February 2016

We started February the way we always do - with Grandpa Earl's birthday! This was his 85th. He's such a good guy. We all adore him.

 Not sure what these faces are for.

 I took a lot of pictures of the dog and cat, apparently. Stryder's turn to give Kitty a bath. She enjoys his a lot less than he enjoys hers. Slurp! haha...

The joys of doing all of Grace's school work at home... She had to do her owl pellet lab on our kitchen table. It was very cool, but pretty gross too.

 David gave me a very thoughtful Christmas gift this year. He rounded up a whole bunch of really nice art supplies so that I could get back to drawing and sketching. This was one of the sketches I did as I sat home with sick kids. It's Grace, trying out her new guitar at the music store.

 Then, more cheer. I can't adequately express how grateful I am for these girls and their friendships with Harriet. It has changed her life and ours too.

 And, Grace was a very patient big sister who sat through A LOT of hours of cheer waiting to see her sister go on stage.

 This was the Spirit of Hope competition. The girls took second place in a disappointing (and possibly rigged?) loss. I'm not a sore loser, but these girls deserved to win this one. The silver lining was that it put such a fire in their coach, and in them, that they tore through the competitions for the rest of the year and won everything after that.

Holding the team trophy - still a pretty rad 2nd place trophy. Not too shabby!

Then, the daughter of our close friends from MA (Bret and Shawn Bahe), came to town with her band. Maryn Jones plays with Saintseneca and they included the Launchpad in Albuquerque on their tour. I rounded up my concert buddies and we tried to pretend like we were 20 and could go to a concert that started at like 9:30pm, no problem. There was an opening band too. I admit, the late night into the wee hours of the morning nearly did me in, but it was so worth it. Maryn is incredibly talented and has the voice of an angel. I got DJ and his wife, Ashli to go too and they are now Saintseneca fans as well! I will always love going to concerts and seeing music performed live. It's one of my absolute favorite things to do. 

Grace, my straight A+ student, was finally recognized at school for her academics. Up until this point, they never did a single thing for the kids who are on the honor roll. They finally coughed up a little assembly to honor these kids and gave them a nerdy t-shirt too. These kids work hard and do well in a sea of kids who seriously don't care about getting an education. It is so disheartening to see the apathy in the kids when I go to the middle school, even the elementary school. I guess it was probably the same way when we were growing up, but it seems to have gotten much worse. Or at least, it is much worse here in NM. I don't care about the pat on the back as much as I care that the community shows some kind of glimmer that they support kids who value their education and work hard for their grades!

Other good things happening at school this month: Harriet's school participates in One School One Book, where the entire school reads the same book at home, book club style with daily discussions at school, over the course of a month, and then have a big celebration at the end for everyone who finished the book! This year they chose Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, so we had a fun Charlie-themed night at the school.

(4th graders with a selfie stick)

Then, Harriet's 4th grade valentine party was just a couple days later, so we kept the Charlie theme going and had a "candy bar" for their treats, along with a chocolate fountain, and they watched the new Charlie and The Chocolate Factory movie!

random moon pic - I've become obsessed with taking pics of the moon

Random assignments that Grace did this month: I love the drawings on her hand showing all the things she loves.

Then, it always warms my heart to see a kid do the cell structure assignment and label all the organelles! Ah, biology.

David did some major traveling this month, including a trip to Japan at the very end of the month. He spent more time getting there and getting home than he actually did in Japan. He probably has 10 pictures on his phone somewhere.

It's pretty eerie to look him up on the "find friends" app sometimes and see where he is and how far away from us it is.

No, the animals are NOT allowed on our nice leather couch. Unless they are on top of a blanket. On top of one of us. We spent a lot of time like this over the winter as everyone stayed home sick, watching movies all day for so many days.

January 2016

January is kind of a blur now that it is already another January. (oh wait, now it's February...) I am determined to catch this blog up soon and get a whole bunch of family stuff printed in books this year. 

So, back to January 2016. We finished off our Utah trip with a bunch of cousin fun. Harriet and Kate went to the American Girl store together. It's their dreamland.

They went home and promptly set up shop. These girls would play dolls for months together without coming up for air. 

