Broken Toe, Shorelands Preserve, Blue and Gold Banquet, Mother Daughter Date

We are keeping ourselves busy over here.  Here's our family happenings for the last 10 days.  Last week Daniel came home complaining that he had hurt his foot/toe.  He said he had been playing soccer at school and someone stomped on his toe and it really, really hurt.  Now knowing Daniel he can be a bit...let's just say dramatic about things at times.  I didn't really take him too seriously until he was still limping and complaining two days later.  We figured we had better get it seen just to make sure there wasn't anything big going on.  Daniel's toe was bruised so that also added some credibility to his complaints.  

The bruising did go down the side of his foot so better safe than sorry so we took him in to get an X-ray.

We checked in and got pulled back to an exam room where we waited, and waited, and waited some more.  Luckily, some person before us had put googly eyes in some weird places around the room.  I didn't notice them at first, but Daniel did.  The googly eyes had been put in inconspicuous places so you really had to be looking to find them.  There was one set under the exam table facing the wall:

 There was another set on a wall plug behind the exam table.  After seeing them we thought it was pretty funny.  Too bad we didn't bring any googly eyes to add to the room, too.

 After waiting for a long time the doctor came and looked at Daniel's foot and decided to get an X-ray which showed a chip fracture on his big toe.  This isn't Daniel's exact X-ray, but this is pretty close to what it looked like:

 Luckily, the fracture wasn't bad enough to do anything about.  They offered to get Daniel a special walking boot to help with the pain, but he declined.  He just needed to take it easy for the next week or two.  Too bad this happened the same week soccer practice started--DOH!!  Luckily, Daniel is feeling pretty good right now (10 days later) so I think he is almost back to normal.

Last Saturday we went in to the Lagoon office to get our passes printed out so we could be ready to go when it opened the following Saturday.  Here's Noah getting his card after they printed his picture on it:

 After getting our Lagoon passes printed out we headed over to The Great Salt Lake Shorelands Preserve  in Layton.  They have a cool one mile boardwalk trail with neat things to read along the way.  I had been wanting to take the family out there for a while so it was the perfect day and weather to go.  They had informational boards to read about the migratory birds that fly in from all over.  Aaron wasn't too happy about going there when he found out that it was going to have birds there.  Aaron HATES birds. Luckily, we didn't get too close to any birds so Aaron was relieved--haha!

I love beautiful spring days like this!

 In the middle of the trail they have a tall observation tower you can climb up.  At the top you can see for miles in all directions.  Here's the view of the wetlands and the mountains behind Matthew and me:

 It was a fun day.  I love that it is getting warm and sunny outside.

Noah is a bit of a spoiled child, but that's to be expected with the last kid, right?!  He will get put to bed every night, but will sneak out and watch TV and Aaron and me for a bit.  He uses the excuse that he needs lubs and how can you refuse that?!  He usually will fall asleep in my lap after a few minutes, but I don't mind--haha!

 On a different night I put him to bed after he fell asleep in my lap and he will found the craziest position to fall back to sleep.  What a crazy kid!

Last Sunday my parents had us over for dinner since my birthday is coming up.  Dinner was delicious!  They even made a birthday cake for me with candles to blow out.  I am getting OLD!!  Good thing I had a helper to blow out those candles!

After dinner they let the kids try out their new adult tricycle.  It helps with balance and not easily tipped over which is good.  The kids had fun trying it out.

 Daniel is almost done with his Public Health, Life Saving, Swimming and Medicine merit badges.  Last week he worked on his life saving swimming skills.  It was quite difficult, but he was successful despite not quite getting it on the first try.  Wahoo Daniel!

 Last week I had my preparatory work meeting for starting the Clinical Instructor CNA job again.  It was at 5 pm about 30 minutes away so as I was leaving I told Daniel to stick a frozen meal in the oven so everyone could eat dinner when they got home.  Daniel was awesome and set the timer, put the dinner in the oven and did everything I asked.  It wasn't until Aaron got home about an hour later that he discovered Daniel had forgotten to turn on the oven to cook the dinner.  DOH!!  The dinner was still frozen solid so they put it back in the freezer for another time and we just had fix it yourself for dinner.  Oh well we tried--what can you do?!

