Allison – Page 6 – Terry Family Shenanigans

Allison is DOUBLE DIGITS

Allison had her 10th birthday. Double digits for her is a big deal! She has told us that her standing in the world is basically an adult now that she has two digits in her age. She is beyond excited to be able to say, “I am 10 years old!” Instead of the slightly less dignified, “I am basically 10.”

She originally approached me with a three day two night party plan with her closest 20 friends. After some negotiating we were able to get it narrowed down to something a little more manageable for her no fun mom. She helped plan a very good party for herself. She invited a few friends over to watch a gymnastics movie about mid afternoon and play some games. Then per her request we had Wendy’s for dinner. Of course their was blowing out candles and a cookie cake and opening presents. Then they went not just swimming, but swimming at the end of the day so it was dark and the pool lights were on. It is fun to swim in the dark.

After swimming they cleaned up and watched a movie outside in the driveway with lots of movie snacks. Then they goofed around in the basement until they fell asleep. The next morning we had donuts and juice for breakfast. After breakfast they all piled into the car for the last activity of the party, open gym at the gymnastics gym. When that was over everyone was pretty tired and went home to hopefully take a nap.

It was a fun group of girls, I think Allison had a fun time and loved celebrating herself. Her dad and I gave her a hover board which she was beyond excited about. She zips around all over the place with it.

Just Going to Leave This Right Here.

All right dear Allison. This post is about you. Maybe no one ever reads it again. Maybe we laugh about it together in the future. Maybe it is just for immediate therapy.

You are a strong willed, determined, passionate human being. I love those qualities in you but I admit they are also sometimes difficult to help you learn to manage and direct. I know sometimes I am to overbearing and short and impatient with you. I promise it is something I work on daily. Darn it girl! You don’t make it easy sometimes. We seem to struggle more sometimes than others with getting along with each other and lately it has been more struggle than not.

Yesterday we had some dentist appointments and then were meeting some friends at the Butterfly Garden to spend the afternoon. The dental appointments went a little quicker than usual, we had an hour drive and were still going to be a little early to meet our friends. There was a McDonald’s right next to us so I asked the girls if they wanted to get a little snack to eat on the way at McDonald’s. This is how the next few minutes went.

Me: Ok, I will swing by McDonald’s and you can each get something.

Allison: Is there a Wendy’s? I like Wendy’s better.

Me: No, there is not a Wendy’s around here. We are by McDonald’s already, that is why I said McDonald’s.

Allison: We passed a Burger King on the way here. Can we go there instead?

Me: (deep breath- 9 out of 10 times when we have any plans or decisions made Allison will request they be changes for her convenience- we have time to kill, it isn’t a big deal) Sure, it isn’t on the way but since it is pretty close and we have a little extra time we can go to Burger King instead.

A few minutes later pulling into BK I ask the girls what they want. Emilee wants french toast sticks and Allison requests mozzarella sticks. It is still early so I ask the employee if they are making mozzarella sticks or not. They say they are not but will make them ‘special’. I look at the menu and it says 4 or 8 sticks, and ask Allison how many she wants.

Allison: I want 5.

Me: They don’t do 5. You can do 4 or 8.

Allison: I only want 5. I will eat 6. Can you ask them for 6.

Me: (deep breath-Allison often likes to ignore facts, rules, or guidelines and will just keep repeating her question/statement to see if the answer will change) 6 is not an option. 4 or 8 is the option. If you want 6 get 8 and share the rest with others.

Allison: Uugg. I will do 4. Ask them for extra mozzarella.

Me: They are already made sticks, you can’t add mozzarella to them.

Allison: Why can’t you just ask. It doesn’t seem hard to add cheese to something.

Me: (deep breath) Tell the person we are ready to order and ask for 8 mozzarella. As I do this Allison repeats over and over in my ear from the back seat to just ask for extra mozzarella. I ignore her.

Allison: Rolls her window down (which I usually have locked for reasons just like this) and interrupts me and asks the employee if she can change her order to 6 sticks and add extra cheese.

