Sunday Talk and Piano Playing, Wax Museum, Field Tripping, Crazy Hair Day, Turkey Trot, Date, Pie Eating Contest, Escher, BYU Game

It has been quite a busy week for our family.  Here's a few of the things that have been going on around here...

Monday morning I had to work at the butt crack of dawn.  I really hate when the alarm is set for 4:30am--ugh!!  However, things went smoothly for me at work.  I am still trying to switch gears from giving shots to being a clinical supervisor for students especially when my brain isn't all the way turned on at 5 am.  Anyway, since I had to work Aaron got to take Daniel to his doctors visit.  It was just his annual check up (I know it was way past his birthday, but better late than never, right?!).  Daniel had to get his 12 year old immunizations and was not happy about that at all!  Daniel HATES shots.  Good thing Aaron was with him and not me--haha!  Daniel begged them to put the numbing gel on his arms before the shots were given and they actually did.  After the shot Daniel was saying that he couldn't move his arm anymore.  He really could he was just using his dramatic acting skills.  Phew--glad he survived his immunizations.  Aaron was quite the trooper and I guess Daniel was, too--haha!  

After I got off of work I got to come home and help Daniel with his big school Wax Museum project. Each student was assigned a Greek, Roman or Egyptian mythology character in which they had to make a back drop, find a costume and write a small speech about them to perform.  Daniel was assigned Perseus.  He was the character that cut off Medusa's head among other things.  Daniel asked me to help him with his back drop.  I sketched it out adding a dead Medusa body at the bottom per Daniel's request and then had Daniel color it and I shaded it.  Then we got his Perseus costume together.  Good thing I had an old Stripling Warrior costume that we could adapt to use--wahoo!  The teacher had told the kids they could get help from their parents as long as their parents didn't do the whole project for them.  I made sure there was still plenty of work for Daniel to do.  Anyway, I ended up painting the Medusa sugar skull head while Daniel pinned the gummy worm snakes on it for her 'hair'.  This was the result:

Tuesday I got to be a chaperone for Noah's field trip down to the Loveland Aquarium in Draper.  I was even lucky enough to ride the bus which gave me a great appreciation for the regular bus drivers that have to deal with that much craziness every day--haha!  I was so glad to come home to my quiet house for a few minutes before the kids came home.  Anyway, here's my cute bus partner:

 I had 5 kids in my group and they were all really well behaved.  We had a fun time visiting all the different displays and exhibits.  Of course you can't pass by any photo op.  Here's one of the photo ops they begged me to take:

 My favorite exhibit is the jelly fish.  I could sit and watch them swim all day long.

 Here's a HUGE King Crab we got to see:

 The kids had fun walking across the huge net bridge a few times:

 They even got to pet a ginormous cockroach:

 They loved the touch pool where they got to pet a sting ray as it swam by:

 The kids liked the underwater looking bubble at one of the exotic fish exhibits:

 It was a fun field trip and I was glad I was able to go.

Tuesday evening Josh had a Court of Honor where he received his scouting Life award.  That means he is now able to start working on his Eagle project.  Eek!  That came fast.  We are trying to figure out a good project for Josh.  Hopefully, we can get things in motion soon!

Wednesday was crazy hair day at the elementary school.  Daniel and Noah wanted Mohawks.  I think I ended up using almost half a tube of hair gel just to get it to stay up since their hair is so long and in serious need of a haircut.  Sarah got to wear cupcake hair:

 Here's the back of Sarah's cupcake hair:

 Wednesday afternoon Josh proudly handed me his certificates that he had received at school.  Way to go Josh!!

 These early mornings seem to be taking a toll on Noah.  Matthew has to get up way early (about 5 am-ish) to catch his bus to school.  Matthew is not a quiet morning person so he ends up waking Noah and sometimes Sarah up, too.  After a few really early mornings and late nights (Noah sneaks out of bed for lubs until about 9:30 pm) Noah gets tired.  He sat down next to me Wednesday afternoon and fell asleep within a few minutes the poor guy!  I will take it though because it doesn't happen very often anymore that one of my kids falls asleep on me.

 Thursday I got to work an afternoon shift.  Things were going great, but got even better as the night went on.  The facility I was at was having a pie party for the residents and their families.  Well whoever ordered the pie ordered way too many.  They had loads of extra pies leftover.  They were trying to give whole pies away after the pie party since they had so many left over.  They even begged me to take one for each of my students.  It was funny.  Aaron was excited since I was able to bring home some apple pie.  Wahoo!

