Celebrating Carly’s 9th

Carly’s birthday was last Monday, March 4^th.  We knew it would be a busy day with school, piano lessons, homework, dinner, etc… so we decided to do our family outing on the Saturday beforehand.  For months Carly has thought about what she’d like to do and one activity that has always been at the top of the list was the Family Fun Center.  We’ve lived in the Seattle area now for nearly 12 years and have never gone.  In my opinion I consider that as successful as my never have been to a Chucky Cheese with my kids either.  As it turns out though on Friday, the very day before, I got an email for half-off all the activities the Family Fun Center offers.  Yippee-I-O it was off to the Family Fun Center we go!

The big kids (and Justin) started off playing laser tag while I hung out with Katie as she practiced her driving skills.

 

Little did we know Katie would actually get to put her skills to practice and drive her own little car.

 

Technically, kids are supposed to be 3 to drive these little cars, but the employee told us if she was able to do it he would make an exception.  She did great pushing the little green button as she steered around the small track.

Abigail was the only one old enough to drive the go-carts.  She was reluctant at first, but ended up loving it.  She’s such a responsible kid that she was nervous about driving well – she’s so serious.  It took her several laps to finally give us a smile.

 

Jason and Justin also took a go around the track.

As much as Katie enjoyed driving around a little car, the highlight of the afternoon for her was most definitely the Frog Hopper.  She was all smiles bouncing up and down on that thing.  This girl is ready to head back to Disneyland.  She would have a blast.

 

Another highlight for the big kids was watching a short movie in the 6D theater – I worried it might be too crazy for Jason, but he loved it.

We actually had a great time despite the crowds, filth, and mediocre activities at ridiculous prices.  Really, it was fun and I’m sure we’ll go back sometime in the next 12 years.  I don’t understand how I left without any pictures of the birthday girl, but she was there and she had lots of fun.

We redeemed Carly’s free birthday meal at Red Robin on the way home and afterward we each turned in a valentine at Krispy Kreme for a free donut – yum, yum.

 

Carly wanted to take mint brownies into her class on her birthday.  We made two batches the night before and they were oh, so yummy it was hard to give them away.  She had piano lessons on her birthday after school.  She was told last week if she didn’t practice her Hanon her teacher would draw a mustache on Carly with a sharpie as punishment.  Carly actually thought that was pretty cool and turns out she didn’t practice, at least not well enough.  Ms. Kori decided to use some of my leftover frosting instead of a sharpie since it was Carly’s birthday.

 

Carly requested chicken biscuits for dinner and for her birthday cake she requested 2 layers of chocolate cake, a layer of red velvet cake with pink, blue, and purple swirls on top.  I wasn’t the happiest with the results, but Carly thought it was spot on (she even thought I intentionally swapped out the purple for brown because it would look better).

 

After dessert Carly opened the cards from her grandparents and a ball that Abigail picked out and purchased for Carly with her own money.

And with that it was time to get the birthday girl and her siblings to bed. 

Happy Birthday Miss Carly Ann!

And just a few tidbits about Carly:

Carly loves any chance she can get to have one on one time with me or Justin.  During the past year Justin has taken the opportunity to read a few books with Carly at night before bed.  Earlier this year they read Narnia together.  Carly really loved that time alone with her Dad.

While Carly enjoys reading, she has typically gravitated toward shorter books.  Last month Justin and Carly decided they would both read the first Percy Jackson book – separately, but together.  Carly loved it and has already moved on to the third book in the series.

Carly without a doubt pushes Jason’s buttons more than any one in the house.  She knows what how to irk him which can try her parents patience.  On the flip side she can also be the most nurturing kiddo in the household.

This girl still loves crafting and creating.  Unfortunately, I am terrible at giving her these kinds of opportunities, but over the years the girls have gotten many crafty activities that they enjoy working on.

Carly may just be my most willing helper in the house.  These past few months as I’ve been wanting to get the house a little more organized – if anyone is along side helping me out it will be this girl.  One day she went through all the markers and pens in the house and happily tested each one and then moved on to sharpening every pencil.

Carly is eager to learn.  She loves to help me in the kitchen and will often be stirring or mixing while I busy myself with other things.  She even has a meal she can cook completely on her own - Top Ramen.

She loves to take long, hot showers.

Carly loves getting her hair done, even if her two-year old sister is the only one willing.

She has started getting a little particular about clothing – like a little seam will irritate her and she’s developed a preference for short sleeves over long.  Thankfully, it’s not too extreme and hopefully it’s not a sign of things to come.

Carly is awesome about saying her prayers at night.  After we’ve all read scriptures and said family prayers she’ll quietly sneak into the darkened bonus room for her own personal prayers. 

We sure love this girl and the fun, spunky energy she brings into our house.

