Family History

So, I don't know if everyone is aware, but I do have some roots in St. George. I haven't done too much research, but as we made a trip to the Washington County Library in downtown St. George, we came upon this plaque with the name George Brooks on it. George Brooks is my great great grandfather (for those of you that know her my Grandma Bird's grandfather). Anyway... he designed and built this arch of the St. George Arts and Community Center right next to the library. I thought it was pretty cool and snapped some pictures...

So, we've made the move to St. George. We officially moved here the day before school started for Lexi and Jason. I don't know why school started SO early, down here...It started on August 11th. The kids ride the bus every day to and from school and love it. You'd think, in a place where it is still over 100 every day, they'd want to wait until it got a little cooler to start school, and not start it when it is so hot... But what do I know?

Dixie State starts on Monday. We will be trading off attending school, J.J. in the morning, and I will go in the afternoon. We'll just have a quick hand off of Cassie on Mondays and Wednesdays, so I don't think it will be too bad. We are all happy to be here and are looking forward to the school year, and our new lives in St. George, Utah.

So, I thought maybe I should update this blog since it has been WAY too long since I posted anything. We are right in the middle of making the move to St. George, Utah. J.J. and I will both be going back to school at Dixie State University there this fall. I am going to finish my bachelors degree in English and J.J. has decided he would like to try to go back to school in auto mechanics. We will be living like college students again, but with three growing children... Wish us luck! :)

Cassie's Birthday

Cassie turned two on the 27th of November. And boy, are we seeing it! But, we love her anyway. She has so much personality! She loves to be silly and make everyone laugh. She sings to herself ALOT and is getting over her shyness around women, but the men...well, she still hesitates around them. I won't be trying to talk her out of that anytime soon. We had a birthday party at our house before we left for Thanksgiving at Grandma & Grandpa Miller's house. We didn't do the birthday cake thing, because the cake never gets eaten, and we were going out of town for a few days. Instead we had birthday ice cream! This was such a great idea, we just might do this more often...

Cassie opening her princess wipes. I know, I know. Wipes? But, I'm practical. And she loves that the container has princesses all over it.

I love these pictures. They are of her reaction when we pulled out her last present... a shopping cart!

Cassie doesn't look too thrilled at the fact that Jason and Lexi like the shopping cart, too!

The Craziness!

It's that time of year, again! I can't believe how fast time is flying by. We try every year to take Christmas pictures of the kids. This time we tried to do them as a family. It did not go very well. We had some happy times and not so happy times, as you can tell. I don't know if there was one picture in the whole group that everyone was happy in. Ugh...why do we put ourselves through this!

Happy Halloween!!!

We had a lot of fun this year on Halloween. We carved our pumpkins the day before, so they wouldn't be wilted by the time Halloween actually got here. Cassie took to trick-or-treating like a fish to water. She thought it was the coolest thing that all you had to do was knock on someone's door, and they would oogle at how cute you were and give you candy. i took the girls around the neighborhood, but Jason only lasted for four houses! He said that he had some candy and he was really nervous about all of the dogs in our neighborhood! haha!

The girls love their tutus and headbands I made.

I think they'll go in the dress up box for year-round fun!

Slacker!

What a slacker! Okay, so we have established that I am not very good at updating this blog. So, every few months or so, I'll get to it. This fall has been pretty busy. The kids started school at park View Elementary in Payson. After a couple of weeks, we switched to a charter school, C.S. Lewis Academy. Then after a few weeks of that, we started homeschooling. We have now been doing it for about six weeks. For the most part, we are really enjoying it. I really didn't think that would be something I would do and enjoy, but so far, it's working out really well. There are obviously days that the kids just don't want to do school, or Mom has had enough, so we mix things up a bit and get out of the house. In fact today we did math at wal-mart. I taught the kids about name brands vs. store brands and comparison shopping. Usually, it is very structured, as we are doing an on-line school with all of the materials a regular public school has, and marking attendance and progress. It is a decent amount of work for me, but I think it is worth it. :)

Here are some pictures of an activity we did with our new on-line school.

(We went with a group of home-schooled cousins.)

These are pictures of the kids' first day of school at Park View Elementary.