Oveson Family

We gave Kyle his first taste of “real food” (a.k.a. rice cereal) on Saturday!  His emotions ranged from

Mild curiosity

to utter excitement

to complete disgust!

Too much fun!!!  What a cute boy he is!!

Well, Thursday was Zach’s first day of Kindergarten.  It was a really fun, good day, but it was also pretty hard.  I’m just one of those Mom’s that hates the idea of my kids growing up.  If I could just freeze them the way they are right now, I would!  It’s so hard!  But Zach was so incredibly excited!  That’s all he talked about it for days!  So, that morning we took him to school and they had all the kids go into the gym and sit on the stage.  Zach was excited.  He found Weston and immediately sat down and started talking and playing around.  Then Brian and Lainee joined them – they were all so excited and cute!  But then they had a big production and much more drama/trauma than was necessary, and they had the parents march out of the room while the kids watched us leave.  So after all of that, Zach was trying so hard not to cry!  His little chin was quivering, and he was blinking a million miles a minute trying to hold back the tears.  Poor kid!  It was so hard to leave him there!  I spent the next two hours worrying and looking at the clock to see how much longer it was until I could go back and pick him up! Luckily,  by the time I picked him up, he was excited to tell me all about his day and the “Chester Hunt” they went on.  (Though he was quite disappointed that they didn’t have recess).  So, Zach survived his first day, and I survived it too.  And the second day was “much more funner” according to Zach. :>  So, here we go on this grand adventure of letting our kids grow up!!

This Saturday was also the Ridd Family Reunion.  It’s always great to get together once a year and see everyone (well, at least everyone that comes).  We didn’t take very many pictures, but here are a couple:

Grandpa Ridd and Grandma Beverly

Dinner Time!

Lots of visiting!

Grandma & Kyle

On Saturday we had an awesome back-to-school WIPEOUT party! For those of you not familiar with Wipeout, there has been a TV show on this summer called Wipeout that my boys and my nephews have LOVED! Basically, people run around doing a bunch of silly obstacles and falling all over the place. Thus, it’s called Wipeout. There couldn’t be a more exciting show for a bunch of active little boys. Of course, each time we watch it, my boys feel the need to run, jump, climb, and bounce off of anything and everything in sight. So, after one such evening, I decided it would be fun to get the whole family together for an end of summer wipeout party. My boys started planning immediately! We let each of the cousins come up with their own wipeout obstacle to add to our obstacle course. Zach really wanted to do the “Big Balls,” but we obviously don’t own any ten foot balls and a giant lake. So, he settled for a couple of old couch pieces instead. Preston’s obstacle was a slip and slide covered in shaving cream. The other obstacles included the “slippery hurdles,” a balance beam over a kiddie pool that included water balloons being launched at you, running up wet car ramps and then hula hooping, and crawling through the sprinklers and under the hurdles. Sounds like fun, eh? And when all was said and done, everyone was awarded a “cash prize,” a giant cookie gold medal, and a popsicle. It was seriously so much fun! Here are some fun pictures from the grand event:

Zach on the slippery hurdles

Tyler after crawling through the spriklers

Preston on the balance beam

Uncle Mike and a hula hoop

Grandma on the couches

Mary crawling under the hurdles

Matt on the shaving cream slip and slide

Lucas just being cute

Uncle David “wiping out”

Mike on the balance beam

Isaac crawling under the hurdles

Liz and Kyle – the amazing “hosts”

The gold medals

Zach and Pres drinking the slip and slide

Cleaning off the shaving cream

Today is a good day, despite that it is a Monday. Today marks the 13th anniversary of the day I met my beloved Mary. We met at the opening stomp at Alta High school through some mutual friends. I was starting my junior year and Mary was just starting out as a sophomore. When I met her I thought she was a senior. She was so confident, not to mention beautiful. She wore this denim dress/jumper (I don’t really know what to call it) but it was denim on the skirt part and had this sunflower design along the top half. She looked great. I still remember how beautiful she looked then. It doesn’t really compare to how beautiful she is now, but she was still a knockout. She has had such a huge, positive impact on my life and I appreciate all that she has done and still does today. I love you, sweetheart.

After that short look back to the past, now we come to the present. Today marked the beginning of school for many people throughout the country. As I drove up to Weber State this morning I saw kids heading to middle school and high school. They were all dressed in their new clothes and trying to look cool, trying to hide their excitement/anxiety. As I parked and made my way through the crowds, I saw the same mix of fear and excitement on the faces of my fellow students. Most of the freshmen were easy to pick out. Guys of all ages tried to flex and look cool for all of the ladies on campus. I’m so glad I never went through the college dating scene. Seems like it has its highlights, but quite a bit of stress in between. Just my observation. Anyway, it was nice to start a new semester. After conquering a personal nemesis of mine (Math 1050) during summer semester, I have greater confidence and really want to make this term my best. We’ll see how it goes. I’m starting to feel “old” on campus though. As I was leaving I saw Amber Harris trudging up 36th Street. We’re never too old to learn though.

Looking forward to the future a bit, my oldest son starts kindergarten on Thursday. This marks a rather big milestone in our child-rearing lives. I think it’s a rather emotional milestone for Mary, and I think it’s sweet that she’s sad to see him go off “on his own.” It’s only for a few hours a day, but seeing your kids grow up and go do things without you is bittersweet. You want to see them learn and grow and handle things on their own. But it’s also strange to feel unneeded or “left behind” as it were. Zach is very excited about it and doesn’t seem very nervous, which is good to see. Zach’s usually more hesitant about new things, but he’s going at this full force without any apparent worries. I’m sure he’ll do great and learn many new things. That’s what this life is about. Facing new challenges and situations and learning how to handle them. It’s interesting that no matter how old we get there’s still something that can make us nervous. =)

We kind of have a summer tradition of going to the Brigham Young Park to enjoy some great free concerts. The two we always try not to miss are Peter Brienholt and Voicemale. In fact, we even mark them on our calendar at the beginning of the summer and try to save the date. Unfortunately, this year Peter Brienholt come on a Tuesday, which at our house is Mike’s meeting day. And not only was it a normal meeting day, but it was his meeting with the stake president. So I was pretty bummed. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to take a “cheerfully teething Kyle” along with the other two boys down to Salt Lake by myself. I was sure I was going to be walking with Kyle instead of listening to the concert, all the while trying to keep Zach and Pres from running wild. Sounds fun, huh? But I also realized that this is just the reality of our life at this point, and if I wanted to go I was going to have to go it alone. So, we invited my nephew to join us (I already had 3 boys – what’s one more?) and decided to make a day of it. We went down to the zoo, went to dinner, and then headed to the concert. We had a lot of fun, and all of the boys were so good – I’m quite proud of them! Guess it wasn’t so bad to brave it alone!

Last Saturday we had a sorts of fun!  We took advantage of the RAMP free day at the treehouse and took the kids.  We saw the Sagendorfs, the Tullis kids, and our cousins – so obviously some of you took advantage of the fun too!  I saw Emily’s cute pictures from Saturday, so here are some of ours:

So after the treehouse, we had our annual ward swim party.  I didn’t do much swimming due to Kyle, but the other boys had so much fun, and I enjoyed talking to all the other people not swimming.  Mike, as always, enjoyed himself running around and taking pictures.  Most of the pictures were of Zach and Pres, but there are some other cute ones of others in the ward.  If there is not one of you, you can either chastise or thank the bishop!  So, here are some of the fun pictures from the party:

Here are some cute pictures from this week!