October Phone Dump 2017

Look at me go! Another month taken care of, and still keeping up on current events. I have a hopeful goal to be all caught up by Spring Break. Hmm, okay, caught up by summer. That is probably a more realistic goal.

There are so many fun memories caught in a certain month. I'm glad that I put all the bits and pieces on here. It is like the beverage to a meal. It isn't a main course, but it fills up all the empty spaces in your stomach. Enjoy these scraps from the month of October last year.

The girls are always turning in art projects. Sometimes I get to see the finished products and other times, I don't. I'm not too worried because I'm sure that every piece they do will end up in the art show in a few months, but I still like to grab a picture if I can. This is June's cardboard art.

Ivory tried out for Student Council. They had a ton of requirements. They finished with an assembly and some fun skits. I took a picture of these girls at the end. They are all great friends and it is nice to see Ivory happy and prospering socially. (They all made it on Student Council.)

Here is one of Robyn's pieces. The silhouette with all the pieces of her personality inside. Yes, there is a big spider on there. That must be in the nightmare side of her brain.

Pip was a new addition back in October. She was newly shaved. She doesn't look like this now. She is a lot fluffier.

These next few pictures are from when I was gone in Minnesota. Dad was in charge and still taking pictures. What a champ. He took our shark shopping. Good thing it is well behaved.

Carpool was still happening even with me gone. Ty sent me a picture to say hi. Don't worry, the picture flipped. June is not allowed to drive non-family members around yet.

Another cute group selfie on Monday evening. I think it was before FHE.

Hahaha. This picture is so weird, but really funny.

More art (in progress) from Robyn. This is the self, surrealistic, and abstract portraits. She got her inspiration for the creepy one from Night Gardener. (Our family book group book in October.)

The orchestra concert happened the night before I returned. I was sad to miss it but Tyler recorded the whole thing for me. Here is the group, a picture of my cute June, and Elyse holding Pearl. Pearl loves all of June's friends.

Robyn is still painting our window. We have had almost a year of fun art. I loved her Halloween painting with the hill from Nightmare Before Christmas.

Sometimes when I bring the groceries home, I like to stack them. June was trying to interrupt my tower. But know, that it would have stood strong if not for interference.

Crazy hair day at school came and went. I actually don't care much about getting the kids all dressed up in certain themes. It is hard enough to get everyone out the door on a normal morning without adding to the chaos. However, Daisy had a fun idea to make her hair look like a cupcake. I approve.

On afternoon, Tyler and I kicked an acorn down to church. Then we found it and had everyone kick it home. It is harder to kick it uphill, but we managed and it was a great group effort. Really, it is the little things that make a family stronger.

Robyn finished out her tennis season. Her final competition was played as doubles with Olivia. They did okay. I think she will do better next Spring now that she has a better idea how everything goes. I think I'm not good at spectating. If I see someone playing Tennis, I want to go play too.

Ivory got dressed backwards the other day. I don't think it had anything to do with school themes. She is just a weird duck to begin with.

Band had a concert too. You already know that Robyn is always in the back. Even during percussion, they were towards the back of the stage. She played Congos and vibraphone during Jazz band. Oh yeah...Jazz Band is new this year. Robyn really loves it. I mostly think she likes having music for two classes of the day.

I feel like this picture would be in stock photography. Robyn was showing me her red tongue.

The activity day girls made sucker spiders. These are probably the only spiders I can support. And maybe jumping spiders.

Some local kids put together the play Pirates of Penzance. It was fun because I had never seen it before. They did a good job, although sometimes it was hard to hear the words. Here are Alice and Steven taking tickets.

The girls found some columns in the building. I love this photo Tyler took.

And a selfie for good measure.

Daisy found one of those random mailer things with a glow number trying to get you to bring it in and check the number. She found a better use for it. She made it a cyborg eye. Love it.

June took a picture of Christina the candy vampire. I think she looks....tasty.

Finally, football season ended. We went to the twins last game. It was fun to watch. I'm glad we went to those games because we haven't made it to any of their basketball games. Mainly because they are not at night. Apparently after school is too busy for us.

