Allison – Page 11 – Terry Family Shenanigans

Allison wraps up the school year!

Allison has had a busy last month of school. Her teacher’s name this year is Miss Coovert. It is her first year teaching and she is pretty awesome. Allison has loved having her. All the third grade teachers have made this a pretty fun year. They always had fun projects when they learned things and Allison loved being able to use her creativity. One of her favorite projects was making a bottle buddy of a famous Kansan out of a soda bottle and a foam ball for the head. She picked Bob Dole because his name was Bob.

They have gone on several field trips the last few weeks too. They went to the Topeka Zoo and toured the Capitol building. They went to the Fire Station, and last week they went to the Mahaffie Stage Coach Stop. I went on that one with her. We panned for gold, road in a stage coach and learned a lot about the different trails pioneers used to travel around. I am glad that I got to go on a field trip with her. She won’t want me on to many more probably. She is getting to where she wants to be around friends more and more.

Panning for gold, we didn’t have any luck.
Stage Coach ride!
Mahaffie Stage Coach Stop

Allison has been learning the value of honesty the past few weeks too, and is still working on it. She asked me to sign her planner after school one day, which is very normal. The ‘planner’ she brought me was not normal. It was a stack of lined paper taped together with “Do Math” written on it. At the bottom of said stack of papers was a suspicious orange piece of paper sticking out that said “Parent Signature”. As you might have guessed she wanted me to sign her ‘planner’ on the orange paper. I looked at her and said, ‘You want me to sign your planner, is this your planner.’ She looked back and said, ‘Yep, my real one is missing so I made one.’ I picked up the pen she conveniently had ready for me to sign with and signed the white paper, she of course said I should sign at the bottom where the orange paper said. I told her is she wanted me to sign the orange paper I would have to untape it and read what it said first. I wish I could have gotten a picture of her face when she realized that her plan had not worked. I remember coming up with ridiculous plans like that as a kid and wondering how my plan could have possibly failed. Allison quickly disappeared when I started un-taping her ‘planner’. I told her when she wanted me to sign it she could come talk to me about it. It was a think sheet from school. They have to fill one out when they do something they are not supposed. It says what they did, why it’s wrong, and what they are going to do to fix it. All the teachers have tickets at the school and hand them out to kids when they see them doing something good. When they get so many tickets they can turn them in for a prize in the office. Allison had decided that she would make her own tickets at home with our color printer and then turn them in at school and told her teacher the substitute they had the day before had given them to her. Again, how did this brilliant plan fail?!? I of course did not fail to point out the irony that she tried to get me to sign her think sheet about being dishonest by trying to trick me and be dishonest again showing she clearly had a lot to learn about being honest. After a long repetitive talk about honesty and trust, several drafts of an apology letter to her teacher before one was approved, and the punishment of being grounded from friends and all electronics for two weeks, I signed her think sheet.

One of the best days of the year in elementary school is Field Day. It was a great success this year. It was 85 degrees and sunny. Perfect weather to play outside. They had the younger kids do Field Day in the morning and the older ones in the afternoon. I went and helped out with both of them and had some fun one on one time. Allison helped her class win the relay race and the tug of war. She had a few turns in the giant hamster balls and blow up obstacle course and slide. They had fun water activities and lots of rope climbs, net climbs, hula hoops, dancing, pogo sticks, and topped it off with lemonade and popsicles.

Water games
Alli in the hamster ball
Allison and Paighton waiting for the hamster ball.
Running her leg of the relay race.
Nice job Allison!

Allison finished her second year of Girl Scouts this year. She bridged from being a Brownie to a Junior. She joined a new troop this year and has really liked it. They do a lot more outdoor stuff. She went on a campout at the Zoo a few weeks ago. They went on a night hike while they were there and saw the animals while they were sleeping. Then they slept in one of the exhibits. She has a few good friends in her troop too. I am glad she has found something that she looks forward too.

