Wednesdays

Wednesdays are fun days. Lucy and I got to spend lots of time together just the two of us. Also Piper has ballet. She loves it. Almost to the point that she can't contain herself. Every time I see her class, I think of the meme of the the ballet class of young girls. All the girls are in a perfect line poised and doing exactly what they are supposed to do, except for one girl who is rocking out to her own beat not standing in line or listening to anything anybody is telling her to do. It should be a fun year!

Sibling Bonding

Ben and Piper had fun working on a little project together. They built a bike jump with the light-bright. :)

Hanmandang Festival

We found out that there was a taekwondo tournament in Great Falls this weekend. Trevor showed a lot of interest in it. (At his taekwondo school, they got a new teacher and now he is in love with TKD again. His teacher talked about how fun this tournament was going to be and so was excited to go.) Ben was supposed to have his last biking race, so I stayed home with him and the other kids and Grant took Trevor and Lydia to the tournament.
They had a lot of fun. They both broke boards and placed in everything they did, which I thought was pretty impressive. Trevor got a silver (knife hand strike) and a bronze (stepping side kick power break) and Lydia got a gold (for the skipping side kick) and bronze (back kick). They both got a trophy for coming in third place in a team creative thing that they did. It was awesome and they had so much fun! Grant said that all the people there were really nice and coached them through learning new things on the side.
They had some car light issues on the way home so it took them an extra night to get home, but they all loved their experience!

Happy Place

Grant and I decided to go up and see what progress had been made on the house today for our quick date. It seems that we have been having a lot of "quick dates" lately. We'll find an hour here or there in between running kids places. As much as I have not liked picking out things for the house (have not liked it one bit), I love seeing the progress on the house and I enjoy the process of seeing our home become a reality. PLUS I love being there. I love how quiet and peaceful it is. It is my happy place.

Happy Birthday Miss Karmin

Our little miss Karmin is 11 today!
She wanted crepes for breakfast. We almost got them done before she woke up. She had her first day of Thursday classes at school, so that was definitely exciting. They sang to her in their drama class because Trevor told the teacher it was her birthday (sweet boy). After school she went to activity days and they celebrated her birthday there as well.
Grant had a deacon's quorum activity where they were going to ride their bikes 8 miles. He needed my help to have 2-deep leadership. So I invited Karmin to go along because I know she loves hiking and I wasn't about ready to leave her home to babysit on her birthday. We didn't quite make it 8 miles...it was more like 1 mile before we had to turn around. A boy got two flat tires, and by the time we made it one mile, we were supposed to be back at the church soon, so Grant called it quits. I felt bad for Karmin because she was so excited to ride her bike that far. So I had the idea to ride to the store with Karmin to get some ingredients for her dinner. She enjoyed that. We came home and finished making dinner. She wanted roast, Nana's oven potatoes, and cheesy noodles. For dessert she wanted Crazy Cake. It was a good day and we kept her busy!

We appreciate Karmin so much!! She is a life-saver for us. She happily babysits for us and does a great job. We often leave one of the boys "in charge" but we all know who is really doing the babysitting! She is kind and does not like contention. She will go to great lengths to prevent contention. She is always happy--not much gets her down. Karmin is a hard worker. And she is smart! Her school talked about her in a meeting the other day wondering if they were providing her with enough challenging things to learn. She is in the 5th grade, but does 6/7th grade math. She loves animals and thinks that every animal is the cutest thing ever. She dreams about owning a horse, or at least taking horseback riding lessons. We love her so much and appreciate her constant happiness and singing!

Second Day of School

I totally forgot to take a first day of school picture of Trevor and Karmin. So second day will have to do! Trevor is starting 8th grade and Karmin is in 5th. While they were gone, I was at home with Miss Lucy. It is the first time in 13 1/2 years that I only have one child at home. Lucy helped me bake Karmin's cake. She thought it was so funny that I gave her the beater of the frosting to eat. It took her awhile to catch on!

Date Night!

Tonight, our church held a date night. Grant and I decided to ride our bikes there so we could spend some more time together. I love that Grant loves to bike ride! I loved talking to him and just doing something different on our way. We ended up going 24 miles total. It was so much fun!

Reptile Expo

Since now we are a reptile family, Grant took the kids to a reptile expo this weekend. Trevor has been so excited for it! I stayed home with sick kids. They got to see all types of reptiles and amphibians. They got to touch snakes, and snuggle snakes. Karmin paid to hold a tarantula....reminiscent of her 4-year old self. And they came away learning about creatures that they never knew existed. The expo was a success!

Ozzy

Ozzy is getting much bigger! Trevor and Karmin love him!

Twinkle Toes

Piper has been dying to do ballet. She will find shows on tv that have dancing in them and will try to copy them. Her favorite thing to dress up as is a ballerina. She loves it. However, after doing gymnastics, I have worried that ballet might not be the best place for her. Plus it makes my schedule more difficult. So I tried to talk her into doing taekwondo like the other kids. I even had her try a class. She was excited at first, but then when class started she was in tears because she was so nervous. She didn't get in trouble per se, but she did get talked to because while she was waiting in line, she was so excited about the kicks she was learning that she would practice them. And in line that is not safe. But she had fun, so I was hopeful.
Then I took her to a ballet class because I had promised. And it was completely different. She had a permanent smile and she didn't get in trouble. In ballet, you don't really wait in line, you just keep going and moving. It is very structured, so she did really well. She was so happy. Now, she is doing ballet.

Her Idol

Whenever Ben leaves the house, Lu says, "Ben, go biking?" She knows that biking is his passion. And she wants to be like her big brother. She is always trying to get on bikes.

It Keeps Her Happy

For our primary activity, I bought a huge box of sidewalk chalk. I think I have gotten my money's worth. Lucy loves coloring Raider's dog house...never mind she is painting it pink. It has given her a fun project!

Silverwood

We did our annual Silverwood trip today. Here are some of the highlights (the ice creams were almost worth a post by themselves!):

And At Home...

Miss Lucy is not too pleased that Karmin is spending time on school and not her.

Moving this and that

So here we are in the middle of a move. We are moving out of a very large house that we have lived in for almost 10 years and there are 8 of us. There is a lot to move.
At our new house...the girls went from having all four of them in one room to not even being able to fit 2 bed frames in one room. Looks like the floor will have to do for the next few months!

 Somehow we need to fit all of this stuff in their room

 So much stuff to move everywhere!

 The people who bought our house wanted our shelves too. I wasn't too excited about this because they are kind of pricey, but mainly because of this picture:

 This is one of the first times Ben gratified his name into something of ours. It happened a lot in his growing up years (I still don't understand why he never thought that he would get caught for it when it is his name?) But he was just learning to write his name and so he must have been 4 years old. I will miss seeing this!

 We've all been so tired. Lucy tucks herself in with Karmin every morning so they can get their daily dose of snuggling in.

 One of the last nights of them sleeping all together in the old house. Lined up in a row. All together...just the way they like it. With Trevor joining the party too.

Ben and Lucy taking a break. Ben was talking on the phone with a friend, and Lucy came to hang out with him--no clothes and all. At least she had shoes!