Kaylee and Lauren's going away party

Here are some pictures from the going away party we hosted last weekend.  Kaylee is Emily's best friend and our neighbor girl who was like part of the family.  Lauren is the other little girl in their class at school who is also moving this weekend.  (their class will be down to 15 kids!)

Nobody does it like Disney...

A couple weeks ago we went to Disney on Ice.  We got discounted tickets through Girl Scouts.  It's not every day that a family of six can have a night of fun like this for under $50!  We had never done anything like this before as a family, and we enjoyed every minute.

Note the $12 souvenier cups...4 souveniers cost as much as 6 show tickets!!!




The Finale

Thanksgiving...

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Ours wasn't so great.  We didn't have any plans with family or friends.   Instead of spending a ton of money on food for only ourselves, we decided that we'd go to a restaurant for our Thanksgiving dinner.  Well, Wednesday night Brian got the stomach flu.  None of us left the house Thursday except for my failed attempt at finding a newspaper.  We had cinnamon rolls out of a can for Thanksgiving brunch, and pasta bake out of a box for supper.  The poor kids kept asking "where is our Thanksgiving dinner?"  Next year I'm going to be better prepared.   

Friday I got up at 4:00 and headed out the door by 4:40 to start my day of shopping.  Seven hours later I had my first morsel of food for the day at 11:30 at Sbarro.  I had a very productive day though!

Saturday night Brian felt a bit better, although a head/chest cold was beginning to settle in, so we decided to venture out for our postponed Thanksgiving dinner.  Sunday morning Brian woke up just as sick as ever with fever/cough/aches.   The girls and I went to church then came home and vegged out.  What a lovely weekend!   

None of the rest of us are sick - yet!

All done!

Emily is home safe and sound and feeling pretty good!  Most of her nervousness went away when we arrived and they told us that the items on her bed could be taken home with us!  That included the cool sparkly princess pillow case, stuffed animal, and cloth bag full of fun stuff.

The surgery went well and they took very good care of her afterwards with ice cream, pudding, toast, grapes and whatever else she wanted!

Emily has surgery tomorrow...

I'm pretty sure I haven't told too many people, but Emily is going in tomorrow to get her 3rd set of ear tubes.  She just had an ENT appt 2 weeks ago so this all just came up really quickly.  They are also going to do a nasal scope to make sure her adenoids didn't grow back, and if they did, they'll cut that tissue out again.

Please keep her in your prayers tomorrow, she is really scared.  Surgery is set for 10:15.  It should be a very quick simple procedure though.

Parent Teacher Conferences

I'm proud to say that parent teacher conferences went very well this year.  There were a couple specific things that I wanted to mention - I figured my blog would be the best place for that!

Erin's conference was first.  She's in 5th grade now, her final year of elementary before she heads off the middle school.  Her teacher wants to make sure they are prepared, so he has been working on extra things with them...such as PowerPoint.  (for those who don't know...it's a computer program used for giving presentations)  So for Erin's conference, she made a Power Point presentation of her report card and various related materials, and she had to present to us her strengths, weaknesses, grades, goals, ways to improve, etc.  I think if I had to give my parents a presentation in front of my teacher when I was 10 years old I would have wanted to shrivel up and die!!!  We were extremely proud for the great job she did presenting.  Her grades were pretty good too...too bad she's like her Mom and has Social Studies as a weak spot.  (BORING)  We're working on it though.  :)

I really wasn't sure what to expect at Erica's conference.  I should have known...she is doing great.  She's one of the oldest in the class of course, having turned 6 the 3rd week of school.  She has already met all the benchmarks that need met to enter first grade, so the rest of the year should be interesting.  She has her working in some higher level books for guided reading so she is still challenged.  Apparently in the first 2 months of school, Erica has been pretty quiet (I swear, that's what the teacher said, lol) - so when the teacher tested the kids individually at quarter-end time and found that Erica was excelling in so many things, she said this, "Erica is like the little flower who I didn't even realize I had, and she grew and bloomed without me even noticing."  Wasn't that sweet?  But because she gets bored easily...she does need to focus on doing what she's supposed to be doing and listening better.

Also, this week at school Erica had a substitute teacher...and it was the teacher who had taught Kindergarten for 25 years and retired just a couple years ago.  When I passed them in the hall at school, she said, "Oh, are you Erica's Mom?  She just read a book to me - and - WOW."  So that made me a proud Mom.  

And last was Emily's conference.  Typical Emily:  neat, tidy, polite, well-behaved, always does her best, sweet Emily.  She had an awesome report card!  If she got letter grades they would have been all A's.

We are so proud of all of them!

Cheerleaders

A few weeks ago the elementary schools were offered a cheerleading clinic where they ended the day doing some cheers to start out the varsity footall team.  Go LeMars Bulldogs!  They played against the Midgets, I can't even remember the name of the town. 

Erin did well, but you can tell she was a bit nervous...

Emily is right behind Erica for this cheer:

Trick or Treating...

I took a picture of the girls the night before Halloween, since I knew that Erin was going home with a friend Friday night and we wouldn't get a photo op on the actual day.  As they got dressed, Lizzie had a fit because she didn't want to be JoJo the Clown like she was last year - that costume "wasn't pretty enough".  So she found a flower girl dress to wear instead.  :)

We have a Flower Girl, Belle from Beauty and the Beast, a pumpkin, and Mulan from the Disney movie Mulan.

