Annie's birthday

Annie is 7 years old!

 We celebrated with the family at Grandma and Grandpa Knight's house on her birthday. She was overjoyed to get what she calls the squatty potty unicorn. It's a unicorn that has pudding/ice cream-like stuff coming out from under it.

 🎶 Happy Birthday, dear Annie! 🎶

Annie's friend party happened Saturday. Annie loves cooking, so she wanted to have a cooking party. Annie just invited a few friends, and one got sick on the way over, so she ended up with her friend Emilie from school, Lizzy from church, and her siblings. They rolled out pizza dough and made their own pizzas, then while those cooked they decorated their own cupcakes.

The pizzas were loved by all.

And the cupcakes were creative pieces of art. :)

We had a taste testing game where they all tasted various foods at the same time, then yelled out together what they thought it was.

Then we wrapped up the party with presents and playing.

Here's chef Annie and her assistant Rachel making the first batch of unicorn pudding.

Annie is a jack of all trades. She likes cooking. She likes rocks. She is a good reader and a fast learner. She claims to not like doing math, but does well once she decides to apply herself. Annie is a hugger and loves squeezing her siblings and parents until they pop. She and Rachel have really become good friends and enjoy playing Lego Friends together often. Annie is a great help in the kitchen and usually is quick to help with any cooking job. She has a tender heart and when she sees someone sad she empathizes with them. She is reading the Book of Mormon with a goal to finish before her baptism in one year. She is currently in 2 Nephi. And she is so excited for her baptism even though it's a year away. Happy birthday, Annie!

The rest of October

Fall break accounted for the first half of the month. The kids headed back to school and more fun ensued. The second day back Annie's class got to go on a field trip to the pumpkin patch and I got to go along as a chaperone. It was fun to spend the day with her.

 Jumping pillows:

 Duck races:

 Ms. Esham's class:

 Ryan is loving karate.

 The kids all had a dentist check up. Megan got to have her first x-ray. She did great, but looked hilarious with the lead apron swallowing her whole. And the x-ray seat is shaped like a frog, so you can see one of its eyes poking out from behind her.

 We went to cheer on one of my laurels in her last home cross country race. The kids had a fun time.

 Ryan told everyone as they ran past, "RUN FASTER!" Katie did well and enjoyed her little fan club.

 We also went to U of A Band Day to watch another one of my laurels perform.

 I took Rachel and Annie with me and they enjoyed it a lot. Until the sun went behind the stadium and they were freezing. It was probably 73 degrees out.

 A couple weeks ago was Red Ribbon week at school where they emphasize for the kids "Don't do drugs." One of the days was "We MUSTACHE you to not do drugs" day and the kids all wore mustaches made out of electrical tape.

 Grandma Knight brought Megan to cheer on all the kids as they ran in the red ribbon race for a healthy heart while I was volunteering in Ryan's class.

Megan got a big dose of Desert Willow Elementary that week (which she loves) because Friday we went back to school to cheer on the kindergartners in their Community Helpers Parade. Ryan dressed up as a firefighter.

 We went back to school an hour later to cheer on Annie in her mileage club race. She runs twice a week during lunch recess, then once a month has a race where they try to beat their time from last month.

 She had fun.

At Young Women we had a great combined YW activity where the girls made prom dresses out of newspaper and duct tape, then we had a guest speaker talk about fashion and thrift shopping and how what you wear communicates to others something about you before you even speak, so you should make sure it's saying what you want it to say.

 Saturday we were back at DWE again for Make a Difference Day. We helped scraping and repainting the steps of the amphitheater that we helped with at last year's Make a Difference Day.

 Saturday night was our ward's Fall Festival and Trunk or Treat. I only got a picture of Megan and Ryan, but that's ok because the older girls kept the same costumes for Halloween, while these two decided to have a different costume. Megan was Anna from Frozen and Ryan was a ghost.

 Monday for FHE we carved pumpkins, except for Megan who didn't want to cut her pumpkin.

 They looked good outside by our milk carton ghosts.

 On Halloween Peyton and McKenzie kept the tradition alive and came to trick or treat with us. Annie was a bat, Rachel a cat, Ryan a zombie, and Megan was Rapunzel (the crisscrosses on the dress made it Rapunzel's dress, apparently). When I told Megan to get her shoes on so we could go trick or treating she told me very haughtily, "Rapunzel doesn't wear shoes!" Duh. But she agreed to wear flip flops anyway. :)

 Between the trunk or treat and Halloween night the kids made quite the haul.

 They had free reign of overdosing on candy from Saturday (the trunk or treat) through Wednesday (the day after Halloween). After that we let them pick out their favorite candies, then took the rest for other purposes (piano treats, donation to the troops, Mom's stash). Combined, not counting everything they had eaten and everything they kept, I had 13 pounds of candy.

