Fun with Friends

 We've had a fun, but really busy week - though it's starting to seem like they are all busy...  Monday was the usual.  James and Payton playing together, laundry, school, piano practicing, grocery shopping.  We had the Sister missionaries over for dinner and had a fun family home evening lesson with them about giving your fears and shortcomings over to God and letting him help carry them.

Tuesday, James had preschool.  He got ready and picked two stuffed animals for show-and-tell and then he shoved the stuffed animals in his shirt and said "Look at me mommy - I have BIIIIG BIBS"  (no that's not a typo)  He was so cute and so funny!   He loves preschool!  After, we picked up Payton and then played until we went to get the kids from school.

Wednesday, Dan took Aaron in for his orthodontist appointment - Anna's had to be moved because the appliance hadn't arrived yet.  After dropping the older kids off at school, James and I went home - Tayanna and Nicole couldn't go to the library today and James was not in a great mood.  So he and I just hung out and read stories and took it easy.  After school was the usual and then I had choir, Aaron had cub scouts and Dan had Young Men's in the evening.

Thursday was another fun day of preschool for James.  After, I met with Christina for a bit to talk about some Choir stuff, then I had to rush over to pick up Payton.  After lunch, we had a bit of an adventure involving kid poop in the yard, but I was washed away with a hose with out too much trouble and all was mostly well.  :)   The kids had piano lessons after school and Eileen had an appointment to get her teeth pulled.  She was not happy, but Dan helped her feel better by getting her a new watch and a milk shake after.  She got home just in time for piano lessons.  In the evening, I went to Becca's Gender Reveal Party.  Becky and Natasha were there too which was fun and I got to meet Natasha's sister, just back from a mission in France.  Becca is having a GIRL!!!  And now I'm happily planning girl baby blanket and accessories.  :)  After, I stopped by Becca's house for a bit and said hi to Jeremiah, then headed home.

Friday was school as usual for the kids,  We watched Adeline and I went for my allergy shot, then the kids came home and the insanity ensued.  After doing their post-school stuff, they had to get stuff cleaned up for the pizza party.  Then we made pizza while Dan went with Nate to help out a lady in our ward.  After, Nate and Ally joined us for dinner and the kids ate pizza and watched "Jem and the Holograms"  It was awesome!  :)  Morgan came over in the evening, Her family is going to be moving soon and we are trying to get them some time to hangout together before she moves.

Saturday, Eileen had flute lessons in the morning, then I took her straight to the mall where we met up with the rest of our family and Morgan for Eileen and Anna's concert.  They both sang, and Anna did a trumpet solo with one of the pieces - and she did awesome!!  She was nervous, but she worked hard and she did amazing!  After, we let the younger kids play in the play area for a bit, and I took the older kids and we walked around for a bit - only to find ourselves in Claire's where I got suckered into getting the girls "Best Friend" necklaces along with some other fun little stuff for the kids since they were buy 3 get 3 free.

We have video of this, but it was too long for me to embed - I will have to figure out something else. 

After that, we all met up at Cold Stone for ice cream.  And a dance show by Evie and James....  

The kids all spent most of the rest of the afternoon playing outside with the chicks and helping Dan out with yard work.  Dan put in a lot of hard work taking out a stump, chopping up wood, helping a sweet older neighbor lady with her fence and building us a fire pit.  He had some help from a young man in the ward (and his dad) but he was tired by the end of the day!  I took Anna out shopping for some stuff for the weekend, then to trumpet lessons.  

After dinner, we built a fire in our new fire pit and roasted marshmallows and had s'mores

Sunday was great!  Sacrament meeting was wonderful with wonderful talks, I think my Sunday School lesson went well, and the Relief Society lesson was wonderful.  After was choir, then we went home for dinner and playing outside.  Morgan's mom picked her up and

Adventure Time

This week was an adventure.  Dan got a new bike on Saturday, but I didn't get a picture taken of him on his new bike until Monday - so here it is.  :)  Monday was a bit crazy for us.  The van wouldn't start in the morning, we tried charging the battery and it worked in time to drop Payton off at Preschool and it worked to pick him up, but when I went out to try to go get the kids from school, it wouldn't start.  I called Dan a bit desperate and he came and picked up the kids from school, and Payton's mom came to pick him up after.  We had the missionaries over for dinner that night, we had hamburgers and guacamole and salad.  

