Half of a year!

I can't tell you how much it pains me to say this, but Jack has hit his six month mark!!  He is growing up SO FAST!!  I have to admit, I'm loving every stage he is hitting as he grows.  He is doing so many new things.  He's tried eating solids (I say tried, because he spits out whatever I feed him and then clenches his jaw shut so that nothing else can go in- but we'll keep trying :) ).  He has been rolling around like a crazy person, getting wherever he needs to when he's on the floor.  He can ALMOST sit up, he just tips over a lot.  But he has the ability, just not the control.  He likes it too.  He loves playing with toys.  Most of his baby holders entertain him for a good 15 minutes, if not more :).  He smiles like crazy.  He looks around at people almost waiting for, or expecting them to smile :).  It's cute.  Like he knows he's cute and can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to smile at him :).  I love it!  He sleeps okay, not as good as before, but I think that may be a result of his not getting enough to eat anymore.  Which is why I've been trying everything I can think of to feed him.  But I really can't complain still.  He sleeps better than most babies I know ;).  He is generally very happy!  Gooing and Gaaahing.  It's fun to listen to him "sing" with Nate.  He gets really happy when his big sibs pause their busy little lives to play with him.  Even if it's just a few minutes.  He gets very excited.  He is still a wiggle worm!  (that's an understatement)  I wonder when all this pent up energy is finally going to be able to have it's time.  He will be EVERYWHERE!!!  We'll look forward to that I guess :).  ANyway.  I'm really happy that he is so healthy and happy and that he is ours.  I don't know what our family would have done without the little guy.  He is just such a little light.

Fugitive Slave Law

Wednesday was Charity's much anticipated, History Fair Open House!  Even though she'd stayed up till midnight Monday night, putting her display together for grading and her class presentation, she was still up till midnight Tuesday night as well, putting on the finishing touches for the judging that would go on on Wednesday!  It was insane!!  But I'm glad she is so motivated to do a good job.  She did her project on the Fugitive Slave Law.  We all learned SO much about this topic during the past 2 months!  Nate and Charity especially.  She really knows way more than she should :). I was so proud of her and her hard work!!  She did a fantastic job!  I need to get a better picture of her display, but she was so tired, she didn't really even want this one.  She was bummed that she didn't win to go on to the next level, but I think she was mostly relieved that the whole thing was over.  

Charity's Day of Days!

Tuesday was a pretty hectic day, for the most part.  It was Charity's Constitution Bowl!  She had spent the last month or so, cramming 96ish (I think she only made it to 72, but still, wow!) questions and answers about the Constitution.  She had signed up to do this all on her own, completely optional, and was put in a team of about 6 kids her age.  This was an extra curricular thing, but happened to be during school hours, so that was pretty cool.  We had to go to Adelaide Elementary dressed in Sunday best.  I brought Jack with me, but left Erika and Noah home with Grandma Hatch for the day.  Signing in was a little stressful when we learned that half of her team were sitting in class 15 minutes before the thing was supposed to start.  We were afraid her team was going to have to forfeit and that was scary, but luckily they let us shuffle the teams around a little and then a lot of the kids actually showed up, so it all worked out.  The Bowl was pretty cool.  It was double elimination.  Charity's team struggled their first round with people not quite knowing how to buzz in, and they were up against a pretty tough team.  They lost that round and then lost their second round as well.  The second round was a lot closer and a bigger disappointment when they got out.  Some of those kids just knew their stuff SO WELL!!  They were able to buzz in two words into the question and get them right!  It was amazing.  I think our kids realized that they needed to have studied a little more, and luckily they will have another year, another shot at it next year, when they know more what to expect.  This was the first time our school has participated so nobody really knew what was going on, and they didn't get enough coaching or help from their teachers.  So now we know, and now we will be all set for next time!  I got to sit and talk with Tiffany Skelton through the whole thing, so that was fun for me :).  And Jack slept! until the last half hour or so.  So it was nice.  They got out so early on that we thought they would want to leave, but they liked missing school I think, and I figured they'd earned the morning off.  So we let them play on the playground and basically just do as they pleased for the last 2ish hours, until the awards were given at the end.  They got a participation certificate and cheered for the teams that won.  Hopefully they had fun.  I was overall, very proud of our kids, Charity especially.  She knew most of her stuff and had done so well in the competition.  It was a good experience.
We stopped at Wendy's to get the kids some lunch since they'd missed lunch time.  I bet they felt cool coming to school late, with fast food!  Good times.  Nice work Charity!  I hope she tries again next year.

So after that, we were able to rest a little, but not for long because I had had to make my dinners and deliver them.  Then it was time for Charity's next big thing, the SPELLING BEE!  We all headed on over to Bountiful High, yes,we took the whole to a district spelling bee, don't judge me like the people behind us did. Charity was pretty nervous but she did so great!  She lasted three rounds. Her first word was"podium" second word was "celebration" and her third word, the one she got out on, was "professional".  She gave it an extra "F".  We were so proud of her though and she was proud of herself as well.  Grandpa Hatch and Steve and Jauslin had come to watch and we all went out to Dairy Queen afterward to celebrate.  What a neat experience!

