Merit Badges

Tyler has now reached the age of 11. That means he can start working on merit badges. This week, Tyler and his friends Cade and Chandler, have been going every morning at 8:00 am to classes until noon. Yes, that is early in the summer, but with 3 of them it makes it a little more bearable.

They picked 3 badges that are hard to get and required and then of course they wanted a fun class. They chose golf. This meant that they have to play 18 holes before Friday.

I volunteered to take them yesterday to get started on 9 holes. I asked Chandler if he had ever been golfing before and he said he could do the whole thing in about an hour. I assumed a little longer, but never imagined we would be there 3 1/2 hours.

It was hilarious to watch 3 boys who really have no experience with golf, a mom who has no clue about golf, and Megan and Emily following behind. At one point, the boys even talked Megan into being the caddy.

Cade's grandpa Ben get the privilege of taking them on their final 9 holes this afternoon. Maybe he can give them a few pointers I wasn't. All I can say is here's to 1 merit badge down and 20 to go.

We are back in business!

Yeah! We finally have a new computer. I think I'm going to start with my most recent pictures and slowly catch us up. This blog is really for our family journal so bear with us as we post for the last 6 months. Now it just may take a couple of days for us to figure out how to get to our pictures.

Our computer has crashed!

Among the top excuses for our blog being so behind is the fact that we couldn't add any more pictures to our computer. We thought by moving them all to an external hard drive would help, but now the computer has just died. Thank you to Mark who tried to revive the thing yesterday for most of the afternoon. And so, our blog remains ever locked in November until we can break down and buy a computer. We have never had to buy a computer. We have used my old work ones, but the 486 is just not cutting it anymore. Any recommendations? We have heard good and bad about Macs and other varied opinions about PC brands. Here's hoping we can find something soon and get our blog back on track.

The Most Wonderful Day of the Year!

I love Black Friday. It means crowds, sales, getting up early, shopping straight for 9 hours without kids, being with friends, spending money, and filling the van. We did have a little extra room in the van this year, but we did take more than one also.

We started bright and early at 3:15 am at Target and didn't get home until 12:30 in the afternoon. I love going even if people think I'm crazy. I think I love the company that I am with and the fact that most of the Christmas shopping can be done in 1 day! I look forward to Black Friday as much as kids look forward to Christmas morning.

Black Friday also means getting out the Christmas stuff. Boxes of red and green can only mean decorations.

Megan did a great job with the tree while Emily watched mostly and Tyler helped Wendell with the lights outside. I just love the Thanksgiving weekend. We saw Santa come into town in a parade, played laser tag, saw Tangled, shopped some more, and ate out. It really is the best time of year. Now we are ready for the busyness of December.

Thanksgiving Day

I just love Thanksgiving. I love that it is a relaxing day with food, games, and family. I also like the anticipation of the shopping weekend. This year we went to a church to eat and celebrate.

Grandma Grace has a lot of posterity when we sit down to eat. There were a lot of people and a lot of food.

Emily's favorite part was the pumpkin pie with squirt cream.

While the adults played games, the kids entertained themselves in the gym with tables, the stage, and planning plays. It was a fun day.

Later that night, we went to Wendell's parent's house to do gingerbread houses. I think the kids ate more of the candy than actually got on the house. What a great day to be reminded of everything we have to be thankful for and celebrate with those that mean the most.

Thanksgiving Break

The last day of school before Thanksgiving a huge "blizzard" was supposed to blow in. Everyone rushed home to wait out the terrible storm. Well, we didn't get our blizzard, but snow did fall. Enough to make the perfect playground for a day without school.

The kids spent hours digging and building forts.

Sadly, it hasn't snowed since, and their forts have all melted.

The night before Thanksgiving, we went to a festival of trees. Emily was so sad that we wouldn't fork over the $700 for a new tree complete with decorations. I finally told her it was either the tree or presents on Christmas. She relented and was happy with reindeer food for $1.00.

The trees were beautiful.

It was fun to look at everything. Tyler informed us after looking at all the trees, that we needed to do a little better with our own when we put it up. I can always count on Tyler to be honest. Now bring on the turkey.

You Just Got Burned!

I have finally finished my final for the semester and can update the blog again. Before I do, though, I have to quote Megan. She had a lesson a couple of weeks ago in Young Women's on tithing. Apparently the only thing she heard was the scripture about being burned at the last days if you don't pay. We had tithing settlement this week and she took almost all of her cash out to pay as tithing---which we didn't know. Well, today we were in the car talking about buying things and Megan said, "I can't buy that. I don't have any money. I paid it all to tithing so that I won't get burned." I think we need to have a lesson on the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. At least she is covered if the second coming happens in the next couple of months. I guess I should be more willing to pay all I have so I won't get burned.