mikentash: 2025

I got this picture because I thought there is a chance this might be the last time Alden rocks Maebryn. He rocked her to sleep a number of times. Sometimes when Michael and I are gone on date nights other times when I was tired or needed to do something. He is a super helper and Maebryn loves him dearly.

Exploring in the back yard with cousins. They came for the long weekend. We always enjoy having family in town.

Piano recital and group lesson. During the summer I usually try to do a group lesson and piano recital. This time we were doing the escape room challenge.

Matching pj's

Puppet show in their bedroom with friends.

Fairy House. We started this at a relief society activity, but I brought the last little bit home to finish with my girls. We had fun finishing it up.

Dream park

I don't post a lot of pictures of choir or orchestra or preschool for that matter, sometimes it is because I don't take many pictures others because I don't want to show pictures of other peoples children but this was an event at the nursing home. The residents really enjoyed having us come sing. It has been a new thing starting up choir but it has been good for my kids hopefully others as well.

The end of the summer. We still need to hang up ollie the bird from our home in Tucson.

My brother Austen has been looking into property and this was some a little while south of us that we went to look at for him. It was interesting, this is a common thing right now where someone has purchased a big area of land, subdivides it into lots and then creates a community for people to come buy off the lots. They always advertise a few very inexpensive lots but I guess there are hundreds there right when it opens to bid on those lots but then the rest go slowly throughout the day.

Dream park with the kids

My two cute girls going for a walk. I am assuming Maebryn was in the stroller but asked to get out as she has no shoes and only her diaper. :)

Tara shirts! We all love our Tara shirts. We have a Gee reunion soon that is all about honoring my father who is about to turn 80 years old. These shirts are all something the kids picked to describe him. Alden's says "Family oriented as a wolf", Calvin says, "Smart as a bobcat", Benson says, "Curious as an otter", Evan's says, "Sleepy as a bear", Roslyn's says, "Graceful as a butterfly, and Maebryn's says "Kind as a bunny. All of them with the exception of Roslyn's describe my father perfectly. He is an encyclopedia and knows so much and is curious always learning about everything, he loves his family and that has always been his focus and he has always been very kind. He is also very sleepy and sleeps a lot.

Below is my two little explorers. I love how they picked out these outfits to go do there work in the yard. They are always exploring, looking at birds, animals, and building things in the forest. I sure love my explorer boys.

Alden has been getting really good at the cello. These are the other three playing around him.

Our compass rose we are just about finished with it. I think it turned out fairly well. We just need to put some cement inn the top extra area. This is at the top of our walkway on our hill.

Doing hair for church on Sunday. This is a dress Tara sent to us. I am actually writing this in August 2025- I had started getting these done but never edited and shared the post so I am now going through them. Anyways this is still Roslyn's favorite dress. She has worn it for 3 years! It isn't long on her like it used to be, now it hits her knees but she still loves it.

Our first day of school. Writing our poem and scripture. Public school doesn't start for another week or so but I like to get our basic routine set up a week or so before so we have that all figured out when preschool, orchestra, choir, ect all starts up.

We are still swimming and loving it. I love seeing everyone playing together out in the pool.

My cute little swimmer girl

When Austen was here he made this sign and one other pointing to different places on the property. It's fun as it says where to go to the dragon nest, the play set ect.

I'm really wanted to do more nature journaling. I love that the kids went out to paint.

Calvin's first day of public school. He decided to do it this year. (He started on August 17th and by his birthday he started asking if he could come back to homeschool.) I had him write an essay of the pros and cons of public and homeschool and then I took him out. He had a few people from church in a couple of his classes so that was nice but still it wasn't his favorite. Pros he wrote about were the teachers, he did like a lot of the teacher and thought they did a great job preparing for their classes, the cons was the noise of it all. He explained how each class started great but continued to increase in volume until the end was chaos. There was also swearing and other things that he didn't like. I had paid for his spot at co-op because I wanted to be prepared just in case he wanted to come back. Honestly, I was glad to have him back. One of the first days he was gone we went for a bike ride and it didn't feel quite the same not having everyone.

This was everyone else the day that Calvin went to school. We started our day outside. I am trying to have more outside time each day. The compass rose is finally finished.

These are the steps up to the compass rose. I think things are really starting to come together and look nice out there.

Maebyn got a hold of some markers and really had fun with them...not sure why the markers ended up mostly all over her face. She was surprised when she saw her face in the mirror.