February-Rodeo Break and Beyond

 February 18, 2024

Jacob and I planned a date Friday to go out to dinner then to the temple, but I forgot his temple bag and white shirt when I went to pick him up from work, so we just went out to dinner on Friday, and went to the temple on Saturday. We went to an Indian restaurant and the food was delicious, and the company was great.

February 25, 2024

Family games last Sunday.

February 25, 2024

I saw this shed at Costco about a month ago and thought about it for a place to store our lawnmower and other yard work stuff. Jacob agreed. So when I had Rachel and Megan home from school last week because they were sick, I stopped by Costco real quick and picked up the shed. It barely fit in the back of the van (we had to remove a seat of the middle bench), then when I got it home it was too heavy to move so I opened the box and Rachel helped me move it to the back yard piece by piece. It took a couple days to level the ground, and a couple more to assemble it, but I got it done! Now I just need to move the excess gravel out of the way, maybe to the front yard, so we can open the doors more easily.

February 25, 2024

Rodeo Break this week. Todd brought Ben to visit, since his class was doing a class trip without enough info shared with the parents for them to feel good about it, so he came here instead. Ryan and Megan took off Wednesday from school so got an extra long rodeo break. They played lots of games and enjoyed getting steam set up so they’ll be able to play more games remotely now.

Annie read a ton over break. So many books. Megan is also flying through the Wings of Fire series.

The kids took advantage of break and managed to get Dad to watch comedians with them. They’re also educating him on Bluey and sharing their favorite episodes with him.

Rachel and I have taken to watching Perception together while working on a puzzle. We finished one puzzle of the Grand Canyon that was super hard, and have started on a second one. But with school starting back up tomorrow we’ll be making slower progress now.

Ryan’s deacons quorum has a campout on Friday, so Ben and Todd went with them. They seemed to have a lot of fun, even if it was freezing. And Ryan never even put on the house that he brought.

Rachel and her friend, Eden got together to watch the Beatles movies on Friday. They didn’t finish, so they continued their movie marathon on Saturday at grandma’s house.

We wrapped up our rodeo break with an at home movie night watching Wonka. We all enjoyed the movie, but Annie especially did since she’s playing Violet in the school play Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

February 25, 2024

Since Megan is done with her gymnastics meets, she’s been enjoying gymnastics practice more. Last week she started working on her front handspring on Monday and had it down be the end of her next practice on Thursday.

February 28, 2024

Rachel’s band did great today! Congratulations to the Cienega Symphonic Band on earning a SUPERIOR rating at their 2024 ABODA Area Festival! We’re so proud of all their hard work this year and can’t wait for what comes next!

February craziness up to Vail Pride Day

 February 2, 2024

Another week gone by. Jacob has been out of town last week and this week, and we’re all looking forward to him getting back tomorrow. Rachel has had pep band nearly every night this week. Annie had her tryouts for drama today.

Wednesday I was helping at the Desert Sky snack bar when Samantha Merritt called calmly asking if I was busy or if I might be available to watch her boys while she took her daughter to the ER. I told her we’d figure it out and I left Robin (PTO treasurer) to run the snack bar while I ran over to the Merritt’s to help with their kids. We ended up taking them to my parents’ house so they could watch them until Annie got done with drama and could babysit. Megan was there playing with her friend, Emma, and they had a good time with the little guys. After I was done at the snack bar we took the kids over to our house for dinner. The boys had a blast and of course my kids did, too. They love little kids. I guess brother Merritt was with Jacob when he got a call from his wife telling him about needing to go to the ER and Jacob suggested she call me. I was glad we were able to help, between all my mom and kids mostly taking charge of it all.

Thursday morning I woke in the middle of the night with a sore throat. I dialed back my activities Thursday and, after getting a negative Covid test, made sure to wear a mask while I helped set up the book fair at Desert Willow and at Desert Sky yesterday, and ran Free Book Friday today. Now I’m hunkered down in bed to rest and hopefully feel better by the time Jacob gets home tomorrow.

February 3, 2024

Someone’s been watching Ryan practice.

February 4, 2024

Ryan and Megan’s favorite way to spend time at Grandma’s house. Digging and getting dirty.

February 7, 2024

When your 16 year old begs you to go to Fry’s with her because she wants to see if there’s any California rolls left for the cheaper Wednesday price, even though you’re already in PJs and REALLY don’t want to go out into the rainy, cold, you give in and go with her to sit in the car while she goes inside. So you can be there to comfort her when she comes back empty handed.

February 10, 2024

Love of reading week this week also meant book fairs at both Desert Willow and Desert Sky. As an NEHS member Megan got to be a guest reader in Mrs Rios’ class. She read The Book With No Pictures. Mrs Rios texted me this picture and said the kids were laughing and loved the book she read.

