Second quarter

 Second quarter was packed full of stuff. Make a Difference Day was the first Saturday back at school and it was mostly my job to get everything bought and ready for it. It came together well and we got a ton of stuff done at the school. Including a ton of gravel spread where they've been wanting it for a couple years.

Trunk or Treat was the following week and came together smoothly. Jacob had to take Ryan to his basketball game, and Rachel was at a football game for marching band, and Annie wanted to stay home and have full control of the remote, so Megan caught a ride with the Sanders since I was already at the school helping set up. 

The following night was our ward trunk or treat. Megan was a crazy pet lady (like a crazy cat lady), Rachel was Alex from Minecraft, Annie was Shaun the Sheep and Ryan was a robber.

Halloween was a success. Soooooo much candy.

Rachel and I took a trip to Goodwill for some pants. She found her long lost trophy.

Annie wouldn't ride her bike to school before fall break because it was too hot, but she said after fall break she would ride it more. I think she rode once, maybe twice, with Zula and Hayley. Then it got too cold. Or she got too lazy. 

Annie decided she wanted to do a craft day with little kids to earn some money for Christmas presents (one of her love languages is gift giving and she really thinks about and plans out what each person would really like). So she came up with an idea of doing a craft and a turkey cupcake, made a flier to advertise, and I sent it out to our ward and friends on Facebook. 

She got 4 kids to sign up, plus Ryan, so she earned $25 in an hour and everyone had a lot of fun.

With trek coming up in February, we had the trek kickoff in September. I dressed up in pioneer clothes to help set the mood with some of the other stake leaders.

Rachel and I are working on getting more exercise in preparation for trek.

The week before and the week after Thanksgiving were both concert weeks. Rachel's concert band had a concert first.

Then the Rita Ranch Performing Arts group had their concert (a combination of kids from the 3 Rita Ranch elementary schools). Megan sang in the choir this year, and Ryan was in band. I helped with the field trip that morning to keep kids in line while everyone figured out their places and was able to snag some pictures from closer up. That night at the concert we were way at the back, so pictures were less effective.

Annie's band was after Thanksgiving. Annie won the band award for excellence for the 2nd quarter and was selected to participate in the Middle School Honor Band in January. She's well on her way to becoming a band nerd.

We had a girls night out to go see the middle school play. Megan was happy to have the Palmers there to have someone to hang out with close to her age.

I helped arrange for some smaller band ensembles from Cienega to come to Desert Willow and play during lunch. The kids enjoyed the music.

With the PTA I've also been helping arrange to have this turf installed for the new inclusive playground we're working on. The kids loved getting to play on it after it was installed.

Just like we had a better monsoon season than normal, our winter rainy season has been more active and started earlier than normal. The crazy kids went out to play in the rain even though it was a cold rain, unlike the summer rains. They came back soaked and in need of dry clothes and hot chocolate.

Megan was invited to her friend Kaylee's birthday party at Jump. It's good to have good friends.

Rachel got sick with a fever a week after Thanksgiving and we finally took her in to urgent care on Sunday morning and it turns out she had a kidney infection. It took her a couple days to recover after getting medicine, but she managed to get back to school and finish the semester strong despite missing several days. She should be a doctor's office model. :) 

I was so excited to get our new Murphy Bed that we ordered, but it turned into a mess that lasted a lot longer than I would have liked because we were just too busy and never home long enough to make progress on putting it together. A couple weeks later I finally managed to finish it. And I love it so much. Both the desk and the bed pack up neatly, but come out easily when needed.

The last week of school before break was insanely busy. Starting Tuesday afternoon I had something planned pretty much all the time until Friday night. In addition to the Holiday Store all week at Desert Willow, we had Rachel's Fine Arts Showcase, and Kayla's baptism (a new member of our ward), Cookies with Santa, a crockpot lunch for Desert Willow teachers, a crockpot lunch for Cienega teachers, the middle school awards assembly, helping with Megan's class party, helping with Ryan's class party, packing up the Holiday Store, a temple trip with the stake YW presidency, our ward Christmas party, and the regular after school craziness. I was so happy to make it to the end of that week.

