Blast from the Past- May 2017 Happenings

And just like that, we are on to the month of May!

A busy, busy month indeed.

Abbie Kadabbie

Abbie had a busy month which included finishing up her first year of Junior High, going on a field trip with her friends in her peer tutoring class, and playing softball.

She LOVES softball and it has been fun to see her improve her softball skills.  

I love this gorgeous little 13-year old of mine.  She loves to help people, she loves going to the temple, and she still loves anything and everything that has an owl on it.

Ellie Bellie

In my post for last month I mentioned that Ellie found out that she won the Arbor Day contest for her grade at Liberty Elementary.  I love, love, love her poster and I am so happy that Mark and I were able to go with her to the awards ceremony.  This little gal is a pretty amazing artist and I am excited to see where she takes this talent of hers.

Ellie finished up the 4th grade this month and received a "Math Magician" award for her hard work in math this year.  

She also survived a session in the van where I was teaching Emma to drive (the picture of her wearing Abbie's softball helmet.)

She took a baseball apart because she 

A.) Saw someone do it on YouTube

B.) Wanted to try it for herself

She is such a cutie pie and I cannot believe how grown up she is getting.

Emma Lemma

Well, May brought us another legal drive in the house.

It takes her almost a full minute to adjust the seat every time she gets in the car, but she is turning out to be a pretty good driver.

She still gets distracted easily, so we are working on that.

But, she does know that you

A.) Should not drive with both feet.

B.) Should stay away from garbage cans

C.) Cannot wave to her friends while driving.

She is definitely part of the "selfie" generation and I find a lot of pics of her by herself and with friends on her phone.  Josh happened to be the lucky victim of one of her photo sessions.  She is going to miss that kid when he is on his mission.

She finished up her Freshmen year of high school and is gearing up to move on to being a Sophomore this fall.  Y-I-K-E-S.

Mother's Day

It was a pretty low key Mother's Day this year, which was just fine by me.

This little cutie instructed me that I was not to get out of bed in the morning until she had brought me breakfast.  So, it was a breakfast of toast with strawberry jam and a heart cutout in the middle, scrambled eggs, and water for me.  I loved it.  She also made the flower centerpiece.  I love her.

After church, I just basically did nothing, and it felt so good.

I read for a bit, took a nap, and then we went over to Mark's parents house to have dinner with everyone there. 

The perfect Mother's Day if you ask me.

I think I will continue the glorious month of May in a few more posts, so stay tuned...

October 2016 Happenings

Once again I have fallen way behind in updating this blog.  As in, I am nearly four months behind.  So now I am going to have to try and remember things.

So here goes nothing...

We decided to try a different softball league that had a fall option.  Abbie had a lot of fun and got to know some new girls, but the games were C-O-L-D.  I'm not sure if we will stick with this league when the spring comes, go back to Murray, or if Abbie will choose to not even play softball.  We shall see.  I hate to see her stop because she is a good softball player.  It's just been hard to find a well-organized league.

It's never good when you see the elementary's school number on your caller ID around 10:30 in the morning (recess time).  Especially when you are teaching preschool and cannot rush to pick your injured child up.  It's a good thing that dad works from home so he could be the hero in this situation!

Just like her older sister, Emma, little Miss Ellie took a tumble off the bars on the school playground.  Both the radius and the ulna were affected so on went the cast for six weeks.

She was a trooper though!  She hardly cried at all during the whole process.

I had the opportunity to be a volunteer for Ellie's field trip to the Utah Daughters of the Pioneers Museum and This is the Place Park.  I had never been to the museum before and found it fascinating.  I definitely want to go back so I can explore it some more.  

The kids also had fun at This is the Place even though it was a little bit of a chilly day.  They got to go on a mini handcart trek and Ellie pulled her little heart out, even with a bright green cast on her arm.  (Something tells me that the pioneers did not have bright green casts.)  All in all, it was a super fun day and I am thankful that I took the time to go with her.

During Red Ribbon Week, the school had a crazy hair day.  I asked Ellie what she wanted to do and she said, "I want to be Judy Hopps" (from the movie, Zootopia.) 

