Janae – Page 11 – Terry Family Shenanigans

March Madness Gymnastic Meet

Allison had her second to last meet for this season, this month. She had her best meet yet! She placed first in her division on bar and floor, second on vault, third on beam. She won 1st place All Around for her division.

It was really fun to watch her and see her excitement at doing well. She puts a lot of time and effort into gymnastics and it is fun to see her enjoying it. She has one last meet at the end of this month. It is in Manhattan Kansas and it is a big event with multiple areas for each event happening at the same time. She is pretty excited.

The Valentine Box

It was recently the fun time of year when all (now most in a post COVID world) elementary students carry on the decades old tradition of decorating a box with as much hearts, glitter, pink and frilly decorations as they can and make a Valentine’s for each class member to exchange and put in each others box. For some brief back ground- Matthew made his first box in kindergarten and after that year decided a plastic grocery sack was good enough for his remaining elementary years. Allison let me help her make her box in kindergarten and then told me my help was no longer needed in the following years. She came up with a bigger and more elaborate design each year for her box. It never resembled a box or anything to do with Valentine’s other than having a slot to put the Valentine’s cards in. By third grade her reputation preceded her and the teachers gave her specific size limits on her box. Emilee has always gone the more traditional route and decorated a shoe box in the before mentioned way. She is the last kiddo that still makes a Valentine’s box for school in our house.

This year during one of our many days off of school in February she had a burst of creativity and brought me a drawing of what she wanted to do for her box the next week. We gathered the supplies she needed and she was excited and thrilled to make her picture come to life by making her box all by herself. She did a great job. She was very proud of it and it sat on the side table in the kitchen for the few days before it was time to take it to school.

They were told to bring it in sometime in the two days before the party. She had a bunch of other things to take the school the first day they could bring them in so she planned to take it the second day. The morning she was supposed to take it I reminded her not to forget it. She said, “No, I think I will just have people set the Valentine on my desk.” I of course asked her what she meant and she started to tear up. Come to find out, almost everyone else had brought their boxes in the day before and after seeing them Emilee thought hers wasn’t good enough. She said that most of the other boxes were, “more neat looking” than hers. Meaning-they were made by adults not kids, or ordered on the internet and ‘professionally’ made. Grrr, I was pretty annoyed. This isn’t the first time one of my kids has been embarrassed of something they did on their own because other kids parents do the assignments for them. It is a soap box of mine. Stupid parents. We talked about how her box was perfect the way it was and how awesome it was that she did it all by herself (because 1-she wanted to and had a great time doing it and 2- THOSE ARE THE DIRECTIONS-not have your parents make your box). I told her I loved her box and she should be proud of it. She told me,” You are just saying that because you are my mom so you have to like it.” Allison then chimed in and said that one of the reasons she made her boxes the way she did is so they would be unique and represent something she liked and told Emilee, “I love the way you did your box. The see through part is cool.” Allison’s words carried a lot more weight than mine. The silver lining of having sisters that fight more than it seems like they get along is that when one of them gives you a compliment you believe it because you know they have no problem insulting you. It was a sweet moment. I appreciated Allison helping her sister.

She took her box to school and was happy to report that her friend Millie told her is was an awesome box. I was helping at the party the next day and had the chance to see all the boxes myself. There were many boxes there that were clearly made by an adult or straight up bought on some bougie valentine website. It was ridiculous. I was happy to see the few that were home made by kids and made sure to tell each of them I loved their creativity. She still has her box sitting on her dresser and I will leave it there as long as she wants to instead of chucking it after a few weeks like I normally would.

Firsts

In our church the year you turn twelve you graduate primary and move to the youth program. Allison started Young Women’s. Each class has a presidency to help plan and run the activities. She is the secretary for her class right now. Allison loves growing up and being in charge of things so she is loving it. Most of their activities are on Tuesday night and she has gymnastics that night, so for now she won’t be able to go to a lot of them. She is still enjoying planning and going to the ones that aren’t on Tuesday’s.

The year they turn twelve is also the year they are old enough to go to the temple and do baptisms. She was able to go for the first time last week. It is fun to see her growing up and getting more responsibilities.

Matthew is turning 16 this year so he moves up to the Priest Quorum in our church. That means one of his new responsibilities is to bless the sacrament on Sunday. He did it for the first time a few weeks ago and his dad and grandpa did it with him. It was cool to see three generations blessing the sacrament together.

Allison’s Art Work

Allison’s Adventures

Allison is doing really well in school. Her goal it to work on her time management which makes me very happy. She is a person that evaluates herself and while she might not admit a mistake or shortfall, she makes a conscious effort to change or develop habits that she wants to work on.

In one of her classes they are making a large marble chute on a board. She asked me if I new which one was hers. All but one of them was contained to the board they were given to attach it to. One of them had extensions all over and was only on the board when she wanted to cross over to the other side. I guessed the least contained design and was right. Allison doesn’t like to be contained and that applies to all aspects of her life.