Allison with her Girl Scout Troop
Walking through the rainbow bridge.
She is now a Junior Cadette instead of a Brownie.

This week at school they had the talent show and awards ceremony. Allison and her friend Hailey started working on a cheer routine at the very beginning of the year. Somewhere along the way it got changed to Hailey and Paighton doing the cheer (I think because they had matching cheer outfits) and Allison was the comedic relief/judge for the cheer leaders. They were all pretty excited about it and had fun doing it.

Allison was awarded the Student of the Month for P.E. and Miss Coovert gave her the Helping Hand Award because she is always willing to help in the class room. She is a very helpful girl when she wants to be.

She can also be thoughtful. The past week or so she has been learning to sew a little bit. She made a few pillow cases for herself to use. Then she decided to make little throw pillows for each of her Grandma’s so she picked out some fabric, I helped a little but she cut, sewed, stuffed and then decorated them pretty much on her own. They turned out pretty cute. She definitely has talented crafty side. In between sewing projects she decided to make a snack serving platter for her chips, salsa, and fruit. It actually worked quite well.

Mother’s Day Weekend

For Mother’s Day weekend Ryan and Matthew decided that I would love to watch baseball. Just kidding. The coach asked if the moms were on board for a tournament that weekend and none of us were going to be the one that poohooed the idea so the coach decided that’s what we would want to do for Mother’s Day. The boys probably put him up to it though.

I do very much enjoy watching them play though so I wasn’t put out. The rain decided to come down almost nonstop for the whole weekend though so instead of playing baseball we spent most of it waiting the rain out in the car, or under an overhang somewhere. One of our games was close to one of the players homes so we went and had a little Mother’s Day celebration there while we waited for a bit. The boys each gave us a red carnation with a card that they wrote a little note to us on and it had a team picture and an individual picture of Matthew for me. There was brownies, donuts, and chocolate too so it was a pretty fun time. While the moms hung out and relaxed the boys and the rest of the kids decided to have a game of wiffle ball in the cul de sac. I think we only ended up playing one game the whole weekend. We all went to lunch together while we were waiting too. We do enjoy this team and the families. Everyone is nice and friendly and for the most part gets along. We have fun times together.

Emilee and Allison love being around the boys. Allison plays is cool and tries to act like she could take them or leave them. Neither one of them is supposed to be in the dug out but Allison will casually meander in there and try and go unnoticed as long as she can. Emilee is much less subtle. She knows better but occasionally I have to haul her out of the dug out or an after game huddle. She likes to give the boys more attention then they usually want with hugs, jokes, sharing toys, tickling, stealing their hats, offering one sunflower seed at a time, asking them for sunflower seeds and anything else she can think of. Some of them don’t know what to do with her so they just pretend she isn’t there. A few start calling for Matthew to ‘fix her’ and a couple are sweet and play a little bit with her. We remind Matthew that they will never admit it (at least Allison) but they watch him like a hawk and want to be like him and with him as much as they can so when he can he needs to include them. Sometimes I get an eye roll but most of the time he is good about letting them hang around when they can.

Team lunch waiting for better weather.
Matthew running the bases in wiffle ball.
All the moms and the boys on Mother’s Day.
Emilee spending a half inning on dads lap.
Matthew forgot how to wear a shirt.
Emilee giving Cam the run down on how many flowers she collected so far.

April’s Memorable Moments.

Opening day for Spring Baseball! These two were skipping out the door with a big smile at 7am on a Saturday.
2019 Spring Baseball NBA Adams team
First home run!

