It was Indian week in Kindergarten!  Isn't she cute??  That's her little bow and arrow that she is holding.  She got to shoot her arrows at pictures of bear and buffalo as well as make her feathered hat and her beaded necklace.  Kindergarten is so much fun!  Bethany is very excited for Thanksgiving but she is also very excited for Christmas.  She has been looking for Christmas clothes to wear and checked out a bag full of Christmas books and activities from the library.  She even performed a Christmas puppet show for me.  It was quite adorable!

Ben has taken to bandaids this week.  He already really enjoys tape.  He would play with tape everyday if we hadn't already run completely out.  He wraps it around and around and around whatever object happened to have the misfortune to be the closest to him when he discovered the tape.  So, perhaps because we are out of tape, he now goes hunting for bandaids.  He puts them over the little scratch he finds on his ankle or knee -- like 10 of them all in one spot.  We will soon be out of band aids as well.  So much for emergency preparedness.

Megan had her first basketball game this week!  It was pretty terrible and Meg started but then her silly coach took her out for most of the first half and half of the second.  Ah well.  Megan had a great time!  She's getting to know the girls on her team and loving playing basketball every day. When we picked her up from her two-hour practice on Friday she asked if we could take her over to the church and she could play some more basketball!

Sarah and I and Ben went to watch Megan's first game.  Kevin met us there later from work. Sarah and I both wore our Springville sweatshirts so we took a picture of ourselves, too!  We were twinners!

Sarah has started looking around for a job.  We will keep you updated on how that goes! Otherwise, she took her sisters to the store Friday night for a movie and treats while her parents went out.  On Saturday, she took Mariah and they saw the high school play and had a great time!  I'm loving that she can drive!

Savannah worked four days this week and worked last night from 4 until midnight.  They called in all the troops to do restocking I guess.  Savannah had a great time!  She knows Christmas is a very busy time of year at her job in a toy store!  She was also very, very excited for the Dr. Who event on Saturday.  It ended up that she hated it, though!  Poor girl!

Mariah played two basketball games this week and won both.  She helped a friend all day Saturday with her school project which was super nice of her.  On Thursday she and Sarah helped babysit for the ward's Relief Society dinner.  She is a hard worker and a great help!

Cheyenne and Calianne had an Activity Days dinner for their mom on Tuesday!  It was great fun!  We got to eat dinner together and then make some friendship bracelets.  I'm still wearing mine!  They have to memorize a poem to recite in front of their school class on Monday so they are going around the house reciting it to themselves.

Kevin spent all day Saturday being fix-it man around our house.  He worked hard and we all will benefit!  His work is going well and he is enjoying coaching basketball most days of the week!

I have written 41,000 words for National Novel Writing Month!  It's going really smoothly this year which is nice, but I am afraid I am going to run out of story before I get to 50,000 words!  That'll throw a real wrench into things!

Ben gave Bethany a black eye this week!  They were playing (when they were supposed to be going to sleep) and Ben, acting as Captain Hook, swung his truck around and hit Bethany in the temple, right at the side of her head.  I've never seen anything go immediately to goose egg like that!  The next day it was a black eye.  The day after that it was an even worse black eye.  It happened Monday night and it still looks horrible.  He felt really bad.  He's just got a lot of energy and doesn't quite know how to control it, yet.  How happy that Mariah taught him how to climb trees!  I don't know if that's a good thing or not . . .

Cheyenne and Calianne had nothing but piano one day after school this week.  They played with friends everyday, as usual, though.  They also talked me into getting Fraction Samurai on the ipad.  They played it at school and wanted to play at home!  Chey woke up early Saturday so she could come with me to watch Mariah's basketball game.  Cali had stomach flu Thursday night so she stayed home Friday.  Ben loved it.  He played with her all day.

Mariah had basketball practice on Monday and Friday, a game on Tuesday, and a tournament on Saturday.  I watched her play Saturday and she is playing GREAT!  Her ball-handling is smooth and unstoppable.  I don't think Kevin even wants to see what a game would be like without her.  With her, they won the tournament!  Go Mariah and Kevin!  Mariah won some pink athletic socks!  Cool, right?

Megan made the junior high basketball team!!  Go Megan!  She's had basketball every day after school this week.  They are working her hard.  She thinks their team won't be any good, but that she is going to have fun anyway.  Kevin, Sarah, and I can't wait to see her play!

Sarah got her driver's license this week!!  Hurrah!  I had to talk the girl into it.  She finally came with me to the DMV on Friday.  That night she asked if I could take her to the store and I said, "You could drive yourself!" and you should have seen her face light up!  I think this is going to take a while for her to readjust her thinking to her new freedom!  She also got a perm this week.  I think it looks really cute.  I got my hair cut at the same time.  Aren't we beautiful?

Savannah worked three days this week.  I also took her over to the gym to get a membership.  Apparently she is short one PE credit for graduation.  The principal gave her permission to do exercise hours in exchange for the credit.  It's a lot of hours she has to do, though, so we'll see how it goes!  She might have to drop something next semester to take PE.  Crazy, right?

