Wolf Badge

Nathan has been working hard these last few weeks to finish up his Wolf Badge for Cub Scouts. We've been working on it all year, but he lost the desire to really do much for a while in the middle there!


This week was Pack Meeting, where he was presented with 1 belt loop (for kickball), his Wolf badge, his Gold Arrow Point, and 2 Silver Arrow Points! He had really wanted a total of 4 Arrow Points, so he is working this last week before his birthday to earn that 4th one.

Ryan ended up conducting the Pack Meeting, so he was the one who presented Nathan's awards to him.


It is fun to see him so excited to work on projects and goals. Hopefully it will continue when he starts earning his Bear, and he can earn it well before his birthday!

Spirit Fridays

Since this is my family scrapbook/journal, I guess I need to write once in a while about something that is keeping me busy this year: PTA.

One of the projects I chose to take on this year was to organize school t-shirts. We hadn't had any in the 3 years that I've had kids at the school, so the PTA Board figured it was about time.

In conjunction with selling the shirts, we've worked hard to promote Spirit Fridays, where we encourage all the students and teachers to wear red on Fridays. To get the ball rolling, we gave out prizes on Fridays in October. I didn't count the first week, but I'd estimate that we gave out about 125 prizes. The second week we were at 220. And last week, we had about 330 students wearing red -- that is 75% of the school! I really enjoyed going to the school each Friday to pass out the prizes and see how many students were into the spirit of the day!

Last Friday, we had a special school picture for any of the students and teachers who were wearing any type of red school t-shirt. My wonderful neighbor, Camie, was kind enough to come and take the picture. And now we have a large copy framed and hanging in the school.

Benjamin and Nathan are both on the 2nd row; Benjamin on the left side and Nathan on the right. This year's school shirt is the one with Provost written in white on the side.

Now on to the next project :) Anyone have any great ideas for games, food, and auction items for the Spring Festival?

New Trick

Elizabeth loves to climb into the highchair herself. Not to eat, necessarily, but more to laugh and show off!

Friends

We had Elizabeth's friend, Izzy, over on Monday for a little while. It was so fun to watch them "play" together. Of course I couldn't get the cutest things on camera. Elizabeth loved taking Izzy's bink, which was hanging on her clip, and help put it in Izzy's mouth for her!

Notice that Elizabeth still is holding her balloon from 2 days before!

It will be fun to watch these girls play together as they get older!

for the Grandmas

Look at those cute kids! I just love new church clothes!

Elizabeth did not want any of her brothers to hold her!

It's all fun and games . . .

Yesterday we had just a great family day together. There was a church/neighborhood 1K/5K with breakfast over at Bicentennial park. The weather was supposed to be a lot colder and stormier than the past few days, but luckily there was no rain until we were finishing up the breakfast. Ryan helped cook the food, and the kids enjoyed playing on the playground.

After we came home and did Saturday jobs, we headed up to Toys R Us for a free Lego event they were doing. They advertised that you could come make a free Lego car from 12-2. We got there at 12:30 and were surprised that they were already out of car supplies! Luckily, they still had plenty of Legos, so the kids still got to create something with a 20-piece limit. They had a great time building, while Elizabeth and I wandered through parts of the store, looking for things to recommend to Santa. I didn't bring my camera to the store, but here are their creations once we got home:


When we got home, we had lunch and then the boys went to play outside. About 20 minutes later, Joshua came in screaming. His face was dirty and bloody! Ryan started cleaning him up while I ran outside to find Nathan and Benjamin, to find out what had happened. Apparently, Joshua and Benjamin were fighting verbally, and then they started throwing "dirt rocks" at each other. Benjamin threw one that was more than just dirt, and it hit Joshua in the mouth. Once Ryan got his face cleaned up, he realized it wasn't as bad as it first appeared, but Joshua was still hurt enough that he didn't stop crying for a good 10 minutes. His upper lip split open, and his gums by his front teeth were bleeding.

So the rest of the afternoon we had quiet time :) When Elizabeth woke up, she had so much fun with a balloon she got from the running activity in the morning. I was so impressed that she held on to it really well all afternoon. I even had to try on 2 shirts on her, and she didn't let go of the balloon the whole time. She instinctively knew to switch hands for the balloon as we put her arms in and out of sleeves!

I am grateful for the times when we can just enjoy being together as a family and having a nice day together!

Curl Girl

Elizabeth is starting to get more hair. It is still not a lot to do hair-do's with, but I got excited to try curlers.


Here are the results:

You can see the hair better in the mirror, but it's still hard to notice!
By this point, she was SO ready for a nap. I love these sad pictures because this is a rare thing to see from her -- it's kinda cute!
This was on another day where I only tried the top

Notice that you really can't see the end result because her hair is thin and light still. And what you can see looks like a mohawk on the top, and bad bedhead in the back!

