Catching Up

I have not done a very good job at keeping up with the blog lately, so I just went through my pictures for the last month or so and now you get a quick re-cap (with lots of pictures!).

On the School Front:

Besides the science projects, the kids have been keeping busy at school, doing well and having some fun too. I thought this was a neat thing that showed up on the chain-link fence (made from some little plastic squares):


At the end of every grading period, the elementary school has an "Academic Pep Rally" where they give out awards, recognize the honor roll, etc. I went to the last one, which had a "rodeo" theme. Here's the principal reading some names:


Hannah got a T-shirt for being on the All-A Honor Roll:

Courtney insisted on getting all dressed up for her class picture.

Unfortunately, she was the only one actually in her class picture this year. Hayley got sick with a little stomach flu bug the night before (all over the bedroom carpet...ugh) so I had to keep her home. Hannah had a dentist appointment that day to finally get her "quad-helix" appliance installed (to expand the roof of her mouth) and I hoped that they'd do her class picture in the morning, but of course, they took it during the couple of hours we were gone to the dentist.

The next day, the kids did all make it back to school for their class Valentine parties. I got to stop in by Hayley's class party for a few minutes.

And I also got to be in charge of Hannah's class party (lucky me!). She had been really worried that her mouth would be sore from her new quad-helix so she wouldn't be able to eat any candy, but as you can see, she was feeling just fine (other than some initial speech/pronunciation adjustments).

Her class party actually went really well -- I got a lot of help from other parents so that makes my room mom job much easier. One of the favorite activities was frosting and decorating heart cookies.

I had to take a picture of Hannah later at home to show what her clothes look like after she frosts cookies (it might be hard to see here, but black was maybe not the best color choice that day!)

McKay continues to be good about practicing his trombone for band (most of the time) and he's made a lot of improvement since the beginning of the year!

On the Church Front:

We planned a Primary PJ activity last weekend that went pretty well. The kids got to wear their pajamas, play some "get to know you" games with the teachers, make a couple of "PJS" crafts (Prayer-Journal-Scriptures) and eat some doughnuts and fruit.

Hayley looked cute one Sunday with her cat in a matching dress (but Mom still wouldn't let the stuffed animals come to church, darn it)

On the Home Front:

Grandpa and Grandma H. have been visiting for a few weeks now, while Grandpa H. works on some new windmill towers for Grandpa G.

Grandma H. has spent some of her time staying with family in the Dallas area. Grandpa G. was also here for a few days to check on construction progress of his house.

(We are still dealing with mud issues too as we continue to get snow. I for one am ready for winter to be over!)

The kids always love when grandparents come to visit! Hayley had a fun time putting all of her little blankets on Grandpa H. one evening.

Courtney lost another tooth in the middle of the night. I didn't even know she had a loose one, and when she came in during the night and told me she thought she found a tooth in her mouth, I didn't believe her. The next morning, she showed me her mouth and all I could see was a new tooth growing in -- no empty spots at all. I told her she didn't lose a tooth, until she pulled it out from under her pillow and showed it to me (she wanted me to take a picture of the actual tooth this time).

I guess she did lose a tooth during the night! And she was a little upset that the Tooth Fairy didn't come after she stuck it under her pillow at 4:30 in the morning.

And finally, we had to say goodbye to our dear friends the Roberts family. They have lived just down the hill from us and we have spent a lot of time together the last year and a half. Emily has been a great friend and support for me since our move here and our kids are great friends too. They have only moved about an hour away so we will still get to see them once in a while, but we miss them terribly! Courtney especially has struggled with losing her best friend Audrey.

Hayley misses her good friend Eric too -- they played together all the time and were in Pre-K together (here they are after the class Valentine party):

We had their family over for dinner on Valentine's Day (their last Sunday here) and hugged and cried. My girls have already written a bunch of letters and drawn pictures and cried some more. They are counting down the days until next weekend when we hope to go down to visit them and see their new house.

I can't believe that tomorrow is the first of March! We are planning a Spring Break trip this year -- since last year's CA trip fell through due to home remodeling, we're going to try it again. We'll spend a few days visiting Grandpa and Grandma G. and then drive up to do a 3-day excursion at Disneyland. The kids have never been to Disneyland (Brian and I went once shortly after we were married). We can't wait!

Forgive and Forget

Last night I went to the adult session of Stake Conference, so the kids were left in charge of themselves with a movie to watch. (Brian, unfortunately, couldn't come with me as he ran into problems installing the new propane water heater and had an open gas line that he was missing some fittings or something for so he was off searching hardware stores.)

We have left them alone before for short periods of time and they are all old enough now that I don't worry too much -- usually they are just fine. When I got home last night, McKay made a comment that Courtney and Hannah had been in a little "fight" while I was gone. I never did get the details of what exactly happened between them, but as I was getting beds ready, I saw this little note folded up and left on Hannah's pillow:

Dear Hannah,

I am so sorry. I might even cry.

Your horrible dumb sister

When Hannah found the note, she went off to the other room and wrote a reply (her spelling):

Dear Courtney,

You are not horrible, selfish and definity not dumb. Courtney I'm sorry for hitting you and I wanted to make a club in the bedroom so I snuk into dad's office and I thought I took the keys to our bedroom. And then you came in, and, well you know what.

