Ketchup!

In my last blog post I mentioned that things were about to get busy and let's just say that turned out to be the understatement of the century. Now here it has been 3 weeks and I am going to attempt to fill in all the blanks.

I had the good fortune to be able to go on three field trips all within a week and half of each other. First I went to the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve as a parent volunteer with Jake's 4th grade class. Between Jake's participation in the nature encounter program over the summer and our many family hikes and photo sessions there, we are no strangers to the preserve but this was a very special, informative and fun trip.





I was then able to go to the McCallum Theater in Palm Desert to watch a Hungarian performance troupe with the third graders from my class. Later that week, I went with the 2nd graders from my class, as well as Jadyn and her class to the Gem and Mineral Show in Joshua Tree. Our family has made this an annual tradition every since discovering it when Jake went as a 2nd grader. The kids have quite a collection of unique rocks!



That same week I took an evening training class for work and we celebrated Joe's birthday with a nice BBQ with his side of the family and breakfast out with the Millers.

Meanwhile, Jake has been continuing to stay busy between school, soccer, cub scouts and play dates with his friends. Jadyn has been taking both cheer and tumbling classes since school started and she has really come along way. She is so close to being able to do a backbend kickover from standing.



Last weekend after Jake's morning soccer game, we headed to Whitewater for family pictures. Here we are waiting in the car for our time - I didn't want the kids to get dirty. I'm super excited to see the proofs. We haven't had professional pictures done in several years and I love that they were a) outdoors and b) we were able to include Kuma.



After pictures, we drove up to see my Grandma who was celebrating her 81st birthday. Here she is (in the purple) with almost all the great-grandkids. We don't see this side of the family nearly enough and the kids had a blast playing with all their cousins while the adults caught up.



At the moment, I am currently filling in for the afternoon instructional aide position in my classroom, which means I am once again going in with the kids and coming home with the kids. While I love, love, love working all day (and am sad the district doesn't allow it to be permanent), it also means I have had to squeeze in things like grocery shopping, cleaning, organizing and errand running on weeknights and weekends. I am really in awe of full-time working moms. I don't know how they do it!

It feels good to be almost, somewhat caught up. Someday.