Giving Thanks

We have much to be thankful for!  Monday, for Family Home Evening, we had fun making little Turkey Table decorations with the kids.  They all had their own fun little personalities and we had a fun time together making them!  

The weather was nice enough for the kids to get to play after school on their last day of school this week.   As usual they had fun playing with friends and I was glad to have them playing outside.  

Wednesday we mostly spent our time getting ready for Thanksgiving.  Cooking and cleaning and all that fun stuff.  Plus since we bribed the kids to get the cleaning done, they played video games after we got the cleaning done.  

Thursday was more cooking getting everything set up for Thanksgiving dinner.  It was fun, since we had a small group, Dan and I pulled out the nice china for the adults!  We had Sandi and Lisa and her family over to Thanksgiving.  It was a lot of fun and the kids had fun playing together.  It was so nice to see Stephen and Lisa again and their kids are so cute!  

Friday morning, we headed out to the tree farm to pick out our Christmas tree!  The boys requested that we go to the same place as last year.  It was pretty drizzly, but they still had a fun time choosing the tree and roasting marshmallows and getting a toy from Santa and playing on the playground. 

When we got home though, we realized that we should have brought a measuring tape....  

We had to cut off a few inches (or feet) to make it fit!  LOL  But it's a nice tree and the kids are looking forward to decorating it next week!  

David decided to make a Christmas List.  He wrote it himself with a bit of spelling help from mom.  He was so funny - he also put down how many of each he wanted - there was a 5 after toy, and a 2 after stuffie, but he changed them to 1's.  

Saturday was pretty relaxed.  Anna and Aaron and I played water polo and Dan took the younger boys to the library.  Then we had a pretty relaxed afternoon together.  

Sunday was great!  Church was wonderful with some great talks in Sacrament meeting.  Primary was fun - though numbers were small.  It seemed like half the ward was sick or travelling.  :(   

I can't believe it's already Christmas time - the year seems to have flown by.  The kids are all super excited for Christmas though!  

It's fall!!

We've had a fun and busy week!  We had the water polo end of year banquet on Tuesday.  I had made up a slide show to play at the banquet and it was a big hit - the kids loved seeing pictures of themselves and each other.  Fun was had by all, then I got to go to my first night back at Thills masters.  

The weather has been cold but dry this week - so there are TONS of leaves in piles all over the place and the boys have been having fun jumping in them and playing in them.  And of course, having their picture taken in them.  It has also meant that the boys could stay after school to play most days.  On Friday, we had a fun time playing the monster game - where I ran after them trying to catch them and tickle them.  

Wednesday, the youth activity and the primary activity days activity were combined.  The youth put on a great program about temple preparation and James, though he went grumpy, came home happy, so I figure that's a success!  

On Thursday, I went to Melonie's house to crochet and chat and we had a nice time and I worked on the stuffies for Jen's kids and got a fair amount done.  We had fewer people at Masters on Thursday and I was in the field most of the time, but it was a lot of fun!  

Friday, I had lunch with some of the ladies from church and we had a fun time chatting.  I found out my friend Joe from Beaverton Swim Center is the brother in law of one of my friends, and that we had just missed meeting a couple times before we finally met at the water polo practices.  

In the evening, Evelyn had Acro, then went to her friends house for a movie night after.  Dan and I went to the temple, then out to dinner.  

Saturday was the usual busy - rehearsals for Anna and I.  Aaron and Anna and I went to water polo and Dan took the kids to the library for more books.  In the afternoon and evening, was our Stake Conference.  Dan went to the leadership meeting, while I hung out with the kids, then we both went to the adult session with Eileen, then after we went to Shari's with some friends for pie and fun.  

The Youth devotional and general session of Stake Conference were today.  I got to go to the youth session since I was leading the music and it was wonderful, then our family was performing a musical number for the general session - All except Eileen and James who didn't want to.  It went well - David stole the show and was adorable enough to make up for any other mistakes that may have been made.  The talks were wonderful!  As usual our afternoon was spent playing games and crafting and naps were had by some.  

Championships and a Cloak

It's been a busy week heading towards the end of the season.  Plus Dan has had a busy week with work and getting things ready for a new big release next week.  Between school and water polo and working to get Evelyn's cloak done, we've been a bit busy!  

