Matthew and I had the "opportunity" (if you want to be optimistic enough to call it that) to go to the Jazz game last Saturday. It was Game 4 of the 1st round of the Playoffs. This is all I have to say about that:
Matthew looks like he's about to laugh. He's not very good at pouty faces.
My beautiful, crazy, red-head, Kya, turned 7 last week. She is growing up so fast, and I mean that quite literally. She is catching up pretty quickly to September in height and I think they're closer than they've ever been. My prediction is that she'll pass her up in the next year or two. But anyway, back to the point. We had fun celebrating her birthday which ended up happening over 4 different days which I don't think she seemed to mind. The Saturday before, my parents celebrated with her while they babysit the kids while I was at my friend's funeral. Then the next day we celebrated over at Cluff's after Sunday dinner. She got a chihuahua Webkinz from her Uncle Ben and Aunt Shannon that she was SOOOO excited about. Her and September are both into Webkinz big-time right now.
On her birthday I went to her school for her spotlight thing. She was supposed to have done it a couple days earlier, but I had been so busy with various things that I didn't get a chance to work on her poster until the day before and when I went to get the pictures printed to put on her poster the machines were down at 2 different stores. So I asked her teacher if I could do it a different day and it worked out to do it ON her birthday which I think made her feel that much more special that day. She did a great job of presenting it to her class by herself. It's always interesting to me to see my children in a school setting because you always wonder how differently your child acts at school versus home. It's amazing to see how far Kya has come since last year. She had a rough time in kindergarten for reasons that I will choose not to go into on a public blog. But she has suddenly blossomed into little miss popular this year and has more friends than I can count. I have friends parents telling me all the time about how their daughter is always talking about Kya and what a great friend she is and how funny she is. And Kya comes home constantly with little notes from friends saying the same types of things, and little pieces of paper with friends phone #'s. It makes me so happy to see how many friends she has made. Her confidence has grown so much this year and just thinking about that makes me tear up a little and make my heart feel like it's going to burst!
After school we surprised her with a few things. Matthew left work early and as soon as she got home he took her on a scooter ride to go pick out a movie for that night, while September and I stayed home and finished decorating her room (which September had already gotten up early and partly done that morning....she cracks me up!). We blew up a bunch of little balloons and put them all over her bed which had her new quilt on it that I FINALLY finished after starting it 4 1/2 years ago!!! (The funny thing is, I don't even like it all that much. Back when I started it it matched the look and style I was going for in the girls room. But now, not so much. But I had already finished September's, and I was so close to finishing Kya's that there was no way I wasn't going to finish it and at least let her use it for a year or two.) When she got home and we let her in her room she didn't even notice the quilt. She just got excited about the balloons and gift on her bed. It made me absolutely feel like those last 7 or 8 hours I had frantically spent finishing the quilt was all worth it!! I got over it. I try not to get offended by things like that with Kya anymore. It's not that she's ungrateful, that's just how Kya is. She can be completely oblivious, but once we pointed it out to her she was very grateful. She was also very excited about her gift...we got her Super Mario Kart for the Wii. Although it has been Logan that has gotten the most use out of it. Perhaps it would've been a more appropriate gift for him instead.
We only let the kids have big parties where they invite multiple friends on certain years, and on the other years we let them choose a fun place to go and they get to invite one friend. She wanted to go to Chuck E Cheese, but we wanted to wait and do it the next day so we could go earlier in the day. But we still wanted do something ON her birthday, so we let her invite her friend over for pizza and a movie. We actually ended up with two friends coming over.....one was actually September's best friend, who is the sister of the friend Kya invited. We let them both come because that's pretty much how it works with those 4. They're a package deal! Ariel and Courtney practically live at our house and vice-versa.
The Party Crew - Ariel, September, Peyton, Kya and Courtney
Last week I was doing my daily reading of the newspaper when I spotted someone on the front page of one of the sections of the newspaper that I recognized....our Bishop! The article was about bankers helping local children learn about money. Suddenly I looked closer at the picture and realized that it was September's classroom, which made sense because the Bishop's daughter is in her class. I looked for September in the background but remembered that she sat on the other side of the classroom than what was shown. I was disappointed, but then the story continued on the inside and I opened it up and lo and behold there was another picture, this time with September right up front. It's more of a side profile, and it didn't have her name in the caption, but it was still enough to absolutely fill this mother's heart with pride!
I don't know how much longer they'll leave the article up online, but you can find the link here:
This year we decided to call Spring Break "Sprinter Break" because it was such a mix of Winter and Spring. It ended up snowing a couple days into it and snow remained on the ground the majority of the time. Ug! But the kids had fun getting their snow gear on and going out one last time (hopefully!!!) and making a snowman and playing in the snow.
One big treat for us during the week off was that Kalun & Kristi's niece, Kyli, was here! They'd had her plane ticket booked for a few months and September and Kya were really looking forward to it. One night we went over and had a BBQ and let the kids just play. Another day we went bowling and then we went to Jump On It, a place that is pretty much wall-to-wall trampolines, with an area of huge blow up toys for the tiny kids. We pretty much had to stick to indoor activities the whole week because of the crummy weather, and it felt more like the kids were out of school just because than it felt like Spring Break, but we still managed to have fun!
Once again, I haven't posted in a while and so much has happened, so let's get down to business. First, Easter....
We had a great Easter! We colored eggs on Saturday night. Afterward September made a comment that made me feel like a failure as a parent. She asked, "I understand that part of what we celebrate at Easter is new life (well, it started out all right).....but (you know you're in trouble when there's a "but")....what do eggs have to do with that?" This led to a fun discussion. No, it didn't quite escalate to the birds and the bees.
When we woke up on Easter morning, we came out of our bedroom to find little colored pieces of paper in the shapes of eggs all over the wall. At first I thought Lisa and Kyle had done it, until I went to the bottom of the stairs and found this and realized that it was September's handwriting.
We could hear her and Ember awake in their room so we just figured that they had gotten up early and done it. Nope! They had in fact stayed up very late making all of it, and then set the alarm clock for 2:30! The alarm clock's volume was turned down so it didn't wake them up but September happened to wake up at 2:35 and that's when they got up and did it. I think maybe she should take over the Easter Bunny's duties! They both crack me up how big they are into holidays. As Matthew says, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree!" He's right, I absolutely love holidays....the big and the small.
That night as we were on our way to dinner with Matthew's family, I received a phone call from my sister informing me that a friend of ours had been shot and killed the day before. This was a kid that we had been friends with during our teenage years. He was a foster child living with one of our neighbors. He had had a really rough life and as a consequence had gone on to make some bad choices in his life and he had been in and out of prison. I hadn't had contact with him in years and didn't know all of that until after I'd heard about his death. He had just gotten out of prison last year and had been working really hard to turn his life around. In the last couple weeks of his life he had started feeling very overwhelmed and depressed and it led to an incident that ended up with police officers at his house and in the end he was gunned down by the police. The media twisted the whole story and made him out to be such a monster and I was extremely upset by some of the comments that people left online in response to the articles. Deep down he was a good guy with a good heart, he just had a tough life and had made bad choices. It was extremely bittersweet to receive the news about his death on Easter. It soured a day that had been otherwise very fun and uplifting. BUT, I couldn't help but think about our Savior and his Atonement and how much it related to this situation. It made me that much more thankful for my Savior and the sacrifice he made for all of us. I know that I will see him again and I know that he is finally at peace, and that leaves me at peace just knowing that.
