Birds

We're being invaded at the Dirks' house!

For days now, these birds have come to feast on the leftover grapes from our trellis vines.  And by feast, I mean make a huge mess that takes them days to clean up.  The first few days were mainly dropping bunches one the ground, consuming a few here or there.  The next few days were spent as above, with many birds flying in at even intervals, feasting on one or two, flying away, coming back.

Mira camps out here for a good part of each day, waiting and watching.  It's pretty cute. 

There are currently no bunches left on the vines, and I will say they've cleaned up a good 95% of their dropped mess.  Even when we don't mean to, we're engaged in service feeding the poor...

Lessons: Check!

The kids finished their final lesson of the Season, earning them their Season Pass.  It was neat because the instructor took them down the mountain twice, even though he really only had time to do it once.  He didn't care about the extra time with the kids, he only wanted them to have fun.

Because they all love it so much, we purchased them helmets, goggles, and will contemplate getting them their own skis at the first of next Season.  My goodness, if I thought buying the kids shoes/sandals/boots every season was expensive, because they grow out of them so quick, it's nothing to skis!

It's so fun knowing they all love it so much.  Visions of siblings going together on weekends, or them going with friends, dance in my head.  Not because I don't do skiing so I wouldn't have to go, but because they all have something they can't wait to do more of.

*Side note: Even seeing that my 9-year old loves it so much, including coming down the mountain backwards his second day on skis, is not inducement for me to take lesson next just yet.  Five of our family of {six} love it, and that's enough for me right now.

Focus

It's nearly done!  

There are two pieces that go under the doors on either side buried in the snow at Mike's house that still need to be put on, and we're still waiting for the title to come from Oregon, but other than those two things-- it's done.

Just in time for Keilie's class to begin on the 26th!

I'm so happy for her!

Whole?

While at Target on Monday night, I remembered that we needed a gallon of milk.  We'd taken Shelby to spend some of her birthday money, so I stayed with her while Randy went to grab the milk.  If I'd gone to get the milk, we may never have had this fun experiment.

A few months ago (could be last month or last year) I got a gallon of Whole milk.  ALL of the kids said it tasted weird.  I smelled and tasted the milk, but it tasted completely normal.  Randy and I surmised that they didn't like the taste because it was Whole after living their whole lives with 1%.  Randy walked to meet us at the checkout lines, all the way at the other end of the store from the food section, with Whole milk, saying it was either that or Soy milk.  Not wanting to send him back, knowing I would never have grabbed it to begin with, I decided that we'd pour half of the Whole milk into the old container and add 50% water.  Randy thought they'd hate it, but I said it would be no different from the complaining we'd hear about the Whole milk.

It felt so weird to add water to both containers and hide the Whole container in the freezer for later, where I'll pour it all into the 1% container.  When both Keilie and Brennon asked to have cereal with milk for a snack (cereal with milk is breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack in this house), I found myself hiding my knowing grin, and holding my breath.  Not one word!  It's pretty cool to know that I can get two gallons of milk from one gallon of Whole milk, not that I'll be doing it again any time soon.  I may tell them, I may not.  Who knows, maybe their own kids will read this and be in on a secret with their grandparents!  That's a fun thought.  Hi, Grandchild!

After "snack," Keilie immediately asked the question that I knew she'd been dying to ask: "Dad, will you take me to get my Driver's Permit?"  And so he did.  And then let her drive home from the church.  Ladies and Gentlemen, we have another driver-in-training in the Dirks' home.  It's pretty scary right now because the roads are still pretty much all single lane from last week's massive snow dump.  The plows have made large berms on either side of the road, barely making it wide enough in places for cars to skim by one another.  I sure hope we have super sunny days to melt this snow, or at least not any more snow, until my girl is done with her class that begins on Monday at 4:00pm.  I know this is wishful thinking, since the weather app calls for more snow.  Sigh.  If I can learn to drive in Utah winters, my girl can learn when there's snow on the ground too.

I mean, really, if she can eat watered down Whole milk without one gagging complaint, that girl could do anything she puts her mind to!

Green

With an entire week of Snow Days last week, and Shelby working each of those days to makeup missing assignments from January as well as some that were due that week, I was starting to get worried that she'd fill her brain too full of differing information, then get back to school and not do as well on the content assessments.  Remember, she has to pass them at 80% or higher, or she has to go back and do them all again.  Each assignment takes at least 10 hours.  It's a nightmare, especially when she gets behind like she had.

Anyway, I emailed her English teacher, asking if there was any way that I could monitor the content assessment at home, since it was all done online anyway.  She said that I couldn't, but that she was planning to go to a local coffee shop that morning, and would Shelby like to come and take tests there.  On a "day off" for this teacher.  We jumped in the car and met this angel teacher there.

