Yet Another Teacher's Birthday's!

I got to say I'm really happy I only have two kids and have two teachers to worry about when their birthday's come up! Yes Abby's teacher's birthday was the other and and yes we had to take her something too. Her teacher has a pirate theme in her classroom so I decided to make her a couple of pirate bookmarks (from pinterest of course!) and get her some books for her classroom.

I wasn't feeling good so this was easier then making a pencil vase and flowers for me. She liked them and Abby liked them so I think that it turned out good! And now I'm done with Teacher's Birthday's for the year!

Curling Lessons!

My friend Heather planned for all of us to go take Curling lessons up in Salt Lake on Friday night. I thought it would be easy because really pushing a stone across the ice kind of reminds me of shuffle board, but it was kind of hard. Josh how ever still holds strong that it was a piece of cake! When Josh found out that we were going to be taking Curling lessons he had me google Curling and see what they wear! They wore track suits so yep Josh needed a new track suit!! I went on line and found one just his size and ordered it up! I LOVE that Josh wanted to dress the part and really get into this activity...usually I'm dragging him out with me!  It was two hours of lessons and one game. Boys against girls and yes us girls lost!

It was such a fun night with a fun activity and super fun people! Thank you Heather for organizing this whole event!!!

Orchestra Performance

Elizabeth had one of her last Orchestra Performances of the year on Friday. She has really loved Orchestra and wants to continue with some viola lessons during the summer to help her get better. And I think she needs a little help the whole time during the performance I think she maybe played ONE song. The rest of the time she kind of just sat there....but she sat there with her legs closed (she was wearing a skirt) and so that makes me a proud mama! (It really doesn't take a lot to make me happy!)

She got her Orchestra certificate at the end of their performance. I am so proud of the work that she has put into practicing and doing this program!

Battle Of The Books!

Battle of the Books was this week. Elizabeth has been preparing for this for months now. They were placed in groups and assigned books to read. Elizabeth read her 5 books plus 3 more that she said no one in her group had read yet. She worked so hard and was so excited. Elizabeth can be a little competitive sometimes. I was a judge for it ALL week long! Monday and Tuesday was 5th and 6th graders and Wednesday was 3rd and 4th. Then on Thursday was the finals. It was pretty fun until you got to Wednesday when they announced who was going on to the finals....yep you guessed it Elizabeth's team didn't make it and she held it together pretty good while all the kids where still there....then....tears....big tear balls started coming down. Elizabeth was so sad so I checked her out of school and we went for some frozen yogurt. This has been a really good lesson for Elizabeth. Working with a team and realizing that she may need to work harder if she wants to win. And this has motivated her. By the end of the frozen yogurt and while I was checking her back into school she told me that she will work EVEN harder next year and read more of the books and review the books over and over before the competition! 

You can tell in the pictures when she found out that they didn't win....she is so hopeful in the second picture and then it all comes crashing down! Elizabeth I am so proud of all the hard work that you put forward in this and know that you will do better next year...oh man that means I have to do this next year too!

Our Day Of Green!

I had grand plans for St. Patrick's Day.  The girls made a leprechaun house to hopefully trap the leprechaun that comes to the house. My plan was the night before the leave a trail of skittles to the house fill it with gold coins and leave green shirts for them. Yep it was a good plan only one thing I forgot was....to do it before I fell asleep. Like the toothfairy in our house apparently that dang leprechaun gets sleepy early too! So the girls woke up sad in the morning!! So I had to just give them the shirts to wear to school and tell them maybe he will come in the daytime...I'm really getting less creative with my stories now that Elizabeth is suppose to know that it is all not real.  However she is claiming and holding strong that she still believes and that these magical creatures better start getting their acts together and remember her!!! WOW...is all I can say to her. So the leprechaun was supposed to get there before school got out....but once again I forgot while I was waiting at the school to pick up the girls I suddenly remembered. Luckily I have a husband that knows and LOVES me. I was on the phone with him and he just happened to be coming home from work for lunch and told me to run home and do it and he would pick up the girls. (we had to do it this way because wouldn't you know it the gold coins were in MY car) You would think after ten years of being a mom I would start remember these things....but nope not yet! So I ran home, skipped the whole skittles thing and filled the house with gold coins (Oh they were chocolate gold coins by the way) The girls came home and were happy...so I guess our day of green turned out pretty good after all!

