Allison’s squad did the dance and cheer competition this year. They did a great job! It was fun to watch. The smile on her face when she was doing it showed that she loved it too.
They ended up placing third for the dance. I really think they were better than at least one if not both of the teams that took 1st and 2nd but they got docked a huge amount of points for the way they tossed their poms to the side when they were done with them…I will refrain from the snarky comment I have about judging competitions getting way out of hand. I have no problem being in competitions that are judged. I think it is can be good for kids actually. If it is logical with clear objectives. When it is convoluted and subjective. All the teams were fun to watch, the judging was just a little obscure and hard to predict.
I don’t know what happened with my pictures. The first few are fine and the last few are fine but the middle ones came out way to dark. I lightened them as much as I could. I feel awful they turned out dark. I also put pictures from her last cheer game on here. They performed the same routine they did for the competition during half time so I got a few good pictures from that. After they last game they switched gifts with the football players too.
After counting down almost daily for the last 6 months Emilee’s birthday final came! She was so excited. She has been asking for some lego dragons fora long time. I was able to find some on ebay since they were not sold anymore and she got her little family of lego dragons for her birthday.
To celebrate she wanted to have a few friends over for an all day play date. She spent the night at Jovee’s on Friday and then I picked her up and Jovee, Reese, Cambrie and the rest of our family went to a movie together. It was cheesy, bad acting, and pretty ridiculous and they loved it. They giggled and laughed through the whole movie. After the movie we went home and had pizza and rootbeer, opened presents and then blew out candles and ate cake. The weather was great so Emilee picked a park and we went and played for a few hours. After her friends went home we met Jovee’s family at Sake Lounge and had Emilee’s favorite food- a Shaggy Dog. It is a sushi roll.
I think she had a fun birthday. She said she feels a little bigger but not much. We have lego dragons all around our house.
To explain this title. I will need to back up a little bit and go back about a three weeks ago. I wanted to give the outgoing Primary Presidency and small gift as a thank you for their service so I went online and found a website call Zazzle and ordered my gift from them. They do personalized gifts, so you design it and then they put it on a picture or shirt or whatever you want. So I ordered something it came and I delivered it and was done with Zazzle.
Fast forward a few weeks an I find a box in my mailbox from Zazzle. I was immediately confused because I had already received the order I placed and hadn’t ordered anything else. I open the box to find this little item featured below. This leaves me more confused. Then I think, maybe it is a promotional item (a very tacky bad one but still) and they just sent them out to a bunch of people. I then find the receipt in the box with the hat that says I designed and paid for this tacky thing.
I go to the website and login and look at my orders…nothing. So I somehow designed this ugly hat, ordered it, paid for it, and had it shipped to my house and there was no record of it on my account. I thought maybe it was another persons order that had been delivered to me but it had my name and address on it too. Slightly annoyed now thinking about how long I am going to have to spend on the phone to get this figured out, I start looking for a customer service contact number.
At the same time I was texting with Ross, Lauren, and Ryan on a group text about some random stuff. I sent them a picture of my perplexing hat. After I send the picture Ryan texts back, “Hey that is mine!” I thought he was messing with me. After some very confusing but now hilarious texts I found out that he had decided to order a hat from a movie for a friend for Christmas. Coincidentally he came across the same Zazzle website I had used a few weeks previously, made his own account and ordered it.
So we actually did pay for an ugly hat! Luckily it has a purpose though. Also, luckily he let me know it was his before I got ahold of Zazzle customer service and got irritated with them. It was pretty funny.
It is important to appreciate the small things. I had a small victory the other day that I have been waiting for years to get done.
When Ryan and I got married we got stockings for us that were just the standard basic fluffy stocking. I didn’t know for sure how many kids we would have so I didn’t want to get some nice ones then have a kid and not be able to find a matching one (I am a uniform decorator). I wasn’t sure what stockings I wanted to commit to either. When we had kids I just got the same kind at the store. They changed the color of the red slightly each year so none of them really matched that well.
When we were done having kids I wanted to get matching ones for all of us that were a little nicer than the 99 cent basic one. For the last 5 years I have had my eye out for the perfect stocking. I didn’t want anything elaborate, but I wanted them to have our initials on them and I did want them to be red. I found a couple that were cute but they didn’t have enough, or the right letters, or they were to fancy or something.
The other day I was walking through a store and I saw some cute knitted red stockings that were perfect-except they didn’t have letters on them so we could tell them apart. I kept walking and when I got around the corner there was the exact same stockings with letters! I was so happy. I tried not to get to carried away because I didn’t know if they had all the right letters. It turned out they did though so I was finally able to get my cute little stockings!!
They are hanging up on my fireplace now and I love them. It makes me happy when I look at them. Yay for matching Christmas stockings!
A friend of mine told me about a church that does a production each year for the community about the birth of the Savior. It sounded pretty neat and I was able to get tickets for us and Lauren’s family to go.
It is very well done. When you come in they have a nice waiting area with cookies and hot chocolate. Then when it is your groups turn you go outside and walk through probably 15 different stations that start with Moses, then Abraham, then Abraham and Isaac, then Isaiah and then starts the story of Mary and Joseph and then going to Bethlehem and then of course the stable and his life, death and resurrection. The town of Bethlehem was pretty amazing. They had a ‘street’ that you walked through and probably a hundred people doing all kinds of things on the street- shopping, looking for someone, talking with friends, selling something, beggers, people doing laundry. It really felt like you were walking through a street in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. It was a neat experience.
We had a good conversation with the kids afterwards too. Aside from remembering what Christmas is celebrating and remembering to focus on that part of Christmas amongst all the other holiday stuff, we talked about the importance of surrounding ourselves with good people and good things. Even though we don’t belong to the same church as they do and they don’t have the fullness of the gospel they were good people teaching a lot of truths and strengthening people’s knowledge and faith in the Savior.
