long story short

We started out the school year a little rough.

The first day of school the boys were supposed to meet up in the cafeteria (with all of the school's walkers) to walk home with the girls but the school changed the procedure and let the kids leave the school from their class rooms which caused confusion for the kids with no planned meeting spot.  As I was waiting anxiously on the corner to see all the kids I became a little concerned when Luke was walking alone and had no idea where his brothers were, then I find Cody walking alone having no idea where Ryan was even though he looked all over for him and then lastly I found Ryan back at the school almost in tears because he couldn't find any of his brothers, not a good ending to the first day of school.

Luke stayed home from school on the third day which was Friday because he was sick with a bad cough and cold, with three days home away from school and the new routine he freaked out going back to school on Monday.  It was a horrible morning and him and I both ended up in tears.
That same morning Ryan was staying home from school because over the weekend he wasn't able to walk on one of his legs.  We took him to an urgent care on Sunday but that Dr. wasn't for sure why that was so she wanted him off his leg completely and using crutches.  When Ryan heard that news thinking it was for the rest of his life he sadly said to me, "I barely even got to use my legs."  We never bought him crutches and took him to his pediatrician on Monday who said he had a pulled groin muscle and wanted him using it as much as he could handle, within a few hours he was almost back to normal.

Thankfully school since then has been smooth sailing, the boys are all enjoying their teachers and classes.

Ryan and Ash had been begging for a sleepover all last week, the only day we could make it work was on Friday because we were leaving first thing Saturday morning for camping.  We told the kids Friday after school and they were so excited. We took the kids swimming at the pool and had the place to ourselves.  We let the kids have their dessert first and then ordered pizza. When the weather got a little cool all the kids got out of the pool and started giving each other massages, the things that they come up with.  They used all of my sunscreens and lotions mixed with pool water and leaves to massage each other with and then used the diving sticks as a massaging tool, this kept them busy until the sun came out again and they were all back in the pool.  After showers, jammies and packing I walked Ryan over to Amanda's for the sleep over to begin.
I came home to finish the cleaning and packing for camping and then headed to bed,  I wake up to a phone call at two am from Amanda saying Ryan's been awake since midnight and isn't going back to sleep.  We think that he was so excited for the morning to come (Amanda was making waffles for breakfast) that he just couldn't fall back asleep, it's not that he was crying and missing me, sadly.  So I walk over to pick up Ryan and bring him home at two am but he was in one of his moods so he wasn't really talking to me or Amanda, he just laid wrapped up in his blanket with his face covered not speaking to us.  He shook his head no when I asked him if he wanted me to carry him back home so Amanda picked him up to carry him back to our house at two am while I carried all of his things.  Once home I put him to bed and laid down with him but he still wasn't going to sleep, he was mad that I wouldn't let him play on the ipad, mad that I wouldn't let him read Junie B. Jones, asked me about how babies can drink milk out of nipples, cried that it was Amanda that carried him home because he thought that it was me and cried some more that he never gets to eat waffles at our house (even though we had them for breakfast the two days before), finally at three thirty am he fell back asleep. That wasn't quite the way I was expecting our camping to start out,  with lovely bags under my eyes and a grumpy attitude but we recovered and the good news is that Ryan's good with having another sleep over but wants this next one at our house.

We made it up camping and almost the whole family was there, everyone but Hailey was able to make it up there for a fun family get together.  It was an easy laid back trip with everyone pitching in to cook and clean so that made for lots of time just hanging out around the camp fire visiting.  The boys loved a very fun scavenger hunt that Uncle Matt planned for them that included lowering bags of pine cones out of trees, finding hidden walkie talkies, following clues and digging up treasures.  The kids also built a fort and spent most of their time in it, they loved it even more when Uncle Matt and Heath helped them build an even  bigger and better fort.  They had plans of sleeping in it one night but since I wouldn't let them bring out their pillows and blankets to get all dirty and the temperature dropped to forty at night they slowly changed their minds once it got dark and stayed in the camper with us, like we knew they would.  The long weekend was also filled with lots of fishing, a little boating, playing on the beach building sand castles and catching dragon flies, celebrating Ricky's twentieth birthday and lots of good eating something my family loves to do.

 A lot of the family was off work for the long holiday (Heath took the whole week off) so that made it easier for us all to be there for Tucker today when he was sworn into the Air Force.  There were eleven of us there in total to support him, they weren't expecting such a crowd and said we were the biggest group that they have seen in there, Unlce Matt even showed up in style bringing his work with him.  The whole process takes just a couple of minutes but I was happy that we were all there supporting Tucker, we are all very proud of him.  As of now it looks like he will be going into basic training sometime in January but is still working full time right now and just started taking a few college classes until then.

I think that should catch you back up to what our first few weeks of this school year have been.