For an hour and a half, this teacher worked on her work while Shelby took FIVE tests: Human Impact, Water and Earth 1, Plate Tectonics, Ancient Greece, and Knowledge of Words 6.  She passed them all!!  In a new environment, with loud music playing on a speaker directly above her head (all 80's music, which was seriously awesome for me to listen to while I waited!), with a booth taken right behind her by 4 teenagers talking quite loudly (despite 6 other booths being wide open!), and a bell dinging every time a new customer came through the door.  That's a lot of distraction!!  And my girl passed ALL FIVE!!

I choked up.  (Randy: "You?  That doesn't sound like you."  Me: "Punk.")  An entire hour and a half of testing, which would have been difficult to do once she got back to school, having spent the entire day working at school.  We were both so relieved, that when I found Shelby like this three hours later...

I realized that she must have been as anxious as I was.  

She still has work to do on Projects (these are done mostly in-class, unless she doesn't finish it there, and take longer than 10 hours each, every single month), so she's working today, a regularly scheduled President's Day day-off, to finish those, returning to school tomorrow without a single worry in the world.

Mrs. Presnell: "Shelby, you'll go back to school with all Greens, when everyone else will have Reds, because of the Snow Days."

Could I love this teacher any more?  No, no I could not.

BANG!

I like to decorate, it's true.  But when it comes to certain events, I feel that decorations could be kept a tad more simple.  Ward Christmas party-- More elaborate.  Scout activity-- Less is ok.  Not everyone agrees with me.  Hence a Blue & Gold Banquet that had 14 adults (that I can remember off the top of my head) and more than 20 kids helping to set up for more than 3 hours on Saturday afternoon.  This time does not include the hours upon hours upon hours she took to gather all supplies, and paint all of the cardboard, as well as transport everything to and from the event.

This entry setup looked exactly the same on the other side!

Look at the detail of just one of these 4.5' boots.  She made four.

Notice the banners hanging from the ceiling-- she cut all of those out, having the boys decorate one hat and one boot at a recent scout activity.

Do you see the hand-painted 3' cacti?  How long did those take her to paint?  Between the stage and the exit is the Wanted Board which I'll show you below.

The hay bales were cardboard boxes covered with a type of plastic table cloth stuff.  They looked so authentic, a little girl fell through when trying to sit on one.

Notice the "Stable" above the exits.  Randy and I got placed in charge of that on both sides.  Her idea, but I think we did a pretty good job executing it.

See the "corn field" above?  Well, the "fence" is actually a brown paper that she folded into thirds and taped so that you could assemble it there.  Probably 50'+ of folded paper.

The centerpieces were mason jars with actual straw and lights inside, with a balloon weight and fun western balloons blown up while we were there.

Do you see the wagon wheel on the bottom left of the above picture?  She painted and cut all of those out as well.  The jail that you see near the blue divider is made out of PVC pipe and the same plastic table cloth material as the backdrops, and wooden barn-like wood.

She also made a Wanted Board with a poster of each boy.  The boys got to pick out their own names, as well as their "crime."  Tyson's photo was voted #1.  He's pretty proud of it.

We ate and had the awards ceremony and then opened up the other side of the gym for games, while those that could helped clear tables and start the cleanup.

There were stations, with five minutes planned at each, and everyone divided up into teams dependent on the color of their bandanas found on the back of their chairs at dinner.  There was a game where they bounced ping pong balls to try and knock down a tower of red cups, human balloon pop, tug-of-war rope, lasso the rocking cow, pin-the-tail on the cow game, and ours: Rodeo Roundup.  They had to hit a badminton birdie over the net into a 4' blowup cowboy barrel.  They got six tries.  If they got it into the barrel, they got a bigger treat.  If not, they could grab a small treat, so they didn't leave empty-handed.  It was fun to have kids come that had never played before who'd come back for more at the end of the night.

Even with the 45 minutes of cleanup from many adults as their kids played games, it still took another hour to get everything cleaned up and out the door.  3 hours set up, 2 hours take down, and hundreds of man hours, all for a 2-hour activity.  She's done 6 Blue & Gold Banquets in a row now, this being her last.  She figuratively and literally went out with a BANG! 

Practice

I was asked to play the flute for a number in our Ward Conference today in January.  I received the music, planning to meet with them on the morning of the 3rd, 10th, and 17th for today's performance.  However, the 3rd found Tyson really sick, with a headache for me, so I stayed home until Nursery, and then got right back into bed when I got home.  Last week we had a Snow Day for all of Richland, with instructions to help others in shoveling service.  That left today's choir practice as the first time I had ever heard the song.  I felt prepared... until they started to sing.

