Aren't they cute??

Today was the primary program at church!  Cali and Chey sang so well and represented the girls of the senior primary at their loveliest.  Bethany sang along to at least 80% of the songs and only felt compelled to wave her arm along with the conductor on one of them!  Benjamin sat on the front row with his tie (first time he had ever asked for one!) and sang right along with the first song.  Later though, his tie came off and in his effort to get it back on (it was a clip-on tie) he discovered that the clip opens and shut . . . much like a mouth . . . just like everybody's mouth while they are singing!  After that the tie sang several of the primary songs.  I laughed so hard that tears were coming down my face!  I tried so hard to be quiet but I don't think I was!   I missed watching him for several minutes after that so I wouldn't start laughing again.  My mirth was still too close to the surface!  They all said their parts really well and I know they have learned a lot in primary this year.  I love it!  Primary helps them learn the gospel so very well.

Savannah couldn't come to the primary program because she was teaching Sunday School in her student ward today.  That is her new calling and she teaches every other week.  She really enjoys it.  We didn't see her until today as she had to use the weekend to do school work.  She is super busy but seems to be doing really well.  She is always happy when we see her!

Sarah seems to have fully recovered from her wisdom teeth removal now.  She even went to play tennis Friday morning with Megan!  We had the day off of school Friday because Thursday was the last day of the term.  She spent the rest of her day off watching Harry Potter 1-4 with Allyson and sometimes Megan and Mariah, too.  She also worked at Funfinity this week and helped with a service project for YCC on Saturday!

Megan helped with the service project for YCC, too.  They did some work helping to fix up the old theatre on Springville's Main Street, The Rivoli, and Megan really loved it with the old stage and the trap door and the whole historic, imagination-sparking-ness of it.  She's still playing tennis twice a week and doing a great job keeping up with school.  She and Sarah went to the church's Halloween dance on Saturday!  I thought they looked great!

Mariah started practices for Mapleton basketball this week.  Kevin will be her coach!  They also practiced for Bantam.  She is really excited for games to start again but will have to wait another week!  She is a great help to me around the house as she works on her Personal Progress and also just tries to fill her days with helpful projects.

Cali and Chey started Mapleton basketball this week, too.  I am their coach!  We had two practices and we had great fun.  They really want to get good at basketball and play like their big sisters.  The weather has been great and they have been outside playing a lot.

I went to parent-teacher conference for Bethany this week and was pleased to hear that her teachers like her and she is making good progress.  She can ask and answer in Chinese, What's your name?  How old are you?  What school do you attend? and What grade are you in?  It's pretty fun to hear her little voice speaking Chinese!

I taught Joy School for Benjamin at our house this week.  We went on a litter walk on Tuesday and made bread on Thursday.  It was a pretty action-packed week!  We also made those little pictures where you put leaves in wax paper and iron them.  The kids had a great time.  I did too, actually!  I meant to take a picture of all the kids with their little loaves of bread! . . . but I forgot.  :( 

On Friday, I came back from taking Megan to the store and found Beth and Ben had taped feathers around their heads like Indians!  It was so cute!  Ben couldn't remember "feathers" and kept referring to them as "chicken leaves".  Isn't that awesome?  Leaves fall from trees, these other things fall from chickens--it all makes sense!

I have great kids and I love them all!!!

On Monday night, the tennis team had their end-of-year banquet!  Sarah, Megan, Kevin, and I all got to attend!  Megan and Sarah both got participation awards.  Sarah also got a Varsity letter certificate.  We also got a bunch of fancy professional pictures the coach had taken of them!  Tennis has been a great thing for them to be involved in and has developed skills that they can enjoy throughout their life.  Plus, we've got to watch a lot of exciting games!  I'm so glad they've been involved in it.