Well after that battery trouble, Dan took the car in the next day to get a new battery.  James had preschool in the morning, and then Payton came over to play in the afternoon before we picked up the kids from school.  Eileen and Anna had choir, then in the evening, Anna had her trumpet lessons.

Wednesday morning, Anna and Aaron had an orthodontist visit - Aaron was getting spacers and Anna was getting fitted for a retainer.  She won't actually have to wear braces at all, and Aaron will hopefully get away with only wearing them for a little while.  They were still able to make it in time to school since it was a late start day.  I dropped off Evie and Eileen and then James and I picked up Tayanna and Nicole and headed to the library.  James actually participated some this time and was really sweet about sharing and helping out.  He had a lot of fun after in the kids room playing around and singing for me while I took a video.  After was the usual get kids from school, do piano practicing and homework and such.  The evening was, as usual, packed with Scouts, Cub Scouts, Activity Days, and Choir.

Thursday, James had preschool again and as always had a blast!!  After, we stopped by the park for a little bit before we had to go pick up Payton.  The boys always have so much fun together!  After school was piano lessons and in the evening, I had institute.  I've really been enjoying Institute and taking some extra time in the week to study the scriptures.  I've also been enjoying getting to know our teacher - Sister Ker - better. She's in our ward and I've always thought that we had a lot in common and would get along well together, but she had 5 kids and I have 5 kids and so we haven't had as much time to get to know each other before.

Friday, started out with a Dentist visit and an allergy shot.  James is a social kid and loves having kids to play with or adults to chat with.  After, we took it easy for the day and then got the older kids from school.  Weather was supposed to be getting bad, but it stayed pretty nice until the night when it started raining.

By Saturday it had turned to snow and was falling good and hard.  A lot of the things we had scheduled for Saturday ended up getting cancelled - though the roads never really got that bad.  So in stead of being crazy busy all day Saturday, we just had Eileen's flute lessons, driving Doug to the airport to go visit Julia and then a date night in the evening.  Dan went to help clean the church in the morning and then grabbed some groceries for the weekend.  Other than that we spent the day cleaning the house and getting it presentable.  In the evening, Dan and I went to dinner with the Kers.  We went to Texas de Brazil and ate WAY too much food and had a great time chatting and hanging out together.

The snow continued all Saturday and through Sunday morning, but thankfully the roads weren't too bad, so we still got to go to church - which I was grateful for because the talks in Sacrament meeting were wonderful, the musical number was wonderful and the lessons in R,S, was wonderful.  I hope my lesson was also good and that they learned something that will help them.  After church was choir, then we had the Crocketts over for dinner.  I got to spend a bunch of time holding their new baby and the kids had fun together and the adults had fun playing games together.  Now thankfully the weather is supposed to warm up and melt all this snow!

Don't my kids ever go to school??

So after have all last week off for Spring Break, and two snow days the week before, my kids also had Monday off for a teacher work day - hence the title of the post....  But we had a fun day Monday.  We went to the Wildlife Refuge with a friend who was hanging out with us for the morning.  The Visitor's Center is closed on Mondays, but we drove around and walked around the lake area a bit.  We got to see the buffalo and saw lots of animal tracks and drove past a ton of deer hanging out really close to the road.  The kids loved it and loved getting to see and take pictures of the wildlife.  After, we stopped by the house to grab water and lunches and Koopa and headed to the park.  We all had fun playing and the kids also had fun climbing trees (I skipped that part) All went well and then we came home and played around the house in the afternoon.  I didn't get much laundry done though... :(  

Tuesday morning, James decided that he was going to do the dishes.  He carefully wiped down each one and put them in the dishwasher.  He was so cute and helpful!  And he liked doing it so much that he has wanted to do the dishes every day since...  After that he had preschool and then we picked up Payton.  The boys always have fun together, but on Tuesday they forgot the rule about not taking off clothes.  After we picked up the kids from school and choir, Anna had her trumpet lessons in the evening.  The girls school choir is doing a song that has a trumpet part and Anna is trying hard to learn it in time to play with the choir!  She is so dedicated and hard working when she wants something.

Wednesday, James and I had to go to the library alone, Riley was sick :(  James is so funny because he wants to go to Story Time, but he wants to sit in my lap and read other books during story time, then once it's over, he wants to go play.  After school was the usual craziness and then I had choir, Dan had Young Men, Aaron had cub scouts and Eileen played babysitter for us.