I take another deep breath while the employee says, as you might expect, “We only have 4 or 8 sticks, and we can’t add extra cheese but we can do extra sauce.” Allison then changes her order to 4 sticks and NO extra sauce. I take another deep breath and pull forward to get the food. As we wait she repeatedly asks in my ear from the back seat to ask for extra sauce because she now wants extra sauce. They hand me me the bag and there is a large container of sauce-easily plenty for 4 sticks. She insists it is not enough, so I ask for an extra sauce and we drive away.

Allison ends up eating 4 sticks with no sauce because ‘it tastes weird’.

I have had several conversations with Allison in the past when my patience is better about doing things efficiently, or easily, or conveniently, or considering others time or preferences. When I finish she explains to me that efficiency, ease, and convenience are below zero on her scale of importance when making decisions and other peoples needs she will try to consider more often but by her tone are barely above the previous reasons. Her desires, interests, aesthetic appeal, and fun are what drives her decisions. So we continue our daily interactions with very different approaches. One thing is for sure, we will both help each other build our patience and endurance.

April Fool’s Day

This is a day that I usually prefer to pass by unnoticed and then pretend to be disappointed when someone remembers we missed it. Most of my family seems to be on the same page with my opinion, with the exception of Allison. She anticipates it for months and has almost the same giddy excitement she has for Christmas or her birthday when it gets close. With the entire Nation on stay-at-home orders I think in general most people paid more attention to it this year, simply because of lack of other things happening. Allison had a long list of tricks ready to go.

She placed a piece of card board in all the toilets. Thank goodness she hasn’t discovered other ‘options’ for this classic trick, that I will not even mention here because she does eventually read this.

She put tape across several doorways. This happened to be the day I did laundry and often was carrying things in front of me so I couldn’t see as well. So I personally ‘fell’ for this one at least 5 times and so did others. She was very pleased with herself.

I also found tape covering the faucet when I turned it on in my bathroom.

The one she did that made me chuckle the most was drawing on Emilee’s arm while she was sleeping. Emilee came in and said, “Mom, I don’t remember drawing any of this on my arm.” She still draws on herself enough that it was a total possibility she did it, but was confused she couldn’t recall it.

Allison’s pride and joy prank for the day was getting a hold of Matthew’s cell phone and changing her contact to “Campbell” who is Matthew’s crush. She then texted him like she was Campbell. Matthew figured out pretty quickly that it wasn’t Campbell but he thought it was her sister. He even told Allison about it and she was giggling while she sat right next to him and continued to text. He figured it out shortly after that. Then I helped him change it back and change the password on his phone so she couldn’t get into it anymore.

The winning prank of the day was by me though. Thanks to my neighbors. They pranked me first with the following pictures.

This is the Governor of Kansas. I was shocked when I saw the schools would go through July.

Once they new they got me they said they were looking it and would send me more info when they found it. A minute or so later she said here is what we found. and send me this.

I was still a little confused and thought it was not very appropriate of the Governor of Kansas to do something like this. Then I saw the subtitle-the Hogan’s are the neighbors that sent it to me. They got me good. Then I decided to pass it forward to my kids.

Allison was mad for a good 30 minutes before she calmed down. 🤦‍♀️

Quarantine Entertainment…Day 2 of SECOND Quarantine

Emilee’s Answers (Age 7)

If you won a million dollars, what would you buy? candy and a new bike and some stuffed animals and more candy
How long does it take to get to the Europe? 10 hours
What do I always say to you? I love you
What job do you want to do when you grow up? Dolphin trainer
What is the capital of America? The flag or the eagle
Where do babies come from? Your mom’s belly
What age do you become an adult? 31
If you could change one rule your family has, what would it be? Eat candy for dinner
If you could be a superhero, what superpower would you have? speed and magic
What would you do to save the planet? pick up trash
If you could eat one thing for the rest of your life what would it be? donuts
How much does it cost to buy a house? $1000
Why do you think we should be nice to others? Because it spreads to be kind to others
What does love mean to you? That you love someone with your heart
What are you scared of? The dark
What it so important to you? My family
What makes you angry? When someone sticks their tongue at me and calls me names.
What is your favorite thing to do? Play with electronics and my Lego dragons.