If it weren't for the sugar-induced insanity, I might like Halloween a little more. As it is, I am so glad Halloween is over and we can get on to the GOOD holidays now. Christmas music is playing and Thanksgiving decorations are out! :)

Fall break

Our first week of Fall Break was spent in Utah, the second week was spent mostly getting ready for the Laurel High Adventure, and going on that, so our 3rd and final week of Fall Break was my first chance to relax at home and enjoy the lack of schedules.

Now that it was a month ago I don't remember what we actually did. I think we went to the library, and probably went to Dunkin Donuts or out to eat somewhere, at least.
Rachel was going to take part in this study at the U of A that would pay $50, but when that didn't work out she was pretty bummed, so we brainstormed some ideas for her to earn money. She had just made two duct tape purses that day:

 So we decided to have a Craft Camp since everyone was off for fall break anyway. She charged $5 per person to come and learn how to make their own duct tape purse.

 She did a great job and all customers left very happy with their purses. (One more not pictured.)

 Her friend, Madisyn also wanted to learn, but couldn't make it at that time, so she invited Rachel over for a playdate, and to teach her, so in all, Rachel ended up making $30. She was feeling pretty rich.

Near Madisyn's house was a nice park, so we went a little early and I let the other kids play there for a while before we picked up Rachel.

 Fall break concluded for me with a temple trip for the youth in our ward--our first ward trip to the Tucson Temple.

We had only about half of our youth show up, but it worked out since it was our first time there and we could see how things would flow in the new temple with limited seating. It went great.

Laurel High Adventure

The second week of Fall Break Jacob and I and my Laurel Advisor and her husband took half our laurels on a Laurel High Adventure trip. It was lots of fun. We left Thursday morning and drove up to Flagstaff where we set up camp. There were lots of brave squirrels that were curious and eager to meet us to see if we had any food. They had obviously been fed in the past. They had no fear. We made sure our food was secure and some of the girls were happy to scare them off.

After camp was set up we went to the Lava Tubes. It was significantly cooler inside and the floor was not at all smooth for the most part so after a while walking it got a little taxing on our feet, poking through the defenses of our shoes. But it was really cool.

 Emma, Megan, Savannah, Mikaela, and Sariah

 We made it all the way to the dead end with only a few places that it got tight enough for us to have to bend over much.

Having seen the brave squirrels, I had left a heavy pot and our hammer and hatchet on top of this lid that had bread inside so the squirrels couldn't pry the lid off. We came back from the lava tubes surprised at what they were able to do.

 If we had been gone another half hour they probably would have broken through and claimed their prize. We didn't leave any food out after that, no matter how secure we thought it would be.

After dinner we headed up to the Lowell Observatory for an interesting evening. We were able to see Saturn through a telescope, including the rings. We also heard a cool presentation about the size of the universe. It was pretty neat.

 We went back to camp and bundled up for a long night. I was ok, but some of the girls weren't prepared for the frigid temperatures and didn't sleep much because they were too cold. We got a fire going the next morning and a nice warm breakfast in our tummies and everyone felt a lot better. We walked over to the Flagstaff Extreme Adventure Course that was right next to our campground and got started on the ropes course there.

 It was a lot of fun, and pretty challenging. There are 5 courses and I think everyone that wanted to made it through 3 of them. One girls knew going in that heights was not her thing and that she would probably sit most of this activity out, but she tried it, then decided she would enjoy it better watching from below.

 I think this one is me:

 One girl wanted to do the zipline on the 4th course, but nothing else, and none of the other girls wanted to do more because it was getting hard, so the 4 leaders went with her, and Jill and I came down with Savannah right after the zipline, while Jacob and Dan went on to finish that course, but opted out of course #5.

Our bishop came up the night before and stayed with his family, then brought some canoes for us to use Friday afternoon. We headed over to Lake Mary to canoe for a while.

After we returned to our campsite after canoeing we had dinner, then a little devotional by the bishop and sang some songs and had a small testimony meeting. It was nice.

 That night was even colder than the night before, but we were a little more prepared so most of the girls slept better than they had the night before. The water in our water dispenser did get a sheet of ice on the top of it that night, though, so we know it was cold.
We packed up camp that morning, had another devotional, then headed towards Sedona for a hike and Slide Rock. The place we were going to hike was overflowing with cars so we decided to skip that and just go to Slide Rock. It's a good thing because we wouldn't have had enough time for both anyway. Slide rock was beautiful, but the water was frigid.

 Many of the girls and all the leaders except Jacob went down the "water slide." It was fun, but would have been better if the water wasn't take-your-breath-away cold.

 We grabbed some ice cream, then started for home, stopping for dinner on the way. It was such a fun few days. I wish more of our Laurels could have made it, but the ones that did come bonded and had a good time. And for Jacob and I, and Jill and Dan it almost felt like a couples retreat, with a few teenagers along for the ride. It was nice to get out and do something without having to worry about the little kids. And they had lots of fun with Grandma and Grandpa while we were gone, so it was a win-win.