The Bradshaws

As most of you know, yesterday Dave went back to school and will finally be finishing his degree in Computer Science(wahoo!). What you don't know, because I did not know it myself until last night, is that I am going back to school this semester as well.
I have been talking about going back to school and was planning to do it next year after Dave was done. Then yesterday Dave came home from his class and said to me, why don't you just start school tomorrow? I looked at him like he was crazy... but then we started talking and looking up classes... and he convinced me! I got online to the UVU website, applied and then called my sister-in-law Jayne who just graduated in the same degree program I'll be in to ask her advice about classes. Although I'm not officially enrolled or registered, I'm just going to the classes I plan to attend and then I'm going to add them once I have my student ID number :)
It's a little stressful for me to go about things without having them all planned out in advance, but the longer I'm married to Dave, the more he helps me to deal with things that come up at the last minute. He is definitely a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of guy. Thanks, Dave, for pushing me toward going back to school. For believing in me and for supporting me. I'm really excited to see what happens this semester and to be back in school.

The boys started their 2009-2010 school year today at a brand new school. Now that we have moved we are in a new school and in a new school district. We are also in year-round school instead of traditional school. It will be an interesting change and I'm actually excited about it. At first, when I found out I wasn't thrilled. But now I think it will be good. Ben has had trouble focusing and hasn't always been the best student and I think that the year-round schedule will be really good for him.

We also live less than half a mile from the school so we're excited that the boys will be able to walk or ride their bikes to school everyday.

This summer I really wanted to make it fun for the boys. I think I felt bad that I didn't do very much with them last summer. We had them in a summer camp because we had already arranged that with their dad and so they we gone during the day on most weekdays.
So THIS summer, I decided that I wanted to make sure that they didn't just sit around the house and I definitely didn't want them to watch a lot of TV or play on the computer. Although we did occasionally allow some TV watching, we pretty much did not allow any computer games all summer! Woah. They weren't really happy at first, but I tried to come up with lots of fun things to do instead.
Here are some of the things that we did to keep busy in Summer 2009:

Symphony in the Park
Rockapella concert at Thanksgiving Point
Summer Pass to Sandy Fun Center/Classic Skating
Puppet shows at the SLCO Library
Shakespeare for Kids at Orem Library
Movies in the Park
Natural History Museum
Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point
Visit Temple Square
Hot Dog roast in the canyon
Swimming
Clark Planetarium
Wheeler Farm
Living Planet Aquarium
Hogle Zoo
Animal Show at SLCO Library
Liberty Park
Bike riding
Storytime at Barnes and Noble
Dollar Movies
Ben went to Scout Camp
and of course Disneyland :)

Dave and I had the opportunity this summer to volunteer at the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House. The new temple is located very close to where we now live and our ward was assigned some of the time slots for helping with the open house. Because of Dave's work schedule, we could only sign up for the night shift which meant that we would be doing custodial duties. It was such a great experience to be able to go and help. Because they clean every day after people go through, it didn't take as long as I thought it would to do everything. We also got to go through and see all the rooms in the temple, even the ones that aren't in the regular tour. It is such a beautiful temple and we are lucky to have yet another temple so close by.
On the 28th we took the boys to go through the temple open house and I was impressed with how well they behaved. They understood that the temple is a special place and not some place that they can run around. Before you enter the temple, they have you watch a movie about the purpose of temples and the boys had pamphlets that were handed out with pictures of some of the rooms on it. Ben was asking me what each of the rooms were for. When he pointed to the Celestial Room, I told him that it was a beautiful place to go and sit and feel the spirit. When we walked through the room in the temple he stopped for a minute, looking up at the chandelier and then said to me, "So mom, is this the most beautiful room in the world?" :)



The temple is being dedicated on August 22nd and 23rd

For Ben's birthday this year we let him have a birthday party and invite friends from the neighborhood. Luckily we've lived here long enough now for him to have met some boys from Church and Scouts even though school doesn't start for a couple more weeks. We had a 2for1 deal at a game place called Hollywood Connection and we had the party there. We let the kids play games and do laser tag and it was definitely a hit. The birthday party also coincided with Stephanie and Jared's visit so their girls got to come to the party as well. It was a lot of fun.... with minimal effort on my part :)