Tuesday was Mariah's last race for Cross Country.  District Finals had every girl in our district racing together (over 70 girls) and Mariah came in number 2!!  Can you believe it?  This was the course they ran in their first race of the season where Mariah ran a mile and a half in 10:14.  She ran it on Tuesday in 9:11!  That is a huge improvement.  Also, that is fast!  What a great season she has had!

Also on Tuesday, Sarah got her wisdom teeth removed!  The procedure went without any problems but it is no fun to recover from with the swollen jaw and restricted food.  Sigh.  Sarah has been a good sport, though, and even with her swollen jaw went to work Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  They were short on employees at Funfinity because of Fall Break which started Wednesday for all the kids.  We didn't make any plans partly because Sarah was getting her wisdom teeth out and then they made her work!  It doesn't seem quite fair!  But it does prove what a trooper she is.

Cali and Cheyenne were thrilled to have a school holiday!  Unfortunately all their friends had plans Thursday and Friday!  They managed some fun times in the leaves and with each other, but they were happiest when their friends showed back up again.  Saturday I watched some little ones for a friend and I think that was C&C's favorite day!  They each took a little person (aged 3 and 1) and followed them around and took them to the playground.  They are great little babysitters!

Kevin took Friday off of work but again, it wasn't to play!  He replaced the roof on our shed which really needed it.  He spent Friday and Saturday working on it and got it done!  It was a lot of work but he did a really nice job on it.  He did have a small helper though he was more of a very interested four-year-old observer!

Can you see?  Ben is on the left and Kevin on the right!

I didn't get any pictures of Bethany this week but she really needed some time off school!  She has been getting weepy over homework and at bedtime--signs of stress and fatigue, I think.  She had lots of playmates during the break sometimes with five little girls all at once.  It was Bethany heaven!  Some of those girls have little brothers who came to play with Ben, so he was pretty happy, too.  I, for one, love to have a house full of little kids because they entertain each other all so well!

Scott took Savannah to a BYU homecoming dance on Friday night!  It was held at the Shops in the Riverwoods.  Kevin and I were gone when they left, but we got a picture when they got home.  It sounds like she had a really fun time and college is going well!

Sarah and Megan decided to reenact this picture from Ben's babyhood.  It's still pretty cute! Although decidedly more difficult to keep him still!

Ben had a field trip for Joy School this week.  He thought that was super exciting!  All the moms came too and we went up Mapleton Canyon to a little spot by the creek.  It was beautiful with the leaves changing and the weather was not too cold yet, either.  It was really fun.

Bethany's school had a carnival this week.  She went with her friend Macie.  They jumped in the bounce houses and got their faces painted, colored Halloween decorations and ate French toast.  Apparently a fun time was had by all!  She also finally got a Sage Creek t-shirt with a Chinese dragon on the front.  What fun!

Calianne got to be the tax collector at school this week.  Everyone was given tootsie rolls to be taxed upon in order to better understand the grievances of the early American settlers.  Since she was a tax collector, she didn't have to give any of hers up!  She liked that but she didn't like how nobody else liked it! 

Cheyenne gave a talk in primary this Sunday with only a couple of hours notice.  It was about the Family Proclamation.  She wrote it in sacrament meeting and read it in primary and it was great!  She also bore her testimony in Sacrament meeting!  Who knew she had such composure in front of crowds?  Our Primary program will be October 26th if anyone wants to attend!

Mariah had no race this week because district finals are this coming Tuesday.  She had lots of cross country practices, though.  She has had basketball practices, too and piano lessons.  She also finished her Sarah Eden book which she loved!

Megan started tennis groups in Spanish Fork again.  It's twice a week so she is happy to be playing tennis again!  She is reading The Devil in the White City for school and she enjoys telling me tidbits about the Chicago World Fair.

Sarah played tennis in the State Finals on Thursday in Salt Lake City at Liberty Park!  She and Allyson played great!  They won their first match and went on to semi-finals.  They lost that match and were out, but what fun it all was!  Watch out for next year!