Marianne had given me the sheet music for the Flute, as well as a link to the recording of the song.  However, the song had a bit of a glitch, ending at one spot and then looping back to the beginning.  It took two or three times listening to it to realize.  I would play along for as long as I could, but ultimately had to just practice the music first to end without hearing the accompaniment.  This is all well and good if you are able to practice with the choir a few weeks before the performance... which I did not.  Today, with all choir members present, I learned the piece we were going to be performing just three hours later.

Coming away from the practice, I can honestly say that I was a bit nervous.  You know how it is when you want something perfect for someone else, because you love them so much-- you just don't want to let them down when they have trusted you with something.  We'd gotten a good recording of the piece before the end of practice, so I planned to listen to that song over and over and over, eventually writing down prompts and cues to help me come in at the exact moment or word.  Hearing the words really helped, since the recording was more of a humming.  By the time it was time to come back to the church, I felt more prepared than I had upon leaving choir practice, but nowhere near as ready as I usually like to be.  I've never played my flute where I wasn't a bit nervous, but this was by far the most scared I've ever been playing for others.

Randy recorded the song.  I can hear so many mistakes (mistakes that only I could know, because I have basically memorized the music by now), but feel good about it as a whole.  In fact, the recording of the practice sounds much, much better than the actual performance.  It's weird: the actual performance today is where I like to be the very first time I practice with the choir, usually weeks prior.  I practice for hours before coming to them the first time, and then we practice together for a few weeks.  It just didn't happen this time.  They got to see and hear me make the mistakes I usually make at home, the mistakes that I work for weeks at to get them right.  I had exactly 1.25 hours-- time that was also needed to curl my hair and get my makeup on-- to iron out those kinks.  I was shaking so hard, my knees were knocking so bad, I didn't need much vibrato to make the flute sound breathy and pretty.  I barely made it back to my seat on the third row, my legs were like Jell-o. 

Shelby: "Mom, I was watching your hands as you were cleaning your flute-- you were shaking so bad!"

It was a very stressful day that has left me extremely tired, but wildly proud of myself.  Maybe that was Heavenly Father's plan all along.

"See, you can do hard things."

Sketch

I love it when I find little sketches that Keilie's done.  This one was Brother Andrew Bagley's arm around his sweetheart, Rebecca.  I wish I had as much talent as she.

Snow Days 2019

We've had quite the winter.  One week it is literally 50 degrees and sunny, prompting me to walk around the neighborhood in only a light jacket, and the next it is a literally blowing blizzard... and keeps getting worse.

Saturday reminded us of our life in Casper, Wyoming.  Snow was falling, yet it couldn't accumulate where it fell because the wind was blowing it wherever it wanted.  We had snow drifts in places up to a waist, which is fine when it is in our backyard, but not fine on major streets.  We became a homebound city.

Unlike Casper, Richland is not as snow equipped, which is something we learned pretty quick after moving here in November.  Although I do need to remember that they were still laying sod in the backyard of the rental we'd just moved into.  In November!  Anyway, I digress..

It became apparent on Saturday that the plows wouldn't have really mattered all that much, we just needed to wait out the blizzard winds and plow when we knew the snow would stay put.

I guess we weren't homebound when you consider that we have neighbors that braved the weather decked out with their ski poles.  Probably walking around to make sure front doors weren't being painted...

It didn't stop Brennon from going out with Mira.  I got the cutest video of them playing together, but it is too long for here.  You can see the patches of grass near the bottom of the picture, as well as the drifts that Brennon is playing in.  It was a windy day!

 This was the view from my dining room window on Sunday morning.  Compare to the picture above of the "hikers."

 This is the view from our back door.

 We spent the day helping neighbors dig out.  It was actually really neat to look down the street and see so many of us out at one time.  There was laughter and talking as we all commiserated with one another about the difficulties of the storm.  At one time, every home within our site had at least one person outside.  That's never happened to me.  Ever, in fact.  And I grew up in "The Greatest Snow on Earth."

*Side note:  It's hard not to judge a few of our neighbors a bit harshly, if I'm being honest.  We have many senior citizens in our neighborhood.  With all that you've heard about our HOA, it's not hard to guess that I have mixed feelings about a few of them.  But when it comes to the work that was required to dig out, I felt nothing but compassion and goodwill for every member of our community.  There were a few neighbors that used their snow blowers on their own driveways and sidewalks, got their work done, and went in for the rest of the day.  I just don't understand how someone could not want to use their tools to help for such an unusual circumstance, especially when we have so many elderly women.  Randy and I spent from waking to 2:00pm shoveling.  Not because we absolutely love getting blistered hands and broken backs, but because it was just so overwhelming and we couldn't pass up an opportunity to serve those in desperate need.  Our last home was an older woman that hoped to get a small swatch out of her driveway, in case her husband was actually able to make it home-- the airport had been shut down.  She could not believe that someone would actually come to help her, thanking us with hugs and emotion-thick thanks.  There were more that could have used our help, but we physically couldn't go on.  I just don't understand how someone could not use their snow blowers to help, especially when most of us had only shovels with snow up to our eyeballs as far as the eye could see.**

