SLEEMAN: 2013

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Kurt's birthday comes next, a mere 2 weeks following the day known as "Epic". We had to wait until the weekend to celebrate Kurt's birthday, but the kids and I celebrated at home anyway by renting a movie and eating pizza while he was at work. Sorry there are no really cool pictures for this very eventful celebration.... I forgot the camera, but this DID happen!
We loaded up the trailer and started on our way to Rexburg, and then to our camp site at Henry's Fork Outlet. We got as far as Pocatello to stop for bathroom breaks and noticed that the truck was spraying gear oil all over the place. Now what??? Well we decided that we are just as close to Rexburg as we are to turn back, so we might as well keep going on a wing and a prayer :). We made it. Kurt was frazzled. He made a few phone calls, while we ate dinner at mom and dad's and finished loading up their trailer. Kurt ultimately decided to just buy a bunch of gear oil and keep an eye on the leak and add oil as needed.
We arrived at our campsite after midnight, and zonked out. The next day mom and dad showed us all the best 4-wheeler trails and we took a day trip to Johnny Sack's Cabin... I highly recommend seeing that. It was more wonderful than I can describe. Jexten is set on meeting that man in the Spirit World and heartily shaking his hand. I would not be surprised if Jexten names his first son Johnny Sack :). We stayed there for quite some time. It was a nice sunny hot mountain kind of day so we thought a river float was in order.. BOY WERE WE RIGHT! We took a 2-ish hour long river float and saw: some HUGE fish in deep cold water, a cow moose standing in the middle of the river, lots of wonderful birds, and a bull moose laying in some lush reeds. We were so close to so much wildlife, I mean up close and personal! We took Sunday off to go to the Island Park Ward sacrament meeting, eat like kings (that was an every meal occurrence) and rest. Kurt came down with a pretty bad cold by this time. So we pulled out on Sunday afternoon, and slept at mom and dad's that night. The hospitality of those people is limitless! Monday we rode horses, and decided to go to the Tautphous Park Zoo in Idaho Falls. We all thought it best to add Curt and Limmie's family to the party for the Zoo. It was a perfect cloudy overcast drizzley day so we got to see ALL the animals. I think that was my first time actually seeing the male lion in the wide open, majestic is all I can say. It was a wonderful weekend to celebrate a wonderful husband and father!

These pictures were actually taken on Jexten's birthday, but they are so fun!

We have water fights with dad just because we can!

The Birthday Blog

Our family's end of summer "thing" is Birthday Celebrations! Everyone , except me, has a birthday between the end of August to the end of September..... So I have held off with the birthday pictures long enough that now I can do one, great, big, gigantic, enormous, BANG of BIRTHDAYS!!! YAY!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY EVERYBODY!!!:)

So we'll start off with Jexten, August 15th, he had been counting down for months and thought the day would never get here. But the day DID finally come, and on that day he said that for his birthday he wanted "all the good little boys to stand on the patio and try to catch the candy that he would smash out of a pinata." Nice mental picture,huh? The real thing was even better. Jexten called it "Epic". It really was:

some of the loot from a really fun treasure hunt

they attacked the presents, and then the cake. Hailey "only wants half of the cake" :)

Splash pad in Rexburg followed by some deep "boy talk"

Carnival for you birthday?? LUCKY!!

feelin' pretty big for his boots!

camping UFO's

after a non stop action packed weekend "mom, I'm tired."

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Summer of Still Small

finding buried treasure

riding horses is fun to do!

"slippery slides" are for everyone

our personal parade

Someday they will grow up and that will bring it's joys, but today is today and this summer they are still small!

Party ON!

Mother's day tree falling

Adessa Loves Animals!

Luring a cat from hiding at Grandma's

Little Willey

Always Grandpa's day

These boys are techies....with guns ;)

The joy of Balloons!

that little girl better watch her chocolate better, Adessa is thinking about it....

i guess Jexten needs a haircut!

Matthew loves presents!!

WHO WANTS CAKE!!?

The after party!

friends forever!

AYSO soccer All-Star league game

SHE WON!

a hike with matthew RACE TO THE TREASURE!

my "ugly purse thingy" *snicker* haha! that reminds me i need more upholstry thread... better go get some!