I will be busy at work for this portion of the semester.  It is nice to be able to work and earn money for our travel fund.  Hopefully, we will be able to go somewhere fun in the next year or so barring any other emergency issues (ie emergency room visits, car engine replacements, etc.)  Keeping my fingers crossed to not have any crazy emergencies!!

Josh had his annual visit with the counselor to plan out the rest of his school career.  It is crazy to think that everything will count next year.  I still have a hard time hearing the word college and looking at Josh and still seeing as a cute 8 year old kid!!  Anyway, Josh has a good idea of what he wants to do when he grows up so I am hoping things will go as planned for him!

Josh has started track.  Gratefully, we have a volunteer track coach in our ward that used to be a Young Men leader.  He was willing to work with Josh to help him get faster in his mile times.  After working out with him Josh is pretty exhausted, but his mile times are getting better which is great!

The end of this week was crazy busy!  It was the Blue and Gold Banquet for the cub scouts.  Aaron as the Cub Master was in charge.  He drove me crazy because he procrastinated the whole thing until the last possible moment.  Ugh!!  Anyway, we were running around like chickens with their heads cut off all of Thursday getting things prepped and ready for that evening.  Things turned out pretty well if I do say so myself.  The theme was 'One in a Minion (Million)'.  Here's what the gym set up looked like:

 We had three activity stations.  This station you could decorate your own Twinkie Minion with an outfit, crazy hair and googly eyes.

 We had a photo booth with Minion props:

 We had another Minion Memory Game station:

 All the tables had a Minion wrapped soda bottle, candy, a yellow and blue balloon, pencils, a Minion word search and a Minion find and seek--kind of like Where's Waldo:

 All the water bottles had Minion labels:

 For dinner we had bottled water, pizza, salad, and brownies.  There were two cubs that received their Arrow of Light award that Aaron got to present them.

 It was a busy day/evening, but everything turned out pretty well.  Glad he (we) don't have to worry about that again until next year--phew!!

The next day we got to have Activity Days at my house.  It was a fun lesson about letting your light shine.  Luckily, I wasn't in charge of the lesson this time just in charge of cleaning my house.  I think I would have rather been in charge of the lesson, though since my house was pretty messy--haha!  It is fun having Sarah in Activity Days with me, though!

  While we were having Activity Days Aaron helped Josh and Daniel pack for their scout camp out that night.  Luckily, it was close by since the boys forgot their sleeping bags and pads.  After dropping off their sleeping bags and pads we discovered Daniel had forgotten to bring along his Epi-pen and other emergency meds--DOH!  Another trip to deliver forgotten items got made.  Ugh!!  Luckily, after that they had everything they needed.  From the pictures their leaders took it looked like they had fun despite the rain and cold:

 Daniel was excited to go as well as Josh:

That night I was able to go to a Ladies Night with friends.  It was a spring pot luck.  I ended up bringing 'brookies' which are brownies and cookies mixed together.  It was a fun night of talking and catching up.  I didn't get home until after 1 am and for a really old me that's late--haha!!

The next day we really wanted to go to Lagoon for their opening weekend, but it was raining pretty hard all day.  Matthew was pretty sad about it.  Hopefully, the weather will be better and we will be able to go next week.

That evening Sarah and I had a mother daughter date.  We went and got some dinner and then attended to General Conference Women's Session.  She was a pretty cute date.