When I took some things into Emilee’s room the other day I found this note on the bathroom door that they share. It has been a while since I have found an Allison note. It made me chuckle. I especially love the ‘probably’ in parenthesis under “I WILL”. The two of them are working out some boundary/sharing issues with their shared bathroom.

Allison had another gymnastic meet this month. Her team took 1st place. She got her personal best in two events. She got a 9.3 on her floor and vault routine. She is progressing in all of her events and doing well. It is fun to watch her improve.

Boys vs Girls Communication

While I was at work the other day on a Thursday afternoon, I got a text from Lisa, she is Matthew’s friend Campbell’s mom. She asked me if I was ok with the schedule for Saturday for pictures and hanging out before and after the dance. Apparently that weekend-in two days, there was a high school dance that Matthew and Campbell were attending with a group of her friends. I told her I was glad she had reached out because I had no idea there was a dance coming up. After her text, I texted Matthew and asked him if he was going to a dance this weekend that he hadn’t mentioned to me yet. He said, “Yep.”

I am finding that Matthew will answer my questions if I ask him very specific questions multiple times. He isn’t much on details. Luckily Lisa and Campbell are, so they fill me in and tell me what is going on. He made it to all the places he needed to be to eat, take pictures, and dance. Campbell told me the dance was more fun this time because people actually danced.

Matthew also had parent teacher conferences. His communication continued to be brief for that as well. His entire presentation had fewer words than Emilee’s or Allison’s had on one page. Between his teacher and I we were able to drag enough information to know what we needed to know. I took a few snap shots of some of his artwork. I am not sure what the stick figure one is, when I asked he said, “An assignment.” 🙂

Emilee’s Events

Emilee had to find a new place to ride horses. The barn she was riding at had a few of their horses pass away and the owner wanted to take some time off from teaching. It took a bit of time to find a new place. Part of the issue was that she only wanted to ride with Reese so we had a find a place that had room for both of them. We finally found a place that wasn’t to much farther away. It seems a little more organized and stream lined than the last barn. Hopefully they will continue to progress in there riding.

While she waited for me to find a new barn for her, she filled her time with playing with her horses at home. She is pretty cute. This heard of horses, barbies and random other stuffed animals can be found around the house in various stages of their daily trek from the fireplace to the office and and back to the fireplace. They always travel together in a pack and they seem to have a fairly organized rotation for taking turns riding on all the different horses. If you are lucky you will catch a little bit of conversation between all of the animals but if they know you are around they move pretty quietly. I love her imagination.

She has also become one of her primary teachers helpers with her baby on Sundays. She loves holding her. The babies name is Maddie and as you can see she is fond of Emilee too.

February is usually parent teacher conferences. For the winter conference they have the students come with their parents and talk with them about what they are doing and learning. Along with her grades (that were very good!) I was sent home with a few of Emilee’s self portraits. One of them was her before she got glasses and the other was after she got them. She has done much better in school and seems to feel more confident going now that she can see. Imagine that. She reads a lot without being asked too. I asked her how she read the board to know what to do. She said, “I just guessed.” I’m glad we figured it out so she can work and learn at her full capacity. Poor girl! She looks pretty cute with her glasses I think!

All three of my kids needed glasses when we went in for this years annual eye check up. Apparently we didn’t eat enough carrots last year. Matthew and Allison only need their glasses in certain situations, Emilee needs hers all the time.

January 2022

This January was a typical January. Not a lot going on. A good month to rest after all the holidays and re-group and plan for the upcoming year. It is a long slow month. I don’t mind though.

Ryan’s work did there usual January Christmas party for the company and their spouses. This year was a little different though because it was also the 10 year anniversary of the company starting. Ryan has been with them since they started so he made a little party planning committee and they put together a fun night for everyone. It was at a hotel in Lawrence Kansas. They had meetings Thursday and Friday and then Friday evening all the spouses came and joined for the party. They had a dinner followed by a casino night. They gave you fake money to play with and you won tickets with your money that you could bid on a bunch of prizes at the end. They did a good job. It was a fun night. Everyone stayed the night in the hotel and went home the next morning. I am glad he works at a company he enjoys and works with good people.

That is about the only event worth reporting in January. February came with a couple good snow storms this year. Ryan’s parents went to Idaho for a while to see Becky and her new baby boy Kaden. We took care of their house for them while they were gone. Ryan told the kids to go over and shovel his driveway. I am a sucker and they talked me into driving them over. Then they found his snow blower and asked if they could use that. I pulled it out and it was easy enough to use so I started using it and told them to shovel. At some point the new phone in my pocket that was less than two weeks old wiggled its way out of my pocket and fell on the ground. The snow hid it and the next time I came around I snow blowed it right up. I thought I had hit a heavy part of snow for a second and then didn’t think much about it. Matthew was standing at the top of the drive way in front of me and noticed a black object flying through the air land at his feet. He looked to see what it was and picked up my phone. It was no longer straight but had a nice arch to it. The phone did not survive its run through the snow blower. The case however came out with barely a scratch on it. I was pretty annoyed. I got to spend three hours of my day to go buy a second new phone. I got the special one for the price of two deal this time.

