Opening Day

Yesterday was opening day for baseball. I don't know if this is a big deal in other sports, but baseball around here has a huge festival for "opening day" where they introduce all of the boys, coaches, board members, etc. They have guest speakers, then games for the boys to play. It is quite a big deal. This year promises to be interesting, both Gabe and Jayd are on the Giants team in different age leagues. It has made things very confusing since I can't tell which team the emails are from. To confuse things a little more, they are both #13. But I think that it is fun to have my boys have something in common this season.

Valentines Day

Our Valentines Day celebration wasn't really spectacular since I was still recovering from being sick, and I didn't have an opportunity to prepare anything on Saturday. But we still had a nice day. Allie made herself a heart headband to wear to school. Each of the kids wrote something that they love (hot chocolate, snuggling in a blanket, etc.) on their heart and posted it on our banner. In return, they received a heart filled with chocolates. We all enjoyed the fragrance and beautiful red roses from the centerpiece that we brought home from the wedding on Saturday night. All in all, it was an enjoyable day.

World of Color

Sorry about my absence. I have been out the with flu, which eventually developed into pneumonia. So I have not done a lot for the past three weeks. Everyone else, Jeff, the kids, the ward has done extra work taking care of me. I appreciate all of their help, it has really been great to know that I am loved.
Since I really don't have much to write about for the past 3 weeks, I will go back to the last thing I was going to write about. We went to Disneyland again. I became sick the day after we went, so I was very grateful that we went when we did. We had a great day. Maddie's friend, Patrick, came with us. It was a nice empty January day, so we went on nearly all of the rides in both parks. They we went to see the World of Color presentation at the end of the day. It was very strange. The park closed at 8:00, but the presentation didn't start until 8:30. I have never seen that happen before. So we spent an extra hour at the park. The World of Color was fabulous. There were fountains that moved and sprayed in sync with the music. There were lights that came from everywhere, lasers, and spotlights, and all sorts of different combinations. With the fountains and the lights, it made some very unique effects. We often thought "How did they do that?" It was a very fun day.

Projects, projects

For some reason, I seem to have feast or famine on my household projects. Either I am not working on anything, or I have 4 projects going at the same time. This month is a feast. We have been working on installing crown moulding in our home. I was fortunate to find 500 feet of crown moulding for free. One of my neighbors was just giving it away. So we are looking forward to the finished product. We started in the bedrooms and are nearly done with them. Now that we have some experience, we will attack the living areas of the house.
Another project currently underway is the front yard, what is left of it. I have been working on making a little planter area to add some character. Yesterday, I put in the bricks. I had never done any brick work before, so there was definitely some learning. But I think that it turned out all right, and should do for a small planter in the front yard.

Snow is bright and white and makes black and blue

Living in So Cal has many benefits, but at times, the lack of snow can actually be a detriment. Trying to go on a snow campout is an extreme challenge for our scouts. Most of the time when they are able to put one together, there is a pitiful amount of slush on the rocky ground. This year, they were in luck. There was 2-3 feet of snow on the ground. It was like really snow camping! Still being Californians, we didn't have any sleds available to take advantage of this boon. But never fear, we are resourceful and they brought boogie boards to slide down the snow. It worked quite well......in fact, maybe a little too well. Jayd became bold in his sledding on the icy snow and eventually came face to face with physics and mother nature and met a tree head on. A little dazed and certainly black and blue, he was not to be stopped in his enjoyment and charged back up the hill. However, he does admit that after that run, he would try to slow down when approaching a tree!

The Music Man, or the Music Van?

This week I was in charge of the Music Van. I have done it for several years in a row and it never seems to get any easier. The Music Van is a program for the elementary school sponsored by the PTA. We rent a van that contains all sorts of musical instruments, trumpets, trombones, clarinets, flutes, violins, cellos, harps, drums, xylophones and other various instruments. Then we put 8-10 year old children in the room and tell them to try to make music. Most the time it winds up being more like noise than music. They love it. If you can tolerate the noise for four hours, then it can be a lot of fun. The hard part is finding other victims to assist me with the instruments. This year, there were only 5 of the required 8 volunteers, and one of them was Jeff, who needed to leave for work soon. It was a little stressful, but throughout the day a few more volunteers trickled in until we had plenty. New to this year, they had a tuba in the van. Allie and Gabe weren't able to participate at school, so we came home and had our own little musical session where they could try the tuba and the cello. It cracked me up to watch them try to play it, it was nearly as big as them!

Christmas-New Years, the Fun doesn't end

As soon as the Christmas weekend was over, we were invaded! Jeff's family came down from Utah, and his brother and family came up from Redondo Beach and the whole family was together (at times). We had a week packed with activities.
For Day 1, we went to Griffith Park. I was unable to go, I stayed home with kids that were under the weather. They went to the Train Park and climbed on the trains, then up the hill to the observatory. It was a clear night, but the place was packed so they were unable to glance through the telescope, but they had a lot of fun playing near the thermal camera.
Day 2 we had a Ping Pong Tournament in the garage. Everyone played and the tournament went well. Some games were blowouts and some were nail biters. The final game was between Jeff and his older brother. Age triumphed and Jeff lost. But we all enjoyed playing together.


On Thursday we went to Magic Mountain. Despite purchasing a season pass, this was Jeff's first and only trip to the park this year. Oh well. It was a terrible day to go, it was bitter cold. To add to the misery, it was fairly crowded and half of the rides were closed. Hence the remaining rides were swamped with long lines. We only went on two rides, then I challenged them to go on the water ride, the only ride with a short line. They did, and Jeff wound up much wetter than he anticipated. That ended our day, but we had a good time being together anyways.
Our last day with the Stouts coincided with the last day of the year. We welcomed in the New Year with a rousing night of feasting and games. Chips and salsa, Martinelli's and peanut butter cups were consumed freely as we played Apples to Apples then topped the night off with a rousing game of Ligretto. We even convinced Grandpa to join in the game, that was a big treat! We are glad they came and spent some time with us.