A Morales Minute

Olivia has started driving! She's not excited about it either. She is not eager to get behind the wheel. All classes are via zoom and drives are done singly instead of multiple kids in a car going on drives with the instructor so I think it's going to take a while for her to get the course complete and get her license.  

Today is the first day of middle school for Tyler. He's not nervous and slightly excited. Also, he really likes blue. :) School starts earlier in middle school. It'll be a struggle for Tyler to get up early and catch the bus, however Aidan will also be starting school tomorrow and they'll be able to get on the bus together.  What we hoped for didn't come to pass. Masks are still required in schools and there are still some restrictions. We're just grateful they're going to have school in person still. I've got to hand it to all the kids who go to school happily wearing a mask. Do they like it? No. But they're happy to be among peers and teachers. At least I know that's how my kids feel about it.   

  With the delta variant of Covid causing a spike in cases church was canceled and back on in the homes. We've been told it's only for a couple weeks. We're really hoping that's the case.  I had them pick a song to sing. They chose the Star Spangled Banner so we said they need to stand. I think they enjoyed it! :) Church isn't the same at home as at the church building, but it's still spiritual and more personalized. If my children don't remember the lessons that we taught I know that this will be a time they will remember when they're older. I hope it's something that will make them think and realize that we could have easily not done church but we believed that it was still crucial to hold meetings even if it was at home. Because we have a modern prophet who started a new curriculum for home based church lessons that coordinate with in church lessons it was revelation enough for us that God knows what is going on and uses his prophet to lead the ch

Lindsey's senior photo session was today! It was fun to follow them around and watch Lyndee work her magic telling Lindsey how to pose and such.  Lindsey wanted some IN the water. Leave it to Lyndee to be the first to walk in sock-footed up to her knees in the water.  The more pictures she took the deeper she went!  I'm excited to see how they turn out!

This past week has been a lot of fun being it's our theme week at moms. Mom comes up with fun themed dinners and then the kids get excited to help make it. The first night was pirate night.  Orange slice ships in a jello ocean, chicken skewer swords, and other fun sides.  Swords of chicken tenders After dinner the kids went on a treasure hunt with lots of fun clues to chase around the yard.  Jackpot! Before bed we watched Goonies. :) Baking chocolate chip cookies. Made some mini, regular, and one giant for a bizookie, big cookie with ice cream and caramel sauce. The mini cookies were for our "mini" theme night.  We had mini dishes for our mini sized dinner. Mini hamburger, mini zucchini pieces, and mini bowl of jello. We had multiple movie ideas for this night; Honey, I shrunk the kids, Ant Man, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, etc. But We opted not to watch a movie this night but visit and not stay up too late.  Foil dinners and then watched RV for camping/RV night! The k

So while the kids have been gone to the coast with their grandparents, I made some plans of my own! I didn't make dinner all week! I said I wanted to go to places to eat that were new for both of us or at least one of us...or we had a gift card so the food was free. I mean, who doesn't love free food! And generally a gift card doesn't have enough on it to feed our entire family so we still end up paying when we use the cards (which is what the restaurants hope for).  We ate at Frost Me Sweet The avocado butterflies appetizer was so good! I liked my dish Curry On but I think it could be a little smaller...for me. :) One of the gifts Jaime was given from staff at McClintock was a book called The Adventure Challenge - Couples Edition. It has 50 scratch-off date ideas. We planned to set some time aside in the evenings to do some of the dates.  We had a movie night an an indoor tent. #adventurechallenge We had to pick a romantic movie to watch. We found one on Netflix that we ha