Yarn and Friends

This has been a fun and busy week.  

Wednesday, the girls had their Young Men/Young Women combined activity - every year in February, the Bishop and his wife host a "love fest" where they teach dancing and such.  And then they all dance together.  It's a lot of fun!  Anna had a blast - when I got there to pick them up, they were having a great time!  Eileen doesn't like the loud music, lights or touching people, so she mostly went and hid in another room for most of the activity.  

Thursday, I had choir and it was great!  We had a different director than we usually have, and he was amazing - it was a great rehearsal and lots of fun! 
Anna also had a track meet on Thursday after school - she did awesome - she got a PR in her mile and took 4th place in her 800. 

Friday evening and Saturday morning, Dan and I went to the viewing and funeral for a brother in our ward who recently passed away - Dan teaches his daughter in seminary, so we wanted to be there to support the family.  We've only been in the ward for a year, but every time I talked to him, it was because we were out in the halls with cranky children - like Dan, he was a great father and husband, always supporting and helping. 

Saturday afternoon, we got to go down to the temple, then we met up for dinner with some friends from the ward.  We had a great time and ate yummy food - then after making the staff annoyed with us for not giving up the table, we invited them back to our place for dessert and a game.  They promptly trounced us in San Marco.  But we still had a great time!  And we didn't manage to scare them off or make them sick of us, since they invited us over to their place for dinner this evening. 

So Evie, James and Aaron have been very into crocheting lately.  Evie and James have both managed to figure out how to do more than just a chain now and Evie has gotten rather enterprising and creative.  She began making pillows and blankets and little bags and then started selling them to her friends at school!  The only problem is that they have made some bad choices about cleaning up after themselves and being responsible with my yarn and hooks, so after finding a huge chunk of my yarn cut up and all over the floor, I took away the crocheting privilege for a bit.  Evie was devastated - which was when Dan and I found out about her little business, so I said that maybe she could do some supervised crocheting in order to make the things she had promised. 

Lots of Love!!!

Monday evening we had a Family Home Evening lesson where we talked about John 4 and Christ teaching the woman at the well.  We even managed to get the kids to read the chapter before our lesson so they were prepared too!  In the evening, we got a rather shocking call - a man in our ward had been in a car accident with their oldest daughter and had passed away in the accident and their oldest daughter was in the hospital.  It has shaken the whole ward to have such a tragedy happen to people we know and love.  I had spent just the day before this call in the nursery with his wonderful wife and Dan teaches one of their daughters in Seminary.  It has been very heartening to watch the ward come together to support and give their love to them. 

Tuesday was a pretty normal day - School for the kids in the morning - Anna is on the Track Team and so she gets dropped off early each morning.  In the evening, I had institute class which was wonderful. 

Wednesday, I finally managed to get in to the doctor so I could get my prescription re-filled - and a recommendation to a dermatologist.  Then in the afternoon, I had to pick Eileen up early from school because she was sick.  In the evening, the girls had Young Women's and I had choir.  Choir practice was awesome - we got new music - lots of fun high notes!  YEY! 

Thursday was Valentine's Day - we started with our traditional Heart-shaped biscuits breakfast - early so we could eat with Dan before he left for seminary.  The kids got some chocolates and then headed to school, except Eileen who stayed home sick.  We took her in to the doctor on the recommendation of the school nurse who gave her a note to stay home through Friday.  In the evening, Eileen and Anna watched the kids so Dan and I could go out for a dinner date - we went out for Mexican food and enjoyed ourselves!  We went someplace close and got home in time to kiss the kids goodnight before settling in to watch Ant Man and Wasp. 

Friday, Eileen was still home from school and Dan stayed home from work and asked his team teacher to take the class on Friday.  They both stayed home and slept in and rested trying to get rid of their colds.  Dan was awake and nice enough to watch David while i went to the Dermatologist.  In the evening, we had a fun family movie night - we watched The Incredibles 2 and ate popcorn.  Then we put the younger kids to bed and I watched Newsies with Eileen and Anna (at least until Anna got too tired and fell asleep.)  I managed to get them hooked on the music and so we had fun watching and singing along.  Eileen even managed to get David to love the music and sing along with the soundtrack in the car.  It's so cute!! 