Basketball Season

Basketball season ended a few weeks ago.  I love having my kids involved in sports and I enjoy watching them play, but it’s always nice when a season comes to an end and our schedule frees up a bit. 

Lady Rebels

We haven’t been impressed with the recreation league here - our main complaint is that the kids can’t steal the ball even in the 4th grade.  Last fall I got a phone call from a coach in Fall City that was putting together a competitive “travel team” and wanted Abigail to play.  We decided it would be a great opportunity and Abigail was excited to play with girls from school.  Practices started in early November.  It worked out well that although practices were held 2-3 times a week they were at her elementary school and held right after school.  Super convenient.  Her games started in December and on many Saturdays she had more than one.   Her team worked well together and was really fun to watch.

Back in January they had a tournament down in Chehalis and since the Great Wolf Lodge (a large indoor water park) is right there it became a big, exciting weekend for the team.  A weekend tournament means both Saturday and Sunday games.  Before we joined the team I told the coach we wouldn’t play on Sundays.  His response, having coached his son’s team in the past was basically “we’ve had Mormons on our teams before who have said they wouldn’t play on Sundays, but when it came to a big tournament they always played.”  He was convinced (a salesman by day) that he would easily persuade us to let Abigail play.  I think Abigail was actually ok with not playing, but she was getting a lot of pressure from her teammates and coach to be there on Sunday.  There were some uncomfortable conversations, but in the end he stopped pushing and reluctantly supported our decision.   Abigail and Justin drove down for the Saturday games and Abigail was able to hang out at the Lodge afterward for pizza and to enjoy the waterpark with her teammates.

 

Unfortunately, I was only able to make it to a few of her games during the season so I don’t have many pictures of her in action.  She was a strong player on her team though and her coach was able to have her play in any position and know she could play well.

 

We knew that Abigail’s season would end with a big tournament on the weekend of Saturday, March 2nd.  We were looking forward to a day full of strong competition.  Abigail’s team was placed first in the league and we were confident they could win the whole thing.  When we got the schedule just days before the tournament we learned that being in the first seed meant her team would be able to skip all the early games and would only have to win two final games to take home the trophy.  Great right?  Except the final games were on Sunday.  We were disappointed that her season came to an abrupt end and that she wouldn’t be able to participate at all in earning her team the championship.  Her coach actually tried to appeal for a Saturday game, but there wasn’t room in the schedule for any changes.  Her coach sent us this picture while we were at church:

 

Her teammates all had pink A’s on their arms so that Abigail could be a part of the big day.  The Lady Rebels ended up losing the championship in the final seconds, but apparently there was some controversy over mismanaging the clock and giving the opposing team an opportunity to pull ahead… yadda, yadda.  Anyhow, it was a great season for Abigail.  She had a lot of fun and really improved and learned throughout the season.  Way to go Rebels!

 

Team Crush

Carly also wanted to play ball this year and not knowing of any better alternatives for her age level we again had her play in the local recreation league.  Her coach ended up being Abigail’s last soccer coach – who we really liked, so it worked out well.  Carly’s season started in January with her final game on Saturday, March 2nd.

The majority of Carly’s games were at 8:30am on Saturdays.  Thankfully, Justin was willing to get up early and take her while I usually stayed back with Jason and Katie.  Carly is a happy athlete.  It’s always fun to watch her play with a big smile on her face.  She’s also a very strong athlete and even though she was playing with several girls older than her she was able to make a strong contribution to her team.

After Carly’s final game her team celebrated at Herfy’s – again, I missed out due to a Stake Relief Society conference, but from what I heard everyone had a great time.  The coaches are discouraged from passing out trophies so Carly’s coach handed out cans of Crush soda with each of the girls’ names on instead.  Fitting for the end of the season for Team Crush.  (So bummed I don’t have any pictures of Carly’s team, we skipped out on the official team pictures and Justin and I didn’t manage to get a picture of all the girls together during the season)

Randomness

I’m dragging today.  My to-do list is crazy long.  When I check one thing off the list, I add three more.  The blog has been neglected.  At some point I will catch up but today my mind is more suited for random.  So…

Our mid-winter break was two weeks ago.  It seems I usually use mid-winter break to get a little more organized around the house, but that wasn’t the case this year… maybe spring break will be more productive in that sense.  We fit in a few doctor appts as well as a little fun with friends.  One afternoon we met up with some Auburn friends to watch Wreck-It Ralph at the dollar theatre.  Before the movie we had ice cream at Sub Zero where they make your ice-cream treat right in front of you using liquid nitrogen – pretty cool and very yummy.

Yesterday I had to get a shot to prevent whooping cough, tetanus, and a slew of other harmful diseases all bundled into one massive needle and my left arm is aching from my fingertips all the way up to my shoulder.  All night long it ached and I hoped I’d wake up and be past it, but not the case.   I’m tempted to deem my left arm completely inoperable, but that would be a bit dramatic. 

