This week

The boys asked if I would take them to the Dollar Store to buy Alison a birthday present.  Colin grabbed one of Alison's purses, put his altoid box full of kick-knacks and a dollar in it, and was ready to go.  If you ever need a good laugh, just spend a few minutes with Colin.

They were pretty cute shopping for her and trying to think about what she might like.

 Ben actually gets the award this week for grilling in 110 weather, which called for fruit and whipped cream for dessert. 

Alison got super into "stretching" and watched several how-to-increase-your-flexibility videos on youtube.  She worked really hard and almost mastered the splits!

She asked me to join her one evening, so I sat on the floor and attempted to follow her instructions.  It was quite humbling.  I've never been flexible, but then to have my daughter chuckling at how much I wasn't moving, took it to another level.  Ben sat down with us and we quickly started laughing as we realized that maybe we should be joining Alison more.  The next morning I suggested we do a yoga workout together, thinking that would be a good compromise.  It was really fun and it challenged her some, but I fully admit that I was sore the next day.

Even the boys wanted to join in on the stretching.  Alison took this video and they could not stop laughing over the very end...like tears rolling down their cheeks laughing each time they watch this video.

Every time I turn around, Eli is in underwear. One day I asked him why he keeps taking off his clothes and he said, "I'm just TOO hot momma."  Eli wins points for being in my non-flexible camp.

Public school starts next week, so we had our last cooking class with this group of girls.  I taught them how to make pizza dough and then they each made their own little pizza.

When class was finished, Eli asked me, "So when does my cooking class start?"  I was a little taken aback and suggested maybe daddy could take him to a woodworking class.  Nope, he made it clear that nothing gets by him anymore and Alison got a sewing and cooking class, so he was ready for his turn.  Oh boy, this could be a very entertaining year.

My favorite part of this week=Alison did a lot of writing on her own, without any prompting from me and the results were pretty hilarious.  I learned a big lesson as a teacher this week, as well.  Normally, I would be stressing about all the errors on this page, but I realized that when Alison is writing, she is focused on the content and not the grammar.  She is an amazing speller, but doesn't focus on spelling (or handwriting) when her brain is full of ideas for the page.  This is one of the things she wrote:

And if I ever lose sight of the importance of being mom, I'll just pull this up and remember that on my daughter's birthday list is seeing me first thing in the morning. 

Big Yuma news!  Sprouts opened up!  It's Yuma's first and only healthy food store, but leave it to us to buy Jelly Beans there.   To our credit, we just went to check it out and we had a sample of dragon fruit to balance it out.

Finally, nothing beats ending the day playing a little music with your dad.