Dogsitting!

Our neighbors ask the girls if they could dogsit for the whole day yesterday. They were SO excited and of course said yes. They started out strong playing with her and running around. Soon it got boring and they left her more and more. The worst part was picking up the poop! Elizabeth sucked it up and picked up her part, because they divided it up so that they both had to suffer, but Abby was crying because she didn't want to pick up poop. I was laughing so hard, internally of course didn't want to make her cry more because her mom was laughing at her cry!  But she finally picked up her part!

It was a fun day for the girls and a good lesson of why we don't have a dog....I would be the one taking care of it and I already can barely take care of the two little animals that I already have named Elizabeth and Abigail!

Another Teacher's Birthday...And Once Again Thank You Pinterest!

It was Elizabeth's Teacher's Birthday this week and she doesn't eat any sugar or gluten...I know depressing...so we decided to give her flowers. Elizabeth said that she LOVED Tulips, so tulips it was. And of course I had to make a pencil vase for them to go into. I think it turned out cute...

So Happy Birthday Miss Bybee hope you enjoy your flowers and pencil vase!

Soldier Hollow Tubing

Uncle Adam and Auntie Cory gave the girls passes to go tubing at Soldier Hollow for Christmas, and yes we FINALLY got around to going! It helped that we had to do it this week because they close for the season on Sunday! So Josh and I took the girls up the canyon to go tubing. It was 50 degrees outside and there was NO snow anywhere up the canyon which made us pretty nervous that we were too late! Abby was starting to get upset until we got there and saw that they had snow...lots of it! They had SO much fun going down the hill with each other.

There was a tow rope that took them up the hill and they got to do this for two hours! It was SO cold there that Josh and I were freezing and happily they sold hot chocolate. So we got some and when Elizabeth saw that we had hot chocolate she threw a fit that she didn't get any! Yes this is my 10 year old!! When she gets over tired she turns into a 2 year old! And on that note she was done. Abby how ever didn't want to be done and shockingly she went up one last time by herself. Yes it was a Christmas Miracle...that girl hardly ever does anything by herself. Josh and I were so proud of her!

Here is Josh trying to stay warm...after, we went out to dinner. It was a fun couple of hours for the girls. Thank you Ludvigson's for the awesome Christmas gift!

Trudy...Just Look At What You Started!

When Mark and Trudy were up here a little bit ago Trudy came over one of the days and spent a few hours and taught me how to do Genealogy.  Now when she had told me that this is what we were going to do together my first thought was "REALLY...don't you want to go to a movie or do something else?" I have NEVER really cared to do ANY genealogy and I'm not really sure why I even said yes to letting her show me. And to be honest I didn't really think it would amount to much! But I decided to be a good sport and started to think it might be fun. Well...I'm addicted. I LOVE puzzles anyway so really this was a perfect match for me. I am now on Ancestry.com and Familysearch.com putting together the puzzle that is my family! I have gone through my parents files and have taken over and have gotten organized...because really the first step to any puzzle is organization! Josh even printed out this big chart for me to write on because I was getting frustrated clicking from screen to screen trying to remember these people's names...I'm a visual person! I think that my favorite part of this is getting to go to the temple to do my own families work! I found in one of my dad's files a WHOLE BUNCH of temple slips that need to get done. No offense dad but what where you waiting for? And I have been finding and collecting even more names that are just waiting for their work to be done! I'm so excited to find different stories and histories of these people that came before me.

Josh has put a cap on my genealogy  work time. I can get a little tunnel vision and get consumed with my projects...so I get to work on genealogy for an hour a day and longer on Saturday and Sunday! This way I will not get burnt out and I can't remember to feed my family!  And as long as Josh gets fed everything is good! So thank you Trudy for showing me how to get started on the best puzzle ever!

Day Off Of School

Monday the girls didn't have school so I came up with this brilliant plan to go on a bike ride with them. We decided to try to bike all the way to Josh's work around lunch time so that he could take us to lunch. The girls were beyond excited to bike all that way and I was a little worried that I was biting off more then I could chew, but I was willing to try. This is at the beginning of our trip...