Missionaries, Lost Tooth, Book Challenge, Voluntold, Basketball, Reality Town

Aaron has really been using his smoker.  We had a smoked dinner 4 days in a row.  I can't complain because that meant I didn't have to cook dinner--Wahoo!  His first smoker experience was a bacon wrapped sausage, egg, and cheese on an English muffin.  Here's the bacon wrapped sausage, egg and cheese right after it got out of the smoker:

It was interesting and pretty rich tasting.  I could only eat about 1/2 of it before I was done, but Aaron had a fun time playing around with the smoker while making them.  We also had smoked hamburgers the next night that the kids all inhaled, and a smoked pork butt roast Sunday dinner that lasted over two meals.  We had to take a couple days off because I am not much of a meat lover and I had hit about my max of meat.  However, have no fear Aaron is going to try smoked trout for dinner tonight so we will see how that turns out.  

Noah lost a tooth at school a few days ago and he actually really lost it, too.  It fell out of his mouth and he couldn't find it. He had to come home and write the Tooth Fairy a note telling her about how he really lost his tooth.  Too bad the Tooth Fairy was on vacation for a few days (mental vacation)--haha!  Luckily, she was able to drop off the money three days after he lost his tooth.  It was the tooth on the bottom as you can see the empty spot where it used to be:

 The youth in our ward had an awesome missionary activity over this last weekend.  About a week or two before the activity each youth was called to a different mission.  On Friday night they all met at the Missionary Training Center (our church) and had a three hour activity in preparing them to be missionaries.  The next day, Saturday, they all had to be at the church at 7 am to have companion scripture study and to learn ironing skills, shoe shining skills, how to tie a tie, how to sew on a button, how to teach a discussion, etc.  It seemed like it was a pretty awesome activity.  Here's my two missionaries:

 Josh got called to Paraguay and here's his 'MTC' picture:

 Matthew got called to Mexico and here's his 'MTC' picture:

 Here's Josh South America district with all the other missionaries called to South America:

 Here's Matthew's district of Europe (which for some reason included Mexico):

 Here's some other pictures of the activity that the leaders provided:

Here's the whole MTC crowd:

 They even had journals and booklets printed up for each person:

 Shoe shining:

 Tie tying:

 Breakfast:

 Random picture:

 Lunch:

They had sloppy joes for lunch....hmmmm....let's just say I had to wash Josh and Matthew's clothes that evening--haha!  All in all it seemed like it was a really neat activity.  Matthew and Josh said they both really enjoyed it.

While Josh and Matthew were at the activity the rest of us went to Daniel's last basketball game.  When all of us got home we wanted to do a family activity and it just so happens the theater by our house did a remodel and were having a grand opening party with cheap movie tickets.  They remodeled the theater to have comfy recliner seating which the kids all LOVED.  We ended up seeing the Batman Lego Movie which was pretty funny.  They all liked it.  Here we are loving the electric reclining seats before the show started:

 This last week I got the proof for the kids' school pictures.  I didn't order them because I think they are expensive and I like to do my own.  However, I can't believe how old Sarah looks in hers:

 I am glad Daniel didn't disappear into the green screen like he did in last years picture--haha!

 Noah is looking old, too.  Where did my babies go?!

 Daniel had a 40 book challenge this year.  It means they had to read 40 books with different genres from historical fiction, fantasy, informational, poetry, realistic fiction, etc.  Daniel just completed his last week.  Wahoo!  They are supposed to get a prize, but the teacher hasn't decided on what to do yet.  The whole class has until the end of the year to complete it so I think she is waiting to do a prize for everyone that completes it as a whole.  Anyway, I thought it was pretty awesome Daniel completed the challenge.

 It was Dr. Seuss's birthday a few weeks ago.  To celebrate it the kids got to have a reading period during class as well as birthday cake as part of lunch.  The school counted pages and Sarah's class got the most pages read so they all got a coupon for a free kids ice cream at Cold Stone.  Aaron and I are still debating on which parent will get to take her to redeem that coupon--haha!

 Sunday Aaron and I got to help out in primary.  It was good because Noah had to give the Article of Faith and Daniel had to give a talk so we were already in there so we could hear them.  Aaron could only stay for the second hour because he had to teach Elder's Quorum for the third hour.  It was fun to see our kids and see how they really are in primary--haha!

