November

November flew by. It started out with the girls' piano recital. They both did a great job. I'm proud of how good they're getting.

 Sunday after church we were playing Fuji Flush. Ryan's mustache was hilarious.

 Our bathroom is finally finished! Except for the painting. But I have the paint, so that will get done one of these days. Hopefully soon. That was quite the ordeal, taking much more time and suffering than we originally anticipated. But it's done and it's pretty.

 Megan and Ryan wanted to draw an owl. We found a guy on youtube that teaches kids how to draw and they followed along drawing their own pictures. I was very impressed with how well they turned out.

 We had our last Young Women in Excellence in November. There was a balloon for each personal progress goal accomplished by any of the girls during the year, and it was a pretty cool visual to see how much they have done.

 Annie had been working on StoryShare for the first quarter and into the second quarter with her ELP (gifted) class and some other kids. They each wrote a story, then selected a story from another grade to perform. Annie's story, "Attack of the 40 foot Squishy" got selected to be performed by a group in 4th grade. Annie's group performed an alien story (I can't remember the name) and did a great job. Annie (green hair) was an alien.

 The kids have been loving the skate park lately. They mostly spend time on their scooters, though Annie does use her Heely's sometimes, and Rachel has used her rollerblades a little, but mostly prefers riding the park paths on her blades, rather than the skate park.

 For FHE one Monday we cut out snowflakes. We hung them up in the hallway to the laundry room and bathroom and it created a beautiful winter wonderland effect.

 The kids' classes helped hide the Albequerque Turkey like they do every year. Megan made hers a Christmas tree, Ryan made his into a bowling ball and pin, and Annie did either an elf or Santa, I think.

 I snapped this picture of Grandma with her youngest two grandkids. We're lucky to have her so close by.

 For a combined youth activity in November, we all went to the bowling alley. Rachel did a good job, breaking 100, and would have been top dog in her group if the others didn't use bumpers. (She didn't use bumpers.)

 I was pretty amazing myself. The first round. Multiple strikes and spares, bowled 130+. The second round I completely tanked. Should have quit while I was ahead. :)

Megan and Annie happened to both choose leopard pants and matching hoodies the same day, Annie in white, Megan in pink.

 Sammy came to hang out one day when he didn't want to go grocery shopping with his mom. He liked our turkey hats a lot and I thought he should wear it to Megan's Thanksgiving party/performance later that day, but he just wanted to wear it in our house.

 We made our famous turkey veggie platter one last time. I've made it every year I've had a kindergartener for their kinder feast.

 Megan was super enthusiastic in her singing and did a great job. It was fun to watch them.

Ashley and baby Anya (sp?) stopped by for a few hours before they caught their flight home after visiting Ashley's sister in Sierra Vista when she had a baby. It was good to see them and catch up a little. And Megan (and the others) were super excited about having a baby around to play with.

Annie's 9th Birthday

Annie turned 9! She wanted to make her own cake. She made a double layer vanilla cake and decorated it all herself, with just a little help from me. It turned out beautiful.

 The cake was for her family birthday celebration when everyone came over for Sunday dinner.

 Friday night she had her friend birthday party. She was jealous of Rachel's late nighter that she had at the end of cross country season, so she decided that would be a perfect birthday party (since we don't do sleepovers, except for cousins).

They made friendship bracelets and watched Studio C until the pizza showed up.

 Clockwise we have Megan, Emily, Annie, Laura, McKenzie, Eloise, Alexa, Quetzali, Rachel, and Peyton.

 The girls watched Enchanted on our projector screen.

 Then when Megan and Ryan headed to bed, the girls whipped out their pillows for a pillow fight.

 We reined it in to open presents.

 Then the girls painted nails and watched Studio C until parents showed up.

 I was happy to see that the planned activities took up most of the time. Most of the girls were done with nails around 9:45 and the party ended at 10pm, so Studio C kept their attention for the last few minutes, rather than them feeling the need to run around like crazy people. :)

Annie has one year left in the single digits. Now that she's 9, all my kids are officially odd. Until Rachel turns 12 in a few weeks. Even then she'll still be odd. ;) 

We're so happy to have Annie in our family. She love sweets and candy so much, but she also has a very sweet heart and is happy to share her candy or other things she has. I think one of her love languages must be gifts because when she's feeling especially loving towards someone she finds something to give them. She is very creative and smart and is a great student. Her advanced math teacher recently sent me this email: 

Have I told you recently how much I love having Annie in advanced math?  She's a kid I can always count on to do everything I ask the first time I ask.  She is engaged deeply in whatever we are learning about.  She doesn't hesitate to help anyone who needs help and yet she's never bossy.  Essentially, if I could create a perfect student she would be it.  Thank you for sharing her with me!

Sincerely,

Kate Goodall

Annie has recently started getting into Harry Potter and has read thru the 3rd book. She enjoys reading, cooking (she wakes up most Sunday mornings and offers to make fried eggs for whoever wants them, and always jumps to help whenever I'm baking), the Great British Cooking Show, Phineas and Ferb, playing the piano, crafts, and gymnastics. And she's got one more year until she hits double digits!

Halloween

We were invited to a Halloween party at a friend's house. Rachel was invited to her friend, Lydia's, movie night, but the rest of us went. The kids tied balloons with candy inside around their ankles and tried to pop the other kids' balloons while protecting their own. 

