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.

January back to school and such

January 10, 2024

Boyd and Barbara came to visit! They just happened to come the week that it’s below freezing every morning.

At least it’s still warmer than Idaho, especially during the day with the sun warming things up. They got here Monday, and head home tomorrow. I didn’t get to hang out with them much because I had a doctors appointment yesterday when they were going to the temple, and was helping with teacher of the year interviews at Desert Sky today when they went to San Xavier mission and the air and space museum. But I did get to meet up with them for lunch at El Guero Canelo today, and we all ate dinner together tonight. It was good of them to come visit. I think this might be Boyd’s first time and Barbara’s second time to Tucson? They were already talking about “next time,” though, so maybe we’ll see them again soon. Or at least soonish.

January 13, 2024

Annie was invited to participate in the middle school honor band festival again, so this week she practiced at Empire on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and this morning, then had their concert. It was a great concert and she has a good time having the high school band directors teach and lead them.

January 13, 2024

Ryan was ordained a deacon on Sunday. He’s pretty excited to join young men and receive the priesthood. And as a deacon he can now go to the temple! We went today as a family. Grandma was working her temple shift and came to say hi. Megan stayed home with grandpa since he wasn’t feeling well. It was fun to have most of the kids be able to go. Just two more years and our whole family can go together!

We went out to dinner afterwards at Pei Wei even though we already ate out for lunch today after Annie’s concert. Racking up the eating out bill, I guess.

January 15, 2024

We had a ton of people donate items for the hygiene kits we made for Primavera for the MLK day of service. The Croppers, Reimanns and Allen’s joined us to assemble them. It’s always nice to see what we can accomplish when we put a little effort into organizing some friends to do some good together.

January 19, 2024

Yesterday for my birthday I invited friends to join me to go to the temple and lunch. Karolee, Jill, Katie Johnson, and Rachel Cropper joined me at the temple, then all except Rachel went to Baggins for lunch where we were joined by Susqui, Aimee and Jen Grace. It was nice to visit with them.

Today I was able to go out to lunch with my mom for my birthday, which is always nice. Of course, as usual, we forgot to snap a picture.

January 21, 2024

This week I have been realizing over and over how blessed we are to have two cars normally. Jacob’s car has been working towards dying its last death, and Tuesday he brought it home making crazy noises that told us that taking it out again would end in a call to a tow truck. It’s 24 years old and not worth fixing at this point, and we already had put things in motion to get a new car, which will hopefully be arriving soon.

But since Wednesday we’ve had to juggle schedules, leave extra early to take Jacob to work, borrow a car from my parents on multiple occasions (thankfully they live close), call in rides, and just skip a couple things. Normally Sunday would be an easy day to just use one car, but today I had to go to a different ward, Jacob had to go into work, and my kids needed a ride home from church, all at the same time. So while we could have used 3 cars, we had just the one. Thankfully we also had a friend to give me a ride, and my mom to give my kids a ride. It sure has made me appreciate the blessing we enjoy normally of having the transportation we need whenever we need it. Nothing like not having something to make you appreciate it more.

Wilma (the 4-runner) has lived a good life. 240k miles and 18 of its 24 years with us. Jacob has had her longer than we’ve been married. Looking forward to the next 18 years with the next car whose arrival we are looking forward to soon.

New Year--Week off of school

Jan 4, 2024 
New year, new blog…er method for family history keeping. Since blogging once every 6 months wasn’t working, I’ve decided to try a different way to keep track of what our family is up to: using Facebook but changing my post settings to only my family so I can add the kids as they get older and get their own accounts so they can look back. There’s also a company that makes physical books out of social media posts, so we can still have our annual book for the kids to look back at.

All the kids stayed up for New Years, then managed to sleep in pretty late the next morning. Jacob cleaned the house before half of them were up, then they pitched in with laundry and finishing cleaning up from our trip. We had a lovely, relaxing afternoon, finishing the day watching The Sandlot. It was actually nice having everyone in the room watching together. We haven’t had movie nights a lot lately because of marching band and busy schedules. And because the kids generally like to find their own activity on a screen when they get a chance, usually on Minecraft or YouTube.

We’ve spent this week slowly cleaning our house and backyard and putting away Christmas and relaxing enjoying too much screen time. The kids do get out every once in a while and actually have gone to grandma’s a few times for exercise, and today to do some trench digging on the back yard.

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Jan 4, 2024
Time to reorganize our games. Pulled them all out so we can put back just the ones we actually play with. Holy smokes! How did we get so many?!

I just counted them and we have at least 97 games! We could play one a day and not run out until April!

...

So we found a few more, bringing the total, I think, to 103. We got rid of ones we rarely use or ones the kids have grown out of or lost too many pieces to, and we’re down to somewhere between 70 and 75 games left.

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Jan 5, 2024

There has been a lot of sleeping in this week. Even Megan, who doesn't normally sleep in, hasn't been awake before 7am all week, and has slept until 8 a couple of times. Rachel has reluctantly gotten up when we wake her up at 10am to start on chores, but when left to her own devices doesn't sleep past 10:30 anyway. And today she was up earlier, eager to get her chores done so she can go hang out with friends.

This morning I turned on the light in the family room at 7am to read my scriptures and Ryan was on the couch. I don't know if he was already awake or if turning on the light woke him up. He turned the TV on and when I told him to turn it off he said, "But it's Saturday." They normally can watch TV Saturday mornings as long as it's after 6:45am. He was surprised when I told him it was Friday. He turned off the TV and headed upstairs. Apparently if it wasn't time to watch TV it wasn't worth being awake because we found him asleep a little while later, and he's gotten at least 3 more hours of sleep this morning.

It's been a nice week to relax. We've had a few chores each morning, and our house will hopefully be nice and clean when they go back to school on Monday so we can ease back into the swing of things.

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Jan 5, 2024
Megan and I went out to lunch at BJs today. She got a free lunch in a drawing for not being absent on benchmark day. Worth celebrating, since she got 100% on her math benchmark. She’s been waiting for this all break. We squeezed it in on the last day.

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Jan 6, 2024

We went to the U of A basketball game against Utah tonight and Ryan got to play a scrimmage with his Desert Sky team during half time on the McKale Center court. It was a good game and the U of A won. Ryan had fun playing. He wanted a picture of himself on the Jumbotron, but taking a picture of a screen never turns out great.