Allison’s answers (Age 9)

If you won a million dollars, what would you buy? Pets
How long does it take to get to the Europe? 1 day
What do I always say to you? Do your job.
What job do you want to do when you grow up? Nurse
What is the capital of America? A
Where do babies come from? The butt
What age do you become an adult? 18
If you could change one rule your family has, what would it be? You can get a phone when you want, or have multiple pets.
If you could be a superhero, what superpower would you have? Fly and invisible
What would you do to save the planet? Get rid of plastic bags and straws
If you could eat one thing for the rest of your life what would it be? Pizza and donuts
How much does it cost to buy a house? $24,000
Why do you think we should be nice to others? It is easier
What does love mean to you? caring for others
What are you scared of? Spiders
What it so important to you? Peanut my guinea pig
What makes you angry? When Emilee is annoying
What is your favorite thing to do? Watch You Tube and eat donuts

Matthew’s Answers (Age 13)

If you won a million dollars, what would you buy? House
How long does it take to get to the Europe? 8 hours by plane
What do I always say to you? Listen!
What job do you want to do when you grow up? Play baseball or do something sports related
What is the capital of America? Washington DC
Where do babies come from? Women
What age do you become an adult? 18
If you could change one rule your family has, what would it be? No electronics on weekdays
If you could be a superhero, what superpower would you have? reading minds
What would you do to save the planet? Cure cancer
If you could eat one thing for the rest of your life what would it be? Sushi
How much does it cost to buy a house? $500,000
Why do you think we should be nice to others? So we could get along and have a better world.
What does love mean to you? Family
What are you scared of? Suffocating
What it so important to you? Sports
What makes you angry? When Allison is rude.
What is your favorite thing to do? baseball

Parent Teacher Conferences

As I have mentioned part of the reason for our pre-Spring Break is because it is parent teacher conference time.

I went and saw all of the kids teachers and saw how they are doing. Matthew was supposed to come with me and show me a presentation that he had made about how his year has been going. He was sick so I just went myself and his teacher showed me. He is doing great. He catches on pretty quick most of the time and things seem easy. His biggest area to grow in is challenging himself more. Not just doing the minimum and being done. Pushing himself to go above the minimum even if it is uncomfortable (because it will be) and growing more than the ‘requirement’. When I was telling him how his conference went I told him this is a nice way of his teacher saying-don’t be lazy, and I agree. He rolled his eyes and said ‘okay mom’. Then I gave him a hug and told him I am proud of his effort he does put in. I know a lot of moms that have to remind, nag, beg, threaten their kid to not just do homework but turn it in, and even admit they have it. I ask Matthew on occasion if he has done his homework but more so he doesn’t feel like I don’t care than I am worried he hasn’t done it. Since Kindergarten he has come home and done his homework on his own unless he needs help without being asked.

Allison was also supposed to come with me to her conference. She did and showed me her slide presentation she prepared for me. Then we went through some of the papers she had written the first part of the year. She is doing very well and her creativity shows just as much in her school work as it does in other areas of her life. I took a picture of a couple so share. Even her research reports are fun to read. She is a talented girl. She excels in many areas. One of her favorites right now is Math. She seems to have a good portion of her dads engineering brain. I am very proud of her and how hard she works. Her area of improvement is to slow down and take her time. It isn’t a race to finish everything. Then she gave me all the sticky notes she had collected from various teachers on the board of “items needed” for their classrooms, while she was waiting for me to finish Emilee’s conference. When I tried to explain the items are for the kids/parents to get that are actually in that teachers class and picking one was enough she was mortified at my “lack of caring for others and their needs.” When I told her I would split the cost of whatever she wanted to get for the teachers she put a few back and kept a more reasonable amount of sticky notes. 😘

