Counting Down....wait what?

The kids didn't have school on Monday - Evie and her friends wanted to get ice cream together, so I took Evelyn and her friends plus James and Aaron, and walked down to the ice cream place and got ice cream.  The kids had a good time.  We almost got rained on, but it held off mostly until we got back.  

The kids had school on Tuesday and then we withdrew them from school.  Except Anna.   Then we buckled down to packing.  ....Mostly

Wednesday morning, I had the opportunity to go to the temple in the morning.  It was so wonderful to be able to go.  My heart and soul felt so much better for being able to go and be there and feel the spirit.  

After, I went home for a quick lunch before heading over to Lori's house for a bit.  We were able to sit and chat for awhile and catch up.  It was so good to see her again!  My heart and soul needed that visit too.  All in all - Wednesday was a wonderful day!  

Thursday started with packing, then I met up for lunch with the ladies with whom I've been serving in primary.  We had a great lunch and a great time chatting.  

Friday, the girls and I went down to my parents house for hair cuts.  Eileen, Evelyn and I just got a quick trim.   Anna chopped it all off!   She went with an adorable pixie cut and she looks so cute!  

My dad also pulled out some things from my grandmother's hope chest.  Including this gorgeous coat and two beautiful dresses that she knit herself.  He had the girls try them on - they looked beautiful in them!  

We are officially into the "eat whatever food you can find" stage of packing up.  So for dinner one night Dan had a smoked pork, mashed potato, stuffing, mayo, mustard and jelly sandwich on some of my dad's home made bread....  He loved it - so did James.  This is a picture of the epic creation.  I did not try it. 

Saturday started a bit rough.  My parents are struggling with our move and my mom and I had a text conversation with both of us getting rather teary.  My mom beats herself up too much sometimes.  She is such a wonderful mother and I'm so glad we have at least had some time living down here with them again.  

Saturday evening, Evie headed to a birthday party with her best friends and the rest of us headed over to the Tilton's house.  It was strange to drive back through our old neighborhood and drive past our old house.  It was also a blast being with the Tilton's again.  The kids all had a blast playing together, and the adults had a great time hiding in a different room chatting.  Before we left, we did a photo re-create.  Megan had this picture of Eileen and Sonora from back in the day, so we made the girls re-create it for us.  Such cute little girls and such beautiful young women!  

And this is the original :)  

Sunday, we got to go to church and I got to play the organ.  The talks were about the Love of God for all his children - it was beautiful and uplifting.   After church, Evelyn wanted to make cookies with her friends - but we were missing ingredients and basics like mixing bowls and measuring cups were already packed up, so she found a recipe using only what we had and borrowed some equipment from her friends houses and they made cookies...  at least she is determined!  The cookies came out good though!  

We had a quick dinner of cereal and whatever we could find still in the house, then we went out to our front yard to play and say goodbye to our friends and neighbors.  We had friends from the ward and neighbors come and chat and play.  Dan pulled out some balls and things to play with in the yard and we had a great time!  David had a blast chasing big kids all over the place.  Even Koopa got in on the fun by escaping the house and hanging out with us outside - he was even well behaved mostly.  

 While we were outside enjoying a last bit of time with our friends, we found out that the buyers on our house are asking for an extension of the closing date.  They want to move the closing date to Oct 10th.  So now we are trying to figure out what that means for us and the move.  We will know more once we talk to the moving company tomorrow, but for now, it looks like we will be here a bit longer than we planned...  Now to find out if we will have any furniture while we are here....  

Birthday Fun

 Holy Moley it's been a busy week!  

Monday was my 41st birthday.  We had pineapple upside down cake and nachos for dinner.  David helped me blow out my candles and he wrapped up a couple of his cars to give me so I could play cars with him.  He and daddy wrapped them up in the morning, so he was excited all day about getting me to open my presents!  

These are just David being cute.  My dad sent some bread home with us when we went down to visit - and David loved it!  (so did the rest of us!)  

