First Day of School
8th grade, 6th grade, 4th grade and Kindergarten! Two schools and four students. Do the math - that leaves just Aspen and me. Days of lounging in the sun, watching soap operas, and scrapbooking! Yeah right. If you were reading correctly you'd have seen that it is ASPEN and me! That means lots of chasing, lots of no's and as much intervention as one can take. I'm going to have to get real creative to keep her busy.

As for everyone else they are settling in nicely. Aaron was so confident the first day. He walked right in and kids surrounded him. He has a way about him that people are drawn too. It doesn't hurt that he's almost six feet tall and demands the attention.
Dylan is the sixth grader. He seemed a little nervous, but still ready to go. His teacher is a friends' dad, but I think he was still a little nervous. All in all his first week went extremely smoothly. He got 69 out of 72 on his Math test and 100% on his spelling test. His teacher said that was bad since these were tests to determine where to start teaching the kids. He asked how is he supposed to start teaching him if he got the pretest all right? Brilliance, it's in the DNA.

Morgan was very nervous, but she got over it the first day. Her best two friends; Danny and Largim are in her class and this made things go easy. Her teacher is wonderful, but already I've received a note about Morgan's attitude. Aihyaya! What to do?
As for Jayden. His first day was full of tears and a terrible stomach ache. How was Jayden, oh he was excited! I cried when I dropped him off. I cried when I went to lunch. I cried when I picked him up. He does great. His teacher says he listens to her and he follows the rules. His two best friends are crazy and naughty so it will be a difficult year.

Extreme Home Makeover
No, it's not Ty! Aaron is just as cute though! Here he and Travis are putting some final touches on this side of the roof. Now three weeks and $5000 later it's finished! It looks sooooo good. Aaron, Dylan and even Morgan helped. There were also some wonderful friends; Jeremiah, Lyle, Cody and Steve that came over too. Without all of them Travis might be a single man and me without a roof. Okay, maybe not the roof part - I could hire that out!

The roof before was brown, with a little mold and lots of rot. Travis picked out some great shingles that were black and shades of gray. They are called Architectual Shingles and have layers to them. We took tons of pictures for the insurance company and they accepted it! I'm so glad it's over and we can focus on the million other things to fix.

BIG OUCHIE!
On Tuesday I arrived home from Youth Conference in Juneau. That's a whole other blog, because it was an amazing experience. On Wednesday night i went back to work at the Cedars Lodge. I'd only been working about an hour when Aaron called in a panic, then Travis called on the cell phone. I couldn't understand either one of them. Finally I hung up on Travis and said to Aaron, where is dad? He said, "he took Aspen to the hospital." I dropped the phone, grabbed my keys. It only took me five minutes to get to the er. I ran inside to find Travis holding Aspen on the end of the bed. Apparently she had got her thumb stuck in the front gate and it had ripped the top right off! There was a huge chunk out of her thumb. The nurse was washing her hands. I tried with all my might to not cry or throw up. Aspen was only whimpering. The doctor came in and looked at it, he said that luckily there wasn't any damage to the bone. This meant no surgery he said and the thumb will heal. They had Travis take some xrays to make sure there wasn't any bone damage. Luckily there wasn't any. After only two and half hours they sent her home in a bandage. She has been in a little pain, but okay so far. Now I have to keep her out of dirt and water. Yeah right!