Pie Face Two Ways

Page-turner

The other day, Eliza picked up this book, The Mark of Canverlot, to read during her daily reading time.  She devoured it in just a few days, on the edge of her seat to find out how it would end.

Kudos to Cat, who wrote this book for NaNoWriMo in 4th grade.

Super Heroes

I was looking at photos on Ben's phone tonight and this one caught my eye.  It's from Back to School night at the beginning of this school year and I'm pretty sure it hasn't been on the blog yet.

Can you tell which ones are the cardboard cutouts and which aren't?

Triple the Fun

Jack had a special morning today.  At the weekly morning meeting, he sang The Quadrilateral Song with the rest of the 3rd grade, which they've been working on for weeks and which Jack was really excited about.  It was also Twin Day, and he happened to have TWO friends to be twins with, so they ended up as triplets.  They looked great!  And to top it all off, we were all surprised (because I didn't get a heads' up from the teacher) that Jack was named as a Noble Knight Scholar Of the Week.  What a way to start the day.

That is the question

Yesterday morning when I was practicing piano with Eliza, she asked me, very seriously, "Why do they have to tell Aunt Rhody the old gray goose is dead?"

I didn't have an answer for her.

My Birthday

My grandfather passed away the day before my birthday.  It wasn't a big surprise, but it did happen a bit sooner than we thought it would.  I'd planned to leave on my birthday to spend a couple of days with my family in St. George, thinking initially that I would be able to say goodbye to Opa.  Alas, I didn't get to say goodbye to him, but I still made my trip to St. George so that I could have some time just with my extended family.  The funeral was just a few days later, so I came home for about 18 hours, then left again with Ben and the kids so that we could be together for all of the services.

Cat and Eliza were up at about 5am on my birthday so that they could surprise me with decorations and breakfast and presents.  They let me sleep until 7, which was fantastic, and we all had a great time during our early morning party.  A great way to start the day!

After the party, we all got ready for the day and Ben and I drove separately to the kids' school to see Cat and her fellow 6th graders do a dance performance for the school.  I left from there to go to St. George and Ben kept Luke and took care of the other kids when they got out of school.

The rest of the day went well.  I listened to a book while I drove; when I arrived in St. George I enjoyed being with my mother, grandmother, brother, and extended family; and periodically throughout the day I would pause whatever was going on to answer sweet phone calls from friends.

Cat's First Basketball Season

I've been trying to get Cat to try basketball for a couple of years now.  She was all set to play last year, but after a series of unfortunate events, she didn't.  This year she played with a Bantam team connected with the high school near us and she had a great time.  She wasn't the high scorer on the team, but she got several baskets over the course of the season, and went out with a bang, scoring her first 3-pointer in the last game.  I included the video below, which also shows her incredible surprise at making the shot, haha.  Cat is good at rebounding, and her shooting and ball handling got better and better.  It was a fun season!

Two Worthwhile Stops

Today we came home from a trip to Mesquite, NV for a soccer tournament for Cat's team (more on that later).  It worked out perfectly to stop in St. George, UT on our way home to see my Oma and my Uncle Jamie.  Together we enjoyed a  nice, long, delicious, laughter-filled lunch at The Habit.  (Remind me to tell you my uncle's story about the time he went to the driving range with his friends in high school.)

Then, we happened upon an unusual truck stop as we continued on our drive home.  We headed to a Flying J right off the Interstate, and it turns out that there's a petting zoo there!  It was closed when we pulled up shortly after 5, but we still walked over and hung out with the animals near the fence and even snapped a few photos with a loose peacock.

Eliza discovered that this emu would follow her hand up and down and side to side.
She and Jack had a lot of fun with it!

Luke really wanted to see the peacock but this is as close as he would get.
Jack and Eliza, however, had no trouble following/chasing the peacock as closely as they could.

Note to self: stop and take some time at the free Eagles Landing Petting Zoo in Scipio next time I am in the area.  How have I never seen this place before??

Selfie

Looking Back at 2016

Valentine's Day is the perfect day for sharing our end of the year video from 2016, right?  Sorry to be so late.  But at least it's done.

Here are everyone's highlights from last year:

Ben
- family vacation (Palisade State Park)
- Jack's baptism
- Brett joining MoTab
- Campfire cooking
- Manti Pageant

Brett
- family vacation
- Jack's baptism
- joining MoTab
- kids' sports
- family visiting

Cat
- BizTown
- Hope of America
- kayaking at Palisade State Park
- paddleboarding on Utah Lake
- turning 11

Jack
- soccer games
- swimming at the pool (St. George)
- playing with cousins
- watching movies
- school

Eliza
- dance class
- watching Cat and Jack play soccer
- hugging Daddy
- Palisade State Park
- playing with my family

Luke
- going to the jumpy place
- going to the dino place

Valentines

This afternoon I helped the kids make Valentines to give to the kids in their classes on Valentine's Day. They each got a stack of blank index cards and choices between Dum-Dums and Smarties (it just happened that way!) for their cards. I got out stamps and ink pads, along with lens and am e other necessary materials. And now, the cards are all done for Tuesday.  And I love that the kids took charge and made them in their own ways.

Life Lesson

And yes, Ben made sure the doughnut got turned around before securing it to the car.

Self-Guided Exploration

Partners in Prayer

Candid Camera

Let's just say... Jack wasn't excited about his piano lesson last week.

After a lot of patience (and a little bit of coaxing) on his teacher's part, though,

they managed to make most of it productive.

Cake Boss

Look who made a delicious chocolate cake completely from scratch?  Oh, and decorated it too.

Costume Change

One afternoon recently, Eliza disappeared for a while during

the time when she should have been doing her homework.

When she finally came upstairs, she was in a new outfit.  I was baffled.

When I asked her why she'd changed (and taken approximately 3 hours to do so)

she simply explained that she wanted to be comfortable.

Nail Salon

For the record, Luke's nail polish was clear.

Extreme Sledding

We wanted one more fun snow activity with Ben and Suz and their family before they went back to the Southeast in January (incidentally, they went back to snow, but we couldn't have predicted that).  Uncle Ben knew of a cool place to go sledding near the Tibble Fork Reservoir in American Fork Canyon, so we headed that way.  After fueling up at Krispy Kreme.

The biggest part of the adventure was technically arriving at the sledding destination.  We walked (or some people rode) down a road that had been closed off from driving for the winter.

We continued for a little while until we came to a place where we could cross the American Fork River.  Then we walked a long way along a snow-covered trail.  The kids, and the adults, were so anxious to do some sledding that we stopped at little slopes on the side of the mountain intermittently, to sled and play in the very, very deep snow.  We only had a couple of close calls with people going over the edge toward the river.

We finally arrived at The Sledding Place, and it was awesome.  It was a huge bowl, covered in slick, icy snow, so steep the kids could barely climb to the rim.  But they persisted, and had a great time sliding down the slopes, whether they were on sleds or not.  I don't have any great pictures, but Google Photos helped me out with this fun video from our excursion so you can get an idea of what this bowl looked like.

After our long trek to the bowl and a little bit of time sledding, the kids were ready to get back to the car and warm up (and find a bathroom).  They endured a few more pictures before we started walking back.  Luckily, we used a shortcut on our return trip so it wasn't quite as long.

Eliza was really ready to be done.

It was such a fun adventure!