February 10, 2024

Happy Valentines Day! We had a lovely date last night, going out to dinner then went to the ward party. Desert Sky ward combined with Mica Mountain, so it was all the old friends from pre-boundary change wards back together again.

January 10, 2024

Megan had her last gymnastics meet today. She has improved so much since she started Sapphire team last May. She got a 9.1 on vault, which is her highest score ever. She would did fabulous on floor, but fell down, so her score didn’t reflect how great she did. She’s worked hard and it’s been fun to watch her. She was recognized as the gymnast of the month this month. To celebrate after the meet today we went out to Tropical Smoothie Cafe even though it was freezing and rainy and even snowed for about 5 minutes at one point earlier. Maybe not the best day for smoothies, but Megan deserved to choose.

February 16, 2024

Posted by Grandma Knight: Congratulations Colette Knight Campbell for being the Volunteer of the Year in Vail School District. A well deserved award for sure! She loves serving and spends a big portion of her week doing so.

February 18, 2024

It was Vail Pride Day this weekend. To kick VPD things officially attended the volunteer luncheon on Thursday and was recognized as the volunteer of the year at Desert Sky Middle School.

Saturday we had to get there early because Ryan and Annie were playing with their band. They did great but we couldn’t see Ryan from where we were sitting. We saw him briefly as he walked in, easy to pick out with his yellow bucket hat.

We wandered and looked at the art displays and found Megan’s masterpiece. We visited the sponsor area then spent some time at the jumping castles. Megan was chosen a week or two ago to represent the 4th grade at DWE in Academic Jeopardy. She was nervous, partly because she was home sick the day they practiced, but they did a great job and came in a close 4th place.

We were going to grab burgers at the food truck supporting Cienega band, but the line was crazy long, so we stopped at Eegee’s on the way home instead.

The rest of January

 January 21, 2024

Ryan ran in the Vail Pride Day 5k yesterday at Andrada. He did a great job and we think he came in first among the middle schoolers. However, they grouped the high schoolers and middle schoolers together in the awards, so he came in 4th place and just missed out on getting a medal. He’s a winner in my books, anyway.

In the last hundred yards he kicked it into gear and passed this guy, so he came in 7th overall. 3 high school kids beat him, one 4th grader, and 2 adults. Not bad.

We came home and looked into triathlons. The one in Oro Valley that I wanted to sign him up for was full for the youth tri, and they wouldn’t let kids under 14 years old sign up for the duathlon we wanted to sign up for. So dumb. So instead we found a triathlon in Florence the following week and he’ll be running that for his birthday (actually in March 23). Time to start training!

January 21, 2024

Rachel got a haircut! Doesn’t she look excited?! She actually was happy with her new do.

January 27, 2024

Rachel’s current obsession is the Beatles. It’s been fun listening to her practice some of their songs on the guitar lately.

She picked up the guitar over Christmas break after not paying for quite a while since she’s been busy with school and band. She’s still busy, but seems to feel like it’s a decent trade to take time to play the guitar instead of spending time on studying Spanish. (Independent study isn’t all she thought it would be. It’s hard to stick to a deadline when there aren’t any real deadlines.)

January 27, 2024

We got a new car! Yay! It’s a beauty. Hybrid 2020 Camry. It’s super nice to have two functional cars. Nothing like not having something to make you appreciate it more.

January 27, 2024

Thursday night was the big Reflections celebration at Desert Willow. The Reflections program has been kind of my job this year as I’ve taken a step back after being president the last two years. I think the whole thing went very well and we had 70 kids participate. Thursday we did the awards and showcases all the projects and everything. It all went great. And I’m so glad it’s over. Megan won a camera for her photography entry. Annie came to help as a volunteer and brought Courtney along, too. Ryan didn’t want to come, but when it started I texted him that Mrs Radspinner was there and that Derek was there and suggested he go see if grandpa could give him a ride. He showed up shortly thereafter and got to see his first grade teacher for the first time in 5 years. She was such an amazing teacher, but left to stay home with her babies after Ryan’s class, so he hadn’t seen her in nearly 5 years. All in all a good night. And I came home afterwards and had moose tracks to celebrate it being done.

(Thankfully our new car was delivered about a half hour before I needed to leave for this, so I didn’t have to find another car for Rachel to go to pep band that night. It really did help, in our one car down state this week, to have Jacob out of town and not have to worry about getting him to and from work. So if there’s a good side to his business trip, that would be it.)

January 30, 2024

Rachel went to Ross with her friend, Eden, Saturday and came back looking like a biker chick. Ok, maybe after adding Annie’s mullet wig. She’s loving her new leather jacket, though.