Monday night for Family Home Evening we went to a Jazz basketball game.  Since Noah and Daniel were in Jr. Jazz they got two free tickets each to go to this game.  We decided to buy three more so the whole family could go together.  The tickets came with popcorn and a drink which the kids all loved.

 We got there early because we didn't know what the parking situation would look like, but it all worked out.  Our seats were pretty high up, but we didn't mind.  It was a great game to watch.  The Jazz came from behind and won the game against the Clippers.

 Here's all of us enjoying the game:

 The kids loved the fast paced music in between the time outs and would dance.

 It was a fun night and we were glad we were able to go.

If you have ever read the Fablehaven book series you know it's pretty good.  Last year Josh found out they were going to add to the book series and has been counting down to the release of the new book since then.  The new book came out Tuesday.  We had pre-ordered it from Amazon and got it the same day it came out.  Josh was at school while the mail came.  Aaron happened to be home from lunch and we decided to tease Josh.  Aaron took a picture of me reading the book and texted it to Josh saying that we got it in the mail today.  He also told Josh that he would have to wait to read it until Aaron and I finished reading it first.  Haha--Josh was not amused.

 Here's how our text conversation went--haha:

Josh had reread all the previous books to get ready for this new book to come out so you could say he was pretty excited for it.  We did let him read the book when he got home.  We like to tease, but we aren't that mean!!  I think it only took him two days to finish the book.  He keeps trying to tell us about it, but we don't want to hear any spoilers!!

Speaking of Josh....I got a call from the school Monday morning.  Have I mentioned I HATE calls from the school?!  Anyway I picked up the phone and it was someone from the Jr. High giving me a reminder to call to make sure I was still going to volunteer Wednesday morning for four hours helping with Reality Town.  WHAT?!  I asked her again to make sure she got the right person because I never signed up for that.  She said, "Oh yes I have it written down as Josh's Mom along with two different phone numbers for you." I guess Josh volunteered me and didn't tell me about it.  Good thing I was able to do it, though.  It was a fun experience for the 8th grade.  They set up all the eighth graders with a job, a family, and then let them learn how to budget their money.  They made it as realistic as they could.  They had a bunch of different booths they had to visit like housing, car insurance, health insurance, entertainment, dentist, etc.  Here was Josh's family of two kids, a wife, job and money breakdown:

After getting their checkbooks they had to visit all the booths.  I ran the medical/doctor's office booth.  When they kids got to me they got to choose a random card saying what they had done at the doctor's office.  Some were just a visit and others were a broken leg or stitches.  The card then told them how much they would have to pay if they had health insurance or if they didn't.  America First actually donated real checks and checkbooks for this so they all had to write out real checks for each booth.  It was interesting to see how many kids didn't know how to write out a check.  I had to help them know where to put the date, how to write it out to the person, how to write out the amount owed and where to sign it.  It was crazy.  I am glad they did this.  Hopefully the kids learned a lot from it.  The teachers kept the checkbooks to review with the class after it was finished so hopefully they can help the kids see what was important to spend money on and what wasn't.

Josh didn't budget his money as well as he should have so he had to visit financial services which helped him get a second job and enlist in the army.  Hmmm....hopefully he will be able to do a bit better when he actually has to stick to a budget in a few years!!  Here is Josh when he visited my booth:

 It was a fun volunteer experience and I am glad I got the chance to help, but I would like a heads up next time before I get voluntold out of the blue--haha!

We always like to try new things.  Last night I tried out some low carb breadsticks which turned out decent.  You use cauliflower rice to make the 'bread' portion and then top it with Parmesan and mozzarella cheese.  Matthew, Josh, Sarah and I liked them.  Daniel and Noah didn't.  Aaron said they were ok so I guess they would rate about 3.5 stars out of 5.  I guess you win some and you lose some.  They were really easy to make, though.

 Noah had his last basketball game last night.  I think Noah is glad about that.  Daniel started soccer this week so there is no rest for the weary--haha!

I can't believe this year has gone by so fast.  There are only a few months left of school until summer.  It is crazy!!