Summer Ending

The summer weather is just starting here in Texas, but our summer school daze is almost over.

Life will get really busy for us over the next several weeks, so I thought I'd give an update while I have a few minutes.

The big change is that I've been "promoted" to supervisor. The down side is that I'll be doing shift work. I'll be one of our 24x7 operations shift supervisors. I'll be working either the 6am to 6pm shift or the 6pm to 6am shift. The big upswing to working this schedule is the 7 consecutive days off every month, plus the 3 day "weekends" in between shifts. It'll be interesting to see how this all pans out. I start my first shift the night of the 14th.

The kids start school the 27th. Emma will be in 2nd grade and Ben will be in kindergarden. They're both excited about the new school year. Jill's looking forward to having just two kids around the house.

Speaking of school ... it is amazing to me to see Emma's progress with learning to read. Last year at this time, she was struggling through small-worded sentences. It took her 5 minutes to read one verse from the Book of Mormon. But recently (starting perhaps a few weeks ago), she is reading very well! It takes her a minute to read a verse and she reads it so smoothly. She's starting to pick up on inflections too. Every time she reads, I am just blown away. It will be interesting to see how well she continues to do over the course of this next year.

Ben amazes me too with his reading. Jill has been diligently working with him on learning to read. He knows most of the small words and can recognize a few big words. He does a pretty good job of sounding out the unfamiliar words too. He's going to soar in school.

Erick has gone from "humming" his words to speaking them in chopped sentences. He's really talkative now. He likes to yell. When he begins to yell, Cami thinks it's a contest and the two will scream at the top of their lungs and then laugh.

Cami's walking. She can take about 5 or 6 steps before falling over. If you hold her hand and walk with her a bit and then let go, she might take 7 or 8 steps. She'll be running around the house in a matter of weeks. She's "discovered" the magic of the kitchen cupboards. If we leave Fritz's food on the floor, she'll eat it (just like Erick used to do and still does sometimes). I guess the salty dog food tastes good to them.

Jill's up to her ears with stuff. She's hosting baby showers, going to the gym, shopping, escorting the kids to friends homes, planning birthdays parties, throwing birthday parties, cleaning, cooking, emailing, talking, blogging ... she does it all. I am in awe with all that she does. And she keeps getting busier. Every time we talk she tells me of something new coming up. Soon she'll be a soccor mom when the kids start their first season this fall. What a woman.

Fritz ... he's doing good too (for those who want to know). I found a dead baby bunny in our yard the other day. I think Fritz may have mauled the poor thing. It's really fun to watch him chase the adult rabbits though.

Jill and I ended our summer of movies by going to Boure Ultimatum on opening night after dinner at Taco Cabana and dessert at Dairy Queen. We usually don't go to opening nights, but we both love the Bourne movies so much, we decided to take the leap. We started the summer with Spiderman 3. I enjoyed it and Jill liked it. The next movie was Shrek 3 ... I still haven't seen it, but Jill took the kids. It was a fizzle in Jill's opinion. We saw Ocean's 13 in Boise ... another great movie, but a little predictable. We also saw Pirates in Boise ... I know it was long, but I loved every minute of it. I just like Pirates. Then we saw Harry Potter ... Star Wars meets Bewitched. But the best movie of the summer was Bourne. I read a blog post the other day that documented all the improvised weapons Bourne used over the course of the trilogy ... click here for amusement and a dash of adrenelin.

It was nice seeing all the pictures of Mom and Dad at Christine's. Thanks for all the pics and updates Christine. We wish we had 75 degree temps!

Enjoy the rest of the Summer.