There was an assembly in November, I believe, at Austin's school about cub scouts. He got all excited about scouts and wanted us to attend the informational meeting held in the evening of a very busy night. I tried to convince him that we shouldn't worry or bother with it since he will become a Scout through the church in June when he turns 8. He wasn't satisfied with that. We couldn't attend the meeting, but I contacted the scout master and found out the wolf den meets once a month and the whole pack meets once a month, with a few exceptions. We decided since he doesn't have a ton going on in his schedule, we'd let him join until he goes with the church group. Since his birthday is right before summer, he won't be attending many meetings right away, so he'll have a chance to get some experience before then.
He's only been to a few meetings, by the time we figured out what we were doing and got all the information we needed. So far, he loves it! Erik likes attending with us too, the times he has gone. I didn't know much about Scouts beforehand. My brother is almost 5 years younger than me and I have never been called as a scout leader before, so it's all new to me! I'm excited for my future scout!!
The last scout meeting they had a special guest speak to them.
He was a pilot in the Air Force for 35 years! The boys got planes as gifts from him, which you can see them playing with in the first picture.
He finally got all his uniform the other day, after the last meeting.
Here's a goofy/cute picture of him. He loves hot sauce on pretty much everything. That red stuff on his grilled cheese sandwich pictured here is hot sauce!
It's that sick time of year again. Erik caught something and had a high fever on Saturday. A couple of days later, his ears bothered him, but mostly he had a high fever and slept all the time. He lay in his bed for hours resting or actually sleeping. Sometimes he would come downstairs and fall asleep on the couch, but mostly he lay in his bed. He didn't watch any TV, which is way different from my other kids when they're sick. By Tuesday evening, Erik's fever was gone.
Karissa got a fever Monday morning and Austin and I did Monday night, so the four of us stayed home on Tuesday. Again, other than a fever and a little coughing from some, or a sore throat, no other symptoms. Jason got a fever Tuesday night with lots of coughing. Wednesday evening, Erik slept for 3 hours on the couch, which I thought was odd. We woke him up at 7:30 so he could eat something, but he said he wanted to go back to bed so I took his temperature and it turned out it was 103- weird! I called my sister who is going to nursing school. Between that and her 7 kids, she has seen it all! She gave me good advice which proved to be right. I took him to the doctor this morning. His infection turned out to be bacterial and he has a double ear infection. We got him some antibiotics and it turns out this is the first time he's ever had to take them! I knew he was a healthy boy, but I thought he had taken them at least one time. Now that he's on them, though, I'm worried about his eating habits in helping his good bacteria to grow back. Luckily he does like yogurt drinks, so hopefully we can keep him healthy!
Karissa went to school today, Austin will go tomorrow and I think I will be able to take Erik back to Red Bell. Through all of this, I've been fighting keep Victoria healthy with OnGuard and lots of disinfectant right before she returns home from school. She had a busy week and I didn't want her to miss it.
Sunday night she was Dorothy in a little skit put on by the Stake for New Beginnings, New Beginnings is a grand welcome to the Young Women program at church for young women who recently entered the program, like Victoria, or will soon. It also is to get all of the girls excited for the beginning of a new year in accomplishing their goals. The theme was to follow the "yellow brick road" (values, good habits, goals, friends, leaders, and parents) to make it to our own personal "Oz" of what it is we want to accomplish, whether it is a mission, temple marriage, or something more immediate in the future like the school year, etc. It was a great evening and she did fabulous! We videotaped it, but didn't take any still shots. (The following clip is just the end of it)
On Tuesday she had her second choir concert, which I attended instead of Jason, since he came home coughing like crazy.
Winter choir concert! It's kind of a skinny picture, but I had to cut off this guy in the background that I didn't pay attention to. I was still recovering and was a little out of it!
She got glasses on Saturday. They're just for seeing the board in class.
I wanted her to not be sick for dance and Young Women on Wednesday because she had missed the week before with a little sickness of her own, but not what we all got. Just a 24 hour stomach bug. Hopefully, she stays healthy so all my disinfectant work I will be performing momentarily will not be infected again!
After a long break from the basement project, Jason got to work putting up the shelves. When Grandpa Jim came, the job went a little faster. We still need to build the cupboard doors over the shelves, but we wanted Jim to help Jason get the future guest room ready so we can change around some furniture.
