First Week of School in the Books!

 With everything still being shut down, I know that I need to step up my teaching game this year.  Aside from online classes, there is not much in the way of outside classes and field trips to go on.  And, I am balancing high school, middle school, elementary, and preschool this year!  It's a lot - and a wide spread of needs and abilities to try to meet.  I tried to make this first week of school as fun as possible.  The boys are busy with their classes, but we try to include them when possible, especially Hunter whose workload isn't as intense as Tanner's!

We made "bookworms" to help get excited about all the great books we will be delving into this year!

While reading Nim's Island, we will be studying the ocean.  Such a fun topic!

Cuddled up watching Nemo!

Magical Kingdom of Books- 2020-2021 School Year

 We kicked off our school year with a beach camping trip with the C Family.  This year we will find treasures in reading classic children's literature-The Magical Kingdom of Books.  We had the kids use a metal detector to find a buried treasure at the beach to discover what we would be learning about.  So grateful for the big boys in keeping the enthusiasm and excitement up to make this a fun event for the little ones!  We are going to organize the books we read based on Disneyland "lands".  Advenureland, Frontierland, etc. We did this similar theme when Tanner was in first grade, and now it's time to do it again with the younger crew.  I really hope Disneyland opens up soon as we can visit each land as we read books inspired from the atmosphere and rides of that land! 

We had a great time spending time with friends the rest of the time.

Seeing dolphins early in the morning...

The S family joined us the last night.  And Tanner and Dallin got a new do and a beach photo shoot.

Snake and frog catching by these adventurous boys...

We were missing some friends this year due to all the craziness in the world, but I am so grateful we still got to do something fun to kick off our new school year!

Happy 2020-2021 School Year!

 

Carlsbad Trip

 We took our annual "before school starts Carlsbad trip".  Ladd, hunter, and Charity went a day early and got to hang with the other Hoyals.  Tan, Felicity, and I came the next day after Tan's work shift.

We played at the beach, swam, and had our traditional dinner at Ruby's.  It was a needed change of pace before school starts up again!

Utah Trip

Tanner's big camp for his school that was scheduled for June was cancelled, but they did have a much smaller camp for just the Student Body leadership at the end of July at Yuba Lake in Utah.  We decided to meet up with the C family and camp up there also.  We needed some kind of summer trip!

Felicity was very serious about her rock collection the whole trip!

We had a great day on the lake.  Jet skiing, searching for treasures, playing with friends, and just relaxing.  

Tanner and Dallin were off with their school group the whole time, but stopped by to see us on their kayaks.  

After we packed up camp, we headed to literally the middle of nowhere where we got to dig for fossils.  It was awesome. We found so many!

We kept cool tubing down the Virgin River.

And Cliff Jumped in Zions...

We got lots of swim time in, playtime, and the big boys got some golf in.

It was a fun spur of the Utah moment trip!  Its always good to see our friends!