The past few weeks have not been the best weeks between Allison and Ryan and I. We seem to go through cycles with her of ups and downs and we are definitely in a down. There are still happy moments when we are on a down cycle but that is what they are moments. Far and few between the contention and friction and arguing and almost constant battles over everything from waking up in the morning to how people are breathing around her. Hopefully we are headed back up at least but that is an unknown for now. It is not fun for all involved obviously.
The other day Allison came to me and said that she wanted to go and have some fun one on one time together. I thought it would be a good idea and a chance for us to have some positive interactions for a good amount of time.
We decided to go to main event together. There is a bunch of different activities there to do and we decided to do bowling together. We played three games and had lots of fun. The score board would use your actual real face on silly cartoons when it was your turn to bowl. Allison thought it was a hoot. We did a fun zip line thing a couple times while we were there too.
It was fun and we did get to reset and enjoy each others company and not fight for a whole two hours. Allison and I have to put more than the average amount of effort into our relationship and communication. The little stinker is worth it though. She doesn’t always believe me but I love her and I want her to be happy and I want what is best for her.
Matthew and Ryan race every year around his birthday to see if it is the year that Matthew can beat his dad yet. He is getting closer, we had to do a photo finish this year.
The past few weeks have been pretty busy but really good weeks.
Our primary at church had their annual primary program. It was really good. It is one of my favorite Sundays of the year. This year Emilee helped me invite our new neighbors to come and they did. It was a really cool experience for them I think. Their son Jack even stayed the rest of church with Matthew. That same week they called a new primary presidency and I am the new president. Figuring everything out and getting organized has kept me busy for the last few weeks. I am enjoying it and excited. I enjoy being in primary. Kids can be little stinkers but they also have sweet pure hearts and I love hearing the way they see the gospel and apply it in their lives.
Emilee was the P.E. Student of the Month for her class. I couldn’t make it because I was at work but Dad made it and got a picture of her getting her award.
Emilee is P.E. Student of the Month
Allison became a turtle activist. Basically that means she made lots of posters and shames any of us that use a straw.
We have had some great Fall weather this month, despite it snowing the day before Halloween. The last few weekends have been gorgeous and we have tried to go to the park when we can.
Emilee decided to measure herself doing different things on her mirror. It made me smile when she showed me. There are fewer and fewer moments like this in our house now that everyone is getting older. It is kind of hard to see but she marked a spot for standing on her tippy toes, standing regular, kneeling up, kneeling down, criss cross apple sauce leaning up, and last but not least criss cross apple sauce flat on her bum.
Allison made a tube for something at school and found a funny way to take pictures with it too.
Allison had her last game for cheer this season for the football teams. They have their final cheer and dance competition coming up later this week. It has been mixed reviews on whether she liked it or not this year. I asked her if she wanted to do it again and she is currently undecided. She is looking forward to the competition and will do a great job and have fun. I am sure that will help her decide.
Emilee had a field trip to the the Pumpkin Patch. There are few less perfect field trips for 1st graders in the Fall. We got lost in a corn maze, played in the corn box, climbed in the hay, and rolled down the lawn in huge irrigation pipes. There are some sweet kids in her grade. Emilee and I had fun sitting in the very back seat of the bus together too.
Allison decided that she wanted to enter a pumpkin in the school decorating contest. In typical Allison fashion she stuck to her motto of ‘Go Big Or Don’t Show Up’ and decided she wanted to do Cinderella’s carriage. She designed it, then we went to the store and got all the supplies she needed then she spent the next three days painting it. They weren’t allowed to cut or puncture it at all because it was going to sit in the school for over a week and they didn’t want them to stink. I might have tried to persuade her to choose something different if I had know this ahead of time…something that was just one round pumpkin. It was not easy to get the wheels and pumpkin to stay where they needed to without skewers. We figured it out though. She did a really good job. I helped her put it all together but she painted and designed it on her own. I was proud of her effort. The winner was determined by people voting for your pumpkins by putting money in a jar. Each penny was a point. Allison had a lot of change, which were votes from kids. She didn’t end up winning though because some parent put a $20 bill in their kids jar. There were a lot of cute pumpkins but I thought Allison’s was the most elaborate. It was also obvious that some parents thought it was a contest for them-not their child.
Usually by Halloween day arrives I am more than happy to be done with it. The kids dress up and it is fun but you can only go to so many parties that the purpose is to get candy before it gets old. The girls school had a trunk or treat, our church had a trunk or treat, there was class parties, we were invited by some friends to go to a community party, our neighbors have a party (its for adults but still Halloween themed). It is all very fun and the kids love it but my small introvert social bucket is over flowing by the time Halloween comes.
We did our usual Halloween tradition with the McDonalds. There whole family came over to have pizza and witch’s brew (home made root beer) for dinner then we go trick or treating together afterwards. Allison invited her friend Hailey and her family to come with us too. Matthew went on his own with his friends. Allison was a little put out thinking she would have to wait for the slow people in our group to go trick or treating and not get as much candy as she wanted. Her costume was a giant rooster that made it a little tricky to get around in so she actually ended up being the slowest person. The amount of candy did not seem to be affected though. She ‘won’ her own prize for the most candy collected when her bag weighed in at 14 pounds. Matthew had a mere 9 pounds and was totally embarrassed he was beaten by his sister. Emilee didn’t weigh hers but I’m sure she had a few pounds as well. I felt like I was going to get diabetes just sitting in the room with all of it. Of course there was a giant trading of candy session when we all got back to get rid of the candy they didn’t like. I think they all thought Halloween was a big success. Ryan has been taking several large handfuls to work since Halloween to help protect our children’s pancreas’. It was a fun night.