...And 5.20 miles and an hour later we made it to the office!  We only had to stop twice for water breaks and once to figure out which way to go to get to the office. We tried to stay on trails for most of the ride and only once had to cut across a park lawn and through a fence to get to the office. The girls did so good. They are extremely cautious kids! Every two seconds Elizabeth, who was in the lead would call out, "Can you see me mom?" And yes I could, because she would not travel more then a few feet away from me. Then Abby didn't like me to be behind her she had to be able to see me, because it made her nervous that she was out there alone with sister! And she didn't want me to be in front of her because she thought I would leave her!! We only crossed one major road which was 1600 right by our house and you would of thought we were crossing the freeway, of how nervous these girls were. Thank heavens we didn't have to cross State Street, we went under it on the trail! But we made it and yes Josh took us to lunch, which made the whole thing worth it!

He loaded our bikes in the back of his truck and after lunch he dropped us off in PG at the trail that would take us directly home. That ride was 3.72 miles and took us 40 minutes to get home. We stopped once for water then found out that ALL of us had to go the bathroom. We raced the rest of the way home...

For the rest of the day we rested! I was pretty tired but surprisingly did well. The girls are already planning our next adventure!

Orchestra Performance

Last week Elizabeth had an Orchestra Performance at a near by school. It was a whole multi-school thing! Elizabeth is doing pretty good with her Viola, so much that we can actually hear the songs that she is meaning to play...somewhat. I am very proud of what she has accomplished this year.

It's not a great picture of the event but Lindon's Orchestra is in the dark shirts they played with the other school for one song then they played alone for a couple of songs after. Elizabeth is the little head behind the piano! Good Job Elizabeth...you are doing GREAT!

Another Skate Night!

It was another Lindon Elementary Family Skate Night! And yes we just HAD to go!! The girls LOVE skate night and it was made that much more fun to have our cousins be there too! Brit brought the kids to skate night and she even skated herself....what can I say she is a better mom then me! The girls LOVE having cousins in school with them. It is so much fun to see them at school events.
The girls stayed still long enough for me to snap ONE picture of them. And Abby couldn't even be bothered to look up! I guess when you getting ready to rock it on skates you just don't have time for dear old mom to take a picture!

Finally...Double Digits!

Elizabeth has been SO excited about her birthday. Every day for weeks she would say, "Guess how many days now?" And you may think wow that would get old....you would be right! And then the day before her birthday she kept saying, "Today I'm 9 and tomorrow I will be 10!" And don't get me started on how excited she is to be in the DOUBLE DIGITS! She is getting so big and it is going by so fast!
The night before Josh and I set up this little surprise for her to welcome in her birthday! She LOVED it and was very surprised! And so our day started... 

I gave her the option of what to have for her birthday breakfast....I figure I can drag myself out of bed in the morning 3 times a year to make my family breakfast on their birthday's! She picked french toast and she was happy she LOVES french toast!

It was donuts/reading day for the fourth graders at school so I went down to the school and read with Elizabeth and her friend. Which was lots of fun!

Then for lunch Josh, Trudy, Mark and I took Elizabeth out of school and out to lunch.  Josh gave her the option of going ANYWHERE she wanted for her birthday lunch and wouldn't you know it the kid wanted Wendy's! Josh tried and tried to influence her pick something else but that's what she wanted so to Wendy's it was!
After lunch Trudy and I took Elizabeth back to school and brought in a treat for her class. Elizabeth's class has a few food allergies and so Elizabeth didn't want to take in a food treat. The day before we went to the party store and found some little toys to bring in and took those in. They were sound makers and their teacher let them make all the noise with them that they wanted for a given amount of time then they were not allowed to touch them for the rest of the day! Elizabeth tells me that only one kid lost his!
That night she wanted for her birthday dinner a home cooked meal of orange chicken and rice and after we had the family over to have ice cream cake and of course gifts. Elizabeth was waiting ALL day for this! 

It was so nice to have Mark and Trudy up here to celebrate with us. I think that Elizabeth was happy with all she got and it ended up being a good day! Of course it's always a good day when you are turning a DOUBLE DIGIT! Happy Birthday to my sweet girl!