First Day of School!!!

The first day of school was a great day! All three boys had a hard time sleeping the night before. Griff was awake at 5 am and did his best to go back to sleep. I heard him in the shower at 6:30 am for 20 minutes. Later - he ironed his shirt! Ahhh middle school!

Both the older boys were pleased with their Nike backpacks. I stitched "Holt" onto their packs in matching colors. Very cool! Noah chose a super hero backpack. What a shocker! He he!

We were out the door on time and off to take Noah and Isaac to school first.. Both boys ran to see their friends! Isaac was nervous to be in his new class. He was unsure about his teacher too - didn't get the teacher that he wanted. By the end of the day - she had won him over! I'm sure the "no homework" policy in her class helped a ton.

Noah had a great time just seeing his classmates. He was excited to see that his teacher had purchased a pencil box for him, found his own cubby, his own desk. I purchased a small book to help Noah's classmates understand epilepsy. His teacher read it to the class today and they came up with a "Noah Emergency Plan!"

Once both boys were in school, we headed off to Stanley Middle to drop off Griff. He only knew that his first class was Math with Mr. Raddo. Once there, Mr. Raddo gave them their remaining schedules for the day. He had a great time and loves Jr. High.

It's amazing how different the 6th graders are compared to the 8th graders. It was a crazy morning. I swear middle school girls don't go through that "awkward" phase that we went through in middle school. Let's just say - Griff noticed them and so did Bryan and I.

At the end of the day, the boys were full of great stories. They loved their classes and teachers. All three are excited to go back tomorrow!

And me..... I will enjoy the time in my home and yard with my music cranked up, getting my "jobs" done, running and working out for my full hour every day, working on the house, getting my emails answered, etc.

Looking forward to a great year!

Job Sticks

Just thought I would post about my Job Stick system for the boys. Sometime I will print and bind my blog posts and I wanted my kiddos to remember the "job sticks." Ha ha ha!

Every morning I set out a small jar. In the jar are each child's job sticks for the day. The sticks are color coded - Isaac (brown), Griff (blue) and Noah (red). I give the boys a time limit -"Jobs need to be done by noon." The boys pull their sticks out of the jar, organize them and get it done.

I'm not great at completely leaving them alone while they are working on their jobs. But, I'm really trying. I want them to learn organization, prioritizing and hard work. I'm surprised at how much they love these job sticks. We've used them for a year now and they are still lovin' them.

I found the photos on the internet. Bought the ice cream spoons at Michael's and printed the pictures from my computer. The pictures were easily found on the Internet. So easy!

A's vs. Yankees

We had a great night at the A's vs. Yankees game tonight! We hurried home from golf, grabbed sweatshirts, hats and pants, jumped into the van and headed to Oakland. Just as we are heading through the Caldecott Tunnel, I realize that I still had my cutest flip flops on! Oops. 83 degrees in Lafayette, with the fog rolling over the Oakland Hills translates to a cool 63 degrees at the game. Oh well! Who cares - I have cute toes. So, I wasn't worried! Hahaha!

We parked in the Bart parking lot and walked the Bridge from the Colliseum Bart stop over to the Colliseum. My kids were a little freaked as usual by all of the interesting people scalping tickets, others playing saxophones for money and some just plain old beggin'. Always interesting in Oakland!

The game was great even though the A's lost. $1 hot dogs, great friends and the kiddos yellen for the A's. It wasn't hard on the eyes to watch Johnny Damon (sp?) either! So sweet!

Love the Bay Area! How do I get 49ers tickets? Will they even have any Monday Night games this season??? I have a small crush on Mike Nolan! So sad he isn't with the 49ers anymore. But, hey - we need to win a few more games. Still - I wouldn't kick him out of bed for having stinky feet! Ha ha ha!

Book Club Summer

A fun summer night's book club with my girlfriends. I've been with this group for two years through thick and thin. Smiles! We take turns choosing books, reviewing them and hosting. Tonight's club was a great time. Thanks to Bushra for the yummy homemade Pakistani dinner and hot tubbing! It was phenomenal. Thanks girls for the heart-to-heart talks, laughter and great book discussions! Looking forward to many more.

With All My Love,
Cath

Skiing Again!

Utah Vacation

I really should have been better about taking photos on this last trip. I find myself getting absorbed in the moment and I forget to bring out the camera. My dog, the boys, Mountain Dew and I drove to Utah on Sunday, July 25th. It was a good trip but with the road construction in NV - the drive extended an extra 2 hours. Did I mention the portable DVD player quit working as well? Yeah - that was not fun and resulted in an WalMart stop in Elko to correct the problem.

I was so happy to spend Sunday night through Thursday at my Mom's home. My older sister, Stacie, took a day off of work and we all had fun hanging out for our birthdays. Mom took us out to Tempenyaki (sp?), a baseball game and also took the older two boys and their cousin, Jai to a new aquarium in SLC. I had a lot of reunion stuff to accomplish on those three days and my Mom just helped me out a ton. Thanks Mom!

Wednesday night I had a chance to hang out with my high school girlfriends - Cheryl, Meg & Andrea. I miss them when not in Utah and it has been a blast to work with them on this reunion. Lookin' forward to our girls' trip in the Spring!

Reunion weekend (see last post).

Sunday - Tuesday - I was illin'! Not sure if it was a big download from the reunion or if I caught some kind of flu bug. Either way, I wasn't well. Bry took the boys golfing and we saw some movies but overall, I was down for the count.

Wednesday-Friday - Finally managed our Bry-Cath Family portion of our vacation. We took the boys to the Museum of Naturally History at the U of U (dinosaur bones), more movies, golfing, Park City outlets and slide, Snowees, etc. But the big event happened on Friday - Bryan, Griffin and Isaac set out to climb Mt. Olympus. Leaving at 10:30 am, they intended to hike a few hours up - few hours down. I waited and waited to see them signal me with a mirror from the mountain. The signal didn't come. I ran a few errands, did some laundry and finally texted at 3:00pm. The return message - "We're almost to the top!"

We never anticipated taking the boys up Mt. Olympus at their young age. But it was amazing, challenging and fun for all them all. I'm super proud of Griff & Isaac for taking on that challenge and of Bryan for safely guiding them up and down that huge mountain. So fun!

Saturday morning we were able to see some of Bry's family - Marie & Fam, Nan & Fam, & Steph and Fam. We had a yummy breakfast of waffles with peaches or raspberries and ice cream (thank you Karen), played a fun softball game with everyone involved and ate pizza for lunch in the pavillion at the park! It was a good time! Thanks to all of the Holts that could get together. It was fun to see you all.

Saturday evening was filled with laundry and packing. We headed out on Sunday back to the Bay Area. It was a great trip. I wish I hadn't been sick for those three days as it would have been my time to visit with more of my SLC friends. I promise to catch everyone on my next trip.

Loves to All!

20th High School Reunion

About a year ago, over a nice dinner with some girlfriends from high school, we wondered if our Skyline High School class of 1989 was going to have a 20 year reunion. Well, it just so happens that the four of us discovered that there weren't any plans in place and decided to let the begging begin. The real meetings began in February and this past weekend we had a great class reunion! Friday night mixer with alumni only at our High School, Saturday afternoon family picnic in the park and Saturday night dinner with spouses at Hidden Valley Country Club.

The committee was actually made up of people that I knew but wasn't close with and some that I was close with back in the day. I had a great time working with everyone and just sunk myself into the final preparations this past week. Seeing old friends and talking about memories was amazing. It's so settling to have seen everyone and hear about their lives. Seriously, everyone seemed pretty peaceful. It was really fun!