Journaling

And now it's been a week since I blogged.  Wow.


- Monday was President's day.  No school.  I had ideas in mind for some fun things to do that day, but it all came to a screeching hault when I found out how much work Charity still had left to do on her History Fair project which was due the next day.  We spent MOST of the day working on that with her.  Took a trip over to Grandma's to use her Word.  Unfortunately, our Word was dumped a few years ago when our computer was having trouble and so doing her homework has become next to impossible here at home.  It really stinks actually.  But at least there are other options.  Most of the things she has to do she's been able to do on her Open Office on her laptop, but a few things still require using someone else's.  Either way, we finished her project, and all was well.

In the evening, we headed up to Nate's Parents' house to have dinner and FHE with the Beckstead's!  This is something we've had as almost a tradition ( I think we've missed a few years) and something we always enjoy and look forward to.  Becky put together a really nice dinner and lesson.  We all drew our favorite person from the scriptures on a paper bag and then everyone had to guess who it was.  Kelly helped Luke and they both drew Joseph Smith with the gold plates and the barrel of beans he had hid the plates in.  Charity and Bradley, independent of each other, both drew Enos.  Nate did Ammon who we just read about in Family Study.  And Noah did Noah :).  We played a few games, I think the kids really loved the game Shark.  We finally got Darren out at the end.  We showed them our Quelf game, played that for a little while, watched Casey make a fool of himself :) Then a few rounds of It Came To Pass.  Nate let everyone have a free Root Beer Float, not counting it as a strike.  The whole night was just a lot of fun.  Even Noah and Erika had fun running around, surprising Grandma and Grandpa.  Good times.  Wish I'd brought my camera.   2-18-13

- Friday Nate got to go with the kids to school at 8:00 and have "Dads and Donuts"  I don't know what they did, but the kids were SO EXCITED for this!!  Even Luke was basing how fun his day was going to be off of this and his birthday table lunch.  It was much anticipated event!  I hope Nate felt the love :).

Then later in the day, Nate, the littles and I were able to go the school and have lunch with Luke for his birthday. That was a lot of fun! Bradley was having lunch with his friend Skylr at the same time so he sat there with us.  I love being able to spend some of the school day with our kids.

While we were there, we found out that Mrs. Davis (Kelly's teacher) was going to be doing the No Missing Work Party on her own because none of the parents had signed up for it.  We figured since we were there, that we'd volunteer.  She consented.  We waited a half hour and then for the activity we played the SHark game we'd played at Becky's.  Nate did a group and I did a group.  Nate's group had more fun, go figure.  But I think it was a success.

That night we had our family game night.  We all went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner.  That was a lot of fun.  We had a really nice waitress and everyone kept changing places the whole time :).  Then we went to the store, picked out a new game, LIFE, and grabbed some snacks (and the stuff for me to make my dinners on Monday) to munch on while we played.  I have ALWAYS (at least since I was 12) wanted that game!  I don't think I've ever played it the correct way though :).  IT was a fun game.  LONG, but really fun for everyone.  Erika and Noah lost interested fairly early on, but they stayed in the room with us, which was more than I could have asked I think.  Everyone did pretty well.  I think Bradley won.  He kept getting the Spin to Win money.  It was a good time though.  I love spending time together as a family.  We were glad Charity came home from her night out with her friends to play with us.  2-22-13

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STAR PARTY!!!

