Dancing with Daffodils

February has been good so far. Lily has been trying to get in all of her driving hours. She could technically take the test as of tomorrow but she still needs to have two more driving sessions and then finish 11 hours of driving so she will probably take it the second week of March. I am equally excited and terrified. She is a very cautious and good driver but she also almost ran into a parked car the other day so it is a bit scary to send her out on her own. I am glad we have a few more weeks.  This has been a quieter time with no sports for Curtis now that track is done and Brandon is playing basketball but it is only a one-hour practice once a week and then a game on Saturday. Compared to baseball, that feels like almost nothing. He is really into basketball right now and his team is playing well. He has one more game Saturday and then the season is done. His play practices have ramped up a bit and we are now only a month from the show. I am super excited to see him be King Trit...

January felt slow and yet I am surprised it is over. After Brandon's birthday Josh left town for the week. We did WARMS that Sunday night with the Rays and it went well. I'm glad my kids get to serve and hopefully appreciate that they have a wonderful home to live in and food to eat. I mostly spent the week playing games and doing puzzles with my parents while still running the kids around, teaching piano and cooking a lot. I helped my mom put together her recipe book. She is a fantastic cook and there are a lot of family recipes so I found a website that will publish her book and she typed them all in and I edited and ordered it. She got one for each grand kid and daughter and I think it is going to be wonderful to have. I appreciated their company while Josh was gone and it was nice they could go pick up Curtis from track while I was teaching.  Friday morning I drove them to the airport and then I made it back in time to get the girls to dance and then Lily volunteered at the...

This year was Brandon's golden birthday. On Friday he turned 10 on the 10th and I tried hard to make it a special day. He did get a delay after three snow days and another delay so that was pretty sweet. Since we had time I took him out to breakfast at Panera after the other kids had all left for school. He used to come along with me a lot when I would go out to lunch with friends at Panera when he was 3 and 4 so he came to love their bagels and smoothies, which is what he got on Friday. Then he went to school and I wrapped a few gifts and I had already decorated with golden balloons and a golden banner but then I made his dessert and got all ready for dinner stuff too. He came home and everyone else was still at activities so I let him watch a movie and made dinner (chicken Alfredo with homemade bread sticks) and finally when everyone got home we had dinner, he opened presents, and we had dessert (an Oreo pudding dessert instead of cake). He got a new bike so that was partly why t...

 Christmas day I woke up about 8:20 am and woke Josh up and then I got Emma and Brandon and woke up the big kids. Curtis was especially slow so we didn't start opening up presents until almost 9am. We had a more low-key Christmas this year with all of our traveling this year and especially our recent Disney trip. We want the kids to appreciate that we choose to spend our money doing things instead of having things. So Lily got a leotard from Santa, a jewelry box and some earrings, Curtis got a nice watch to track his running, books and a game, Emma got a decorative gnome that she was super excited about and boots and a Tigger sweatshirt and a necklace I bought her while in Disney, Brandon got some minion PJs, a Winnie the Pooh hat, a LEGO gadget book and a Little League World Series sweatshirt (actually so did Curtis) and Josh got a bunch of clothes. He got me a nice speaker to play music in our kitchen and my kids got me some slippers that I can wear when I am driving them all ove...