Friday, January 28, 2011

Gold Honor Roll and Leadership Award



Ashlee received two awards at an assembly today at school. She received this month's Life Skill Award for Leadership. And she also received a certificate for being on the Gold Honor Roll. This means she has a GPA of 3.8 or higher. (I think she had a 3.9) She missed the 4.0 by like 1 percentage point. Neither John or I were able to attend. We were both at work. I feel horrible. Another parent was kind and took pictures for me without me even asking. I am thankful for her kindness. Way to go Ashlee. We are proud of your achievements.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Family Updates

I feel as though I am really slacking on my blogging anymore. I really don't want to be a slacker. I want to keep this blog going so that we can have a blog book every year to share, document and remember what things were like someday. Since I am horrible about scrap booking pictures, I have to rely on this as a means to document what is going on in our lives. Here's a quick post to update/document what has been going on. Unfortunately there are no pictures!
John is doing well and constantly working. One of the things I admire about him is how hard he works for our family. He gets up everyday and goes to a job that carries a lot of stress along with it. Although he would like for things to be different and the situation to be better, he does it without complaining. He knows it's a job and times are tough right now, so he needs to make do with it and provide for his family. When he's not at the pig farm, he is busy with the rabbits. The rabbits seem to be going ok. Lot's of work, but going well.
Libby has resigned from her job at the pig company. January will be her last month there. Things have been really slow. She is only getting about an 1 hour a day if that and needs more than that. She decided to go back into substitute teaching, only to discover that the school districts are not accepting subs right now because they have too many. There is one district about 15minutes from us that is accepting subs. She has applied with them and is waiting to see what happens. In the meantime she was offered a job 2 days a week working at the Almond Huller in the off season, so she will be doing that.
Ashlee just turned 10. It's hard to believe she is 10 already. She seems to be doing well. She is getting good grades in school and is looking forward to doing swim team again this summer. Her teacher says she doesn't know what she would do without Ashlee to help her out in class!
Mikayla is doing well in school too. School isn't as easy for her as she would like it to be, but she does well. Mikayla is in the process of having lots of orthodontic work done (the whole process will take like 8 years). Her mouth is a mess. On December 23rd she had an expander put in her mouth to try to widen the top of her mouth. Every night her mouth has to be cranked with a little key like device. After 3 weeks of turning she started experiencing lots of pain and a gap in between her front teeth. The orthodontist made us stop. He said he only has one patient a year go through that kind of pain ( go figure, and it happened to be our child. I am telling you I think we have the worst odds). He said that kind of pain is not normal. He thinks John may have been turning the key too fast and caused her mouth to get inflamed. She is taking a two week break from turning and will start the whole turning thing again in two weeks (this time with dad turning much slower)!

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Sleep Over

Tuesday is Ashlee's 10th birthday. Wow where has the time gone? Instead of having a birthday party like in years past, we decided to keep it low key. She invited two friends over for a sleep over. At Ashlee's request we had taco's and nacho's for dinner and cookie cups for dessert (instead of cake or cupcakes).



I found this cute, inexpensive craft idea at Michael's so the girls made these.






Sarah, Alyssa & Ashlee

After they finished their craft they watched the movie Despicable Me and enjoyed some movie treats. This morning we went and got donuts for breakfast and then the girls played some games before going home.

On Tuesday the 18th Ashlee took donuts to school to celebrate her birthday with her classmates. She chose to have dinner at Hometown Buffet (of all places). Just so she could have endless ICEE'S!







Wednesday, January 12, 2011

4th Grade Mission Project

It only took approximately 20 hours of Ashlee's Winter Break to complete her California Mission Project. Here is the finished project. She also had to complete a packet of information on her assigned mission and do a brochure for her mission. She got a 100% on her project and I am very glad to say it is done and over with. Homework during Winter Break isn't exactly my idea of "quality family time."