Rachel's 16th birthday

 Rachel is 16 years old! Sweet 16! With cousins in town for her birthday we celebrated together for Sunday dinner. 

B and Rachel clapped out the candles instead of blowing their germs on the cake.

Rachel got 16 presents for her sweet 16 (though some of them were $16 split between several presents to bring the total presents to 16).

Her best present was getting her license. She was frustrated that she had to go back a second time to get it when a cross walk with a flashing light thwarted her perfect test, but she did great the second time and came home ready to run all the errands for me. :) 

She planned to do 3 separate birthday celebrations because her friend groups don't jive with each other, but because of Thanksgiving and all, she ended up just doing one, hanging with Eden at grandma's house, making some interesting brownies and watching a couple movies. 

Beyond her birthday, she's had fun hanging with friends. She likes to stay after school on pep band days so she hang out with her friends. On one such day they ended up at Eegees and ran into the big guy himself.

Rachel was asked to perform at the ward Christmas party and invited Olivia and Bella to play with her. They ended up playing It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. Last minute they invited Eliza to sing along with them, and they did great.

I'm continually grateful that Rachel chooses to spend her time with good friends, and that she is self confident and able to stand up for herself and do what is right. She is really loving band and all the friends that come there, and has great friends at church, too. We feel like we don't see her much at home, and miss having her around more. She's a great student and continues getting straight As with all honors classes, including a dual enrollment pre-calc class and AP European History this year, too. We couldn't ask for more--unless you're talking about doing chores ;).

Ryan basketball

 Ryan tried out for basketball second quarter and despite a TON of kids trying out, he was able to secure himself a spot on the C team, which was all 6th graders. 

They improved each game. Ryan played point guard or off guard and was a good team player. His defense is one of his strengths along with his speed. 

For the last game of the season he decided to make his team cookies to celebrate. Of course they loved him for it.

The last game of the season they managed a shut out, keeping the other team from scoring at all, while they got 38 points. Ryan made a couple baskets that game to contribute.

They had a fun time playing bball together and Ryan looks forward to playing again next year.

Gymnastics

 Megan has been part of the Sapphire Team at gymnastics since May. It's an in-house competitive team, which we opted for instead of the Level 2 team she was invited to join that would have competitions in Phoenix. She now practices twice a week for 2 hours each and has learned a ton. 

They had their first competition at the end of September

Megan did a great job and got 3rd place on vault. It was fun to watch her show off her talents.

She also got special recognition as the Most Coachable.

They did team pictures, but instead of buying the professional package, Megan just did another photo shoot at home doing the same poses. :) 

The second competition was at the beginning of December. She requested a different hairdo that would make her back roll easier without a ponytail.

Megan had progressed in a few skills since the last competition and was able to do a double back walkover in her floor routine and a squat on in her bar routine.

She was very worried about falling off the beam when doing her handstand, but did a great job and stayed on.

Megan did such a great job on her bar routine that she got 1st place! We're proud to see her growth and sticking to it even when her wrists hurt and when she is frustrated that she can't move on to the next skill as fast as she would like.

They've got one more meet in February, then Megan thinks she would like to go back to recreational gymnastics instead of continuing with the competitions.

Thanksgiving

 Todd and Savannah's family arrived late the Saturday before Thanksgiving. We celebrated Rachel and Ben's birthdays on Sunday, and enjoyed having cousins around again for Sunday dinner. Our Sunday dinners are always a lot quieter without them around. 

Monday Megan stayed home from school to hang out with them. Savannah, Todd, and Eloise came over to help make the t-shirts for the turkey trot. We had 23 shirts to make. While I took Rachel to her driving test they stayed and finished them off for me.

Tuesday Megan, Annie, and Ryan stayed home from school to hang with the cousins. That night Andrew and his family arrived pretty late. Wednesday no one had school so we decided to go to the mall to use the giving machines and do a mall scavenger hunt. The kids had lots of fun running around the mall for a half our finding as many things as they could on the list. 

Cari and Sharon arrived while we were at the mall (they flew in to Phoenix, then borrowed a car from Uncle Galen). When we got back we grabbed Eegees sandwiches and Eegees and went to Grandma Knight's house to eat in the back yard.

After lunch we had our annual ugly sweater cookie decorating contest.

There were some beautiful ugly sweaters.

We had 7-layer salad for dinner Wednesday, and everyone was enjoying having cousins around.

Thursday we headed to the Julian Wash Trail for our 5th annual Turkey Trot. The shirts say "will run for pie," though I should have changed mine to say will bike for pie, because I rode the bike back and forth keeping track of the kids along the route. 

Ryan came in first and Ben got second place. Matthew won the "most effort" prize.

After the race, it was Turkey Time. 

And of course after Thanksgiving dinner it was time for the tradition of watching Donald Duck. 

Rachel gave Bevy a little drawing lesson with some drawing tips since they both are good artists.

Games were played, cousin time was enjoyed, and the kids especially enjoyed teaching Marvin how to do fist bumps. 

Friday everyone had to leave, first Andrew's family, then a few hours later Todd's family, and a few hours later Cari and Sharon. We were glad they could all come visit, but wished they could have stayed for longer. 

I got down the Christmas decorations from the garage and we put up the Christmas tree. Later, while Jacob and I went to the temple and out to eat to celebrate our anniversary, the kids pulled out a few decorations and hung their ornaments on the tree. That turned out to be about as much decorating as we got done this year, but it was enough.