Victoria really wanted a bedroom makeover for Christmas, so that was her main gift, but of course it didn't happen before Christmas. We finally got to work on it the last week of the break. It also helped having the shelves up so we could put a bunch of stuff on them and get them out of the way. She wanted to downsize her bed, so Karissa will get her old bunk bed and we will put the queen size guest bed in our new basement guest room, when it's ready.
Hard at work!
My long awaited shelves!
Jason and Jim stripped the floor in the guest room and built up the cement around the drain so it wouldn't be too lopsided for the furniture. We plan to put new carpeting there.
The walls are just about done!
We painted Victoria's room and she got this new bed. She has been collecting new decorations for a while.
I covered the chair in the corner to match the closet curtains.She's just waiting for a dresser to be next to where I stood for the first picture.
We still have a ways to go, but our home is finally getting back to normal after about a year of stuff being shoved in weird places. Hooray!
I'm not talking big 10 football, I'm talking Karissa's 10th birthday. If you can believe it, she is 10. That means we have lived in Canton, MI. over 10 years! Crazy, huh? Karissa is the lucky one to be able to celebrate her birthday with family members randomly on her birthday. This year, it was Grandpa Jim and Grandma Pat again. They came out the day after Christmas and helped us work on the basement project, that we started last year and took about a 8 month break from for other seasonal projects outside. We also finished up our Christmas celebrations by making our gingerbread houses.
Getting really involved in that candy.
Who says they have to be done before Christmas?
Karissa's birthday is the day before New Year's Eve, so it fell on a Friday this year. For a change I decided to have her party on her actual birthday. Of course it turned out it was the day our Stake celebrated New Year's at Zap Zone, so it was a day full of fun. We went to Zap Zone that morning and had a Panera Bread/ Burger King take home lunch for Karissa's special family meal. Yes, odd mix. I had some gift cards from my students for Panera and of course Karissa wanted a hamburger, so we did it all! She opened her presents from the family after lunch, then we got ready for the party. She wanted to go to the local radio station that is at our highschool for a tour. We borrowed our friend's 15 seat van so we could all ride together. We got an excellent tour of the station and learned a lot from it. My mom recorded Karissa talking on the station and posted it on facebook. We had a hard time getting it to my computer, so if you haven't seen it, look for on FB, it's pretty cute.
Zap Zone Glo Golf
Present time!
Austin and Grandpa had some quiet time to rock out on their harmonicas.
Erik even gave him some piano tips, though he isn't taking lessons yet.
Making Karissa's Beanie Baby cake
She created it on her own.
Party van! Sarah, Victoria, Ella, Edlewiess, Kasrisa, Olivia
88.1 The Park
Talking on the radio!!
When we returned, we ate pizza and other party food, played the Beanie Baby based games Karissa planned on her own, ate cake, opened presents, and then watched The Princess Bride. Her friends left later then they normally do, as she wanted, and then I convinced my kids, minus Erik, to stay up for New Year's on Friday rather than Saturday so we could wake up for church on time. They didn't make it to midnight, thank goodness! I'm sure part of it was the fact that all the adults had gone to bed, they didn't know what to do!
Beanie Baby bowling
Pin the eyes on the Beanie Baby
Her besties :)
Karissa still loves to read. She reads about 5 different books at a time, sometimes more. I don't know how she keeps track of it all! She's still doing really well in TAG, even though she says she hates math and that she's not good at it. She's really improving in her piano skills and is preparing for Federation in February. She loves to play Animal Jam on the computer and "meet" her friend Ella there. She will text Ella on Ella's mom's phone from my phone and they will figure out how to meet in the cyber world on Animal Jam. She still loves crafts and loves to watch Studio C and sing. She keeps practicing her cheers and cartwheels for next August when cheer starts up again. She really enjoyed being a cheerleader. In the meantime, she just got a part in the community play Fairy Tale Courtroom as a flying monkey. Tryouts were the other day, so we'll see how that goes these next two months.
She is still super small and loves to cuddle. It's hard to think that she might actually be close to my height one day (all 5'3"of me).
She let Grandma and Grandpa have her room and we all had a great time with them. Happy Birthday Karissa!