David wants to spend all of every day "playing cars."  Sometimes that actually means playing with the cars - sometimes it just means, "come play with me mommy."   On Tuesday it actually meant playing with cars since we needed to play with the cars he wrapped up for me.  :)  

Wednesday was Evelyn's 11th birthday.  She had Butter Chicken for her birthday dinner and sheet cake for her cake.  She got some really cute clothes from Grandma and Grandpa Jones and a fuzzy sweater, a stuffie backpack and fidget cube from mom and dad.   

Eileen and Anna wanted to re-do their hair to get the color brighter - I thought they looked awfully funny with their hair in cups waiting.  

She and her friends wanted to do a baking competition - I was a little worried about how it would all work out - but it ended up working out ok.  Some of the girls had more experience than others, so they needed a bit of supervision and we had to stagger baking of the cookies.  They had a blast and made a mess and then we took plates with one of each cookie to have all the parents judge (Dan judged for our family since I knew who had baked what so I wasn't impartial)  Emily and Leah ended up tying, but all the cookies tasted great!  

After we finally finished all the cookie baking and judging, the girls convinced all their parents to sleep over at our house.  Evie had passed out by 10:30 while the other girls were still awake - but they had a great time and Evie loved getting to spend some time with her friends before the move.  

Saturday started out with waffles and lots of girls.  Then after lunch, Evelyn with out for ice cream with Grandma and Grandpa for her birthday.  Evie also got to talk to her adopted grandma Sister Cottrell.  Then in the afternoon, we took the whole family and headed down to Medieval Times for a fun evening together!  The kids loved it - even David was enthralled and James was crazy excited for the whole thing.  Evie got one of the flowers after our champion won an event, and we all had a wonderful time!  

I got to play organ this week for church and of course that meant some practice time too.  Before church on Sunday, I had the kids get their yearly picture taken.  James was reluctant, but quick and easy.  Aaron was quick and easy and liked it when I had him take a picture with his vampire teeth showing.  James wanted his picture taken over and over and over, then wanted to get into everyone's pictures and of course, he wanted to see all the pictures too!  Evelyn was easy once I got her to tilt her head in a way that would remove the glare on her glasses.  Anna was the easiest of all.  Eileen just tried not to laugh at me while I told her to think of cute fuzzy moths and caterpillars so that I could get a nice smile out of her - she hates smiling! Oddly enough my favorite picture of the bunch is not a big smile, but the picture is just so her.    I sure do have cute kids though!  

We also took a headshot of Dan - we need proof that once his hair was this long.  He likes the first one better because he is all dressed up and looking stylish, but I just love the second one - It was taken before I took the kids pictures just to get the lighting in a good place.  The smile is just so genuine! 

I'm certainly not the best photographer, but this was fun and I like how they came out - and it's much cheaper and easier.  

Church was wonderful - but Dan and I were exhausted, so we took an afternoon nap, then after dinner we played some games with the kids.  

Dan and I are spending spare time packing.  We are trying to get to say goodbye to all our friends.  We are trying to get the kids school work done.  I'm ready for this all to be done.  We spent some time trying to nail down our trip out to Oregon and figuring out how it will work out and where we will be when.  We had hoped to stop by Paul and Candace's house in Utah, but that is looking like it won't happen.  Paul may have COVID, which worries us for him and his family, for now he is just quarantining, but either way, we won't be staying there.  

School and Packing

 We've had a busy week of school stuff.  Anna and Eileen have seminary, Anna has band and cross country, Evie has band, Anna and Evie have piano lessons.  

Dan smoked some pork this week - it was SO yummy, Dan invited some friends over to help us eat it and we sent them home with some pork and some sheet cake.  

David wanted to sit RIGHT next to Dan at lunch time.  David had some cute moments - in the car this week, he sneezed and then said "bless myself"  When someone says he can't do something, he often says "too late, I gonna do it"  

Anna High School had their homecoming game on Friday, so Dan and I went to watch Anna play during the halftime show.  She did amazing!  She had me help with her hair - they told her she had to have a medium high bun with no fly aways.  So I did a bun and pinned it up with bobby pins and the glued her hair to her hair with hairspray.  By the end of the night in a warm Texas night, she still had no fly aways and she thought it was hilarious that when she got home and took all the bobby pins out - her hair still didn't fall down.  Dan and I watched the game through the halftime show.  Anna was playing winning, so that was fun - and Anna's first homecoming game of her High School career included a 20 minute break when all the lights went out.  

