Mother/Daughter Activity

Courtney and I went to her mother/daughter activity on Saturday. It was a lot of fun. They had a wonderful dinner and then we took turns painting each others nails. Courtney absolutely LOVED this part of the activity. She has even offered to paint my nails every day for me. Aren't I lucky? After the girls nails dried, one of the leaders, Anna, offered to paint flowers on for them. This of course was a huge hit! Just one more of Anna's hidden talents. They turned out very cute.

Courtney tried very hard the rest of the day to make sure her nails did not get ruined. She was confidant that taking a shower for church would wash her flowers away. Luckily they are still intact. Thanks to all the leaders who made this activity such a success!

Court of Honor

Last Wednesday was Travis' first official Court of Honor. He is doing really well in his troop. He received six merit badges last week, they were Swimming, Emergency Preparedness, Leatherwork, Woodcarving, Home Repairs and Rifle Shooting. He has a couple other ones that he is working on so hopefully he will be done with those soon. Thanks to all the scout leaders that help these boys along. As parents, we sure do appreciate all of your time and talents.

Rainbows in Vegas?

Since it RARELY rains here in Las Vegas it is such a novelty to see a nice rainbow. It rained very briefly last week but it made for a perfect rainbow. We could see the whole rainbow. All of the kids thought it was so cool so we took several pictures. Here is one of them. The colors were a lot more vibrant in real life.

Better late than never

O.K. I know that school has been in for a whole week now and I haven't posted our First Day of School pictures yet. You would think now that ALL the kids are gone in the morning I would get more done. WRONG!! Hopefully as time goes on, I will be more productive. The first reason why I haven't posted these yet is because I forgot to take pictures of Ashley and Travis before they left. Luckily I remembered before I took Courtney and Jared. All the kids were very excited for school the first day. They were all up early and dressed with lunches made before 7:00am. It's great to have them so excited - I hope it continues.

Jared was soo excited to start kindgarten this year. It is hard to believe our baby is off to school. He is so ready for everything school will offer him. I will miss him at home but I'm glad we have a few hours in the afternoon before the other kids get home. He made me promise I wouldn't do any of the cleaning while he was gone, because he didn't want to miss out on the fun. Last Wednesday after school, I thought I would lay down and rest for a little while when I kept hearing chairs being pushed around the kitchen. I asked him what he was doing and not to get into anything. Then the more I listened I realized he was moving the table and chairs so he could sweep and mop the floor. He is such a hard, good worker. I love him so much!

Courtney started 4th grade this year. She is always very excited for school to start but she doesn't do well with new situations. About a week before school started she starts realizing she will have a new teacher and new kids in her class. She did really well this year - she did not get sent home for getting sick a school. Last year she missed about a week and a half in the first two weeks of school. She seems to love her teacher and so far things are going great. Keep it up!

Travis is in 7th grade this year. His elective is Band. He is enjoying learning to play the trumpet. So far he seems to like all of his teachers. Ashley is in 8th grade. She has four of the same teachers from last year, so just two new ones. She was very excited to get back to school. She LOVES school!! Keep up the great work!

Scout Camp

Travis left this morning for his first Scout camp. He was so excited. I'm sure he will have a great time. They met at the church at 7:00 this morning and were going to Alamo. It will be so different around here without him. He brings alot of fun to our home. I hope he has a great experience and comes home with a few merit badges. I hope the weather holds out for them. It looks like we should have rain sometime this week.

Travis ready to go
Travis with a couple boys from his troop and his leader

Partner's in crime

What an eventful day!! I don't even know where to start. Before you start this, know that it is a little long and more pictures than I would normally post, so if you don't have much time or just want to see the end product, just scroll to the end of this blog.

I have to start by saying I jinxed myself in Sunday School today. Our teacher had made a comment about one of her daughters cutting her hair and I thought, "I am so glad I didn't ever have to deal with that. And now that our kids are older, I won't ever have to deal with that." Oh, why did I ever think that!

We came home from church yesterday and Randy and I were in our room with Travis making sure he had his camp gear ready for camp the next morning. Then when we were done Randy and I stayed in our room to talk. We were probably in there for about 2 hours with the kids coming in and out. We came out to start Family Home Evening (since Travis would be gone on Monday). While we were singing the songs, I kept looking at Courtney's hair. It was looking a little odd, but I couldn't figure out why. The more I looked at it, I was more and more puzzled. Then all of a sudden it hit me and I blurted out, "You cut your hair!" Courtney immediately hid under the piano. I finally got her to come out so I tried not to make a big deal about it. Well, up to that point I had only been looking at the right side and the back. I was thinking how bad it was and then she turned and I saw the left side. I about died! It made the right side look great. I was so focused on Courtney's hair, that I had really looked at Jared until Randy caught my attention and pointed to Jared. He ended up with a clump taken out of the middle of his forehead up to the scalp, a nice bald spot behind his left ear, and multiple cuts everywhere else. Well, we still haven't got the whole story, but it sounds like Jared cut Courtney's hair and then she cut his.

Her is Courtney with the pile off hair we found. Notice the platinum blond hair too. Barbie also got a little haircut.
Here is Courtney from the back. If you look close you might be able to see the MANY different layers . Trust me, in real life it looks worse!!

Jared with his cheesy grin. He wondered how I could be mad that they cut their hair but was happy and wanted to take their picture. I couldn't really explain it to him but I had to have pictures for the scrapbook and blog.

After about an hour and a half of trying to figure out what I would do to make these two look half way presentable, I called a good friend of mine who came over and tried to salvage what she could. She was a little nervous but I let her know that they couldn't look any worse than they already did.

We started with Jared. She tried cutting it first but it just made the bad spots stand out more so we decided to just shave it. It doesn't look too bad, just ALOT shorter than we have ever gone before. In a couple of weeks, when the bald spot grows out, we will try and even it out more.

We started trying to blend in all of the different layers, but finally decided if we blended everything, she would end up with the same hair cut as Jared. Debbie did an amazing job with what she had to work with. Thanks a TON!!

Front

Back

The next morning - The kids are pretty happy with their new hair cuts. I am hoping that I have explained enough that they should NEVER do that again, but I'm not sure confident that they get it entirely.

Pioneer Days

We had a GREAT time at Pioneer Days this past weekend. The kids really look forward to this every year. Friday night was a little too warm for me, but once the sun went down it was o.k. I was dreading Saturday though. Then Saturday ended up being a perfect day. It was cloudy the whole time we were there which made it quite pleasant. Here are a few pictures of some of the things the kids got to do.

Courtney hitting the cans down
Travis popping balloons with darts - He popped 2 out of 3. Good job!
Jared doing the ring toss

Ashley after getting her face painted

Waiting for the fireworks to start

The fireworks were a lot of fun. Courtney even stayed and watched them. She had to sit on my lap, with my hands covering her ears the whole time, but she did the best she ever has. Maybe by next year she will actually enjoy them.