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

"Professional Kinder"

Jexten is officially graduated from Kindergarten! Happy/sad for me. Jexten has grown so, so much this year. I was reminiscing about his first weeks of Kinder, and the challenges and triumphs this year has brought. Anyone who knows Jexten, or even has the privilege to talk to him for a minute, knows that he is quite the character! He finds humor in places that most usually don't. When the humor is found, it's usually him. Jexten is very different from Adessa. They share the same kind heart, caring for others, and fast friendship making abilities. But they are different in that Jexten would rather build something, or push something, slide standing up on a board down a hill than draw. He struggled with holding a pencil at the beginning of the year, so I invested in some rubber molded hand trainers for his pencil at school. It wasn't long before he outgrew them, and was writing me notes and drawing me pictures (mostly of engineered "angry birds" plans). :) Jexten is always ready to work, and has a mind for numbers. I was nervous about the reading part of kindergarten though. That has a story all it's own, dating back almost to the day he was born. I start the language development part of my kid's brains early, from the day they are born I sing simple songs to them. When we come home and in the early baby weeks, I recite poems or nursery rhymes to them during feeding times, and in those sweet middle of the night nobody sees hours. By the time Jexten was 1 I fully expected him to react the same as Adessa did to sitting by me to listen to a story, after all, it was never a foreign activity. That didn't happen, I was devastated. Jexten would NOT sit by me, he would walk around the room and laugh at -- stuff. So I kept reading, he would hear something in the story that reminded him of something, or he would just get THE BEST IDEA EVER! and run away to fulfill whatever plan he had in his head, laughing of course. So I started getting REALLY creative in my story times with him. I got giant poster boards and hung them on the walls, gave him crayons, or water colors and let him DO something while I sat wherever he was and read small brightly colored books to him. I even got the bells and whistles books that are FULLY interactive. We should have bought stocks in Energizer batteries. This struggle with reading books to him went on for a while. So when it came time in the Kindergarten curriculum to send home "poetry pages" to learn and read, I was a bit nervous. I took Jexten to the store to pick out some "special homework markers", all colors, that he could color the parts of the poem and highlight high frequency words (the, am, is, he, she...). That worked for a while. Jexten had the most colorful homework around! Then he decided that he didn't need the markers any more, he did homework with a "magical pencil" (mechanical pencil) We started a "word bank" which was just a shoe box covered in white paper that he decorated himself. With each learning to read book that he brought home he got to pick his favorite words in the book, or some words that he recognized were repeated a lot in the book. I would write those words on some 3x5 cards and he got to deposit them into his "word bank" when the bank filled up, we would open it and review the words, and he would get a treat...repeat. Some books were funny, and we would have to stop and laugh for quite a while at the funny parts before finishing the book. After he finished, I would ask him to find his favorite page and we would re-live his funny moment. This was time consuming, but I am happy to say it payed off big time!! Jexten tested at a end-of-the-year FIRST grade level reader BY THE END OF KINDER! YAY!!! Jexten had the best kinder teacher! I couldn't have asked for a better one. She has so much patience and a sense of humor to go with it, she encouraged Jexten in learning, and laughed right along with him in some situations that most would pull their hair out. On some days when school was the furthest thing from Jexten's mind and it was hard to get him to cooperate, I just happened to remind him of Mrs. Jensen and then it was "Oh, YA! I GOTTA GET TO SCHOOL!" Mrs. Jensen has commented to me on one occasion that starting a Monday with Jexten is the best way she can think to start the week. :) I am so excited for the years ahead, and so very excited for the teachers he has lined up in the coming years as part of the dual immersion spanish speaking program! Congratulations Jexten!!!

Saturday, May 11, 2013

The Kid's Great Adventures

Monday, March 11, 2013

W U Z UP

Kurt has been working in his shop. This is his logo idea.

one of his projects

I started a reading aide teaching job at the kids' elementary school, so we invested in fun!

Jexten got a hair cut, and got some "cool green" sprayed into the new 'do

kurt took the priests ice fishing. Jexten stayed home, but payton had a good time!

Valentine's day mountains and sky! it was breathtaking in real life.

Uncle Jeff got married!

Jexten lost a tooth that same day

kurt found out that the guy he bought one of our 4 wheelers from sold him a broken axle....the joke's on the guy because we know someone who can fix stuff like that! ;)