Matthew’s most memorable moment this month has been the start of baseball. After months of off season practicing and boost workout sessions it was finally time to start playing again. It was harder to say who is more excited between Matthew and Ryan but I will give Matthew a slightly higher mark for excitement. He played in a couple tournaments right off the bat. The first one was a bit of a let down. They played great the first game and then it went down hill from there. The next weekend they played awesome and ended up taking 2nd in their division for the tournament. More exciting than that was Matthew hitting his first home run! He was pretty pumped obviously. He has been envisioning that moment for years. He loved it and had a permanent grin on his face for several days after that. There has been a stretch of bad luck for us since then in having everyone healthy on the team. The weekend of his homerun Cam got hit by a pitch and had a concussion. I got hit by a foul ball from another field and got a concussion. During the following week at school Derrick and Caden got concussions at school in recess and PE. We had a few fills at games while everyone was recovering. The first game everyone was back Frank got hit in the head with a weighted warm up ball and got a concussion. It is a little ridiculous. I hope we are done with injuries and we will be ready to go for the season. The new Avenger’s movie-Endgame-came out so we all went to the movies together to watch it. We figured that would be a safe activity that no one should get a concussion at.

Making yummy smores
She made it all the way to the top.
An act of kindness coupon from Allison…

Allison’s most memorable moment was going on the Girls Scout Unit camp out. She likes to camp. She enjoys being able to run wild, eat smores and sleep outside. She had a great time. They had a choice to sleep in a cabin or in a little outdoor hut thing with three walls and a curtain for the fourth wall. She picked the outdoor hut thingy and was next to the curtain so she was a little chilly all night. She forgot to use the hand warmers she took to help keep her warm along with her sleeping back, flannel pj’s, two blankets, and a hat. She is a tough girl though and she survived and had a fun time despite the cold. Her age group was scheduled for the rock climbing area, which she was very excited to try. She made it to the top of the tallest wall they had.

The last picture in her memorable moments is more of a memorable moment for me about Allison. For the lesson in church one week they made coupons to give to someone to remind them to do nice things for people. All of Allison’s coupons said ‘might’ or ‘maybe’ in them. Ha! That is so Allison. You know where you stand though.

Bus ride for Emilee’s fieldtrip.
Emilee’s Paradise Park field trip
The car in this picture is the pace car, not the race car. 🙂

Emilee had her kindergarten field trip to Paradise Park this month. She asked me to be a chaperone for it so we got to ride on the bus together. It was her first bus ride and first time to Paradise Park. There were lots of different stations that they rotated through like cooking, art, face painting, water play, outside play, science, theater, and planting a plant. It was a fun time.

Later in the month Kenny, Sherri and Aubry came for a weekend visit. Sherri gave Kenny a Kansas City Speedway driving experience in a Lamborghini. Emilee and I went with them to watch him drive it. We got to be down in the pit and see them get in and drive off. Emilee liked the sounds the cars made, and of course the different colors. We are not a big race car family but it would be fun to go see a race sometime.

Love notes from Allison

I have shared a few of Allison’s not so nice notes that she has left for me, but a little while ago when Ryan and I went to bed and found a nice note on our closet doors for us. It is even laminated with contact paper so she can erase and write something else occasionally. Our Allison has a sweet little heart.

Emilee’s Kindergarten Musical

After many years of attending Matthew and Allison’s school programs and trying to see over a bunch of tall heads with little success it was finally Emilee’s turn to have her first school musical. I think she was just as excited that it was Matthew and Allison’s turn to try and see over peoples heads to watch her. Luckily Emilee is one of the tallest, if not the tallest kindergartner so she was up on the top row of the risers and we could see her pretty well most of the time. It was pretty cute. They did songs with a forest/jungle theme and dressed up as different animals. Emilee was assigned to dress up as a porcupine. She strongly declined having a solo speaking part. She did however agree to do the Jungle Hop dance with a small group of other kids. She did a great job.

As excited as we were to see her performance, I was not to thrilled about trying to come up with a porcupine costume. I walk the line between balancing the right amount of time,energy and money for a cute costume that will be worn one time for 20 minutes. It seems like I am often on the ‘most obscure’ costumes list too. Some of the trickier ones we have had to come up with is a worm (we had this one twice, very tricky to not look like a piece of poop or a male body part), Humpty Dumpty (with enough pizzazz and sparkle that Allison would wear it) a snowflake, an Indian, a nerd and a zookeeper (not to be confused with a garbage man).

