The Nitty Gritty

We spent the most of June in Utah with our family and loved ones. We love escaping the heat and spending a good amount of time with family to make memories. This trip could not have been better! Here's what we did: We love love LOVE stopping to see the grandparents on the way. First, we stayed with Grandpa Steve and  Grandma Dana in Las Vegas for a few nights. We visited the Desert Museum and enjoyed some tasty root beer floats. Then we saw Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Bickmore in St. George. The boys sang a few songs. William even came up with his own rap, something about the toilet--a typical subject for 7 year old boys.  Van and Nellie are the best "frienemies."  Will loves playing with baby Naomi.  Gwennie and I had a lot of fun together playing restaurant and singing songs.  We went to music weekend at Doug and Linda's Solace Ranch. There were over 60 people there to celebrate Linda's 60th birthday. Doug hired a band, ...

We are winding down to the end of our third school year here in sunny Arizona. We have one more year to go while Isaac finishes his dissertation. Then we'll be headed to wherever he gets a job offer. The boys finished their last week of swimming lessons. The next round didn't coordinate with our schedule so we'll look into doing lessons again in May. William likes his art class. Today he learned about organic and geometric shapes. We got to dog sit for our neighbor's poodle Gladys. I'm not a big dog lover but I LOVE Gladys. She is the cutest. The boys had fun taking turns holding onto her leash and giving her a treat at the end of our walk. When we dropped her off the first night and said goodbye, Van called to her, "Don't worry! Your parents will come back!" Then he said to me, "I thought she would understand better if I said 'parents' instead of 'owner'." We had some cloudy days and a rainstorm this weekend. Lana and ...

Bickmore Buzz April 3, 2016 Today was a pretty rough week. My students were on some sugar high from Easter.   This is the time of year where the students start to mentally check out and I have to stay firm and consistent. I was so relieved when Friday finally came. Isaac had a presentation on Friday for his robot project for a company called Microchip. He made a lot of contacts with people that can help him get what he needs. Lately, William loves to say, “I’m bored”, hoping that I will let him play video games. I just tell him to look at his chore chart and see what stars he can earn. Van loves to give fishy kisses. He scraped his elbow on Wednesday when he was showing off his biking skills for the sister missionaries and crashed. I couldn’t stop smiling because I was so proud that one of my boys finally scraped up their elbow! Our kids are so cautious and never get injured. We did a few fun things this weekend. Friday night, we sat in our friends' hot tub...