Notice the snow is above my knees.  We were blessed to have Bill Trappett, the man that took care of our mowing each week while Caden was dying, come and help us finish our entire driveway.  We'd planned to make a path behind our Expedition only, but he helped us finish it all.  He did more than five driveways, and probably 1/2 a mile of sidewalks, before I noticed him doing his own.  I wish more were like Bill...

 Being Randy Dirks' home, it wasn't all work with no play.  They made their annual Snow Fort.

 I was trying to capture just how tall the snow was here.

And then I thought how fun it would be to place my phone on the sidewalk...

 Pretty cool.

We've now been told that today will be our third Snow Day.  We had freezing rain last night, waking to another 1-2" of snow.  While freezing rain scares the heck out of me, I must admit that it sounds incredible while falling.  I can't describe it well enough to even try, it's that indescribable.  It's not the snow that prompts our Snow Days the last few years, it's the freezing rain.

Winter finally came.  All at once.  In one weekend.

Nature

With the boys sharing so we can have a proper game room, we've started to fill it with some fun stuff: a tv and Caden's x-box, games, Legos, Nerf guns, and the kids' Christmas present, a double shot basketball game.  With this new game, we of course had to keep up our competitive natures and get a white board to keep score.  I found this little gem today...

Apparently Tyson's keeping up with his Little Brother Nature as well.

Party Time!

Today we got to celebrate Shelby in style-- sewing and baking style, that is!  Because she loves both of those things, we decided to make that our theme for her birthday party.  It was a BLAST!!!

Jamie cut the fabric for the aprons, and then used the extra fabric to make these two banners and a table runner that we used on the cupcake table.

We set up her sewing school in our front room for the first half of the party: Making their own aprons.  With the staggered arrival of all friends, it made for a perfect flow from one station of sewing to the next. 

 Where one left the pinning table, another would show up to take her place.  When one would leave an ironing station, another was walking over. 

It was a perfect rotation, with only a few minutes from when one would end to when they were all finished.  8 aprons made in 1.5 hours!  Perfection!

(Back, L-R) Katie Stafford, Shelby, Jordyn Purcell, Sydnee Larsen, Isabella Evans, Shaedynn Burt.

(Front, L-R) Brooklyn Butler, Naomi Redd

After opening presents, where Shelby hugged each girl after opening each one, we moved to the table to use our aprons to frost cupcakes.

It was so much fun hearing the girls' excitement when they realized that they would get their own piping bag and tip for their cupcakes.  Then the squeals when they found out they would be making their own colored frosting!  I hoped they'd have a good time, but never expected the highlight to be a piping bag and color choice:)

 "Oh, I think I'm going to use these sprinkles, so I'll make this colored frosting to make the sprinkles pop."

 "Oh, I think I'm going to add these pearl sprinkles on the tip of each frosting peak."

 "Doesn't it look cool when the colors mix in the bag?"

"Can we eat the frosting?!"  They didn't eat it in the way Shelby was faking in the above picture, but they sure did get a bunch as they frosted and ate cupcakes while making their to-go cupcakes.  

One girl showed us all the best way to eat a cupcake-- take off the bottom of the cupcake and place it on top of the frosting, making a cupcake sandwich.  That way you don't get frosting on your nose.  Especially when you use as much frosting as these girls did:)

 Do you see the tie-dye swirl of the purple and pink frosting?!  Look at those perfect peaks!  She's 12, folks!

Look at the cool tip she used to make this design.  These girl have more talent at 12 than I'll have ever!

I love the faint orange in the center of the blue of Shelby's.  SO MUCH FUN!!!  The talk around the table, the laugher, the mood-- it was infectious!!!

 Each girl went home with a box of four cupcakes.

Each girl ate at least one cupcake and at minimum four cupcakes worth of frosting while here.  Add that sugar high to their balloon-sucking helium giggles, and you have one perfect party!

One girl saved one aside special for her brother, whose birthday is today.  "He'll be so excited that I came home from the party with something for him."

One activity blended into the next so effortlessly, I can't help but feel energized at its end.  The girls were so loud with their love, we enjoyed the best feelings for these two and a half hours.  Shelby will probably be useless the rest of the day, so high is her excitement.  That's what birthday parties are meant to be like!  

Thank you, Jamie, for helping me host such a fun party!  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SHELBY!!!!