Bright and early on Saturday morning, Anna had a track meet.  She did well and had a really good time of 16:16.  Grandpa Cox came to watch too - he drove up and was comfortable being there since it was out in the open and he didn't ever have to be near anyone to be able to watch her.  

Saturday afternoon, I took the kids down to the library for a quick drop off and pick up of books and let them know that this was the last time we would be checking out books from the library.  Then we headed down to my parents house.  I didn't think it would be warm enough for swimming, but I should have known better.  The four younger kids spent most of the time there swimming - even though they were obviously cold.  Anna also got in for a bit, then she got out, laid down on a towel and slept through dinner.  Dan and I brought sour cream enchiladas for dinner and a salad for my dad, my mom got a cake from Nothing Bunt Cakes and we did a little bit of a birthday celebration.  My parents, with a hint from Dan got me a super soft fuzzy sweater!  

Sunday was beautiful.  We had church together.  We played games - we played space base and I lapped Dan with my score!  :)  We had biscuits for dinner, and Evelyn made cupcakes that we took to her friends in the neighborhood after dinner.  Then we had a nice time chatting with the Francone family.  

MCO had it's first week of video rehearsals.  Evelyn and Anna and Eileen all have done their rehearsing for the week - I still need to do mine, but it's wonderful having the music in our homes!!  I love getting to listen to them sing!  David was a bit of a cranky beast today - he can go with out a nap once in awhile, but if it happens more than once in a row he gets really cranky.  We were talking to Gene and Ann for a bit today, and he got very mad when Dan wouldn't let him walk off with his phone and talk to them on his own.  

We have also spent some time this week packing up.  We are starting to try to get everything that isn't totally essential packed up.  

New Home!

 It has been a long and crazy week.  School has been getting into a more regular train and the kids are doing pretty well.  David misses being able to play with all the kids though.  Eileen and Anna have seminary in the mornings and Anna has cross country and marching band and piano.  We are keeping pretty busy.  

Dan was supposed to leave for Oregon on Tuesday to look at houses.  However, storms in the area caused his flight to get cancelled and he ended up not being able to leave until Wednesday.  On Wednesday afternoon he was able to fly out and got into Portland just in time to look at a house that we had been excited about.  Unfortunately, there were serious slanting issues with the floor in the house.  So the next day, he went to look at a couple more houses we had been interested in, and they both had similar issues!  We were getting rather bummed out by the whole thing.   Dan was just driving around the neighborhood of one of the houses we had looked at and was looking for "For Sale" signs and then having me look up if they were in our price range and would fit our family.  Wonder of wonders, we found one that looked like it would work and we really liked how it looked too, so Dan set up an appointment to see it.  After walking through the house, we both really liked it, so we put an offer in and now we are officially under contract!  

One of the nights that Dan was gone, we had Beef Stroganoff - David loved it and ate crazy amounts of it - both on the night we made it, and on the next night when we had leftovers.  

The younger kids wanted to build a fort and sleep together on the hide-a-bed.  So we let them have fun and they actually even slept - mostly.  

Saturday was a much more laid back day - we slept in a bit and spent a few hours at the pool.  Dan was supposed to get in around 7 - unfortunately, due to more bad weather, his plane was unable to land at first, and then unable to circle anymore without refueling, the flight was sent to Kansas to be refueled and then they finally made it home.  He didn't get in until late, but at least he made it home safe!  

Today, we got to go to church and it was a wonderful fast and testimony meeting proceeded by an epic  tantrum from James that had me outside with him waiting for him to calm down and missing the opening song and sacrament.  :(  

In the afternoon, we headed over to the Mangum's house for dinner and fun.  We had a great time chatting and eating yummy food!  

We spent our evening talking with family on the phone and playing games and playing.  I've spent way too much of this week looking at the pictures of our future house and trying to plan where things will go.  Eileen keeps laughing at me for it.  