So, there are our October moments. I'll leave you with a lovely Autumn sunset. (contented sigh)

Proxy Skate Night

Usually we will try to take the whole family to skate night, but recently, with so many kids, there is always extra stuff going on. If I'm being truly honest, even if there wasn't something going on, I would rather skip skate night. However, I remember loving Skate King when I was little. I have many fond memories of friends and skating and holding hands with boys while couple skating.

The last skate night we had in October, I'm not sure what I was doing, but I was busy with the older girls, and Daisy was either sick or in trouble. I actually think she was in trouble, but when I asked her about it (since it had been a while) she claimed she was sick. Hmmm....

Regardless, Tyler took Pearl and Ivory and ended up with a couple tagalongs.

All these pictures were from Tyler's phone and I didn't feel much compulsion to add them, but once again, I figured the girls would have great memories so they needed to be included.

It looks like they had a great time. I'm not sure where the cupcakes came from, but they looked yummy too. I think roller skating is an essential right of elementary passage.

Solo and Ensemble

Every year the orchestra does Solo and Ensemble. Each student has to participate somehow. They can form groups or do solos. They usually scramble to get into groups, but a few people go for the solo or the teacher signs them up. They are scored and some move onto district.

I know that June did a solo one year and a has performed in groups as well. This year she was in a duet with Brooke, her good friend, and she also got roped into helping out the basses in a quartet. They needed a violin and June was available.

She said it was pretty crazy because the three basses play so low that it just sounds like a low cacophony. She would just do her thing. I didn't record it, but it sounded...interesting. The scoring system is 1-4. One is superior and you can get also get minuses. For instance, if you got a 2- that would be just below excellent. June actually never checked her score with the bass trio, but they didn't move on.

June and Brooke played Duet 2 by Ignace Pleyel. Here they are getting ready.

And the song.

I think they did a pretty good job. They scored a 1. However, there were many people who scored high and they didn't move on. They got the first Honorable Mention. Aren't they cute in their matching dresses.

However, one of the solos that moved on decided not to go, so June and Brooke were bumped up. They did okay at district. June said that they didn't play quite as well. They ended up with a score of 1-. Good job ladies. It is really fun listening to them play.

January Flush

Woohoo! January is gone and I am still caught up with what is current. At least mostly. I hope it isn't too confusing jumping back and forth between 2017 and 2018.

I still tend to take a lot of random photos that don't need a post of their own. I usually call them phone dumps, but today it is just a flush. Flushing out all those memories that need to go to a happier place...the blog. Enjoy all the tidbits...

January is one of my favorite months, book wise. All three of my book groups start planning for the year and I have lists of things I'm going to be reading. Sometimes I will order copies so they will be around when I need them. Especially for the family book group because there are four of us reading the same book around the same time. When my thriftbooks packages come, it it like Christmas all over. I'm not sure why Tyler put the bag on his head, but now it is an even better memory.

I know I have mentioned how much I love the kids art. It is one of the things that makes my heart so happy. Robyn was drawing the other day and I took a couple pictures. The first is a sketch of Pip. And the other is a lion.

Speaking of Robyn...she gets the most awesome wings and fluff in her hair. Wings are the pieces on the side that seem to stick out from your head. June gets some great ones too. The other kids don't seem to suffer from them. I'm pretty sure I was the one who passed on the hair fuzz. One day, (I think we were outside playing spikeball) Robyn was standing with the sun behind her and suddenly she had a halo of hair fuzz around her head. She looked like those pictures of Mary with the halo of light around her head. It was epic.

Speaking of spikeball, I heart that game. We play inside when it is too cold, although we played out in the wind and snow today, so whatever works. Tyler took a picture of us playing indoors. (You can't be quite as crazy inside, but it is still a blast.)