I taught the Beehives how to make pie crust on Tuesday.  All ten of them!  They did pretty awesome.  I also wrote 2,000 words a day for NaNoWriMo.  Our Relief Society organized a toy swap and it was on Saturday.  A lot of toys were given away but not many moms came looking for toys.  I got a lot of great things!  It saved me at least a couple hundred dollars for Christmas.  It was pretty great!

Also on Saturday, I took Cheyenne, Calianne, Bethany, and Benjamin to the discount theatre to see Monsters University.  They got free tickets for being such good students.  It was pretty fun!  Ben made it about halfway before he started climbing over seats and exploring the theatre.  It was a good thing the theatre was mostly empty!

Cheyenne and Calianne had their last day of gymnastics this Wednesday.  It was a six-week class and they really enjoyed it!  They wanted me to come and watch this time since it was the final class.  I was really impressed with all that they had learned in six weeks!  I think it was really fun for them and a good experience.  :)

Thursday night was Savannah's Cross Country Banquet.  Kevin was teaching a class so just she and I went.  It was a lot of fun.  There was a lot of energy in the room with both the boys' team and the girls' team there.  Both teams had good seasons and new coaches.  All the kids got awards and Savannah found out that she lettered again -- three seasons in a row!  What a gal!  We are so proud of her for sticking with her sport of choice and doing so well there.  It's been a great experience for her!

Megan started to attend open court practice for basketball over at the junior high this week. Tryouts for the junior high team are this coming week.  Wish her good luck!

Mariah and Kevin started season games with their Mapleton team this week with games on Tuesday and Thursday.  They won Tuesday and just barely lost on Thursday.  I couldn't attend either game but Kevin reports that Mariah played great and scored most of their points.  What a star!

Kevin is in his third week of teaching an evening class for men struggling with pornography on Wednesdays.  We don't see him until after nine, and we miss him.  But, the class is a success and he feels like they are all accomplishing a lot together so that is a great thing.  He was also on TV again this week!  This time he was part of a spot about pornography on the ten o'clock news.  He's getting to be quite famous.

Ben seemed to get a "Round 2" of his cold this week.  He's been pretty whiny and easily frustrated. Poor me -- I mean -- poor Ben.  :)  We'll make it through!

Bethany has been feeling better and even had some friends over to play again this week.  It's nice to see her happy again.

Sarah and Megan, with their friend, Hannah, played a musical number in church this Sunday. Piano, violin, and flute playing "Love is Spoken Here."  They worked really hard on it, practicing multiple times, and spending a long time in the chapel on Saturday going over it so more.  I was really pleased to see all the hard work they put into it.  It turned out great, too, and brought their YW president to tears.  Awww!

I'm getting the cold everyone else has had now and I have a really busy week and DON'T WANT IT!!  Somehow, I don't think that'll matter much.  I'll get everything done AND my 2000 words a day.  I will.  Even if I don't know how just yet.

Good luck on your week, too!  See you next time!

It was the week of Halloween!  Which meant that on Monday evening we got ourselves some pumpkins and carved them up into jack-o-lanterns!  Savannah was at work and we missed her!

On Wednesday, Bethany had her ballet recital.  They danced to "The Witch Doctor," and got to wear their Halloween costumes.  Bethany was "Pinkalicious" this year for Halloween.  She loved being all pink, although she did not love the pink hair spray.  It made us both choke!

Halloween was on Thursday!  We got everyone all dressed up in the morning, of course.  The elementary school kids, at least.  The older girls looked Halloween-y, too, but they were in a rush to get out the door so I missed getting their pictures!

Later that day, I saw these three cuties again at the elementary school's Halloween Parade!

So, cute!  Right?  After dinner, we drove over to Grandma's to trick or treat at her house and then back to our neighborhood to take the four youngest around.  Sarah and Mariah both went to friends' parties this year.  Savannah manned the door for us.  She handed out candy during the Main Street trick or treat at Funfinity during the afternoon so she was really in the groove!

Halloween is kind of a lot of work and I am always glad when it's over, but it is fun to be out with the kids when they trick or treat.  They're so happy and the neighbors are all so nice to them.  It's sweet.  It's fun.  It's a good experience to share!

We have had more sick kids this week.  Beth suffered from general malaise all week.  Cheyenne was struck down Wednesday and Calianne on Friday.  Chey stayed strong through Halloween, but I kept them both home from school on Friday.  They've never been sick on the same day before and they kind of liked it!  Guess what they did on their sick day home?  They played school! Funny, huh?  I guess you just can't keep good kids down.

We also had a lot of leaves to play in this week!  Ben, of course, rode his bike through them with his friend Mason.

On Saturday, we raked them all up!  Our front yard was much easier than previous years!  I guess that's what happens when you take down a 50 foot Sycamore tree.  Our back yard, though, already looks like we didn't rake at all because the leaves just keep on falling!  However, we don't have any walnuts to pick up this year in our back yard!  I walked into our shed last week and all the buckets in the shed were full of walnuts.  "What is going on?" I wondered.  Did Kevin . . . Did the kids . . . ?  Then I realized it was the squirrels!!  They completely harvested our trees and when they ran out of room in their own nest, they had been "squirreling away" all the gazillions of nuts they could find in every possible space.  How funny for us that they decided on our buckets!  It's like a Disney movie come true!  We got a great laugh out of it!  It's so awesome!