Inspections and Back to School

 We are officially under contract!  We close on Sept. 30th and begin our new adventure as Oregonians.  Dan will fly out to Portland next week to check out some houses that we are considering and then we will make our choice and begin the process of buying a place to move into also!  

David wanted Anna to do his hair, so she sprayed his hair and combed it.  She's just laughing at it all, but his little face is so serious! 

Monday was the day for meeting the teachers and picking up schedules and such.  We had an appointment with James' teacher, we parked, went in, had a covid screening and went and talked with the teacher.  We got his stuff for school and then we went home excited and ready for the first day of school.  The elementary school has one teacher per grade that is in charge of the online students - she is wonderful and has the ability to adjust things that don't work well and the time to devote to the kids since this class is her main responsibility.  It's great!  

Monday afternoon, we had to go to the high school, the middle school and the 6th grade center.  We got to wait in line in the hot Texas sun for 45 minutes at the high school before going inside to wait in more lines.  More than an hour after we got to the high school, we left and headed for the middle school.  There was another line.  Not long after we got there, an ambulance showed up - then about 45 minutes later they managed to figure out a way to move the line so it was inside so no more people would get heat stroke...  Thankfully once we got in, it went pretty quickly.  But by this time, it had been more than 2 hours since we had started this journey and we still had one school to go.  

Thankfully Dan met me at the 6th grade center and took Evelyn to get her stuff and I took Anna and Aaron home.  I think I got dehydrated that day - I hadn't brought my water bottle because I didn't realize I would be standing sweating in the sun for 2 hours....  

The middle and high school students who chose online school are basically just sitting in on classes via zoom meetings.  It's hard on both the students and teachers - the poor teachers are being given twice the work with no extra help or pay.  The kids aren't getting nearly as much out of it because they often have problems getting into the zoom meetings because teachers have to admit each student one by one - and if they are late (for example if they are coming back from band and don't get there on time) then they have to wait for the teacher to admit them - but by then the teacher is trying to teach and it's hard for them to have to keep going back and admitting students.  

Wednesday was the beginning of school.  It was great for James - but everyone else had issues.  Evie had lots of problems getting into her meetings and problems with computers.  We finally just decided to get a cheap computer for school purposes.  

Evelyn's friend Emily is also doing online schooling, so the girls are alternating houses and doing school together.  I think they are both really enjoying it - at least enjoying being together.  

David on the other hand has not been crazy about not having as much attention to himself.  I've needed to spend time checking on the kids and problem solving and all he wants to do is play cars with me.  So he isn't happy when I need to go down stairs and make sure James is still doing school work instead of playing Prodigy.  

Thursday we had to be out of the house in the afternoon so the inspection people could come.  So we packed the kids up and went down to swim at my parents house.  I chatted with my parents, the kids swam and Dan went hunting for a cheap computer.  Apparently we aren't the only ones, because most places were sold out of the one we wanted...  

Friday was the usual crazy of back to school, but it finally feels like we are finding a routine.  Next week we get to throw a new wrench into it with seminary, but we're getting there.  

Saturday was crazy busy.  we started out early with Anna's first high school cross-country meet.  She did well and then had fun at a team breakfast after the meet.  Then at 1:00, the kids had a primary ice cream drive through activity.  Evelyn's friends came with us, and we had a fun time getting sticky and cool.  

Eileen and Anna went to a birthday party for a friend from church who was celebrating her sweet 16 birthday.  They had a great time, then we picked them up on our way to the Hendrickson's house for dessert and swimming.  We brought the creme brulee and had a great time swimming and chatting.  The kids loved it and want to go back... right now.  They especially loved the lights in the pool - which they only got to see since we let them stay up much later than usual - which meant they were all exhausted by the time we got home.  

Today was wonderful.  We had a great church at home - we talked about Joseph and his coat and his dreams and about being kind to our siblings and respecting them.  We played some games and the kids had a blast playing with daddy after scripture time.  

Evelyn taught this to David and it's adorable!!