McAlister Matters

The first quarter of school is wrapping up as we approach fall break. It's been a fun year so far. We had a fantastic time at the Desert Star theater seeing the play Wickeder with Grandma Mimi. The kids all love the Wicked movie and music so it was fun for them. The kids are all liking their school teachers and classes. Sarah and I have been enjoying more quiet time at home and lunch dates.   The garden is all wrapped up now. We've been on some bike rides with the kids. We went to the Bountiful Pond recently to spot some more birds. Sarah and I have also been on some fun bike rides and hikes too. The Fall weather has been great! Halloween is fast approaching after Fall break this week. The kids all have their costumes. Kahlan is a butterfly. Juni is a gymnast. Paul is a mummy. Penny is a princess. We went to two concert performances for Kahlan last week. One was for her school choir. The other was for her school orchestra. She did great in both! Kahlan just got braces last mo...

  School started this week! Penny started on Wednesday and is in Mrs. Roylance's class. When Sarah dropped her off she told Sarah she had picked someone out to make friends with. She couldn't figure out how to get her school lunch the first day but her friend Alicia shared her lunch with Penny. She's been loving it so far! Paul is in 2nd Grade and has Mrs. Jenkins who Juniper had 2 years ago. It's hard to get more than a few words about what he did each day from him. But he seems to enjoy it. Juniper started the 4th grade and has Mrs. Cox who Kahlan had too. The fourth and 5th grade are combined for her and she gets to switch classes a lot just like Kahlan. She has no problem telling us all the happenings of the days. Kahlan started Junior High! She was super excited and has her schedule figured out now. She walks to meet a friend on the way to school. It was a busy week for her. She had to teach Young Women's today and give a talk in sacrament meeting! All while fi...

It's been a long fun summer and it's coming to an end. School starts tomorrow! Kahlan is starting at Centerville Junior High. She got all the classes she wanted like orchestra, chorus and art. Juni starts 4th grade and will be doing the play this year. She's been practicing gymnastics all summer. Check out her routine on video! Paul has the same teacher Juni had for 2nd grade. Penny has lots of friends in her kindergarten from church. They got some new clothes and shoes and are excited to start. We let Kahlan buy herself a flip-phone that she can use for calls and texts. She's also using it as a music player. It will come in handy for when she babysits and has school activities. Kahlan get's to teach young womens for the first time next week and speak in sacrament meeting! We went camping as a family for one night on August 1st. We went to Cinnamon Creek camp by Logan. When we got there they told us that campfires were not allowed that night. We were a little disapp...

  It's hard to believe our little girl is 12 now and getting ready for junior high! Kahlan got back from girls camp earlier this month. She had a blast with her friends there and even did some boating. She came back excited for next year's camp.  Kahlan had a party the weekend before her birthday and had 10 friends from school and the neighborhood over. They played camp games like Signs and Werewolf. Kahlan has been improving her drawing skills lately and is learning how to draw Manga style drawings. Kahlan is a great leader, teacher and helper around the house. She's been babysitting for us too so Sarah and I can enjoy some evenings together. We enjoyed the Centerville parade again for the 4th of July. We also took the kids to see fireworks for Pioneer day in Bountiful. Sarah's been doing lots of activities with the kids including the library, backyard pool, splash pad, the skate park, Agricola (a new game), and cousin days. We've gone on a few hikes with the kids ...

  Summer began with the excitement of our trip to California. The drive out went pretty smooth. We stopped out in the Salt Flats for a brief picture. A nice girl ran out and offered to take our family picture for us. We stopped in Winnemucca at a park for a picnic lunch. On Sunday after church we drove up to Arnold in the mountains and met Stephanie, Julie and Heather and the CA cousins at White Pines lake. We hiked around the lake, got eaten by mosquitos and crossed over a creek on a log. We then went to Murphy's to a huge cabin. It was surrounded by woods and had a great view, a pool, games, a movie room and 2 chickens.  The next day we celebrated Obie's birthday by going to Mercer Cavern where the kids got to pan for gems and fossils like old-time miners. The kids also all got to pick out a real geode and get them cracked open. Then we bought some delicious apple cider donuts near town. We had a pool party and cake to celebrate later. On the way back to Turlock we stopped i...

  School ended this week! We had a busy time going to celebrations. Paul's teacher put on a barbeque for the whole class. Kahlan graduated from elementary school and had several class activities. Everyone is excited for summer. We are looking forward to seeing everyone in CA in a few weeks. Click for pics!   

Happy Mother's Day! It was a breezy but pleasant day in Utah. Sarah and I got to go out for a bike ride on Friday night. We got dinner and then went to the plant nursery to get all the plants for our garden. It was unbelievably busy there. I guess everyone else had the same idea for date night.  We spent all morning yesterday planting our garden. The kids were good helpers weeding and planting. We planted the usual zucchini, tomatoes and peppers. We also did a little kale, a sriracha pepper and several types of flowers. Juniper really wanted to plant some daisy's and petunias so we got her some.  Paul is all ready to man the garden again this year. I asked him on our dinner date this week what he wanted to be someday. He asked if it was possible to be a gardener. I said of course. He asks me every day about the sprinklers. He wants windows in his room so he can watch them. Kahlan's grade had a medieval feast and she got to be the queen! She had to complete a long list of re...

  Happy Easter Everyone! It was a nice Spring day here. Kahlan and I got to sing in the choir at church. We sang 4 numbers including " Were You There? ". We've been enjoying some good weather along with the occasional snow or rain storm. Paul had a birthday last week. It's hard to believe he's 7! We went to the West Bountiful Park and had pizza with his Utah cousins. Paul is such a good kid. He gets up every morning and practices his piano and rarely has to be reminded about anything. He loves Legos, Minecraft, now StarCraft and playing with Penny and the older kids. He's top of his class at reading and loves books about Star Wars and animals and facts. He's still the master puzzler. I recently started working full-time at my job. So far it's been good. We've been having fun using ChatGPT to turn some of our recent pictures into Studio Gibli drawings. The kids have gotten a kick out of it. We were really into watching Studio Gibli movies last year....

  We celebrated Penny's 5th birthday last week. The Utah cousins came over on Monday night for cake and ice cream. Penny was very excited to be 5 years old. Now she can stay up until 8pm and play the Nintendo Switch with the other kids. She got a new backpack for her birthday and a new Lego set. We took her out to Penny Anne's Cafe for her birthday lunch. She wanted sourdough pizza for her b-day dinner. On Saturday for Spring break we left on our epic journey to Nauvoo, IL. The weather was nice when we left. It took about 5 hours to get to Martin's Cove in Wyoming. It's a remote spot where there is now a cattle ranch that the church owns. We got to pull some handcarts and some nice senior missionaries showed us around. There was a visitors center there with artifacts and exhibits and a video about the Willey / Martin handcart rescue . We went on a hike to the Devil's Gate landmark pictured in the background. It was a pretty landscape.  Most of Wyoming along I-80 is ...