Bailey Family

Kaitlyn: We were talking recently about medicine and I said almost all medicine when I was a kid was cherry flavored. This led to conversation that led to Kaitlyn's weird quote: "If I lived in the stone ages or whatever it was called when you were young I would have hated it. You didn't have iPhones, you didn't have computers. They didn't have good TVs. They didn't have good Kindles. They didn't have good sprinklers." (Not true) Alee: We forgot some things on the way to 5th grade meet the teacher (my phone and her headband... Mine was a little more important since Seth and Carolyn were home alone and needed to be able to contact me). We turned around to go back home and run in to get the things. Alee said, "I'll run in to get my headband, but you don't run Mom, because then you'll have to go to the bathroom and we don't have time for that." (True, but I've got goals to get back in shape!) The turtle: We got him a ...

Seth stared seminary Tuesday. He attends with most of the kids from our ward, but also kids from other wards who attend the charter school/academy where it's held. Since the class has kids from 3 schools in 3 different districts, the calendar is not so simple. It was nice to have a practice day.  Rob took him to seminary on his way to work. Class starts at 6:30am. He loves it. His aunt (Rob's sister) is his teacher and she puts a lot in to making it a great spiritual and fun experience. We (5 other kids and I) leave home about 7am and pick him up after class ends at 7:20 and begin our school drop off rounds. He's an early bird, so early morning seminary isn't hard for him. And it's on Rob's way to work and he likes going in early, so that's easy too. It's only hard for those of us at home who don't like getting up early (have to leave 30 minutes earlier this year) and those who don't like to eat on a schedule (Gideon) who are struggling a ...

This might possibly be the coolest thing in nature I've ever experienced. Rob said it so well, so I'll just repeat the words he sent to a few people in email, and then I'll add my own to that. It was so cool! From about  2:00 until 2:40 , we checked the sun every few minutes with our eclipse glasses. At  2:40 , it was like early dusk, and we felt something was coming. At  2:41 , it felt like past sunset. Another cool thing was that it looked like sunset in every direction, on every horizon. It was so dark that my camera couldn't catch any faces, no matter how close I got to them. We enjoyed the "ring" by eye only. None of our lesser mortal cameras could capture it. At about  2:43 , the world got brighter, by very minor degrees By  2:45 , the sun was out enough to feel like early morning. By  2:50 , the sun felt like it was back to 100 percent, even though it wasn't. We kept checking with our eclipse glasses until about  3:30 , maybe ...

I'm going to post 3 posts today (assuming Gideon continues sleeping on me until I'm finished with all 3). The first is just August stuff I wanted to post (before during and after the other 2 posts). The 2nd is the total Solar Eclipse we experienced here (amazing!). The 3rd is first day of school. Let's go! I had taken photos of the other 4 (I almost said 3! counting/adding beyond 5 kids is new to me!), so I had to get photos of the oldest 2 (post haircuts). I used a shutterfly gift card I've been saving a while to order 8x10s of these for the wall. I'll update them next year after my favorite photographer has her baby and is back in business. Here's Carolyn. (oops - I mean to edit that strand of hair that is longer than the rest before I ordered these. I knew I forgot an edit. That's the whole reason I got her hair trimmed - so it would all be even. I thought I'd done a bad job, but even the professional can't fix her stick-straight hair to be ...

I want to update my wall pictures of the kids. (The pictures are probably 5 years old.) And I need to add Gideon. However, I'm not planning to do a photo session with my favorite photographer until Spring. So, I needed some "in the meantime" photos of the kids. And then we had some fun. (Seth and Carolyn are not pictured because I need to get a haircut for each of them first.) First the pictures I am going to put on the wall.  (I can't decide which one I want to use for Gideon.) I'm leaning towards this one. I like the bow tie better, but I like the way he's facing in this one better. Then pictures with our favorite baby brother...  Then the fun pictures and edits! Just working out on a hot summer day.   (He got this little rattle barbel from my grandparents and uncle and aunt, so it had to be used in a photo as a prop!) . (They wanted to try photos with their hair blowing behind them.) ...