Joy School Picture Day

This year, Joy School has been very very low key. In fact, it's been more like a play group. We just never got ourselves organized enough. But it has been perfect. Low stress. Which is just right for us this year.

I decided that when the kids came to my house on one of my weeks that I was going to take some class photos. Sadly we were missing one of our sweet girls. I'm gonna have to catch a shot of her on another day.

Our CRaZy group!


mini-e isn't really in joy school this year, but she sure loves to join us when it's at our house.


Mr. T and HY. These 2 are such good buddies. I'm glad they became good friends this year.


Miss K. She's such a delightful little girl. Mini-E thinks she's the greatest too!


Mr. T. I love those brown eyes!


And my own HY. It's hard to catch a photo of him but I guess since everyone else was doing it, he thought he'd cooperate too.

Graduation

Our little man graduated from Joy School!

He had taken a late nap and so when I tried to wake him up and get him ready for his graduation he wanted nothing to do with it. He did NOT want to wear church clothes! There were a lot of tears and finally I bribed him with some Chocolate. That seemed to do the trick, but he still refused to wear anything but his Thomas sandals. Not exactly what I was going for but...I agreed!



All the kiddos sang songs, did the Joy School cheer, told about their favorite time at Joy School, and watched a short DVD (made by yours truly). And of course, ate yummy cupcakes and cookies.

We had such a fun year.


Farmboy was gracious enough to take a few pictures for me.

All the Joy School Moms.


And all our Graduates. They were such a great bunch of kids. Can't wait to do it again next fall.

Joy School Party

We love Joy School. Oh how we love Joy School. This week was the Joy School Halloween party. All the kids came dressed in their costumes & had yummy treats. Thanks to B's mom for the pictures.

Daddy's Day by HY

Today we did something different for Joy School. We went to the big, huge farm! And our Daddys came too! We rode the tractors. I got to sit in the big green tractor and drive with Miss K & Miss T.




Miss A was too scared at first to get into the tractor. She wanted her daddy to hold her. But she got in the big rig later.



I got to sit in a huge truck too. It was soooo big, it had a bed in the back. I got to pull on the horn and it made a loud honk, it kind of scared me. Miss T sat in it too.



It was soooooo cold. We nearly froze to death. I was so happy to be there with my friends.


Thanks Bro. Church Farmer, I love being on your farm and riding the tractors. I hope I get to come back soon. You sure are nice and...tall.


Love, HY
Future Farmer

I'm always behind

Fall has set my life into high gear! I don't know what happened but it's like we are busy doing something EVERY day. I like being busy, but sometime I need a little bit of down time. So, I took that down time today by photographing my front porch. But what I really came out to photograph was this:

Yes, it's HY's latest work of art. It's a bird feeder. Joy School was back at our house this week (I can't believe it's been 6 weeks since the first day). And I forget how much work it takes to prepare for just those 2 days---2.5 hours a day. I'm exhausted by the time everyone goes home. But, boy do we have fun. We sing songs, play, run around outside, and make very cool art projects like this one.

Things to do STILL:
Write talk for church on Sunday (Bishop called yesterday)
Dinner for a family in the ward tonight
Pictures for a friend's daughter
Can more tomatoes (yesterday we finished 26+ jars....that's about 1/4 of the tomatoes)
Housework that has been put off too long.

Wonderful moment of the Week:
Grandad took HY to Midway on Wednesday--the entire day! It was lovely. I can't wait to see all the pictures my dad took. He's so good with the grandkids. HY loved spending the day with him. They hiked a mountain, went fishing, fed apples to the horses, saw a train, went to lunch, went to the park, watched a movie and scouted out pinecones for the above Joy School project. Wheew...I bet Grandad slept all day today. No wonder HY cried when he had to leave.
Thanks Grandad! You are the best!


In other busy news, the bishop called last night and asked me to speak in Church on Sunday (even though I just sang in Sacrament Meeting 2 weeks ago). Sigh!

Oh Boy! I got Joy!

I do, I do! It starts in my heart, then spreads to my head in a minute or two...

Here's my little man all ready for the day. He's so grown up.

Today was the FIRST day of Joy School! And it was at My house. I was the ginnie pig when it came to teaching. But not to worry. We made it out alive. Nobody went to the emergency room-so that's a victory in my book.
HY was so so very excited that he nearly kept us up all night long in anticipation. Of course, he was the naughty one today. Very sad when you get sent to your room during Joy School. Then when everyone was leaving to go home, he said, "Mom, I want to go to Joy School, let's get in the car and go." Clearly he missed part of my lengthy explaination about the day. Oh well, we'll try again on Thursday.

We had a great time singing songs, playing with play dough, setting the rules, and of course playing the backyard.