Then, on the actual night Erica decided to turn her reversible costume of Belle inside out to wear the "red" side.  Kaylee our neighbor girl (Emily's best friend) and her Mom joined us.

Carving the pumpkins

We carved our pumpkins out last weekend...I'm just slow getting the pics on the blog...

Erica wanted a bat, so Brian drew it out and carved it.  Emily's was from a stencil (which we've done before) and Erin did hers all on her own!

They always think they have to do a "crazy" pose...

Halloween Dances

Emily, Erica, and Elizabeth are all taking dance this year - and the first time that the parents get to see their progress is at Halloween time when they perform their "Halloween Dances" at the end of class time in late-October. Of course I took video clips to share.  (I tried to keep them in the center of the videos, in case you can't tell which one they are) We are very proud of them! (first, pause the music on the music player down to the right on this page)

Emily has never taken tap, and hasn't been in dance at all since she was 4...so I'm impressed she can do this after 2 months.


Erica...


Here's Lizzie...she got really excited when she saw the crowd of parents...one of the smaller ones, not bad for only 2 months of lessons...they need to speed the music up for her, lol:

Political Halloween Cartoon

Quotes from Lizzie

I've been trying to savor my last few weeks/months of having a toddler, so much so that I've got Lizzie convinced that she's going to be a baby forever. Well, she will always be my baby. But anyway...she is coming out of her shell more, so I thought I'd share a few quotes from the past 3 days.



-In the checkout lane of the grocery store, she burst into loud song: "Cel-e-bra-tion - Come On!" (we had just listened to it in the car, as you are now if your sound is on) I never really thought Lizzie as being one to show off...but she sure did then!



-After she did the above, the Clerk tells her. "Wow, you sure are cute." Lizzie replies, "Yep, cuter than you are!" I about died of embarrasement...but the clerk just said, "You are right about that!"



-Erica's girl scout leader complimented us on our van, and Lizzie piped in, "Your car is dirty." Yikes! It was the truth though, I guess. I said, "Our car is dirty too, isn't it Lizzie?" Doh!

School projects and our house...

Fifth grade has brought an onslaught of "home projects" for Erin. She already had to do a volcano model. Her latest project had to do with earth forms and factors that change the earth. She chose to demonstrate how "people" change the earth. She ended up taking pictures around our house - at empty lots that had been excavated, digging that started for a house, houses that were just finished and the earth had been moved to prepare for landscaping, and finally a house with landscaping. She picked our house to demonstrate landscaping...the rock wall that we built, the rock berm that we did with the trees and shrubs we planted (which is still a work in progress), etc. So since I have a recent picture now, I just thought I'd share it here...the back of our house. (doesn't the deck stain look nice - thanks to Brian!)

Click photo to Enlarge




Now if only I had remembered to take a photo of the project before she turned it in.

The Pumpkin Patch

We took our annual trip to the pumpkin patch last Saturday.  We decided to go early this time instead of waiting until the last weekend when it's cool, buggy, and no pumpkins are left.  :)  We even did the corn maze successfully and won a treat at the end. 

It appears the 6 year old may be taller than the 7.5 year old...but she had taller shoes...

Redoing the playroom...

A couple weeks ago we decided to have a garage sale.  In preparing for the garage sale, we decided to "gut" our toyroom.  Here is what it looked like last spring after we moved it...and it looked worse a month ago...

The first step was moving every single toy out of the toy room.  It completely inundated our family room/kitchenette area...along with boxes of clothes I was going through.  It was such a disaster, I had to capture it on the camera.

Here's a closer view.  What you can't see is all the barbie clothes and shoes, polly pockets clothes and shoes, brats clothes and shoes, baby doll clothes and shoes, etc. mixed inside the pile.  Now, they weren't in the toy room like that.  We had the girls dump out each of the individual totes into a pile because they needed sorted through anyway.

Then Brian finished the drywall in the playroom, and Kilz'd the cement walls, then painted everything.  He had installed some flourescent lighting to brighten up the room a couple months back.

Then Brian loaded up 10 garbage bags and boxes full of toys to take to the dumpster.  Only God and Brian knows what were in those boxes!  The rest he (and I helped a little after my garage sale project was over) weeded out and sorted into their appropriate containers again.  Barbies, Polly Pockets, Brats, Dolls, Loving Family pieces, Stuffed Animals (3 totes and 3 garbage bags), dress-up, Leap Pads,  etc etc.   I decided that we didn't need 65 barbies, so I weeded through and threw 25 away, gave 15 to Grandma and Grandpa's house, and kept the rest...  I think we have about 75 Polly's too, but we kept all those...they don't take up much space. :)

Anyway - here's what it looked like when we were through!  (there ARE toys on the shelves that we can't see in this pic - and they each have a bunch in their bedrooms)

 

An X-box, karoake machine, Star Station, V-Smile, 25 Barbies, 75 Polly's, 25 Bratz, 50 Baby Dolls, a stereo w/ DVD and VCR and 100+ movies, books, dollhouses, Zoobs, American Girl Dolls, play kitchen,  - what more could a girl want?

The door to the playroom says it all!