Tyler and I have been decluttering. We have been reading some books and seeing ways we can cut back on all the stuff we have. One Saturday, Tyler took all his clothes out of the closet so he could go through them. He ended up getting rid of 2/3 of it. This wasn't surprising to me. I know he doesn't wear half the stuff in there. Now the closet is nice and roomy.

I had to clean out some of the school box and I found this paper of Pearl's. She was given words and she had to combine them into compound words. See any interesting ones?

I am interested in what a tooth teller does. And I need to get me a waterbrush.

I would like to think that Tyler took this picture because I look so peaceful sleeping, but I'm pretty sure it is because he thinks the dog is so cute curled up in the blankets. Lately, she has been peeing on the carpet too much, so she no longer gets to sleep with people. I don't trust her to roam free in the night.

We had a knitting class at church. This was awesome since I want to take up knitting this year. I took all the girls with me. They went to the crochet section and did some chains, although no one felt very confident about it. I learned knitting with only one other person. I didn't get far, but Tricia and I plan on taking some more classes. It will be slow going, but I think I can make some progress in 2018. The goal is a hat. We'll see...

We had a short stint babysitting a guinea pig. Reese's Pieces was actually a very good guinea pig. The girls took her out and played with her every day, multiple times. She had this weird cowlick on the top of her head that made a little indent in her hair. She was a sweety, but I'm glad we didn't have to keep her. One animal peeing on the carpet is plenty.

We have not had a lot of snow this year. So far, only two evenings where it stuck. The only days we have woken up to a nice snowy morning was Christmas and Tyler's birthday. Basically the best holidays of the year.

The older girls and I went out to get some stuff on that Saturday. I tried to take a picture of us with the dusting of snow in our hair, but you can't see it very well.

Daisy is on the Jr. Hope Squad at school. There was a fun assembly with some weird skits. I took this picture of Daisy on the slide show. Her sign says, "Don't let other people tell you who you are." Good advice.

Tyler and I went on a impromptu date. (Oh, our actual 'date' for January was reading a book. We chose The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning to go along with our decluttering. It was actually a really good book, and not too long. That was an essential requirement.) This other fun date was to a show. I had heard cute things about the play, Dear Ruth, so we went to a matinee. It was a very fun show.

On a girls night out, we tried out this new ice cream place called Roll With It. They make Thai rolled ice cream. It was tasty, but I now know that I like regular ice cream more. Hands down.

I still try to go to the temple on Wednesday mornings. I don't always make it but I have been mostly consistent. One particular morning, the temple was so beautiful with the snow. I had to take a picture.

More random art from Robyn. Her Young Women leader is named Camie. She adores her. I do too. She played games with us on New Years. And comes over often to hang out. I guess she just started doodling her name and it turned into a whole page. So cute. I actually drew one of those. You'll never guess which one.

Battle of the books is coming up. It isn't until March, but there have been some practice battles this last month. I went to help out and happened to end up with Ivory's team. I didn't know what her team name was beforehand, but when I found out and saw her poster, it made me laugh.

Seriously, take a closer look at this 'Whalemingo.' (Names have been blotted out to protect the innocent.)

June and I bopped over to an ice cream place while we were waiting for Laser Tag to start. (Laser Tag should be a post by Tyler. I hope he gets it on here.) We went to a place where Curtis works called Rockwell Ice Cream. They have lots of unique flavors. June got Muddy-buddy and I got one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted...Biscoff. Yum...heaven. This kind of ice cream I can get behind. To be clear, I have had Biscoff before, just never in ice cream.

Robyn did the Boom Concert last year. Now that she is older, she didn't do the beginning band number. She played with Symphonic and with the huge mass of kids at the end. There was no seeing her at all this year. Especially when they had three schools on the stage, it was crazy. The kids were packed up there.

 My kids must have misunderstood and heard 'Book' concert, because this is what I saw in our aisle. Don't worry, I think they put them down to listen to one of the songs.

Finally, a cool picture of the moon at the end of January. It was so cool coming over the mountains. Nature can be so amazing. I have seen some really lovely sunrises and sunsets recently as well.

January was a happy month. One down and eleven to go.