Friday was a crazy day.  Early morning was piano for Josh, Matthew and Sarah.  Then it was the Wax Museum for Daniel.  They were supposed to be super still until someone pushed their blue button.  When their button was pushed they gave their 60 second speech about their character.  Aaron kept heckling Daniel, but Daniel wouldn't move until you pushed his button.  However, we did get a smile from him while he was waiting for us to push his button:

 Here's Daniel's speech about Perseus:

After visiting the Wax Museum Aaron had to go back to work and I had a flu shot clinic end of season party I got to go to.  They had a catered lunch which was yummy.  They also had an end of year gift which was a cute hot chocolate mug with a packet of hot chocolate, a stirring spoon, and a large syringe filled with taffy for us to take home.  In addition we got a 'bonus' where they would pay us for attending the 2 hour party.  Wahoo!  It was a fun afternoon.  However, in a house with crazy kids things don't stay normal.  Within the first 10 minutes of being home from the party, Noah promptly broke my hot chocolate mug in pieces.  Boo!  Oh well, at least it was a fun afternoon.

Friday afternoon Josh had a school dance he wanted to go to.  Right after the dance the cross country team was invited to participate in a Turkey Trot run with the community.  Aaron picked up Josh from the dance and took him over to the race.  It was a two mile run and Josh won first place in his grade and the prize which was a 19 pound turkey.  Wahoo, Josh!!  Here's Josh showing off his frozen turkey he had just won:

Ever since Matthew has turned 16 he's been announcing to everyone that he is old enough to date.  While I was picking up Matthew from the Sadie Hawkins dance a few weeks ago a girl came up to me and asked me if I was Matthew's mom.  I said I was and she said that her and her friend have wanted to take Matthew out on a date and if they could get my contact information.  I gave them my phone number and promptly forgot about it since I was still trying to find Matthew among the Sadie Hawkins crowd.  I was surprised to get a text last Thursday asking if it would be okay if her and her friend took Matthew out on a date Friday afternoon.  I was so happy.  They came and picked Matthew up Friday afternoon and he was so excited.  He gave them directions to get to Pace's so they could have some ice cream.  Matthew made them take pictures and text them to me.  Here's Matthew giving them directions in the car to get to Pace's:

They got to have ice cream together.  Matthew LOVED it!!  I am so grateful for awesome people like this!  It really makes me happy to see that other people really love Matthew!

 Friday night the grocery store by our house had a pie eating contest for kids 12 and under.  We went with some friends.  Noah complained the whole time before it started about how he didn't want to be there and how he doesn't like pumpkin pie, blah, blah, blah.  We told him just to try it out so he finally decided to at least try it.  Here are the kids up to age 8 waiting for the contest to begin:

 What a ham:

 Noah was a bit of a cheater Mccheater pants, though.  While they were giving the directions, he kept getting 'tastes' from his pie which was interesting since he was just telling me about 20 minutes before that he didn't like pumpkin pie...:

 He went to town when they said GO!

 Amazingly enough Noah won first place for the kids 8 and under.  He won a candy cane and a $5 gift card to the store.  Wahoo!  He did decide that pumpkin pie wasn't all that bad, either--the crazy kid!

 The second round included kids ages 9-12.  Sarah, Daniel and their friend Landon were excited.

 They all started out with three pieces of pie.

They couldn't use their hands so they dove in with their faces when it was time to start:

 There was a two way tie for first place.  It was Daniel and another girl.

 Daniel got a candy cane and a $5 gift card to the store, too.  Wahoo!  It was a fun contest and I think the kids enjoyed themselves, too.  Hopefully they will still like pumpkin pie when Thanksgiving comes in a few days!!

 Early Saturday morning Aaron was awakened by the chirping of our smoke detectors.  Ours are hardwired into the house with a back up battery so this rarely happens.  As he looked around he noticed that our power was out.  He called the power company and it was estimated the power would be fixed by 3 am.  The chirping of the smoke detectors was pretty annoying, but he fell back asleep.  Unfortunately, the power still was not on by 7 am.  We were starting to sweat a bit since we had just bought our fresh turkeys for Thanksgiving the night before and they were sitting in the fridge.  We didn't let any of the kids open the fridge since we wanted to keep it as cold inside the fridge as we could.  They were a bit upset they weren't able to eat breakfast, but keeping the turkeys cold was more important.  We had a whole day planned for doing things so we decided to leave a bit earlier than we thought and picked breakfast up at McDonald's.  The kids weren't upset after hearing that.  Thankfully, our power came back on about 10 am and our turkeys were still okay.  Phew!!  As we headed out we drove down to BYU for the game.  We went earlier because they are having a really neat Escher exhibit I wanted everyone to see.  It had just opened the day before so we hadn't seen it yet.  It runs until May so we might even come back to see it again before it finishes.  Anyway, it was pretty cool.  They wouldn't let us take pictures inside the exhibit so I took a few outside the exhibit.