Each kid is a little different in what they are willing or want to wear too. Matthew usually doesn’t care what I hand him to wear so he is pretty easy. Allison is the trickiest. As soon as she is assigned to dress up as something she immediately rants about how dumb it is and says she refuses to do it. If she sees or hears anything that might indicate you are making a costume it starts the rant all over. Then the day before the performance after everyone at school has been talking about their costumes and building up the excitement she will come to me with a complete over the top idea of how she will dress up as the assigned whatever and expect me to pull it of thin air immediately. This caused complete meltdowns, hair pulling frustration and crying on both our parts the first few years. I really started loathing school programs. However, by the time second grade came around I had figured out a pretty good way to appease my, plan ahead and keep it simple style, and Allison’s flare for drama and statement making style. I digress, Emilee is a mix of the two. I can make whatever I want for her to wear but unlike Allison she does not want to stand out and if she feels like she does she will have nothing to do with it. Case in point. If you ask Emilee if she raised her hand at school she will look and you with a mortified look on her face and say, “No! If you raise your hand people look at you!” So, when I saw she was supposed to be a porcupine I was a little stumped on what would work for her. Pinterest was no help with low key simple costumes. Eventually I came across a porcupine wall decal that would fit perfectly on the front of her shirt. Then we put a pony tail in her hair and made it ‘spiky’. Taadaa! Both of us were happy campers. In fact, I personally thought only one other person had a better costume (according to my criteria of time,effort,money vs 20 minute usage.) One of Emilee’s besties Laney was a peacock. She had a peacock feather in her headband and a shirt that said ‘Pretend I am a Peacock’. How perfect is that! I told her mom I was doing that for whatever Emilee ended up being next year.

Spring Break 2019

Spring Break was a week earlier than usual this year, and with as much time off in February as we had by the time it came to Spring Break I felt like we had already been having a Spring Break.

Ryan and I talked about doing something further away like maybe Chicago or Gulf Shores. Neither of us got around to planning it though and we had asked our friends the McDonald’s to do something with us. By the time we did get around to planning it we decided to do a long weekend in St Louis with the McDonald’s and spend the rest of the week at home.

Monday was my catch up day. I told the kids that I was going to be checking as much off my to do list as I could then we would have more Spring Break like activities the rest of the week. Monday was actually the first sunny day with temperatures in the 40’s instead of teens so it felt wonderful to be outside. I ‘made’ the kids go to the park for 30 minutes at least. Three hours later I had to drag them home with sun burned faces. After a quick refueling they were back outside playing baseball and riding bikes, playing tag, roller skating, digging in the dirt, and having a great time being outside. It definitely gave us all Spring fever. It was just a teaser though because the rest of the week was cold windy and rainy.

Tuesday was cold and rainy so we decided to go swimming at the Olathe Community Center with the rest of the people in Olathe. Despite the large crowd the kids still had fun. Emilee in particular can’t wait until it is swimming weather again.

Allison picked our activity on Wednesday. A few weeks earlier she had gone to the Johnson County Museum with her girl scout troop. She loved the kids area and has been begging to go back again. We invited our cousins to go with us. The boys stayed behind to play some video games and the girls came with us. They played at the museum until we were all hungry and then we went to Chick-Fil-A for lunch. We topped the day off with a sleepover.

Johnson County Museum
‘modern art’ toys
Spinning chairs at the museum.

Thursday we played around the house and packed up to get ready to go on our weekend getaway. Friday morning we followed the McDonald’s to St Louis and spent the weekend there. We stopped for lunch and then went to The Arch. We had all seen it before but we had never been in it, or seen the museum with it. It was cool to see the view from the arch. The tiny round 5 person pod that takes you 600+ feet into the air was a little claustrophobic but bearable. After the arch we checked into our hotel and then went to Dave-N-Busters for dinner and to play in the arcade for the evening. Matthew figured out the timing on one of the ticket winning machines so he scored a bunch of tickets for everyone. It almost took longer for then to ‘shop’ with their tickets than it did to play the games. It was a fun night.

