Days of our lives

 We got back from the beach and hit the ground running. Seminary started and I drove the carpool the first week so it was a tiring week but a good one. Dance also started and thanks to a wonderful senior in studio company, Lily goes straight from school to dance. It has really freed up my afternoons not to have that daily pick up, although I do miss seeing her and having a few minutes to check in. So she leaves at 5:50 am for seminary and gets home at 6:15 pm. Then she does homework, makes her lunch and goes to bed. Busy girl! The first week went pretty well but then last week she was tired and then she fell down the stairs and got a super nasty bruise and she forgot her breakfast one morning and she did a lot of crying. Lots of emotions and learning to manage her time and be more responsible and I think she is handling it all well but it will take some time to get in the groove. She did stay home from youth activities because she came home from dance that night and was just an emotional mess and needed a moment to catch her breath. Friday was a better day though and it was good to see her smiling again. 

I spent one day canning peaches and making peach jam and I felt very domestic. I also went into school and helped Brandon's teacher put some binders together. I have been doing lots of Christmas music planning and fall fest planning and driving to baseball and dance. My piano lessons also started so now I am teaching Monday through Thursday and it has been good. I had two students quit and two are taking a break until after Christmas but then I added four new students. All nice kids and so things are going well. 

Josh was gone for a few days for work and it was my dad's 85th birthday, I hosted a brunch and lots of ladies from church came, which was nice. Brandon had his first baseball game and I would give just about anything for that kid to just hit the ball during a game. He hasn't had a hit since last fall and his confidence is low. He hits just fine when Curtis pitches to him or Josh or his coach but then when its a kid in a game, he can't connect and it makes me so sad for him. He's such a good teammate and listener to his coaches and so I think they all appreciate him but it would be nice if he actually did something during a game. 

On Friday I took Josh to Flour, a cute doughnut shop in Leonardtown, for breakfast and it was beautiful. It was a perfect fall day so we ate our sandwiches and doughnuts (I got apple cider and it was pretty good) and walked around Leonardtown a bit and even just sat on the swings and enjoyed the breeze and sunshine and it was a lovely way to spend our morning before he went to work. His super busy time is almost over but he's been working a lot of overtime and traveling a lot and I'm starting to feel kind of over it but he still has three more trips this year. 

Saturday we went to Curtis's first baseball game (another beautiful and perfect fall day!) and it was good. He is the youngest on the team so he isn't making the plays like he was in the spring but he played well, had a great catch off of a hit and his team won. Then I took the girls to Arts Fest at Annemarie Gardens, which I think is a pretty cool place for our area. Lily is a volunteer there now so she was volunteering for four hours and Emma and I got in for free so we wandered around looking at all of the booths for awhile. Then she painted and we got a funnel cake and kettle corn and we saw all the sculptures and listened to the band and talked to Lily some. It was such a beautiful day and it was a cool event so I'm glad we got to go and that's four hours banked for Lily's volunteering. We got home and had dinner and then watched an amazing BYU football game. We played Arkansas and it was close and exciting and we played so well. One of our touchdown catches was the top play on sports center! It was one-handed and so amazing. It was thrilling to actually win and play well and show up when playing a challenging team. 

 

 

Sunday was a good church day and I figured out some activities stuff and some music stuff and made copycat Cafe Rio. Now we're back at it with school and piano lessons and dance and baseball. The news of the week is that Emma got pulled up to level 4 at dance. I got the email Monday morning and she was invited to start that night but she needed some time to process. So she went to her last ballet 3 class last night and tonight starts level 4. The two downsides are one, she'll miss church activities because now her class is on Wednesday nights and two, she will go up on pointe in the next 6 weeks or so and that makes me nervous. It means getting shoes and for the first time, that is a job and now that our dance store closed, it will mean driving somewhere not close. She is also a year younger than Lily was and Emma is more drama and it was a tough year for Lily so I can't imagine how Emma is going to handle it. I would have been happy for one more year in ballet 3 but, here we go.