Okay.  Now I have exactly 2 hours to figure out how to make your hair look like rabbit ears.

I think I improvised very well, don't you?

Sadly after a little bit of playing at school, Ms. Hopps had to remove all of the hardware on her head, but at least it lasted long enough for a cute picture and for her teacher and friends to see our creativity.

Emma finished up her first volleyball season with Murray High School.  Mark and I have had so much fun attending her games.  We are so proud of our little libero!  She played on the Sophomore and JV teams and is only a Freshman.  It was great to see her progress and I am looking forward to watching another season next fall.

Josh also had a busy October.  He is involved in so many things that it is hard to keep track of him these days.  But, I am glad that he is involved in different things and enjoying his senior year of high school.

 He had a school choir concert...

in which he accompanied the Men's Choir.  It is fun to watch him play the piano.

He also had a school orchestra concert.  I think he was dressed as a hipster...:)

I will save the Halloween fun that we had in October for the next post.  

April Happenings

April has come and gone and it was filled with a million fun things.

Abbie started softball again.  She has been excited for it to start up.  She really, really, really wanted to try pitching this year.  Finally, in about the 4th game of the season, she was able to have her dream of pitching come true.  She did great!  I was so proud of her for staying calm even though she was extremely nervous.  

It is really fun to watch her team play this year.  They have grown so much since last year and really know the game now so they are able to play more rather than just running around with a lost look on their faces.  The last two games have unfortunately been rained out, but we are looking forward to next week's games.

I just had to throw in this cute picture of Bailey that I found on my phone.  I don't know who took it, but I love it.  It shows her sweetness in full effect.

My little Ellie has decided that she wanted to start up ice skating again.  Our horseback riding adventure has sadly come to an end because the teacher moved to a new place.  This got us talking about some options for Miss Ellie and ice skating is what she chose.

She has been doing great!  She has picked things up very quickly and is getting used to the tightness of the skates.  I am excited to see where this adventure takes her.

We had a couple of days of face painting in preschool and these lucky ladies were excited to participate as well.

Maybe you noticed Emma's cow outfit in the pictures from our San Francisco trip.  It's kind of a new thing that I have started on Instagram.  Emma is the #blueeyedbovine.  We decided that we needed to find something for Abbie and Ellie so that they could be part of this fun little adventure as well.

Meet #awesomeowlet.  She is just that.  Completely awesome. :)

And last, but not least, #unicorncutiepie.  She checked the mail every day for 2 weeks waiting for this outfit to come in the mail.  I think she wore it for 3 days straight once it got here.

I was invited to a Murray High School Softball game by my cute friend, Jennie.  She is an amazing young lady whom I got to know at our Stake Girl's Camp last summer.  She is a phenomenal softball player and I am so happy that she invited me to this game so I could see her play!  Before the game started, they had a little ceremony where they honored some breast cancer survivors.  Thank you, Jennie for asking me to be a part of this.  I am honored to be your friend. :)

My two youngest girls have been dying to have a playhouse for several years now.  I have been dying to build one and this. is. the. year.  We are finally doing it and we couldn't be more excited.

Phase 1 was clearing the land.  

Now if it can just stop raining for a few days we can move on to Phase 2. :)


One more fun thing for April...
I got to take a trip to the symphony with my guys.
We went to hear the Utah Symphony play Holst's "The Planets."  They were also showing footage from NASA as each of the planets were represented by music.  It was absolutely beautiful.

A Little Bit of Backtracking...

In the chaos that existed in the month of May, I failed to post about a few events.  So this will be a bit of a catch up session!

First of all, here's my beautiful little ballerina girl!
Ellie has been dancing with Dancemaker Studio for a few years now.  We love Ms. Victoria and are very sad that we will not be going back next year.  Miss Ellie has decided that although she likes to dance, she wants to try playing the guitar so she will be starting guitar lessons this summer. :)
Her final dance recital was in May and she did a fantastic job!