Then next morning after breakfast at the hotel (one of the kids favorite things about staying in a hotel) we went to the City Museum. It is an incredible place. It is an old ten story building that they have converted into a giant play area. We went a few years ago and it was a little nerve racking trying to keep track of the kids. They can crawl in a hole and come out in a completely different room. It is almost impossible to keep track of them. They are older now so I was a little less worried. We set a meeting spot and split up to explore. There is caves, and a catacomb area with a ten story slide. There are basically just mazes and places to crawl around all over. There is an outside portion the has tunnels and paths leading all around that is literally attached to the side of the building so you are hanging in the air. Everything is made with recycled material too. It is hard to explain but it is a pretty amazing place. We spent most of the day there exploring. When we were worn out, we ate lunch and then stopped at a well known ice cream place that I can not for the life of me remember the name of now. It was yummy though. We were meeting our long time friends the Schellman’s that night so we had about an hour to kill before we were supposed to meet them. We all decided to stop at the park and play because the weather was pretty nice. After dinner and visiting with the Schellman’s for a few hours we met back up with the McDonald’s at the hotel and the kids all swam for a few hours. The second best part about staying in a hotel. Sunday morning we went to church with the Schellman’s and then drove home. It was a fun weekend. It was nice to get out of town for a few days and enjoy some fun time with family and friends.

Fortune cookie at dinner on Spring Break
We went to St Louis with the McDonald’s
Top of the St Louis Arch
Entrance to the pod that takes you to the top of the arch.
The McDonald Pod
The Terry Pod
Riding up to the top of the arch in our five man pod.
looking out the tiny windows
Top of the Arch
Top of the Arch
View from the top of the Arch
Top of the Arch 2019
Lined up against the outside of the Arch
City Museum in St Louis
Allison crawling through a tube above me.
Emilee peaking out a castle window.

Mystery Lunch with the Girl Scouts

Emilee and Allison both went to the red carpet mystery lunch that another Girl Scout Troop put on. Neither of them had been before so they didn’t quite understand what it was. They are given a menu with items to order in four separate courses. Each course has three choices from the menu but you can only pick each one once. After a course was finished they took your plate away so that you didn’t have anything to start the next course. The entire meal was macaroni noodles with spaghetti sauce, meatballs, and Parmesan cheese, lemonade, a bread stick, salad with ranch, and a Ding Dong for dessert. Emilee was not amused when they brought her the first course she had ordered. It was a knife, fork and meatballs. She lightened up and enjoyed it when her next course included a Hostess Ding Dong. Allison and her troop were swapping and trading their food so they could all get a good course. One of her courses was ranch, Parmesan cheese and a fork. After they finished eating they let all the girls walk the read carpet in the fancy dresses or whatever they wore and get pictures taken. Emilee was mortified, Allison ate it up. Overall it was a fun activity.

Girls Scout Mystery Meal
Mystery meal red carpet walk
Mystery Meal Red Carpet
Mystery Meal Red Carpet

Bye Bye February

Its already mid March but I wanted to bid a formal farewell to February. I’m glad it’s over, good riddance. For being the shortest month of the year, February sure felt LONG. At least the last half of the month did. This winter has had a lot more snow then usual. I think it is safe to say we are past the snow part but I’ll ‘knock on wood’ as I type this. Usually we have 2-3 snow days each winter, this year we had seven, five of those were in February.🤦‍♀️😒 February is also ‘famous’ around here for having the most days off of school. So just for fun lets do a little math. There were twenty possible days to attend school this month. Twenty minus five snow days, one holiday, and three scheduled days off of school, takes it down to 11 days of school. Mingled among those 11 days of school, each of the kids was sick for 2-3 days at different times. This added five doctor visits to our month. Adding in the regular stuff we have going on and my work schedule that I over booked this month and I felt a little more stressed and discombobulated than I usually do.

