04 February 2013

Cub Scouts, Visits from Old Friends, Getting Ready for Kindergarten, and a Little Genealogy


So, we’ve been keeping busy as always with Courtland’s music class Thursday mornings, volleyball for me on Wednesday & Friday mornings (and Thursday nights after all the boys are in bed), Kolby’s school chorus after school most Wednesdays (after school, and before piano lessons), piano lessons for the boys Wednesday afternoons (while I take the younger boys to the library each week), the boys making all their school lunches for the week on Saturdays (that’s quite the production!), Michael giving Isaac his piano lessons on Sundays, institute for Courtland and I on Monday mornings, family night on Monday evenings, Michael has just started a stake men’s basketball league at church with games on Fridays & Saturdays, and helping the boys with their homework. 

And now Michael was asked to be the Webelos cub scout leader and I was asked to be the Bear cub scout leader at church, so we have scouts 3 days a week – Kolby’s Bear scout group meets here at our place now on Monday afternoons, Michael goes to the church for Webelos on Tuesday evenings, and Lijah just started Wolf cub scouts on Friday afternoons.  I guess we should have known that we’d be spending a lot of time in scouting with the 5 boys.  But I’m actually quite liking this new calling with the Bear group so far.  Last week was my first time to teach the activity and we did the law enforcement achievement, so I asked a woman from church who is a former police officer to come talk to the boys, then we made a plaster of paris mold of a shoe print, and took the boys’ fingerprints, then we talked about safety, filled out emergency contact lists, and looked at the windows and doors in the house to check for safety locks.  I didn’t know if we’d fit that all into the 1 hour time slot, but we did, and I think it went well, and Kolby had fun.

A couple weeks ago I went to the meeting for Isaac to get into the dual language program at Camden’s school for kindergarten next year.  I can’t believe it’s already been a year since I was there signing Camden up for kindergarten.  I got all the paperwork turned in and Isaac had his little interview (the interview isn’t to test the kids’ skills or anything, it’s just to determine if the children are native English or Spanish speakers).  So, now we just need to wait to hear back to see if he gets in, but I’m assuming it’s pretty likely that he will, since kids with older siblings in the program get a higher precedence in the admission process.   So we’ll wait to hear about that.  I’m pretty excited for Isaac and Courtland to get in, because I think Camden will use his Spanish more with them once they’ve started to learn it too.  Camden has really impressed me lately with his reading – he’s reading about as well in Spanish as my older boys were in English at this age, and he’s starting to read better in English too.  (I don’t think the comprehension is all there yet when he reads in Spanish, but that’s improving too).  I took a video the other day of him reading, and I’ll have to post it later on.  It’s just fun to see him really doing it – it makes all this driving I’m doing worth it.  

It was really fun a week or so ago because Erin, my best friend from high school, came into town and we got to hang out and talk for a few hours one night, and then we met at a restaurant in Old Town on a Saturday afternoon for lunch, which was fun with Michael and all the boys and my Grandma Faun.  It was fun to hang out with Erin and catch up, and to remember things from high school that I’d forgotten.  Erin has family in the San Diego area, so it’ll be fun to be able to see her again when she comes to visit in the future too.  

Two Sundays ago I taught a class about RootsMagic, a genealogy software program, here at our house.  My mom is a ward missionary, and has also recently been called as a family history consultant at church, and she has helped organize monthly “Neighbor Nights” where we’ve invited a group of people from church and any friends who want to come to learn about different genealogy topics.  I think it went well overall.  And the next one in February is about “Family Tree,” the new format on the familysearch.org genealogy website that will be replacing new.familysearch.org.  I’ve learned a little about Family Tree and from what I’ve learned it sounds like it will be even better than new familysearch, so I’m excited to learn more about it in preparation for the class.  One cool new feature they’ve just released is a photo site on family search where you can add family photos, tag the individuals in each photo with names (so you know which people in the photo are which), and then link those individually tagged people to the people in your pedigree chart on family tree.  I’ve been playing around with it, and added a few photos so far, and it looks like they’re still adding some more features, but I think it’s pretty cool.  I did a little post with more details about the photo site on my genealogy blog at http://www.stephsgenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/01/familysearchorg-family-tree-photos.html, (in case you want to check it out).

Well, it’s almost time for institute, so I’d better run.

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