We had some really nice weather days where the younger boys were able to play at the playground after school which was nice - still cold, but at least sunny for a while.  It's always nice to be able to let them play and have fun with friends!  

The kids had Thursday and Friday off (well Eileen and Anna just had Friday off, but the younger kids had both days off) but I spent most of Thursday cleaning and cooking and then Anna and I spent all of Friday down in Corvallis for the championships.  

We had one last team dinner before the State Championships.  Thursday night, the girls came over for food and fun, then I sent them home to get to bed and get rest before our early Friday morning game.  

Friday morning, really early, we drove down to play Grant.  We weren't really on our game though and we lost the game that we should have won.  It was disappointing, but the girls played hard and gave it their all.  Anna and I stayed for most of the rest of the day to watch the games and hang out with friends.  It was fun getting to chat with the other coaches and Anna enjoyed chatting with friends on other teams.  The one plus to losing was no early Saturday morning game, so Anna and I headed home in the evening.  The downside to heading home was me really wishing that I could be down there watching the games and wanting to know how everything was going....  There were some pretty big upsets in the end!  

Anna got to go with Aaron and Evelyn to the multi-ward youth activity on Saturday and I got to go to rehearsal for the Peter the Rock.  I was also glad that I got to go play with the masters group because that was the only time all day that I wasn't thinking about the championships and wondering how it was going.  In the evening, we went over to Sandi's for a big birthday party.  We had fun dancing and playing games and eating pizza.  It was fun to hang out with Sandi and to get to see her new house!  

David is quite the social butterfly and had another birthday party this weekend.  He had a blast at the Lego Minifigs place with his friends.  

Church was wonderful!  The choir sang and did a wonderful job!  After I had some meetings, but then after, I was finally able to get Evelyn's cloak finished.  She has been asking me to work on it all week and it's finally done.  I love the fabrics she chose and it came out beautiful!  We left quite a bit of fabric on the bottom so that we can increase the length when she grows.  

Halloween & Playoffs

We had a fun Halloween.  Evelyn had a friend join us for Trick or Treating, James mostly went and hung out with Caleb and his siblings, Anna and I were accidental twins and David found one of his school friends to hang out with while we were out.  We had a fun time, then Anna and Aaron and I took off a bit early for water polo practice, which as you might guess was poorly attended...  

James had a primary activity on Wednesday, David was there too since I stay to help out usually, and the kids had a blast acting out Bible stories with costumes and props and such!  

Eileen's 18th birthday was on Wednesday.  She had classes on Wednesday, so Dan and I took her out for lunch on Tuesday instead, we had fun eating sushi and chatting in between her online classes.  Eileen wanted a cheesecake instead of a traditional cake, so she had a white chocolate cranberry cheesecake!  yum!  She also got flowers from Grandma and Grandpa Cox and notebooks from Grandma and Grandpa Jones.  

On Thursday, Eileen had a field trip for her marine biology class.  She needed a ride though, so I got to take her and hang out with her at the zoo!  We had a super fun time watching and playing with the penguins.  I would have thought that watching penguins for an hour and a half would have been boring, but it turned out to be a lot of fun.  Eileen had a tassel that they would follow and so we would play with them and had fun observing lots of human interaction!   Then on our way out, we got to see the trainers feeding the otters!  It was so cute!!!  They would hold out their hand for a little otter high five and it was so fun watching them with their keepers!  I love otters!  It was a rather chilly and windy day, but we had a great time together and Eileen got herself a couple stuffed animals as a souvenir! 

Friday was the beginning of State.  We had our first match on Friday afternoon against Tualatin and beat them easily.  We then had a few hours to hang out and wait for our second game. Our second game didn't go so well.  We weren't playing our best, but even that would have been ok - what was most frustrating was the reffing.  My girls were called out over and over again for things they didn't do leading them to be upset and frustrated and to play worse.  We had known it would be a hard game, but having the refs do that was much more awful than losing.  

Saturday, Anna had an Encore event for most of the day, I had a rehearsal in the morning which was a lot of fun and then in the evening, Dan and I went out to see a movie.  We went to see Ticket to Paradise which was cute and had dinner.  

Church was wonderful!  We had an amazing fast and testimony meeting with a lot of the youth bearing powerful testimony!  What an amazing generation of kids they are!  Our afternoon was spent with ward choir and games and chatting with family.