Happy 14th Birthday Cassy!

We celebrated Cassy's birthday with a six hour bus ride to Madrid! We had a little party for her before we headed out the door to catch the bus. I surprised her with some treats from the fancy bakery in town called La Campana. We have been wanting to try out the treats there for a while so I bought five different things for us to sample for breakfast.

Once we got to Madrid and got settled we went out to explore a little. We went to eat at a restaurant called La Gloria de something. It was 8pm and the restaurant didn't open until 8:30 and the little kids were hungry, so we headed to the nearby McDonald's and got the kids something to eat there. We watched the action on the street while they ate and then headed over to the restaurant afterward. The food was really good and we had a great time listening to stories about when Cassy was little. A great way to spend her birthday!

14 things I love about Cassy....

1* She is a huge help to me!

2* She is not afraid to try new things and has jumped right in to speaking Spanish and getting to know the locals.

3* We love watching makeup tutorials together.

4* Cassy loves to play soccer. She has been playing with the local boys because girls don't play soccer in Spain and we have had a ton of family pick up games in the plazas here.

5* She is a great student and especially likes her publications and math classes.

6* She knows who she is and what she stands for.

7* Cassy is such a good example to our family.

8* She wants to be a graphic designer when she gets older.

9* I also think she would make a great writer because she has a way with the written word.

10* She is a hard worker.

11* Cassy has big plans for the summer to save up enough money to buy a long board with her friend Kelsey.

12* She is missing her pink fluorescent sneakers and her pearl earrings, which are her signature style pieces.

13* Cassy is always really good with people and includes everyone (except her brothers, of course).

14* She loves sushi, music, and she is chronically late for the bus at home.

Cassy is truly beautiful inside and out and I am so proud to have her as my daughter! Happy birthday Cassy!

Futbol, Volleyball, and Flamenco

The kids are signed up for some extracurricular activities at a school that is just down the block from us. As you walk down the streets here you see lots of big wooden doors and wonder what lies behind them. Every now and then you get a glimpse. It can be any number of things; an apartment building, a church, a museum, a music academy, a school, a department store. You have no idea based on the look outside. This school looks just like any other door, but opens up into a huge stone courtyard with two levels (outdoor) surrounded by all the classrooms. Many of the private and semi private schools around here are convents or monastaries that have been converted to schools. As a matter of fact, the school we thought might have an opening for Cassy was called "Las Eslavas" as in "The Slaves". Our Spanish friend, Ivan, assured me that it is actually a very forward thinking school and not to worry, it was just called Las Eslavas because it used to be a convent called Slaves of the Lord.

Anyway, our first day of activities was yesterday. Luckily, all the kids have activities at the same school, on the same days, and between 4-6pm...I wish that could happen at home! We went yesterday and everyone was a little apprehensive. Cassy is signed up for volleyball (which is not her first love). Apparently girls do not play soccer in Spain, so for her age group there is not a girls soccer league. She was so nervous and when the girls showed up all together with their matching outfits to practice I could see her panic, but she was very brave and joined right in. The coach was really nice, although he did not speak English and the girls were very accepting and wanted to know all about Cassidy, especially if she was a Justin Beiber fan...to which she was very P.C. and just smiled and said, "Do you?"

Alex was really nervous because he does not speak much Spanish at all, but he started playing and pretty soon there was a group of boys gathered around him all saying "Alex! Alex!" and trying to speak to him in English (the two or three words that they know). They were so cute and kept saying, "Good job Alex!"

At home, I have resisted putting Addy in the shake your booty dance classes. We have kept with the 'pretend you are a raindrop and hop across the floor' type of dancing. Well, call it Flamenco and a Spanish cultural experience, and bring on the booty dancing. I have never seen anything like it, it was so cute. Next time I will be ready with video and camera in hand. I really don't know much about Flamenco and haven't seen any performances yet, so I didn't know what we were getting into. Addy loved it and she was the best booty shaker out there in her pink tutu skirt with her brown boots.