Saturday was a bit crazy busy.  I got to go to a baby shower in the morning - it was fun and I had a great time!  While I was there, Dan took the kids to the library and Costco.  We met up back home and did some food prep and a Come Follow me lesson before heading over to a friend's house for dinner and games.  We had a great time - the kids all get along so well together and even though their kids are a bit older than ours, they are still great with the younger kids.  They are such a great family.  We had fun playing the bean game and Five Crowns - Aaron played with us.  I won the bean games, but Aaron smoked us in the few rounds we played of Five Crowns that we played before we had to get the kids home and to bed.  He totally shut us out!  After we got the kids to bed, I made a quick run to the grocery store before we all crashed!

Sunday was wonderful!  We had choir before church to prepare to sing in Sacrament Meeting.  The choir did a wonderful job.  I had picked out our song months ago - knowing that I wanted to do Marriage for Eternity for the Sunday after Valentine's Day.   It ended up fitting PERFECTLY with the messages shared during the meeting.  It was such a blessing to see the Lord's hand - even in a seemingly small detail.  The messages were wonderful!  I even got to go to Sunday School since David did well in nursery today.  In the evening, we had the sister missionaries over for dinner and a message, then Dan and Aaron and I played games - Aaron wanted to play Five Crowns and The bean game again - I smashed them both in Five Crowns.  Dan won the bean game - then it was bed time! 

Beauty and the Beast

It's been a busy week.  Like really, crazy busy.  Dan left for a conference in California on Monday.  We had a great lesson together on Monday for FHE.  Eileen had dress rehearsals until 6:30 on Monday and Tuesday.  I had institute on Tuesday night - the older girls were nice enough to put the littles to bed so I could still go.  The kids had piano lessons on Tuesday.  Wednesday was Activity Days and Scouts and Young Womens.  I was glad the they cancelled the dress rehearsal for that night - it was a relief from one stressor. 

Finally - Thursday night arrived.  Eileen sang beautifully - I managed to get a recording of the whole thing.  They did a great job - there were a couple sound issues, but that is to be expected on the first night of a play.  She was such a beautiful and perfect Belle!  Sandi came up with the kids (Jon was with Dan in CA) and my mom came up to watch also.  We had friends from church come to support also - it was wonderful!  

Dan got in later that night.  By that point - we were both pretty tired.  Eileen had performances on Friday and Saturday as well, but she wasn't the lead on the other two nights.  She's feeling a bit under the weather now - but I often have the same thing happen to me after a big stressful performance - so hopefully it won't last too long and she'll feel back to full soon.  It was so awesome to get to watch her do something new and difficult and do it well!  With all of Eileen's performances, Dan and I did our Temple day on Saturday morning.  Then we spent the rest of the day cleaning up and recovering from Dan's trip :) 

Church was wonderful - I'm trying to work to get David to like nursery better - but it's meant that I've spent a lot of time in nursery lately.  We had a family from ME1 over for dinner - Dan knows them because she is one of the other Seminary teachers.  We had a fun time with them! 

Zoo Fun with Family

Eileen has been busy with getting ready for her play next week.  I've gotten a bunch of pictures of Anna wearing Grandma Penny's clothes - Dad likes to see them and I think it does his heart good to see them.   

Our week was busy - full of institute, young womens activities, choir practice, piano lessons, practices, and family time.  There is a solo in one of the songs for the choir concert and we had to send in a recorded audition, so I spent a bunch of Friday getting that done and sent off - it was strange - I've never auditioned for a solo that way before.  

I talked to Dan about wanting to make memories with the kids with outings and such, so on Saturday, we went to the Zoo with Grandpa Cox.  We had a great time!  We watched the bird show - and Eileen got to participate - fed the birds, rode the carousel and petted snakes.  It was a fun day together!   The kids didn't even argue or fight hardly at all!  

 Church was great!  I ended up in nursery during 2nd hour - David has been having a hard time the last couple weeks, I think i'm going to have to take a bit of time to get him used to nursery again.