 Here's the entrance into the exhibit:

 I loved seeing all the prints from him. Here were my two favorite that I got a quick picture even though we weren't supposed to take pictures.  Don't tell anyone--haha!

I love that the kids were able to see this as well and Aaron and I.  I hope they feel more culturally well rounded--haha!

Here's two of his works that are pretty famous:

We looked at a few other things around the Museum of Art as well:

 They have this cool rainbow string piece that is neat to see:

 Aaron and I met and dated while we were both students at BYU.  We had our special spot on campus that we would sit and talk for hours while we were dating.  It was an outside vent that blew hot air to keep us warm during the winter months while we dated.  We visit the vent almost every time we are on campus.  Much to the disgust of our kids we kiss while standing on the vent to remember back when we were dating.  Hubba Hubba:

 After visiting our vent we went over to the pregame tailgating party.  Aaron made us stop by the Traeger booth where we got to sample some Tri-Tip meat over some crusty bread with a pesto sauce.  It was pretty tasty.  We also stopped by to get the kids' faces painted to show their spirit for the game:

 Here's Noah showing off his painted face:

 The kids tried tossing the football in the QB challenge game.  Sarah, the lefty, was pretty good!

The rest of the kids not so much--haha!

 Can't pass by a photo ops:

 We finally got to our seats.  It was a bit chilly, but not as bad as we thought it would be.  We still had a few blankets and jackets just in case, though.  Here's me and my buddy Daniel waiting for the game to start:

 We love it when we can find cheap tickets!!

 BYU lost, but we did have a fun day together.  We wore out 4/5 kids so they slept on the way home so that is a good thing, right?!

 G&G M have a friend that loves to send Matthew train stuff.  Matthew was excited to see the three train belt buckles.  They were pretty cool!

Our awesome neighbor gave Matthew a Union Pacific 2018 train calendar, too a few days ago.  People are so awesome!!  Matthew loves it!

About two months ago Matthew's piano teacher told us that he had passed off a piano piece he could play for sacrament meeting as well as Josh.  So we got in contact with the musical person in our ward and signed them up to play a musical number for sacrament meeting.  The next opening they had was in 6 weeks which was fine.  They could use the 6 weeks to fine tune their songs.  Matthew got to play his piece last Sunday.  I was so nervous for him, but he was really excited.  He was so excited that when it was his turn to go up to the piano he started yelling out exit numbers from the interstate and city names all the way up to the piano.  It was more noticeable since we were sitting in the back of the chapel and he had to walk quite a ways up to the piano **Sigh**.  We had told him not to do that, but when they are out of arms reach what can you do?!  However, once he got up to the piano he did great.  He played his piece and it was beautiful.  He was so excited.  He did some hand flapping all the way back to the bench where we were sitting, but it was okay.  His piano teacher even came to listen to him play.  It was pretty awesome!  Josh's turn to play was the following week.  The funny thing was, was that a week ago he was also asked to give a talk in church, too.  The poor kid had double duty yesterday.  We let him write his own talk about Repentance.  He did great.  When it was his turn to speak they had to raise the podium pretty high since the bishopric member before him is a lot shorter.  He did great with his talk.  Then the next person spoke.  After he finished his talk Josh got back up and went and played the piano.  He did great.  I was so nervous for him.  As a parent in the audience you just hope everything goes okay for your child!! Luckily, he did great and got to sit back down on the stand.  However, he did struggle a bit with staying awake the rest of the meeting.  Aaron had to keep texting him telling him to sit up!!  Crazy kid!  His piano teacher came again to see him play which I was so grateful for.  I am glad for the support my kids get in the extracurricular activities they do.  I am grateful for the many opportunities they get as well.

Life is going by pretty fast lately.  Hopefully, things slow down during the holidays so we can fully enjoy them.