Kristina reading a story to Ben, Jacob, Ann and Evelyn in our living room


The girls are here! Yeah! Steph, Jared, Ann, Evelyn and Ruby are here visiting for a week! Jared's brother is getting married and so they were able to come out to visit. And they are staying with us :) Mike and Sally are out of town this week, so The Wards are lucky enough to have the top floor to themselves. It worked out pretty well.
We've stayed up late a couple of nights watching movies with Steph and Jared and Steph introduced me to a great break-and-bake cookie that I'm afraid I may now be addicted to. The night after Brett's wedding Jared's family, Kristina and Chris all came over and we played games and it was fun, once again, to have a full, noisy house. I wish we could see Steph and Jared more often, but I am so glad that they were able to come and visit. We probably won't get to see them again until Jared's residency is over.




Here is a picture of all of us together taken at Brett's wedding reception. It was so great to be able to have everyone together at the same time :)

This summer, Dave and I decided to take the boys on a family vacation. We decided to try and figure out a way to go to Disneyland and worked it out with Dave's parents to borrow their van and have them keep Zach for a few days. We also found some good deals on passes, hotels and took most of our food with us to keep things "cheap." Since Dave and I originally started planning this trip while the boys were staying at their dad's house, we wound up deciding not to tell them about it and surprise them when we got there.
On the day of the trip, we told them that we were going on a trip, but did not tell them specifically where or even what state. Grandma and Grandpa took them out for a while so we could pack up without them seeing what we were packing and get suspicious. We took a portable DVD player so the boys could watch movies in the car since it was going to be a long drive (and we are really glad that we did). The first movie we watched was Indiana Jones since they had never seen it and we were anticipating going on the Indiana Jones ride once we got there. We left the house a little after dinner time anticipating that the boys would sleep in the car and that we would arrive at Disneyland right around the time they open, completely surprising the boys! It worked out just perfect. Just before we got there we pointed out the signs which Ben read - "Disneyland." Then they said, "Wait. Are we going there? Can we go there? REALLY!?" It was great. We ate a quick breakfast at the car and I had the boys change into some Disneyland shirts that I had bought previously and brought with us (the second day they wore Star Wars shirts). Everything we did was new and amazing and fun for the boys. It was interesting how little whining and complaining went on even though it was hot and we were doing so much walking around. :) We wound up spending two days at Disneyland/California Adventure and then one day at the beach before heading home.
What a great trip!



The boys thought this "authentic" pirate ship was great. We decided not to ruin it for them and tell them that it was on rails.





The first place we went was Tom Sawyer's Island. The boys had so much fun there and thought that this was the entirety of Disneyland. When we told them there were a lot more things to do, they still wanted to just stay there. We had a hard time convincing them to go see the rest of the park.






Jacob was a little scared of some of the rides. But he always had fun once we got him to try it out.

At the entrance of the Star Wars ride "Star Tours." The only ride the boys begged to go on multiple times. I think we went on it four times.




Ben was picked to be trained as a Jedi. I think I was just as excited as he was that he go to have the experience.


The kids were all trained and then told they'd be given official Jedi certificates and Thanks for everything... and then Dun Dun Dun Dun-Dun-Dun Dun-Dun-Dun... The stage opened up and Darth Vader and Darth Mal showed up and the kids were told they would have to help fight them :) The youngest kids started crying... but Ben was all for it.

After spending two days at Disneyworld, we spent a day at the beach before driving home. Although I had taken the boys to the ocean to see tide pools when we lived in Seattle, they had never been to a warm beach at the ocean, so this was a new experience. We got a boogey board at Wal-mart and had brought along sand castle building equipment from home. Dave took both boys out with the boogey board and although Jacob did it a couple of times just to try it out, Ben really got into it. He spent almost the entire time we were there "catching waves." Unfortunately a dog came a peed on our sand castle before we got a picture of it, haha.