Dancing with Daffodils

 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...

 I am losing steam here. I used to love writing on my blog because it was how I practiced. I thought that if I ever was going to be a journalist again, I should write stories and so I started this blog. Then during covid I turned it more into a journal because that was how I was connecting with people, especially since I came to dislike Facebook so much and no longer use it as a way of telling people what is going on in my life. I so enjoy reading my friends' blogs but no longer really feel like writing on mine anymore. Maybe because it just feels like there is nothing to write, but here goes. General Conference was wonderful, I've been to a lot of baseball games and practices (some in the rain), I canned applesauce, Nutcracker rehearsals have started and Lily was disappointed in how her audition went and the roles that she received as a result, Emma has been extremely moody, Josh has been gone for a long time, I hate getting up early every morning, no cavities at the dentist, ...

 Life is good. The most exciting thing that happened was that Brandon finally got a hit in his game Thursday evening. Emma, Curtis and I were there and I immediately jumped up and starting screaming, I was so happy. He made it to first base (it was a nice line drive to third) and everyone was cheering for him. It was so wonderful and I may have even teared up. All of his coaches and many of the parents told him congrats and what a great hit it was and I appreciated their kindness and support. At his next game he got two hits and then this last one on Saturday he got walked and then got hit with the ball pretty hard in the thigh. I was so relieved that at least now he knows he can do it and it isn't an automatic strike out when he is up to bat. It was very exciting and made me happy. I had promised him ice cream if he got a hit so even though we were all shivering in the cool fall evening, we went to get Cold Stone and it was so good. We went to the county fair and it wasn't as ...

 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 emo...