Dancing with Daffodils

 I have been too busy to write and have had too many feelings to process. It has been a very stressful month even though I have tried very hard to stay calm and not let the stress get to me. We got back from Thanksgiving and got back into the swing of life. Lily had her band concert which was good. I'm still sad she couldn't be in symphonic band this year but she did get to tune the concert band and play first chair so I suppose there is at least on benefit to being a sophomore in a freshman band. Hopefully it will all work out next year. That weekend the girls had lots of dance rehearsal and I wanted to do something fun but everyone was tired.  The next week was good. Michelle and I went to the gym and did some shopping, I helped out at the book fair, I spent hours and hours planning our ward Christmas party (people were supposed to volunteer but most I needed to invite to participate), I went to the gym with Leisa, I made some ministering visits, and Curtis had his band conc...

 First off, this is Brandon's literacy pumpkin. For Halloween at school he had to make a little pumpkin look like a book character. One night I left to go take Emma to dance and told him to come up with an idea. By the time I got home, he had already turned his pumpkin into the tin man. I was super impressed that he had done it all by himself and it looked so good. It is kind of hard to tell in the picture but he is even holding a little ax. So cute! We had a lovely Thanksgiving with my family. We drove up on Saturday as soon as the girls were done with their Nutcracker rehearsals and we got there by 10pm so everyone just went to bed. Sunday we went to my home ward, though it has changed so much. My dad taught the gospel doctrine lesson and then after church we went to KayLee's where we spent the rest of the day. The kids enjoyed hanging with their one cousin who was around and playing games.  Monday was a very low-key day but my parents had to go buy a new car since theirs wa...

 I am grateful for November. We had a tearful end of the baseball season for Brandon. At his last game his coach (whom we love and have been with for five seasons) told us he was going to coach travel ball from now on and was done with Little League. He is an excellent coach and because everyone loves him, the team has generally stayed the same and Brandon is really going to miss his team. Two of the coaches have decided to follow him to travel and one has decided his kid is done with baseball so that leaves one of our coaches, who said he was staying in the minors league and would try to keep as many kids together as possible. Some of them are older and need to move up to majors anyway so the team is totally breaking up. It makes me pretty sad; we really had a good thing going and I invested a lot of time into being friendly and nice with those people. Brandon was really sad and we'll see what happens in the spring. Their last game was awesome though and Brandon had an amazing pla...

 It has been a very busy fall and I am ready for things to slow down. November is nice because baseball ends and basketball starts later and is only one night a week and Thanksgiving is so nice and relaxing at my parents house and I love having nothing planned on Veteran's day so we can finally be together as a family for at least a day.  We did make it to the pumpkin farm on the 21st though after all the passport stuff and baseball and dance was done. We did the hayride and corn maze and the kids played a bit and before we knew it, the store had closed and we were the only ones still around. Kind of a bummer because we hadn't bought our pumpkins yet.        I was super stressed and busy planning for weeks for the fall fest, especially because I wouldn't be there to make sure it went smoothly, but most of the feedback I have gotten was that it was good. A few people were being fussy but I'm taking it as a win that lots of people were involved and our friend...