Connor is also signed up for futbol, but his coach couldn't be there, so they just played a scrimmage with their team. He played goalie and decided that he is good at goalie. Cassy asked if she could play and the boys were very impressed that a girl had such soccer moves. They kept giving her a thumbs up, "You good!" Connor was happy to have his sister playing too. They play on a stone courtyard, rather than a grass field and the kids do not wear shin guards. The boys had them on and the nuns kept walking by and pointing and giggling and exclaiming something exciting about the shin guards.

Everyone had a good experience and they are excited to make some new friends. Hopefully they will become a little more familiar with the language this way too. And best of all....mom gets a break!

Back to School

Having everyone go back to school this year has been bittersweet for me. I am excited to hear the sound of silence on occasion and to have the house stay clean for more than five minutes. I am really excited to have some of the bickering stop (at least until 4pm). But this year it will be extra quiet because Addy is starting Kindergarten! She has been so excited to go to school this week. I am so excited for her. I think she is so ready to be at school learning and interacting with school friends. I will miss my little buddy though. It is easy having one child home with me, especially because Addy is so eager to do the things that I am doing throughout the day. She loves to cook and garden and read together, and she also likes to do things on her own like coloring and crafts, playing with her hodge podge mixture of Littlest Pet Shops, dolls, princesses, legos, and whatever else is on hand. As a side note....the other day she handed me a pink play dough ball with lots of glittery beads and some little tube beads stuck in it. I asked her if it was a porcupine and she said it was actually a bomb and when it goes off all of the pokey things will fly all over and get you (obviously she has been spending a lot of time with her brothers). So anyway, it has always been fun to have her around, and she is such a momma's girl that she doesn't ever get too far away. We have been working to get her to at least go to bed in her own bed with Cassidy this summer, with the contingency that if she has a nightmare that she will hop in bed with us. So about 95% of the time she would sneak down to snuggle with us in the middle of the night. Now that school has started, she is so tired that she has even been sleeping in her own bed most nights and we have to wake her up to go to school. There are so many joys of having school age children. It is nice to have some time to myself so that I can get some things done and maybe be able to do some of the extras that I have been wanting to do , but just haven't had the time for. It is easier to go places when everyone can just go hop in the car (for the most part). And it is much easier to go out to dinner! I think it is just kind of hard to say goodbye to babyhood and to realize that we are past that phase in our lives. Especially hard because I just LOVE babies! I like the quote, "Some days can seem like forever, but the years go by in a flash" or something like that. It is so true. Some days with little kids, when you can't even use the restroom without little fingers poking under the door and someone begging to come in, just seem to go on forever and you feel like you are in survival mode. But looking back, it seems it went by in a flash. It is kind of hard and scary to have your kids out in the world and see how influenced they are by their environment. Cassidy's attitude always shifts a little when she is in school and she gets more intense (which is not fun for any of us:) The boys always moan and complain as we try to get back into the school routine of homework, chores and piano. And most of all I do miss having them all around and running for to our next adventure!

Here's a recap of the first week:

Cassy was given an extra two weeks to complete an assignment that was due the first week (that she was cramming to get done) and i think she will still be cramming to get it done by Wednesday. She is in Publications this year and loves it. She is excited to take Spanish, but doesn't love her teacher. She has one teacher that reminds her of the annoying lady who takes Dumbledore's position at Hogwarts in Harry Potter. And she has soccer everyday after school and just found out she made the varsity team, which she is very excited about! She is also working on a very hard piano piece called "Be Still My Soul" that she is going to play with Gabby and Isabella on the violin. Of course her friends play a major role in her life..