Learning about geese was more entertaining then I thought possible

Emilee was the only one that was not supposed to come to her conference. While I enjoy my children’s company this is the way I prefer to have a parent teacher conference-with just the people listed in the title of the event. Emilee has improved her reading a lot this year. I will admit I was a little bit nervous at the beginning of the year. It was a bit of a struggle to get her to even try to read. She has tried hard and is doing really well now. In Emilee’s life in general I feel like she has started to accept the fact that she can do a lot of stuff for herself. While she is the youngest and all of us are guilty of just doing things for her because it is easier-and quite frankly she prefers it that way- I think we have made great strides in her willingness to try doing things on her own and for herself. She has shown it in playing basketball and not taking herself out of the game because she is ‘done’, making her own peanut butter sandwich, and reading books on her own even though she might not know every word. Her teacher said she is a happy fun girl to have in class and I am proud of her too. She had a very good folktale about how guinea pigs learned to run I got to see at her conference.

Allison’s Famous Pictures

This is when Allison was three maybe 4. Ryan’s company was putting out some new media and asked if Allison could be the kid for the pictures about their work with different school districts. She looks adorable but she was having none of it that day. She wouldn’t smile for anything. The best they got was a silly face. Every now and then it pops up on mine or Ryan’s Facebook feed. I know it is in a picture book somewhere but I don’t think it has made it to my blog yet so I am going to put it here because she is a cutie.

The look on her face to me says, “You can beg me all you want to smile, I am no ones puppet.”

Guess what time it is?!

It is Valentine’s celebration at school time! It was Emilee’s turn to have me help at her class party so I went and ran a game for them. There were many cute boxes and lots of excited kids. It is cute to see them deliver all their valentines. I helped with a game called Cupids Arrow. Each kid get a straw and a bunch of q-tips. They put the q-tip in the straw then blow through the straw and try to get it in a bowl. One boy started at the game area and was not happy at it because ‘the games are always boring and the worst part of the party’. Once I explained and started the game, he ended up being the biggest fan and was hard to get to move on to the next area. Emilee opted to go with a traditional mail box for her Valentine Box that she decorated.

Handing out her candy and excited about the candy she will find in her own box when she is done. The girl has the worlds biggest sweet tooth.

Allison’s party was not at exactly the same time so I was able to stop by and hang out with her at her party for a little bit too. True to her previous endeavors when making her Valentine Box she had to go bigger then the year before. Last year is her last year to make boxes which will be sad to not see the creative ideas she comes up with, but good in that they can’t get to much bigger or she won’t be able to carry them with out help. She went with the Rooster theme like last year but created an entire scene instead of just one rooster. This poor guy is running for his like so he doesn’t get eaten by the roosters that are quickly gaining on him. The last rooster is reminding them that they are vegetarians and don’t really want to eat him. The barn door is where you put the valentines.

Allison stuck with the Rooster theme again this year.

Fabulous February

It has been snowing almost weekly this winter. That is a lot more often that usual for us. Most of them have been less than an inch but some have been a couple inches. Several of them have been the really wet snow that is good for snowman building. We have played a lot in the snow but winter is always a time to get creative about what to do indoors.

Allison has her braces on and gets to go to the dentist a lot these days to have them checked. She found a fun toy in the treasure box after her last visit.

Allison also tried her hand out at the school National Geographic Geography Bee this year. She was the representative for her class. I was proud of her for trying it. The questions were pretty hard.

December!!

Merry Christmas!! December is here. I knew that with Thanksgiving being late Christmas would sneak up pretty quick this year and it has. SO BUSY! I have made a point the last few years to make an effort to not over pack the activities and that has been the plan this year. There just is a bunch of stuff going on this time of year between, regular schedules, end of year stuff, plus holidays. So it has still been busy but I am enjoying it. I have cut out a lot of family activities. We still do stuff together but I have just done the things that the kids have brought up and wanted to do. So some of our favorite activities this December have been wearing our PJ’s grabbing some hot chocolate and driving around looking at Christmas lights, watching a Christmas movie together (Elf and the Santa Claus movies 1-3 with Tim Allen are our favorites) We read my awesome Christmas book collection together a lot too. We decorated a ginger bread house too.