Thursday, James had preschool again.  He loves his preschool friends!!  After, we picked up Payton again - he now gets to come play 3 days a week and James is happy about that.  After school was piano lessons.  The kids did well and had fun.  We let Eileen take some of the chicks outside - the weather was nice and we figure it's about time to start getting them used to being outside.  They are really getting big and getting lots of feathers, it's exciting and the kids love them!

Friday I went over to my friend's house to help out with her son while she took her daughter to surgery.  He hadn't gotten a good night sleep the night before though, so he took a nap most of the time I was there, so James and I played together and ate lunch with her older daughter and mostly got to take it easy.  After, I picked up the kids from school and we headed home for the usual after school stuff.

Saturday was a busy and fun day. We all went to Gateway High School for a 5K (Dan) and Fun Run (all of us - including Dan who ended up doing both) We all got superhero capes, t-shirts and waterbottles along with breakfast.  Plus best of all we got to listen to Gateway's Jazz band play at the finish line.  They were really good and I had a lot of fun listening to them and Aaron was in 7th heaven getting to play on the drums a bit between songs.  Dan did really well - he got 3rd (we think - it's wasn't really well organized) overall and he did awesome!

After, we headed home and I did some yard work - first lawn mow of the season - and he went to go help a friend cut down some trees.  After that, he went with our friend Nate to go get a motorcycle.  It's not huge, but it's good looking and he's really excited about it!
Dan also got Anna a bike.  She had needed a new one for awhile, and he found the perfect bike for her!  Hopefully it will last her a few years!  She was so excited - all she has wanted to do since is ride her bike.
After that crazy Saturday, we were all exhausted and fell asleep quickly!

 Sunday was wonderful!  Church was awesome.  Anna and Evie bore their testimonies.  I talked too much during my lesson and went over - but it was good stuff!!  We had a combined RS/Priesthood meeting during 3rd hour about BSA and fundraising.  We spent our afternoon indexing and playing games and doing some fun craft stuff.  Dan and I had fun playing a game after the kids went to bed, and he was nice enough to let me win.

Spring Break and General Conference

Well the kids had the whole week off and thankfully we had good weather all week so we could have fun playing outside!  We started out Monday going to the DMNS.  I took the kids to the robot exhibit and they had a blast!  It was really pretty cool, but my favorite part was that it was all in one room so I could let the kids check out the whole thing and stay with James while still keeping an eye on all the others.  Eileen's favorite was the vacuum cleaning robot.... :)  

Dan wasn't feeling well that night so I sent him to bed while I did the grocery shopping and finished folding the laundry.  Got to bed a bit late (early) but it was survive-able and Dan felt a lot better the next day.  

Tuesday, we went to the zoo.  The kids had tons of fun.  They forgot the lunches though, so we had a rather expensive zoo lunch.  We ran into the Haight's there and had fun chatting with them for a bit and hung out with them for a little while, but then the kids wanted to go back to the reptiles and fish area and the sea lion show.

In the evening, Julie came over to babysit while Dan and I headed down to the temple.  We did sealings and it was wonderful.  It really felt like the right place to be.  We were able to help some people get a lot of family names done and got some done ourselves.

Wednesday, we took it a bit easy - I was a bit tired out!  And the kids just enjoyed the back yard for the day.  In the evening, the girls had Activity Days, Dan had Young Men and I had choir.

Thursday and Friday, Eileen had her STEM camp at Buckly AFB.  She had a BLAST!  She loved it and really wants to go again next year.  Anna, Aaron and Evie had piano lessons on Thursday in the morning and we tried the library in the afternoon.

Friday the younger kids and I packed lunches and headed to the park on our bikes.  James rode in the bike trailer.  We tried to bring Koopa, but he didn't like the bike trailer, so I ended up carrying him and he didn't much like it.  The kids had a ton of fun at the park and made some friends and got all their wiggles out.  We headed home in time to Eileen to get back and had a fun evening together.

Saturday was the start of General Conference.  We had a great day being uplifted and encouraged and taught.  The kids were great!  Becca came over shortly after Dan left for priesthood and then we hung out and played some games while the guys were gone, then when they got back we had dessert and played another game together.

Sunday was just as wonderful as Saturday.  Evie's primary teacher (and favorite person) came over to watch the morning session with us.  After 8 hours of conference, the kids did amazingly well, then Dan took them all outside for a fun evening of playing in the sun after dinner.  They played catch and it was really funny to watch and listen.  Then since the kids have Monday off, Eileen got to stay up and play a game with us again.  :)  Now we need to go to bed - and I really need this pain in my back to go away!!