put Lex in charge of small, harmless little birds, but apparently they're planning a trip to Washington D.C. together so Lex needs to start saving some money. I think he may earn about $5 by the end of the week for this job, so he better line up some more work.