 We headed outside and played a few more games, then had dinner.

 The kids had fun dressing up and it was fun to hang out with some adults while the kids ran around partly crazy.

 Monday night we gutted and carved our pumpkins.

 Megan and Rachel made the owl on the left and Annie and Ryan worked great together making Jack, on the right:

 The youth were in charge of putting on a Halloween carnival for the ward. Each class came up with different games, and Rachel's class decided they would do face painting. The spent a while the week before during their YW activity practicing. Rachel came home looking like this:

 Black face paint does NOT come off easily.

The night of the carnival Megan decided about 5 minutes before time to leave that she wanted to be a blue owl instead of the witch she had been planning on. Rachel painted her face and I found a blue hat to go with all her blue clothes. Megan's favorite station at the carnival was the fishing booth. She liked getting fun surprises.

 Ryan liked the nerf gun shooting booth. You got a prize whenever you hit a target. And if you didn't hit anything. :)

They ended the evening with a costume parade and then Trunk or Treating.

Then it was finally the big day, actual Halloween. Megan stuck with her witch costume this time, Annie was Penelope Clearwater from Harry Potter, Rachel was an 80s girl, and Ryan was Hobbes from Calvin and Hobbes.

 The cousins came over and we all trick or treated together and headed home with our loot.

 Ryan sorting his loot, making a candy histogram:

The kids had pretty much free rein with their candy from Tuesday (the trunk or treat) until Saturday when we had them pick their 35 favorites, and donate the rest to the Mom Candy Collection. I use that candy for piano treats each week (if they've practiced every day), special rewards, gingerbread houses, Christmas candy, and such. So they get a lot of it back, just spread throughout the year. I weighed the Mom Candy Collection and it's coming in right around 10 pounds of candy. I wonder how much they had before they started eating it all.

October

Once we got back to school after fall break we got back into our regular routines somewhat. One night during family scripture study Megan modeled the armor of God for us. 

 Another night Rachel put together a Jeopardy game covering what we learned in General Conference. It was a good review. And she finished one more personal progress project with that.

 Rachel started personal progress at the beginning of the year and is nearly done. She has completed all except 3 of the value experiences and 2 value projects. She will easily finish before the end of the year when Personal Progress is retired and the new youth program starts.

More progress was made on our bathroom remodel. It took longer than they estimated and the company has been not great about communicating when people would or would not be showing up to work. But it is nearly done.

They somehow didn't get the message that with the closet, we wanted a door, too. They thought they were done except for the floor. When they came back to do the floor they also did the door. 

  When they tried to use the extra flooring that I had gotten, they realized that they didn't fit together correctly. I went in and talked to the flooring people and apparently last year they changed how they fit together, so they told us how to jerry-rig the old and new flooring to fit together. After another missed appointment, the guy finally came yesterday to finish the flooring which he estimated would take 2-3 hours. He worked 5-6 hours, and is coming back Monday morning to finish the very last part which will hopefully just take 30 minutes or less. Now I need to paint it.

I go in to help in the kids classes most weeks. Megan gets me twice--one time in Mrs. Parks' class in the afternoon, and a different day in Mrs. Hager's class in the morning. She loves it when I come in. And hates when I leave.

 They have a little stuffed animal dog in Mrs. Hager's class they get to read to when they get done with their centers. The kids all love it so much.

 Mrs. Parks has stuffed puppies that the kids get to bring home for the weekend when it's their turn to be star student. Megan was so excited to bring Snowball home.

 Snowball comes with a journal and the kid who has her for the weekend is supposed to write about their adventures together. Megan really took that to heart and wrote about every little thing they did, filling an entire page with her writing. I was so impressed and so was her teacher. Most kids write a sentence or two.

 Snowball rode with us to Desert Willow for School Beautification Day (aka Make a difference day), but luckily stayed in the car because the kids helped paint rocks and she would have gotten paint on her for sure, based on the kids clothes afterwards. :)

The following Saturday Annie had a Mathleague competition at Desert Willow and I helped out as a volunteer.

 Annie did a good job for her first competition ever, and afterwards we headed over to Cottonwood to join the rest of the family who were at the Stake BBQ/community picnic that everyone who helped out at various schools for Make a Difference Day (which for most schools were that morning) were invited to. Annie was worried when the math competition was running late, and when we arrived I found out why she was so anxious to get there--she headed straight for the dessert tables. Classic Annie.

My friend agreed to help me make t-shirts for my family, but she didn't realize what she was getting into. I thought it would be fun to have matching shirts for when we go places together, and it would help us keep track of the kids a lot easier, too. But with 10 kids and 8 adults it was a lot of shirts to do, especially with the pattern that I made.

 After we got done with the kids' shirts we were running low on vinyl so we modified the design and did a small pocket design for the adults. It helped us finish a lot faster, which was good because it had already taken about twice as long as we had planned. I still need to make her some treats to thank her.

The day after Halloween the kindergartners did their community helpers parade where they dressed up as someone who helps the community in some way. Megan couldn't decide between being a vet and a mom, so she went to school with a vet outfit, a stuffed dog, and a baby. But by parade time she just had the dog with her. She's probably counting on me watching her babies while she helps the doggies. ;)

 They were all very cute.

Yesterday Rachel and Annie did a great job at their piano recital. Sister Bauer is a great teacher and these girls do a great job at practicing most every day. They're making great progress.