Katie joined us last month for our semi-annual dentist appointments.  This was her first visit to the dentist and I wasn’t quite sure how she would do.  All of my other kids did awesome and even let them take x-rays on their first visit.  With Katie I could honestly see it go either way.  Thankfully, she also did incredible and left with clean teeth, a big smile, and a fun prize from the prize box.

I’m guessing we all have pet peeves that influence how we parent and the rules we establish in our homes.   A few in our house are no gum chewing for our kids and we don’t paint our fingernails.  Think what you want, but they are my rules and I feel very strongly about them.  The girls and I do enjoy a little color on our toes every so often.  Recently Katie joined us for her very first pedicure.

She was so pleased and excited to show everyone her pretty little toes.

The Saturday before last we decided to go shopping for a couple chairs for the girls’ room.  I wanted to create a little lounge like area with a small table between the chairs for them to hang out in, read, whatever.   By some gigantic miracle we found some inexpensive leather chairs AND found a crazy lacquer dresser on clearance and brought it home.  I had no intention on taking up valuable space with a dresser, but this dresser makes a statement – it’s bright turquoise - and was way too cool to pass up.  I’d post a picture, but we don’t get the chairs til late May and wouldn’t it be much more dramatic to see the whole room put together?  Maybe now we can finally pick a color to paint their walls.

We purchased the dresser near Pikes Place and spent a few minutes walking around.  You can’t visit Pikes Place without picking up a bouquet of flowers – except apparently fresh flowers are hard to come by this time of the year so we came home with a large bouquet of dried flowers instead.

I've mentioned that I’ve started putting together our 2010 Family Album.  I started out strong, but now that I’ve reached Katie’s birth and the hundreds of pictures I took, I haven’t been making much progress.  I’m starting to doubt I can get it done before the baby arrives – who wants to be my cheerleader and get me pumped up and confident about this undertaking?   I actually really enjoy doing it, but it is SO time consuming.

Katie has recently started to show interest in doing people’s hair.  Carly is always so good to be Katie’s guinea pig.

Speaking of hair, a few weeks ago Carly asked me to braid her hair and look at what I pulled off!

(Sorry, for all the crappy phone pictures)

Carly’s birthday was Monday (birthday post to come) – as I was taking down our birthday banner yesterday the thought occurred to me to just leave it up.   With Abigail’s birthday in January, Carly in March, Katie in April, Baby in May, Jason in July… it seems we’ve got one birthday after another.   And yes, I just might be THAT lazy.

Things can get crazy at our house – as I’m typing Jason and his buddy are flying across the leather ottoman in the family room at warp speed.  I’m just waiting for someone to catipult themselves into the rock fireplace or something equally messy.  One evening last week our entertainment consisted of wrapping up children in blankets then torturing them by preventing their escape.

Following their Dad’s example

Looking at the pictures above I’m wondering if it’s time to take down the snowflakes from the windows.  I’m sure ready for warmer weather, but we had a little skiff of snow just this past weekend.  Are snowflakes still appropriate in March?

One last picture I just got off the camera – Katie found some sunglasses, came into the office and said, “take picture me!”  How can I resist?

Little Blessings

By the time 7pm rolled around tonight I was feeling pretty defeated.  My expanding body brings with it challenges and limitations and as happy as I am to welcome a new little life into our family, knowing I have three long months to endure was a hard realization today.  I knew Justin wouldn’t be home til after the kids were in bed so I didn’t plan anything for dinner, but darn those kids still expect to eat.  So it was hot dogs and frozen southwest egg rolls for dinner and while the kids polished off the rest of the brownies from last night I worked on getting the dishes done and the kitchen semi-cleaned up (trust me, I had more than my fair share of brownies earlier in the day).  Before getting ready for bed I told the kids they needed to put away a load of clean laundry – with a warning that for every time I needed to remind them to stay on task they would go to bed 10 minutes earlier.  When I was ready to help Katie into her jammies, she was insistant on washing her hands.  Knowing she would likely use too much soap, or splash too much water on the counter I hauled her away from the sink and got her dressed anyhow.  She was frustrated which further frustrated me – something so silly.  We read scriptures and then I felt that of all nights I shouldn’t skip over our recent ritual of taking turns sharing something positive around the day.

Carly was happy to have been able to work on homework after school with a friend across the street

Abigail was glad that she and her partner were able to make significant progress on a project even though they’ve had less time that their peers

Jason was excited that he passed 900 on writing his number scroll at school

Katie was happy that she got to eat cookies today (yes, in addition to brownies we made TWO batches of cookies on Sunday to get rid of some expired chocolate and butterscotch chips)

I shared how happy I was that Katie used the potty today (more than once)

I asked Abigail to fill in for Justin tonight and play catch with Jason for a few minutes before reading to him and turning out the lights – there was no objections.  Carly was asked to read a story to Katie and get her tucked in – something she’s always happy to help with.  On an evening I felt I wasn’t giving anything to my kids, they reminded me how much they give to me.  I’m so grateful for them. 