We had our first Star Party yesterday.  It was a big hit!  I began telling the kids about it earlier in the week.  I began heavy bribing with the stars to get their numbers up.  I really wanted to keep it low-maintenance so that I wouldn't feel overwhelmed to do it again, but at the same time, make it something exciting and new.  Nate totally helped with that, when he went to get the prices for the auction, he came home with like 10 times what I would have gotten :).  He's so much fun!  Kelly helped :).  The kids were excitedly doing all of their jobs and room cleaning, showers were a breeze with the 50 star bonus.  Some of them even folded their clothes willingly!  It was awesome!  It was babystepping to 6:00 for some of them :) but it was a lot of fun to watch them and see how excited they were.  I knew I had to make it a big deal.
So what we did is we paid stars to play games.  When you won a game, you got tickets.  The tickets were then used to buy things in our auction.  The leftover stars were used to buy a ticket to the movie and popcorn and drinks.
I had Charity, Kelly, Bradley and Noah (Luke didn't want to) choose and kind of run the games.
Our first game was Charity's Ball Toss.  This was a lot of fun because we did it in the hallway to the front door.  The bouncy balls were able to bounce around quite a bit off of the walls and door and stuff before finally landing in the bowls.  It was pretty intense!  And kind of difficult!  I didn't get any.  This game was my favorite because everyone was cheering each other on and getting all happy and excited for each other.  I LOVED the good Sportsmanship!
Next we did Kelly's Hershey Kiss game.  She had put stickers on the bottoms of some of the kisses and the kids got to choose two and get tickets based on what kind of sticker was on the bottom.  Nobody got the "z"s :).  But it was still fun.
Then we did Bradley's cracker game.  This was a lot tougher with the small ritz crackers we were using.  But Bradley won that, and then Kelly won it the second time.  That was pretty fun too.
After that we played Charity's second game, the marshmallow straw game.  You sit in a circle, everyone has a bowl and a straw.  You go around the circle, rolling the dice, when you get a 7, 11 or doubles, you get a chance to suck up as many marshmallows as you can, one (or two, and sometimes 3, if you're Luke) at a time, and put them in your bowl.  This was a fast-paced, high-emotion game.  In fact, as the night went on, tensions rose.  I knew this would happen and had tried to prep and threaten a substantial amount in order to avoid it, but I guess we all knew it was inevitable.  I will say that the kids did really good most of the night.  We're still learning how to be good sports, and to deal with disappointment.  I try to cut everyone some slack, and hopefully we get enough exposure to both, we will be able to combat it.  This game was a breaking point for some of the kids.  But it was still pretty fun.  We survived :).
Next was Noah's paper airplane game.  This was fun, but it was so soon after the other game, that we were still having aftershocks from the drama.  Noah loved it :).  He was super happy that it was his game!  Then we did Kelly's second game, "It Came To Pass" card game.  We had a few crazy rounds of this game.  Bradley was killing it!  Both rounds that we played went REALLY fast!  I couldn't believe it!  It was okay though because our second dinner was ready to eat!  Yes, I said "second".  I got all caught up in the fun and burned our first one.  That was a total bummer because it was smelling REALLY good!!!  I've never scraped such a thick layer of crusted on sauce out of a pan in my whole life!  And I've scraped a lot of burnt food.  At least we were having fun though :).  Fettucine Alfredo was our back-up and it was yummy.
Following dinner, we had the most important part of the whole night- THE AUCTION!!!  The kids had been eye-balling the prizes all day, so this was a very much-anticipated event!  I let them help me choose which things we would auction off (I couldn't sell ALL of it at once!!  There was SO much!  We'll use it on the next one).  There were some cool water bottles, fish crackers, pringles, donuts, sticky hand, some princess and Spider-man toys... lots of good stuff.  I added my little cards I had made with Date Nights, Choice of Family Activity, Day of no jobs... etc.
It was a really fun auction.  I couldn't believe how generous everyone was being to each other!  I had to tell them to just buy stuff for themselves because they would be bidding against someone forever, and then tell the other person to stop bidding because they're getting it for THEM!  It was hilarious.  Gave me chills when I thought about how how much they love each other.  When the Princess and Spider-man toys came up, everyone played along for a minute, just bidding to look like they wanted it, but it was obvious they were all letting Erika get the one and Noah could get the other.  So cute!  There was a sad moment when Noah wanted some cheese Fish crackers, but I think we managed the disappointment okay. I want my kids to learn how to handle those situations.  They happen so much at school.  Well, in LIFE!  I hate it when I'm doing a party in one of the kids' classes and we have to deal with all the crying or pouting kids because they didn't get their way!  And these are upper-grade kids still acting like that!!  Blows my mind.  I so hope my kids don't do that at school!  So anyway.  They had a good time at the auction.  I loved that Charity spent almost all of her tickets on the "Mom cleans your room" card.  Makes me laugh.  It was a lot of fun.
After the auction, I sold tickets to the movie and the popcorn and drinks.  Then we tiredly dragged ourselves went downstairs (it was past our bedtime BEFORE we started the movie!).  Erika had bought the "Choose the movie" card at the auction and she had chosen "Chipmunks II Chipwrecked" so that's what we watched!  I think it was a good choice for everyone, either that or they were really good at not saying otherwise.  They all seemed happy about it.  I LOVED this part of our party.  Everyone was happy.  Everyone was sharing.  Bradley and Kelly were sitting on the mat with their goodies combined, in a basket, to share, while sitting under the same blanket!  It was priceless!  Noah and Luke were being buds.  Everyone was pleasant!  I think someone knocked over Erika's popcorn and everyone jumped up to help, Bradley quickly offered her his cup, and I just watched in amazement.  They really are so good to each other!  I love these moments for me to just savor.  I love my kids.
I think the party was a success.  Overall, I was happy with it.  I think we will attempt to do it again soon.  That and a few other ideas I have planned for using stars.  Just an excuse for me to spoil them and do something special.  Next time I will take pictures!  I was too lazy to find the camera.