Connor has Mrs. Costley for fifth grade and loves being in her class. It doesn't hurt that his best friend, Ford, is in the class with him. They sent home a questionnaire that he had filled out and almost every answer was "Ford". "What was the best advice you have ever been given?" answer "Ford". He must have thought it said "Who gave you the best advice?" When I asked him about it, he got a big smile on his face and said,"I should have put your name down, but I wanted her to know that Ford is my best friend so that she will let us sit by each other." We will see how that works out. Connor wakes up early to read his Star Wars Boba Fat (is that how you even spell it?) or to play Lego's with Alex. He hates piano, but after grumbling he sticks with it and has even found two songs he likes to play..."Ode to Joy" and "When the Saints Come Marching In."

Alex told Grandpa Cola on the phone the other day that he doesn't like school. He has Mrs. Stettler this year and has already been working on memorizing his poems. He does like to drag his feet when it comes to homework, making a 10 minute assignment go on for 2 hours. We are working on different strategies to overcome this. Alex loves hanging out with friends. Sam and Danik are two of his friends he really likes to be with, but most of all he likes to hang out with Connor. They are both Lego masters and Alex just got his Lego magazine this morning and put it in his bag to take to school. He is doing so well with his reading and is attempting to read the first Harry Potter book (with a few picture books thrown in for fun). He is a sweetheart and very protective of his little sister....when he isn't terrorizing her.

Addy is loving Kindergarten, although I think it wears her out a little bit. She has started back to Virginia Tanner dance and loves it. She gets to go with her friend Matisse this year. We had to fill out lots of paperwork before starting school. One of the questions asked what name you would prefer to go by. I asked her if she wanted to be called Addyson, Addy, or Addy Jane. She replied, "How bout I be called Diamond?" We asked her if she had any friends at school. She said she has three. Elise and two others that she doesn't remember their names. This morning when she was getting dressed she did let me know that one of her boy friends had told her she looked pretty in her dress yesterday. She is a very girly girl and loves wearing dresses. She can't stand short sleeves, so she usually wears tank dresses or long sleeves. She is a girl who knows what she wants.

Summer Camp

AAAHHHH!!! Summer camp week. I will be happy to have a little break from the running around and the sibling fights. However, I will miss my kids and my hubby a ton. Connor left this morning for Astro camp. He will spend part of his week at the Astro Camp here in Ogden and a couple of days in Pleasant Grove at another camp (it is all part of one camp). My little man will be gone from Monday to Saturday! I was talking to him about if he gets homesick and he looked at me with a quizzical look and said, "Mom, I am not going to get homesick. Tanner's brother's wife got homesick for japan and so they had to take a trip to Japan. I'm not going to be homesick!" Well, I hope that is true. He wanted to got to the camp with Ford, but they didn't register in time, so he is going it alone. I am so proud of him for being willing to try something so unfamiliar (and for such a long time)! He really is growing up. The tuition for camp is $450 and Connor has almost earned his half that he is required to pay, he just needs another $50. He has been working hard to earn the money. I want to teach my kids that they can do anything they set their minds to if they just work for it. Another idea I hope to instill in my children is the motto, "We do hard things". I read about this on another blog and it summed up how I feel. When you are able to do hard things, you feel such a sense of accomplishment, more than anything else, especially more than if you are just handed an experience. I still remember hiking 10 miles up to Ben Lomond peak when we were at girl's camp and the exhiliration I felt just for sticking with it, when almost everyone else (including my friends) had turned around long ago. Once you learn how to do hard things and overcome obstacles, it is easier to challenge yourself to do other hard things and to accomplish great things in life.

Cassy leaves for our ward Girl's Camp tomorrow. They are going to stay in Island Park and do some fun "roughing it" activities, which I think will be good for Cassidy. She has to have her bags packed and over to her leader's house tonight. There is a pile of laundry the size of Mt. Everest in her closet, I hope she can get it all together in time! Alex and Addy will be going to stay at my mom and Wayne's Tues and Wed night so that they can have their own little camp. And Matt will be leaving for a bike race Thurs through Sat. Like I said, a week of summer camps. It will all wrap up with a birthday celebration for Matt and some fireworks at Weber State on Sunday...