So I guess I'll wait awhile before we try again!

Miss Busy Body

Our sweet little girl is not always as "girly" as we had assumed she'd be. Most of the time she cleans up the placemats after she pulls them out of the drawers and such (her 3 brothers NEVER cleaned up on their own at this age!). But some days, I come downstairs and discover this:

Yes, she's laughing that she just pulled ALL of the 70 wet wipes out of their package!

Or I come upstairs and find this:

Home Work

When school started at the end of August, Benjamin started asking me when I was going to get him a desk to do his homework at. I guess he remembered the one time I had casually mentioned that "someday when the basement is finished" I'd like to turn the loft into a homework area.

Benjamin kept asking about it. At first I told him it wasn't necessarily going to happen any time soon -- the kitchen table is a fine place to do homework! But then the wheels started turning and I realized that I am tired of waiting for "when the basement is finished" to do all of my decorating plans!

So about the middle of September, I started looking for desks that would be a good fit for our space and would allow more than one child to do homework at the same time. I had a rough mental picture, but had a hard time finding exactly what I wanted. Manufacturers don't really cater to a really long L-shaped desk that isn't too deep and also has a lot of drawers! And real wood/custom-made was way too pricey for something the kids will be using! (And we are still working on being able to finish that basement!)

After a few days of intense searching, we found an option that I got excited about. Office Max had a line of desks; I realized we could get one regular desk and one L-desk and put them right next to each other to get the effect I wanted. And one of them was on sale :)

Ryan worked really hard to assemble them, which was a process since there were two to do! I love that he took the time to let the boys help a little. They loved it and they all learned a few things!
Here is the before picture. This desk has been good to us for the last 9 years, but it was just too wide for the loft, and wasn't conducive to homework. Don't let the picture fool you -- I had just cleaned up so I could take pictures to start selling it online. Normally it is much messier!


Here is the after! I love that there are 7 drawers between the 2 desks. Two of those are for hanging files. Then each of the boys have claimed one for all of their stuff. And then we have a few drawers for all of the other stuff, like paper clips and pens and such. There are also 2 keyboard trays. Since we only need to use one, we use the other one for the stapler and hole puncher. And there is also a cupboard for the bigger items. I love all the storage! Also there are 2 stations in the L part of the desk; you can either work at the computer, or you can turn the chair and have a space to do homework.

We've had our new loft area set up for about a week and a half now, and everyone in the family loves it! Benjamin and Nathan love doing their homework upstairs now.

These pictures were taken when only the first desk was built. They were so excited to use it, they didn't want to wait another week for the other desk to be done!

Joshua doesn't use it as much, but he loves having "his drawer" to put things in and a place to keep his school books.

Elizabeth discovered the markers in Benjamin's drawer (luckily she can't get the lids off yet), but overall she leaves this desk alone more than she did the old desk.

In this picture, she is playing with the tape I used to mark off the area. I mapped out the space to make sure I'd like it before we bought the desks.

Ryan has enjoyed having room to set up his laptop to work on the bills and such instead of having to bring everything to the kitchen table. And I love the layout and the aesthetic, too!

I have plans for all the wall space above the desks, but I'll wait a little while to work on those. (The names on the wall were there before, and will probably be moving to the bedrooms.) Basically it will be a little decoration and a lot of room to hang school papers and post calendars and such.

Thanks for the great idea, Benjamin! And thanks, Ryan, for being a willing participant in the remodel!

cute conversation

I'm sitting at the computer, working on another blog post, when I overhear this conversation between Joshua and his 2 friends, J & T:

Joshua: "Poopsa-gon! Poopsa-gon!" (they're playing with wooden shapes, including hexagons)

5 seconds later, Joshua:"Hey, J, did you know that we shouldn't say bad words? Because Jesus is watching and he doesn't want us to say bad words. He's up in the sky."

J: "He's up in heaven. I've seen heaven."

Joshua: "He is the Son (or did he mean sun?). Jesus is the Son. Did you know that Jesus is the Son of God?"

Then, as I started typing this, Joshua came out of his room to tell me, "Mom, T said dummy-head!"

I responded, "And you said a bad word too, didn't you?"
He walked back to his room without saying another word!

Feasting

What a wonderful General Conference weekend! The older I get, the more I enjoy and look forward to Conference. It used to be 8 hours of trying to stay awake. Now it is becoming more and more a "feast"!

Speaking of feasting, we started off the morning with our new-ish tradition of homemade cinnamon rolls. They were HUGE and yummy! (I forgot to take pictures.)

On Sunday the boys played Conference Bingo. When Elizabeth was awake, they had to play at the table, instead of the floor. I think this made it a little harder for them, but they were pretty good.
Elizabeth napped and took a few notes, too!