Quick Update

Summer is flying by. I register Sami for kindergarten on Thursday and just the thought of it makes me so sad and anxious. But she is so excited and asks me almost every day how many days until kindergarten.  I have thought and thought about homeschooling but that just doesn't feel right for our family right now, so I will just have to trust God and turn her over to her teacher. There is no half day kindergarten in the whole state of Nebraska so she will be gone from 8:30 to 3:45. That seems like too long for me. Gratefully we have a great school district (we actually chose this house for the school district), and that helps my anxiety. 

I got called as the Primary music leader. It is a fun job but a bit overwhelming for me. I know that Sami and Janie love music time and I feel this pressure to make it fun while teaching them the songs. Plus the sacrament program is next month. Thankfully there are so many wonderful primary music blogs that so far I haven't had to come up with a single idea on my own. :) 

Jonathan's new calling is the building maintenance coordinator. That means he is in charge of organizing the cleaning of the church every third month and snow removal. That also means I will probably be cleaning a lot of bathrooms every third month. But I don't mind too much. My mom told me once that every time you clean the church you help build a temple. I will just think about that as I clean toilets. 

Jonathan is super busy studying for boards. He takes so many tests and they are all expensive. This one coming up is for board certification in internal medicine and he studies every day for it. He is super nervous but I am sure he will pass. He always does, thankfully.

And the best part is that I finally feel like we are "settled." I still have boxes in the basement that I have to go through but I don't have them in bedrooms or obvious places. It's nice to feel like our house is homey. 

Hello, iphone

 When we moved here one of the first things we noticed is our phones didn't work. I couldn't call or text without my phone dropping the call or text. So we went to Verizon to set up an account and they gave us free iphones. I was so excited. I love free!

One of the funnest things (that I know how to do-there is much, much I don't know how to do) is the camera and the camera apps. I have been having a lot of fun with those. 

I know that these are not great pictures. I know the resolution is low and some of the overlays are wonky. 

But it's just so fun!

 This says "the princess loves otterpops." I don't know why it didn't all show up.

These are the trees in our yard. I LOVE the trees in our yard. 

So I am new to smartphones. What is your favorite app or trick? I feel like I need to class on how to work these. 

And the apps I used to make these photos fun are "Rhonna" and "Picture Show." Both are $1.99 and so fun. 

Omaha Independence Day

 We greatly underestimated how much Nebraskans love Independence Day.

On July 3rd, we went to a bbq and stayed out until 9 pm (which is very late for our kids) so for the 4th, we thought we would just let them light off sparklers and poppers. Because of daylight savings, it doesn't get dark until 10 pm and we didn't want to keep the kids up until 11 pm for the fireworks. (We're boring like that.)

So we put Lucy to bed and then we went out for our "fun." The girls were so scared at first. Jonathan made the comment that things would be so much different if we had boys. But I was terrified of fire works when I was their age, so I understand. 

Eventually we got into it and the girls had a blast. But we realized sparklers are much more sparkly in the dark.

After we got the older girls in bed, we watched a show and then it started sounding like a war zone outside. We went out onto the porch and was awed by the amount and intensity of the fireworks here. We had neighbors shooting off commercial fireworks! It smelled like there was a forest fire burning. It was unbelievable. And it just kept going and going. At 11 pm, we put in ear plugs and went to bed. 

I don't remember it being like that when I was teenager living in Nebraska. I was shocked the girls didn't wake up, and I am glad they didn't because they would have been scared. 

Maybe next year we will keep the older girls up for it, now that we know what happens in our neighborhood. 

The older I get, the more I am grateful for a free country.

God bless America!