Allyson, Coach Flood, and Sarah

Savannah came and visited us tonight.  She had midterms this week!  She is still really struggling in her calculus class but seems to be doing well in her other classes.  The big news of the week, though, was that her hall-mates convinced her to play mattress dominoes with them Saturday night.  She still feels incredibly guilty but couldn't admit it without also telling us how seriously fun it was!  Nor could she tell us the story without a huge grin on her face!  I'm glad she is having some silly times.

Friday night the primary had a "Family Fun Night" for the primary kids and their families.  Savannah was at college and Sarah was at work but the rest of us went and played games and decorated Halloween cookies and had our picture taken.  It was fun!  We even played Twister.

Saturday morning Kevin spoke at the Togetherness Project in Heber.  It was a conference for women who are struggling with someone close to them's addiction to pornography.  The woman who introduced Kevin said he was like a rock star.  That made Kevin and I laugh, but I am super proud of the good work he is doing and the help he is giving people!

So, after going with Ben on his field trip to the canyon on Thursday, I really, really, really wanted to go hiking!  We found some time Saturday afternoon and drove into our own canyon.  We took a beautiful drive and found a beautiful path to hike.  It was super fun!

 

I love hikes!  I love Fall trees!  AND I LOVE MY FAMILY!!!

Benjamin has been a very dedicated transformer fan ever since he discovered their TV show, Rescue Bots, several months ago!  He splits his Duplo blocks into colors and builds Heat Wave and Chase and Boulder and Bumblebee.  Lately he's been having me print out pictures of the transformers from the internet for him to color.  He gets one a day and then he hangs it on the wall in his room!  He is quite the enraptured fan!

So I was very surprised when he watched a Digimon show for the first time this week and suddenly switched loyalties!  This is how he dresses up as a digimon . . . I'm not sure what the tutu is supposed to represent but I'm understanding the red jacket and goggles--and the serious expression which so obviously says we can trust him to save the world!

He is still asking me for transformer pages to print out, so maybe he will continue to save the world both ways!

Bethany likes school and her friends.  She is working on piano in the mornings and is coming along nicely.  She still loves her jazz class.  She is a sweet, happy girl!

Cali and Chey started "Gym Rats" this week which is early-morning basketball practice twice a week.  They are excited to be playing basketball more often.  I continue to send them down to their room regularly to clean it up.  Sometimes they do and sometimes it is worse afterward!  Why is that?  They still love their rabbits and head to their pen first thing after school.

Mariah started Gym Rats, too, this week and had two practices with her Bantam team in addition to cross country practice everyday!  She ran in a home meet on Friday and came in third!  She is doing great!  Her math teacher invited her to transfer to his honors math class.  Since he invited her friend in her math class, too, Mariah decided to do it!  So, she has a new schedule this week with some things she likes better and some things she misses, but we think it will be a good change!

Megan had her first full week with no tennis!  :(  She missed it very much.  She still had homework to keep her busy and a couple of study groups.  Her church class last week had a lesson on seeing the people around us though God's eyes.  Her teacher gave them each a pair of plastic eyeglass frames to remind them of the principle.  Meg has had great fun wearing them around this week.  She took several selfies...

Sarah performed a piano piece in church last week.  She had been spending a lot of time working on it and she was so glad when it was over!  It was "Come Thou Fount of Many Blessings" and it was lovely!  This week in addition to work and homework, she did still have tennis practice.  The Varsity
Regional Tournament was on Thursday and Friday of this week.  The weather was lovely and the matches were here at SHS, so they were great days to be a tennis parent!  Sarah and Allyson won both their matches on Thursday and didn't lose until their last match which was on Friday.  That puts them in second place in our region and sends them to the state finals next week!  It is very exciting!

Savannah came home to watch General Conference with us this weekend.  It is so strange to not have her around!  When she comes back, I feel like saying like Captain Literally, "Balance RESTORED!"  It is a happy thing.