 We had a fun New Year's dinner at my mom's house. I feel bad - she doesn't get to gather the grandkids at her house very often because we are always at Melissa's house. My mom always makes things so nice when you go there. I wish my kids could spend more time there.

 Then, there's always crazy Grandpa Lyle. I'm so glad he can spend as much time with the girls as he does.

 Then, someone had a bright idea to take all the cousins to the bowling alley.

 Can't get enough Lyla time. She looks like a character straight out of a Dr. Seuss story.

 And my kids can't get enough snow time. They are so jealous of the piles in Melissa's yard.

 But, at some point, you have to put your big dog on your lap and drive home. We realized that these three aren't fitting in the backseat of the truck as nicely as they used to.

This was the winter that the kids totaled 22 and 24 absences from school. None were for vacation. They were sick with something the entire school year. Harriet got every virus and infection that came around. We spent A LOT of days like this - snuggled in bed with the animals. We decided that the animals like it when people are sick because we stay home and hang out with them. 

Kit Cat and Stryder are actually pretty good friends considering their size difference and that they are a dog and a cat. They will even give each other a bath.

And it snowed. Thankfully. I had been hearing it all month, that we left all the snow in Utah and I was the worst mom ever for raising them in ABQ.

 Just before Christmas break, Harriet was having a fit that she couldn't see. She would hand me things to read if the print was small and then she started having a hard time even reading music to play the piano. She was getting so frustrated. She often goes through phases where she just gets frustrated and won't try to do things, so at first, I didn't realize that she actually couldn't SEE. But, when she started putting her nose in the crack of her books to read, I realized that it wasn't just a weird phase. We were so busy at the end of the semester, there was no time to get into the doctor, and then, I knew we were leaving for Utah soon, so I kept promising her I would get her to the doctor when we came back. The entire trip, she just drove me nuts - call the eye doctor! I can't see! The day we got back, I called and they were booked out for like forever. Then, they found a cancellation for an appointment that would start in just a few minutes, so I threw her in the car and we drove like crazy across town to get in. It turns out that she has 20/20 vision in both eyes - no correction needed.  Except, her eyes did not focus on the same spot when the spot got to a certain size and distance from her face (exactly the size of font, music notes, etc and about as far away as you are when you read something.) So, they gave her a prescription for prism glasses. I had never heard of such a thing. But, the prism just redirects your focus in both eyes to the same spot. So cool. It was painful to wait a few days for them to be made, but once she put them on, the difference was amazing. She was so happy and everything became so easy. She could do her homework and practicing without fits. Wow. I had no idea! Plus she looks seriously adorable in glasses.

Then, Grace had an assignment to write a thank you note to someone and have them sign it that she gave it to them. She does not like to write, especially when it comes to things like notes. So, this was kind of cool that she wrote so much to her dad. 

 More cheer! Harriet and company made an appearance at a Volcano Vista basketball game! It was super cute - we overheard the high school cheerleaders commenting to each other about how impressed they were with these kids and their sharp moves and performance. So proud.

And, we did manage to find a Saturday when everyone was well enough to go skiing. I think it happened a couple of times. This was at Sipapu. We tried to ski there as much as possible because they allow you to ski for free when you are 40 years old (BOTH David and I were 40 for the NM ski season which is January and February!) Then, they allow 4th and 5th graders to ski for free (Harriet), and once you are in middle school, they will give you a season pass for $5 if you are on the honor roll! (Grace) So, our whole family skied there for the season for $5. Seriously can't beat that! It balanced out the hundreds of dollars we spent for one day of freezing our extremities off at Alta.

 Oh wait, then someone got sick. Again. Grace somehow managed to come down with mono. This really killed us. Making up her homework was just awful. She missed 2 whole weeks of school straight, and then she only went back for a few periods a day for 2 weeks after that.  Poor kid!

 Harriet ended the month with a smashing school dance, 80's style! She loved dressing up in these clothes and looking funky. She and her friends were so adorable out there dancing. I love these friends, that they get her to let her hair down and make her have fun. Otherwise, she would be a total wallflower. She pulled off a pretty good Madonna look, I think.

 One more pic of the (not stuffed) animals. Because they are seriously cute together.