Awards assembly:

Cookies with Santa:

The Grinch came to Ryan's class party! 

First Quarter

 Since I haven't been diligent about keeping up on the blog this year, I've got a lot of pictures to catch up on, but I don't always remember what was going on when I took them. :) I'll make my best guess. And probably not include too many details because I'm trying to catch up on the second half of the year. 

Ryan needed a hair cut when school started. A week or two after it started he agreed to a haircut. Starting with a reverse mohawk was picture worthy.

Ryan found a few baby lizards. He's good at catching them. They're super cute.

Annie got to go to the cast party for the drama club from summertime. 

One of my former Young Women, Emma Spendlove, got married! I talked to Jill Reimann, who was also her YW leader, and we put together a low key bridal shower. It was lots of fun to see people from the Desert Willow Ward before it was split.

Megan and I went shopping and stopped for lunch while we were out. Pizza at Target. Delish!

I stayed pretty busy with the PTA during the first quarter. One of the things we did was the bookfair. We were able to buy tons of books for the school. These are all for the library (there was a stack at least this big for the teachers, too).

Rachel started early morning seminary. It starts at 6:15 so for a while we would get the kids up at 6:05 and have family prayer before I would take her to seminary. Ryan and Annie ready for prayer (or maybe having fallen back to sleep):

Cranky kids made it obvious that the extra half hour was needed, so we started having morning family prayer twice, once with Rachel, once with the other kids after they woke up at 6:30. It has been a struggle finding a time when everyone was home together to have family scriptures since Rachel some days would be gone from 6:15am until after 9pm, so literally didn't see Ryan or Megan because they were asleep the only time she was home. Before school worked so well for us, but now that that isn't a good option we are trying to remember to do it at dinnertime with somewhat decent results. 

The PTA planned a game night. With an events committee this year it has made things so much less stressful. I just showed up to help rather than being so deeply involved in the details during planning. The game night included board games, Human Hungry Hippos, Twister, Plinko, and others.

I left the game night early to go straight to the post-FSY activity at the church. It was great to hear from many of the youth that attended FSY and how it changed them and helped their testimonies grow. Rachel had a great experience at FSY, too. After the testimonies they went to the gym and did some group games and a couple of the FSY dances. The kids (including Rachel) had lots of fun.

Rain! This year we had a fabulous monsoon season. It just kept going and going. So much wonderful rain=lots of opportunities to go puddle splashing, both in Jacob's car and barefoot in the street.

Megan and Grandma were twinners!

Jacob had a birthday! One of his main requests was no-bake cookies (aka Dinosaur Poop Cookies).

The Knights were gone for about a month on their vacation to Portugal, then returned to Tucson for a little less than a week before officially moving to Seattle. We squeezed in as much cousin time as we could while they were here, knowing that the cousins would miss each other a lot when they were gong. 

Mud brothers:

Ryan and friends apparently do this most days at school.

Megan got glasses! She was farsighted in 1st grade, and now is nearsighted. (But she won't wear her glasses and wants contacts now.)

The PTA had their fall fundraiser with Step It Up. The company does a great job hyping the kids up and both Megan and Ryan won something at the kickoff assembly. 

The next day they earned prizes for sending emails and came home with these cool hats (and a couple other prizes). Then a few weeks later everyone in the school got to enjoy the Day of Awesomeness with a ton of inflatables to play on. And it was the best fundraiser ever so we haven't had to do more fundraising with the PTA this year, which is a win.

Some of us volunteers ran the obstacle course after the kids were done. (I won!) 

Busses have been hit or miss this year with a bus driver shortage. I'm super grateful for the Palmers and Sanders that live so close and we work together to get kids to middle and elementary school when the bus isn't running on time.

Karolee introduced us to this cool park at the new Rocking K development. The kids love it.

The school board election this year was highly contested and had some very negative people on it that don't appreciate Vail (even though it's one of the top districts in Arizona). It was a little scary and worth getting involved to help the good candidates win. I ended up putting up some signs for Anderson and Buster and got caught in the rain, coming home soaking wet. Gratefully the election turned out well and they won!

Annie did great for her 1st quarter of middle school and got straight As and the Principal's award at the awards assembly.