It isn’t that I don’t like the kids being home, it was nice to have snow days and a little break from the school schedule but it is hard to keep a some what constructive environment going when it is repeatedly being canceled, postponed, and rescheduled. It felt like a constant state of unknown plans which drives me crazy. I also feel like the older I get the more I notice that I start to get a little stir crazy and have the winter blues by the time February comes around. I’m just ready for some sunshine, foliage, and fresh air. The kids show signs of needing to get out and stretch their legs and burn off energy too.

Dad is just going about his business while Emilee dresses him up.
I love pictures like this
Awards from Grandpa Jones
Mrs. Pahl’s student of the month
Emilee named our snow man- Mrs Snowman because it is a girl.
Emilee wanted to make a giant snow man on our 7th snow day.
We smoked the escape room with 20 minutes to spare.
Allison’s sleep over with Hailey

Winter Festivities

This year our resident NFL team did really well. They ended up making it to the play-offs. They haven’t done that for 20 years or something like that. I don’t remember they exact statistic. This year they made it to the play-offs so Ryan took Matthew and went with a friend of his from high school. They got seats for the lower bowl on the 35 yard line. It was COLD! Like low 30’s with snow and wind. They had several layers of everything plus snow pants and boots. They stayed pretty warm except for their toes, but that didn’t stop them from having a great time. The Chiefs won too! They lost the next week, but they won the game they were at which made it even more fun.

Chiefs Play Off Game!
Chiefs Play Off game with dad.
Chiefs Play Off Game 2019

The girls have been taking gymnastics for a few years. A couple months ago we switched to a new gym and they had pictures recently. So I got a cute picture of each of my gymnasts.

Allison’s gymnastic picture
Emilee’s gymnastic pictures

The high school has a Saturday cheerleader camp every couple of months. Allison and her friend Carlee like to go together and dance it up together.

Cheer Camp
Cheer Camp

This is Emilee’s second year playing basketball. She has come a long way. Last year she wouldn’t run to the other end of the court. When the ball went to the other side of the court she would sit under the basket against the wall and wait until everyone came back. This year she runs the court. If she gets tired though she comes up into the bleachers and asks Ryan and I if she can be done. Matthew works on her dribbling with her during the week and she is getting better.

Emilee having a team huddle with her basketball team ‘The Bears’
Emi playing in her basketball game.

February is always an odd month. Its short anyways and there is usually teacher conferences and President’s Day which are no school days. Then there is usually snow days. So far this month thanks to ice storms we have had FOUR snow days and its only half way through the month. Nothing makes the kids quite as excited as a surprise day off of school. We try to get in some fun activities and of course lots of playing in the snow.

Snow day facials
Matthew and Carson built a snow fort.
Emilee and Jovee built a snowman.
Allison and Leah went sledding with Ross and Lauren.
Emilee and Jovee working on their snowman.

Allison was Ms. Coovert’s class Student of the Month. She gets a special certificate and a coupon for a free ice cream at Culver’s. She was very excited and Ryan and I were very proud of her. One of her besties Hailey was PE Student of the Month with her.

Allison was the Student of the Month
Student of the Month with Hailey

More pictures from our Winter.

Allison decided to use her bean bag as her pillow.
Emilee’s 100th day of school celebration
The 6th Graders went on a ski field trip.
I thought this was a cute picture so I just stuck it in here. 🙂

Allison’s Valentine’s Box

Allison begins planning her Valentine’s Day box several months before it is time to make it. In fact about the time Halloween ends that is the next project she starts thinking about. Last year it was a giant robot covered in aluminum foil and then colored in different colors representing slime. This year she had a very unique idea as well. My parents were visiting so she recruited my dad to help her draw it and then she painted it… pictures are worth a thousand words so I’ll let you see for yourself. She is a pretty darn good artist.

Allison’s Valentine’s Box
She went with a rooster!