Your very sorry sister Hannah H.

I still have no idea what exactly happened and unfortuately, clashes between these two happen more often than I would like. But, I love that they can forgive and make amends all on their own. Sometimes I almost have anxiety attacks thinking about my girls as teenagers with all the hormones that will be in our house. But I hope and I pray that they will continue to learn to forgive each other and be great friends.

Science Projects

We've been busy around our house lately with some science projects. The schools here don't have traditional Science Fairs (that I know of), but McKay and Hannah have both had some "at home" projects recently.

McKay's project was to create a large paper mache arthropod, accompanied by a written report. He chose to do his project on the water strider. I helped him with the paper mache part (he still hates to get his hands dirty!) and then he painted it.

His teacher had suggested mounting it on a mirror to represent water, but we decided that would be too expensive so we just went with aluminum foil.

We learned a lot about water striders and he got an "A" on the project!

Hannah's project was to create a model suspension bridge. Each year, the 3rd Grade focuses on a theme and they set up displays for the whole school. Last year it was a "Medical School" about the human body and this year they are doing "Bridges." Each class focuses on a different type of bridge. The model bridges did not have to support weight -- they were just to show the overall design.

We enlisted Brian's engineering skills to help with this project (and parents were able to help). Hannah was excited to paint the lines on the road.

She thought it was so cool to use the masking tape to make the lines nice and straight!

(And in case you're wondering what happened to her face... she was racing outside at school and fell down on the asphalt -- scraped up her knee as well as her face!)

We even got Grandpa Humpherys to help with finishing up the bridge. Right now it is on display in the hallway at school!

Messy Mud

It's been just over a week now since our big snow storm and we are still dealing with all the repercussions of it. The biggest side effect of the snow for us is mud -- LOTS of mud!

To get to our house, you have to travel about a mile on a dirt road, partially uphill. We've had mud before when there have been big rain storms (for example, see here for the story about when the school bus got stuck in the mud), but we've never seen it like this. We had so much snow that is melting and has nowhere to go and no hot warm sun to dry everything out. Then, on top of that, we got another snow storm this past week of several more inches (causing a 2-hour late start at school the next morning) which is just adding to the mess. And it's supposed to maybe snow again Sunday night.

After the first storm, I didn't dare take the van out because of the slippery roads. Monday morning I drove the kids to school in the 4WD truck, but by Tuesday I'd decided the van would probably be okay. We did fine that morning, but by Tuesday afternoon it had warmed up enough to melt more snow and make the road really muddy. I had to pick the kids up Tuesday and we came up the hill to the last corner (which is the worst in terms of mud). We went around the corner and didn't go any further -- the wheels just spun and spun in that mud. I was able to back down the hill, so we tried it again -- and got stuck. Back down we went a couple more times and finally I just gunned it as much as I dared and we made it through the worst spot and back to the house. The van got a good coating of mud on it from all that tire-spinning and now it just sits in the garage (still covered wtih mud). We don't dare take it out again until the road dries up a bit.

Here is the truck after driving through some mud -- it's actually looking pretty clean to me here!

But the road is not drying out -- if anything it just gets worse and the snow continues to fall and then melt. So we are limited to sharing the truck between Brian and I and having to work around the fact that nobody else is coming up to the house -- not the school bus, the UPS truck, the trash truck, etc. It's going to be an interesting next few weeks!

I tried to take a few pictures yesterday and this morning of the road -- there are several "bad" spots and now even with the truck in 4WD you do a lot of slipping and sliding around! It's hard to capture what it's like, but here are a few attempts:

Brian's Birthday

Last Friday we celebrated Brian's birthday (I won't say how old he's getting these days, but he's still older than me!). We all got to spend the whole day with him too, thanks to the big snow storm that came through the day before and the kids having school canceled again.

Brian spent a chunk of his day working outside to clear out snow (see my last post). We had been planning to go out that evening with our good friends Brad & Emily, as it happened to be Brad's birthday too, but we weren't sure if we could get out with the road conditions. Brian had to go run some errands in the afternoon and he said he thought we'd be okay in the 4WD truck. We checked to make sure the restaurant and theater were still open (they were) and since babysitters were taken care of, we decided to brave the weather and roads after all.

Before we left for the evening, we had to sing "Happy Birthday"!

We picked up Brad & Emily (and cute baby Lucy who tagged along) and went to dinner at a Thai/Chinese restaurant. It was yummy!

After dinner, we went to see "Avatar" in 3D at the movie theater. I thought the 3D part was pretty cool -- it took a little bit to get used to at the beginning, but it was a neat effect. And we all enjoyed the movie. It was a fun double date -- something we haven't done in a long time. (Thanks, Brad, for having the same birthday as Brian!)

I am very grateful to have Brian in my life. He is my hero who can do anything, fix anything, and save the day if needed. He is a wonderful dad to our kids -- I love to watch him play and interact with them. And they love him to pieces, just like I do.

I think I was going to post this video last year on his birthday but never did get it up, so I thought I'd share it now. I put this together for Father's Day a few years ago. Happy Birthday Brian!