I have not done our White Elephant Christmas party that we did for years last year or this year. It is was fun to do but I am enjoying not doing it more. Ha! We simplified our treats for neighbors and friends this year too. Instead of making chocolate pretzels and other treats we put a note on a bottle of sparkling cider that said “Pop! Pop! Fizz! Fizz! Oh what a good neighbor you is!”

Some of the other fun things we have done is the girl scout holiday party. I am still a troop leader for Emilee’s troop so I was with them, but Allison was there too.

Our Elf Bubbit came. The girls always want him to come the day after Thanksgiving but Bubbit is one of Santa’s special elf helpers so he has to stay and help Santa until at least the 10th. Since we will be out of town this week Bubbit was able to come a few days before that. Emilee is our elf spotter. She can find him faster than anyone. She likes to leave him notes too.

The girls and I went on a neighborhood hay ride too. Allison wanted to have a seat at the front of the wagon with her friends but Emilee and I decided to sit at the back which worked out great because the second set of horses liked to be right behind the first so we could basically touch them. The girls sat on Santa’s lap afterwards too.

I sang with a group in the Relief Society Christmas activity. It has been a long time since I sang. It was a little stressful getting parts worked out. We originally started with 10 singers and ended up with only 5. We sounded good and it was fun though.

Ryan and I were put on the Ward Christmas Party planning group. We were in charge of Santa and his room and then activities to entertain the kids. The whole party went really well. Santa came with a Mrs Claus that was grumpy and I honestly would have liked to cut her out of all the pictures but it all worked out. The kids loved all the crafts, dinner was yummy, decorations were awesome. The person in charge of the program had a lot of primary kids play the piano, the ukulele, or viola, or sing a song. It was really fun.

Emilee and I went to one of the Highschool choir concerts. They sang a lot of fun songs. A lot of the songs they sang were ones I sang when I was in choir TWENTY years ago. Uuuuummmm, I just realized when I typed that my 20 year high school reunion is this summer! Wow that is crazy. Anyway, I digress. We all went to Leah’s choir concert as well. She is in a choir called Allegro. It was very nice. There is several different choirs and they all sang some very good Christmas songs together.

We had our first snow day for school this month. They cancelled church because we had a big snow storm and then school on Monday was canceled too. The cousins got to sled together for a few hours and we ended up with about 5 inches of snow. It was a fun winter treat before we head to Florida for Christmas.

Allison had a couple rough days, this is the first smile I got out of her after trying for a very very long time. I love her cute smile.

Cheer Banquet

Well, believe it or not, the first cheer season has come to a close. For those of you that are inexperienced with the cheer season, I have discovered it is longer than any other sport I have encountered thus far. It began way back in May with uniform ordering and sizing and 12 fundraisers, followed by camps and regular practice, more fundraising, cheering for games, more fundraising, the parade, then dance and cheer competition practices, then the actual competition, and finally followed by the Cheer Banquet in December. Oh boy, it is a long season. Allison enjoyed some of it. Breaking her arm before her first practice put a damper on things but she still had some fun. I think she loved the dance competition the most. Her little adorable face was lit up the second she walked out to the floor.

The cheer banquet invitation said it was “Hollywood Red Carpet Theme-dress to the nines” and it was the whole family. Ryan was out of town but the rest of us went and I made them dress up. There was probably 150 people there that night. NO ONE with the exception of about 50% of the cheer leaders dressed up fancy. For sure, none of the other family members were dressed up at all. We missed the note that most people just ignore the theme part of the banquet. So we did feel a little silly being all dressed up. They handed out awards to all the cheerleaders. A lot of the dads did a cheer dance performance for the girls that was a definite highlight. They did some fancy lifts and tosses and it was fun to watch.

After awards and dinner the rest of the night was a dance party. It took her a minute watching from the periphery but Allison joined in and had a fun night dancing with her friends.