Archibaldisms

Backwards again! Sorry. Memorial Day at the Ridge.

End of School party time and sleepovers with cousins:

Charlie skipped the last day of school and invited friends over to play instead.

As the classroom mom for Gwen's class I organized their ice cream party. Gwen's teacher, Mrs. Thurston, has been SO good for her. Letting her go ahead of the class in Math and do her own thing online. So great.

Chris and I went for a walk one May evening and came home with the idea for Summer Clubs! We are going to cut back on screen time ALOT over the summer. (We tried a limit-less screen time system where the focus should be on doing important things first and then self regulating...but the regulating part never happened. So we're cutting back and introducing limits again for screens for the summer: 10 hours a week for Alec, 8 for Charlie, 6 for Gwen, 4 for Freddy. They can't watch each others, and they can save up days or even weeks and use them next week. But to prevent the kids from being cranky and bored we let them 'sign up' for various clubs they were interested in. They could be president and help play out the club's activities and decide how often to meet. Etc. I'm excited for it!

Chris' Birthday! 40 years young! The kids and I hatched a plan to give him 40 things each hour, every hour he was awake (40 kisses first thing in the morning, 40 compliments, 40 redvines, 40 golf tees, 40 peanut M&Ms, cinnamon bears, ties, memories, tickles, candles, etc.. He ended up golfing and so the whole idea of giving him them every hour fell flat, but thats ok! We just wrapped them all up and gave them to him as gifts. We went out to eat as adults with his parents and siblings at this yummy Argentinian place. So good. Chris is one amazing man, husband, father, brother, son and friend. He's so patient and understanding, brilliant and funny, tender and talented. We love him so much.

Alec had a great time finishing off the year with a school/club Ultimate Frisbee team. He was so involved with stuff after school this year between this, archery, full orchestra and his LEGO ROBOTICs team. Which... qualified for the State Championship this year! They did so well! It was basically just him and a friend too. So thats awesome.

We headed up to the Ridge a week before Memorial Day to help get some projects done beforehand. We got to ride Rosie, Mom and Dad's new 4 Wheeler! Everyone loved it! The rules are 12 year olds can drive with an adult accompanying them, 14 and up can drive by themselves, and 16 and up can drive other cousins.

End of the Year band and orchestra concerts for Charlie and Alec.

Another Emotional Resilience Family Home Evening that went well!

Don't ask me why Chris bought so many bags of cereal. He practically got one of every kind just to make the kids laugh when he walked in the house with them.

Mothers Day fun for Grandma Betteridge to enjoy on her digital picture frame. We also surprised her with bringing Justin down for an adult dessert gathering. Which was the final surprise in a weekend of surprises. See it was Justins's bday at the end of April, and so for his gift we told him it was running late and wouldn't get there until the next Friday or so. Part of it arrived the day of his birthday: some motorbike goggles to act as a red herring for the REAL surprise coming on Friday.... HIS SIBLINGS! We had a sibling (minus Hailey who unfortunately had to work) road trip and Tiff, Jared, Jordan, Sarah and I drove up to Idaho in Jared's van. We worked it out with Radene that we would be waiting at the restaurant table they were supposedly going to to celebrate their anniversary at the Melting Pot. The wait for our specific table was SO LONG and while us siblings waited in the bathroom hallway we were zooming Mom and Dad in who were at home in AF wanting to watch the surprise happen in real time. He was so surprised and we had a delicious meal. Then we all slept over at their house in Boise and in the morning played pickle ball together then while Radene was off running errands we hatched a surprise plan with Justin to surprise Radene with a quick night-a-away back down in UT at Mom and Dad's cabin at the Ridge for their anniversary. We convinced her we were just grabbing lunch together before us siblings had to drive back to Utah and wanted to carpool in the van together to have more talk time. But after getting Costa Vida to go, we just got on the freeway and kept driving. hahaha. (we had already packed her bags for her that morning) Anyway... the 5 hour drive back down with all the siblings was so fun and we came up with some fun ideas for the Ridge: a mini natural/lake/pond thing, screening-in the pavilion, building a sand pit and playground for the kids, enhancing the zipline set up, building a amphitheater/stage thing, and......doing CANVAS TENTS instead of mini cabins. (We had had MANY evening zoom calls over the past month trying to nail down the county laws so we could start building a mini cabin this summer and were disappointed to find out we needed a permit for any structure intended for dwelling... so Jordan had the idea for Canvas tents!) We then had more evening zoom calls to find exact canvas tents to maybe get some ordered before Memorial Day, or Ridge Week. But in the end, Chris and I were the only ones to order one and it won't be finished until end of the summer.

I let the kids skip school one day to go with their Herriman cousins to a fun center in Sandy. It had so many things, skating, laser tag, bounce houses, jungle crawling thing, arcades etc. They all had a great time.

My exercise buddies:

For a few weeks we had the other kids assigned a day to be the 'nursery leader' for Max and Theo. It was considered an 'important thing' they were supposed to do before they could get on screens. Here is a picture of Charlie taking his turn, using the nursery manual to teach a small section to them. Unfortunately this good idea didn't last too long.