Have I mentioned that we have 3 birthdays in December??? It is just complete madness the whole month and by the end of it none of us want any cake or presents! We start with David Pascal on the 16th. He had a low key birthday this year and just had a friend over for cake and presents. He got a ton of skylanders from Meme and Papa and a bike and a few other things from mom and dad! David is so easy to please and just so pleasant. I would ask him what he wants for his cake or decorations and his response and almost always, “just whatever you want mom or whatever is easiest.” He is amazing. He is a joy to be around and such a big help for our family. He is happy about 95% of the time and it really is a rare occasion that he is in a bad mood or snappy with anyone. I can’t believe he is 8 years old and I have loved being his mom every minute. Such a great kid!!
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Maggie’s Dance Recital
Maggie did a great job for her Christmas dance recital. She did a jazz dance to Sleigh Ride and had a lot of fun with it. We were so excited to have Meme and Genevieve in town for it as well. They got in that morning after driving from Arkansas. It was a great night!
8 months
I am a little behind for Lizzy’s monthly posting, but oh well. Better late than never. At 8 months she is crawling like a pro and just a happy girl. She still just wants mom and dad and anyone else makes her cry usually. She eats anything and everything. She says mama, dada and Hi. She loves to be in the car and gets fussy, if we are homebound for too long. She loves messing with her older siblings and just thinks they are all so funny. She actually finally started rolling on purpose this month. She would not roll over for the life of me until about a week before she was 8 months. She just laid there on her back after getting a diaper change until someone picked her up…even though she could already get from laying to sitting no problem. Figure that one out! She is not the greatest sleeper at night anymore, but she does take pretty good naps. Even with her lack of sleep she is still a happy little baby and just a joy to be around. We love our little Lizzy!!
Thanksgiving 2013
This year for Thanksgiving we went to Pagosa Springs again and had such a great time! We were able to go from Saturday to Friday, which was awesome!! This time is snowed quite a bit, which made us a little more anxious to just stay at the cabin and play in the snow and find things to do without getting out. It was so great. I worked on some projects, ate a lot of food, played games, and just relaxed, which was so nice. To not have anywhere to be or anything to do was heaven. The kids loved sledding down the huge hill. They really got some good speed going down. Biscuit loved exploring the woods and just playing outside and David loved playing Mind Craft. We also watched a lot of The Big Bang Theory. It is one of my favorite vacations because of how low key it really is the whole time. We had a great Thanksgiving dinner with enough food to feed like 20 people just for us 3 adults. Trish did an amazing turkey that just melted in your mouth and we did all the fixins! So yummy! It was a great vacation!
Christmas Tree Surprise
So after I got home from Young Women in Excellence the week before Thanksgiving, I had the best surprise! David took all four kids with him on a mission to get a new tree. Our tree had a few issues. 1. It was 9 years old and you could tell. 2. All the lights had gone out in about half of it. 3. It lost more needles than a real tree. We were due for a new one, but I was planning on using this one more year and then getting one on clearance. But I came home surprised to find a brand new gorgeous tree in our living room just waiting to be decorated. David went to 4 different stores with all the kids before he found this one and we are all so proud of it!
Young Women In Excellence
We had Young Women in Excellence the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. It was a great night! We made it a goal for all the girls to try their hardest to pass off one whole Value and earn a ribbon (including us leaders) and we were just so proud of the girls. Almost all of them did at least one project and got one ribbon this year. We were just so proud of them all! I earned my ribbon for knowledge and made a dress for Maggie for my project, which really was a huge challenge! I learned a lot though. One thing is that patterns that you buy are really of no use and it is a lot easier to just eyeball it and not even waste your time or money with those dang patterns!
Little did I know that just a few short weeks after this night I would be released from my calling as 2nd Counselor in our Young Women Program. They released Alice-Anne as president and me as second counselor. We had both been in for a little over 3 years and I must say I was a little relieved after the shock and sadness faded away. This was the funnest calling ever! The girls were amazing and the leaders that I served with were so much fun to hang out with and it was hard for us to stay on track at meetings and not start talking about just our day to day lives mixed with business. All of our husbands knew that 2 hours was a minimum for these meeting and this happened twice a month, plus we had mutual every Wednesday, temple trips once a month, class presidency meetings and trying to support our girls by going to their after school activities. It really was a full time calling. Luckily we were able to go out with a bang. The Bishop gave us permission to have our progressive dinner the following Wednesday that we had been planning even though we were already released. So we had our ugly sweater progressive dinner, which I won by the way (even though there wasn’t really a contest!) But before all that we had the Sunday, where they announced that we were released and I was so excited when I got to church that morning and then 2 of the girls came up to me and were telling my all these plans they had for helping some less active girls start coming again and these great activities they had thought of and I started tearing up thinking of not getting to hang out with them anymore. So they released us and Alice-Anne and I went into Young Women for the last time and we said our good-byes to the girls. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room and was so hard to say good bye. Even though I can see them whenever I want it still is not the same. I made such great friends through serving with some great women. I don’t know that it has officially hit quite yet, since we have had Christmas and all these breaks, but I think once all the guests are gone and I get back to my normal routine I will notice and have a little more time. I know my kids will notice because now anytime that I make treats they won’t be for meetings or mutual! I was so lucky to serve with Alice-Anne. She is such a great example…even with her awkward comments sometimes…and she always had a smile to give and an ear to listen to everyone around her. Thanks for serving so well, Alice-Anne and for being such a great friend! And thanks to all you other leaders (you know who you are) for making this calling so great and making me laugh so hard each week! Y’all are amazing!!
Sunday, December 8, 2013
Young Women Halloween Party
We had an amazing Halloween Party for our Young Women this year. After the great work they did for the Fall Festival, they deserved it! One of the advisers was over it and did so good! We went to Kasandra’s house and she had it decorated with all kinds of potions and stuff. We started out decorating cookies, then we did some “potion” tasting, a mummy contest. Then at the end we did a really fun game, where everyone drew a sentence that was written earlier and we went around and told a “scary” story. I had started it off pretty scary and then these silly girls turned it in to a comedy! We all had a great time and some of us especially loved the “vampire blood” aka tomato sauce! We had a lot of laughs and afterwards may or may not have gone and toilet papered Kate’s house with the leftover toilet paper from the mummy game. That’s what happens when you don’t come to mutual!