Fire Alarms and Cocoa

All the Christmas stuff is put away. We have had a few snow flurries, the new year is underway and the long month of January is about half over.

Last week after the kids had started back at school about the time that both Ryan and I were headed home from work last week the girls called him. He answered the phone and Allison said, “Dad, the fire alarms are going off in our house. There is a weird smell. I took Peanut and Emilee and we are walking to Grandma’s house. I made Matthew come with us but he is a jerk and wouldn’t bring the crabs.”

Ryan asked if he could talk to Matthew. He didn’t see or smell any smoke so he didn’t think there was a fire but he was going with the girls to grandma’s because the alarms were going off and obviously really loud. He also confirmed that the crabs were on their own if the house was on fire.

Ryan decided to not have them call 911 because he was only a few minutes away from the house and hoped/assumed at 15 years old Matthew was somewhat capable of knowing if there was a fire in the house. He told them to go to Grandpa’s house until I came and got them just in case it was a carbon monoxide leak or a fire.

Roger and Ryan went over to check the house. The alarms would go off for a minute or two and then stop for a bit then start again. As far as they could figure there had been a short or something that set the furnace room alarm off. No smoke, no gas, and the battery was still good. Weird. I will take weird over a fire any day. As far as the weird smell Allison smelled, we think it was the smell of something that burned in the dishwasher on the heat cycle. It washed them while we were all at work and school and when Emilee opened it after school to empty it, the kitchen had a little bit of that weird burning smell.

Ryan called me and told me what happened so I went to get the kids. I was glad to see all three fire trucks at the station by our house when I drove by and no pillar of smoke coming from the direction of my house. When I got to Grandma’s house Matthew was playing a game, she had already gotten a snack and a craft out for the girls to work on, and Peanut was in his temporary home (a box from Grandma’s garage) with several towels to snuggle in. Allison was still annoyed at Matthew for abandoning the crabs and not feeling bad about it at all. When dad and Grandpa gave us the all clear we went back home and had some hot cocoa.

The take aways from our exciting evening were:

We are really glad we have Grandma and Grandpa close by. When in doubt, go to Grandma and Grandpa’s house.
In an emergency Allison will take charge and make sure everyone is safe including the pets.
Matthew will assist Allison in saving human beings but is out when it comes to pets-especially crabs (unless we get a dog). Matthew is also happy to let Allison run the show.

As I am typing the last few sentences, it reminds me of the time the kids came home from school and there was some ‘strange men people’ according to Allison that were climbing around on our roof. I have probably blogged this story before but I will review it again.

At this point in time Grandma and Grandpa didn’t live in Kansas yet. When Allison got off the bus and saw the unexpected people on our roof she later told us she couldn’t recall any conversations about people coming over to fix something and was unaware of any roof issues that our house had so she was immediately suspicious and told Matthew they should all stand by the mail box until dad or I got home. Matthew looked around for a second then said, “No thanks, it is cold.” He then crossed the road and entered the house through the garage like any other day. 🤦‍♀️Emilee followed him because, “It was cold.” 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ They left Allison at the mailbox. As they were closing the garage Allison ran across the street and ran into the garage. Matthew and Emilee went inside dropped their stuff all over the floor and got a snack and went on with their usual after school routine. Allison grabbed the phone and a BAT from the garage and walked out the front door and stood in the middle of the front yard to stare down the strange men while she called Ryan to tell him what the situation was.

Ryan was actually surprised and didn’t know why people would be on our roof either he told Allison to get herself back in the house and lock the door and he talked with her while he came home immediately. A few minutes later she said they were putting their ladders away and leaving. She sat by the front door looking out the window with her bat in case they decided to come back until Ryan got home.

Turns out, it was a Christmas light company that puts lights on your house for you. They had gotten the wrong address and put lights on our house by mistake. They figured it out eventually when whoever’s house they were supposed to put the lights on never got them. A few days later when we got home they were gone.

I think Allison was 8 or 9 when this happened. We recommended that in the future instead of going home they go to a neighbors house if someone is at our house unexpectedly. We know that Allison will take charge and let us know if something isn’t right.

Final 2021 Post…#tbt

This photo popped up in Ryan’s phone the other day. This is from 3 years ago. Emilee would be 6 and Matthew would be 12. Probably a school fundraiser night at Culver’s.

This one is also from three years ago. Good thing we got our family Christmas cruise in before 2020!

That’s it for 2021! Bring on 2022!