I’ve recently started putting together our 2010 Family album and today I started working on the pictures from Katie’s birth.  A fitting reminder of the joyful day that lies ahead for our family.

Concerts

We’ve had some sort of school performance every week for the last three weeks.

First was Carly’s music concert: 

The following week was Abigail’s first band concert.  Let me preface this video by saying none of these kids had picked up these instruments before October.  They meet twice a week before school and this was their final piece at the concert:

Last week was Abigail’s 5^th grade music concert.  Her favorite song of the night was an original “mash-up” of the two songs “Home” by Phillip Phillips and “What makes you beautiful” by One Direction.  They started out singing “Home” which was actually a little emotional for me.  This is Abigail’s last elementary school music concert and the words to the song felt like we were closing the door on this chapter of her life and sending her down that "unfamiliar road".  Then halfway through the song it got crazy and they totally switched it up:

Abigail also participated in two other pieces – one with chimes and the other with bells.  The director of a local bells ensemble offered to teach a few songs to a small group of students – tryouts were held in the fall and they’ve been practicing twice a week during recess since November.  FYI:  Carly was our videographer.

Valentines Day

On Valentine’s Day, my sister posted the following on facebook:

“Happy unimaginative, consumerist-oriented and entirely arbitrary, manipulative and shallow interpretation of romance day”

I’ve never been much for celebrating Valentines Day and let’s face it, Justin and I are probably two of the worst gift-givers on any given holiday, anniversary, or birthday.  While I agree with my sister that having a day set apart during the year when you do what you should be doing every day takes away much of the “meaning” behind it – However, I did, for a change, want to make it a little more special for my kids – and not just because society told me I’m supposed to. 

I’m not a morning person so cooking my kids a special Valentine’s breakfast was not going to happen – especially since Abigail had early morning band.  Instead I made blueberry muffins the night before as well as pasta salad for them to take for lunch - they make themselves sandwiches 95% of the time so they are always excited to have something different.  They also had a few small treats on the counter to start their sugar rush.

Carly was excited to take the Valentine’s box to school that she and Abigail had decorated.

We managed to create the kids’ Valentine’s from candy we already had.  It was a little tricky coming up with clever slogans to go along with the treat.  Abigail had already taken all her Valentines to school before I took a picture – all of hers were made with the fun Skittle packs that I bought in Hong Kong – they are packaged in a neat triangular wrapper.  (Sad to think this is Abigail’s last year celebrating Valentine’s Day at school).  Jason gave the boys in his class gummy hotdogs and hamburgers (also from Hong Kong) and the girls in his class got Skittles.   We had just enough Crunch bars to create Carly’s Valentines.

Justin and I ate lunch at CPK that afternoon.  They had an awesome Valentines special with entirely too much food, but we managed to eat every last bit.  Katie was super excited about the carnation they gave us at the restaurant.  I love that we live close enough to Justin’s work to go out to lunch every so often.

The kids were sugared up when they got home from school so the Valentines cookies I had ready were appreciated, but unnecessary.   Justin and I were still pretty full from lunch so there was no big elaborate meal – though after the kids went to bed Justin prepared chicken enchiladas for me to eat the next day – yum!

Not to shabby for a “happy unimaginative, consumerist-oriented and entirely arbitrary, manipulative and shallow interpretation of romance day”

Business 101

Remember this picture from Christmas:

This doesn’t even include two additional rolls of duck tape the girls got from their cousins for Christmas or the duck tape handbag kits from Grandma and Grandpa Fletcher.  So what do two girls do with all that duck tape?  Apparently they start a business. 

Abigail and two of her neighborhood friends decided they would sell duck tape merchandise with their multitude of colors and patterns.  They created (with my assistance) an excel spreadsheet to track the custom orders and they started taking orders shortly before Abigail’s birthday.  In the first week or so they’d earned $39 – split into three ways that makes $13 each.  I figure they are probably just about breaking even or maybe even making a slight profit, but more importantly they are having fun and learning a bit about doing business as well.  

Last week Abigail and one of her business partners did a little reevaluating and it was determined that which ever girl creates the item, gets the cash – thus preventing anyone from cashing in when they weren’t doing much of the production.  I was a little nervous about her proposing this to the third partner, but thankfully she thought it was a great idea as well.  Geesh, doing business with friends is tricky.

Carly has been selling things on her own also, including candy canes from the 10+ boxes of candy canes Justin purchased on clearance.

Being a little business savvy myself, I’ve put in another Amazon order for duck tape to use for my own personal benefit.  I’m not above a little bribery.