End of summer / beginning of school

 As the new school year has officially begun, I can take a deep breath and look back at our summer. It was pretty laid back, with only one trip to California. We kept ourselves busy around Midway.  Winter participated in cheer, to get ready for the football season. She had a lot of fun doing it, and even got to cheer in the Heber Parade

 When Joe was around, he worked on projects with the kids, including building a bird house with Ginger. Ginger goes out to the backyard daily to check if any birds have moved in yet. No luck so far.

 Miles decided he was a big boy, and learned to sit up all alone just before turning 6 months.

 My big kids still like to build castles and dig holes in the sand. I wonder how much longer that will last

 It won't be long before Sterling will be at my eye level!

 Ginger is still a very girly girl. She loves pink, and her flowery sandals. However, she also takes after her dad and loves to go moutain biking with him.

 We went for a little campfire picnic with the Calderwoods at Whiskey Springs just days before it went up in flames.

 We day-camped with the Judds up in the high Uintahs for a day. Tiffani sure knows how to get Miles to giggle!

So here they are the morning of their first day of school. 

Winter starts 5th grade at Timpanogos Intermediate school in Heber. As I dropped her off she gave me a hug, and I couldn't help but wonder if that's the last time she'll ever give me a hug on the first day at school in the middle of the schools hallway

Sterling starts 4th grade at Midway elementary. He's turning into quite the cool kid, who even wants me to spike up his faux hawk.

Ginger is starting 1st grade, which means she'll be at school all day. She's excited to eat lunch at school, and gets to walk to and from school all alone (with Sterling)

So now Miles and I have the house to ourselves. It's very quiet in here. And when I clean something up, it stays clean! That is, until the kids get home from school. Winter said she will miss hanging out with Miles all day, and I'm sure Miles feels the same way.

Wellness Challenge

In a few days I will be starting an 8 week wellness challenge. It is supposed to create good habits by giving points for doing things like drinking water, exercising, and not eating sweets. It should really help me loose the last 10 pounds from Miles' pregnancy, plus help me to have better habits. The hardest things to change for me is not to eat sweets (6 days a week) and to eat more vegetables. The ironic thing is, that these past few days before the challenge have been extra hard, since I keep thinking I won't be able to do this or that once I start, so my eating has been aweful. That might just give me a big sugar crash....  The challenge goes until the day before the half-marathon I started training for. The running is going fairly well. The first 2 weeks were definitely the hardest.

It's hard to believe that school starts again next week. The summer has been long, but at the same time it has flown by. I can't believe it's been almost 3 months!

The new house has been amazing. It's so much easier to keep a nice home clean, because there's nothing more discouraging than cleaning for hours, and the place still looking like a dump (the old apartment). Now I just need to get a cleaning schedule locked down so it will always be nice and clean and tidy (kids in school should also help that).

Best head of hair

I realize my blog has become somewhat Miles oriented, but he's just changing so much and of course uber cute. Wasatch County hosts a large fair every year, and this year also a baby contest. Babies between 0-36 months go head to head in several categories. Most of these don't really apply to Miles (like a crawling race), but the perfect category for Miles is: "Best head of hair". He has the best hair by far of all my kids. He is also entered into the "Stud and Stunner Beauty Pageant", and Photo Contest. With this contest in mind, we took this 6 month picture

He was pretty fussy, but time was limited. We didn't get a smile, but I actually think this look is cuter anyways. Not sure what he was thinking, but maybe something along the lines of: These people are completely crazy, what kind of family have I ended up in?