 Josh finished up another year with the Utah Youth Symphony.  They played Sibelius Symphony #2 and Finlandia.  They did an amazing job and it was great to see some of Josh's friends there.  He has a really great group of friends and that makes me happy. :)

 This was Ellie's first softball season.  She loved it, even though it didn't turn out quite as we had hoped.  There were only about 6 girls in her age group who signed up to play, so they didn't get much game time in.  They scrimmaged with Abbie's team and spent a lot of time going over the basics of softball.  She had two outstanding coaches, Karly and Elise, who really went above and beyond to make this a good experience for these girls.  Hopefully there will be more girls sign up next year so they can play some games.

 This was Abbie's second year playing softball.  She had a great season.  Her team (the Gator Gals) won every game and although she ended on kind of a bad note (see the previous post), she loved this season.  She would have liked to try pitching, but did not get a chance.  She is going to work on it during the off season so she can be really good for next year. :)

Although I do not have any pictures of Emma to post here, I will say that she is continuing with her ice skating and has participated in a couple of volleyball camps.  She loves both and we are just trying to figure out a way that she can participate in both things.  She has decided to not do the synchro team again (which was more like me telling her that she can't do everything and something had to go...).  She is a little sad about that, especially considering how much fun they had at the Regional competition back in January.  

She will survive though, and she will still be very busy.  She is trying to get her double axel down.  She is having some issues with the landing portion of it.  I know she will get there, but it is a bit of a frustrating time for her right now.  She is working hard at it and hopefully will be able to break through the barrier and start landing it consistently.

I love these kids of mine and I love that they are passionate about things.  Although it makes our lives a bit chaotic at times to try and keep everyone's schedules straight, I wouldn't have it any other way.  They are learning.  They are growing, and they are loving life.  

And I love being their mother. :)

Another School Year Comes to a Close

Whew!  Once again, we survived another busy month of May.  One great thing about this year is that the girls were actually finished with school two and a half weeks before they would have been if they were in public schools!  I almost could not believe it.  Because we are in a charter school that has to require school hours, I still have to log in hours every night.  We are still reading, doing math, and a bunch of other things- we are just not doing the actual lessons.  We've done all we need to do for this year.  Hooray!  

So what did we decide to do?  Well, the girls have been earning tickets for the days that they worked extra hard on school work and they finally earned enough to go to "Get Air."  It was great timing because we used it as a way to party for being done with school.  :)

We were exhausted after 45 minutes.  It's funny because when we originally got there, the girls begged me to stay for two hours.  Then they started jumping.  Our little legs were jell-o in about 30 minutes.  We did stick it out for an hour though and had a blast.

We also decided to get season passes to our local Amusement park this year.  Now that everyone is tall enough to go on all the rides, I think we will have some great times there.  The first trip was a success and we can't wait to go back.  Hopefully the new ride will be open the next time we go.  It looks super scary....and super awesome.

Abbie and Ellie wrapped up their softball seasons for the year.  Unfortunately Ellie did not have any real games, but they did play a few scrimmage games against Abbie's team.  We need to do some recruiting for the teams next year. 

Abbie's 2nd to last game turned out to be her last game because she took a pop fly to the forehead.  :(  What made it even more sad was that she was slated to pitch in the next inning and she has been waiting all season for the chance to pitch.  My heart broke for her.  She had a nice golf ball-sized lump on her head and a wicked headache, but was otherwise ok.  No concussion, thankfully.  Just a great story to tell.

Last week we went to one of my favorite places on earth.  Our Stake Property.  I can't even describe to you how I feel when I am here.  It truly is heaven on earth.  I want to live there- minus the bugs.

We went to help Grandpa O do some work there, and ended up having more fun than working.  Sorry, Grandpa...

While we were eating lunch, the heavens opened and rained down huge hailstones.  Thank goodness we were in the motorhome.  Emma had to be back home for an ice skating lesson, so I took the small break between hailstorms and gathered her and Bailey up in the van and we headed home.  The other girls stayed behind with Grandma and Grandpa.  

Now it is June and summer is officially here.  

I am excited for all of the things that summer will bring to our lives...

camping, 

Lagoon,

lazy days (hopefully),

shaved ice,

bike rides,

some St. George time,

more camping,

and FUN!!