Friday, March 4, 2016

February 2016

Oh! Well,hello Caleb! So often when I look through my photos I see the many faces of Caleb and I love it! He still has such a huge heart but as he gets older he has turned into quite the little goof ball sometimes. He often can make us all laugh! 




A while ago we started an incentive program for the boys and their swim team practices. For every practice they go and work hard at, and mom is the judge of weather or not they worked hard, they get to put a sticker on their chart. Once they get 12 stickers they get to go on a fun outing of their choice with dad. Caleb chose rock climbing or his last outing. 






So since it was February that means Valentines Day! This year the boys valentines boxes were a little more Taylor Family influenced rather then going with the traditional red and pink with hearts all over it. Unfortunately I didn’t get any good pictures of just the boys with their boxes but I did get one of Caleb at his Valentines party. Awesome, right? 



At school Caleb often uses this app called chatter pix. You download a photo and then you can add a background, a picture frame, little images, and even record a voice to go along with your picture. HE had me download it and it’s honestly a fun little app to use. He took the photo from above and put it into chatter pix and here was his end result.  Love it!



Austin has never been one to just put on a nice smile for the camera. He has such a larger then life personality so why on earth would he just smile? It’s almost always a funny face or big mouth and big eyes. It used to really bother me but one day I decided I should just accept it, that’s who he is and I should love that the pictures capture that. 


This fudge recipe I got from my mom who got it from a neighbor of ours in Minnesota and I am NOT allowed to share this recipe! I always find that so funny, the whole not sharing recipe thing. In my opinion if it tastes good then share the love! But it’s not mine to share so I just make it and share with others that way. I delivered this to the girls I visit teach just before valentines day. We had extra and Austin, our chocolate maniac was ecstatic! 


Caleb isn’t the only one who uses chatter pics. 


Okay, so we got a new principal this year and she is AMAZING! On more than one occasion she has helped our family and demonstrated sincere care on behalf of my children. Seriously, I can not say enough good! Well every year at the fall carnival the PTA hosts an auction, I really love going and placing bids on some of the fun things. This year one of the options was an iFly field trip with the principal! What? Are you serious? Two kids from each grade would take a field trip with the principal to iFly (which is indoor skydiving). Oh, I bid, and bid and bid again to make sure my boys got to go! They loved it and once again I was uber impressed with the principal and her ability to make each child feel cared about and special. 








I love that at the end of a school day when my boys climb in the car they tell me all about what goes on in their lives while they’re away. Today was no exception, they ranted and raved about the field trip and I got a play by play of the whole experience and even heard all about getting lunch and cookies at the mall afterwords. Thank you Sunnyvale PTA for providing such an awesome field trip!!! 

The other big event in February was the blue and gold banquet. I am a den mom (if that’s what you even call it anymore?) and I am over the bears. For one of the bears requirements they had to host a carnival for family and friends and so we decided to combine that with the blue and gold banquet. For our two den meetings this month we (me and the seven bears that are in my group) spent the month preparing for the carnival. We mailed out invites and followed up two weeks later with phone calls to get a head count. 

We cut out cute signs and put them into the picture frames we spray painted, 


we went to party city and bought paper goods, balloons, candy, props and other fun carnival stuff.




And then once we were ready I set up all the games at my house and they got to play them all! It was their only chance since the night of the carnival they would not be playing the games, they would be in charge of the games. On the day of the event I went to the church at 11:00 with Emily Johnson and we spent the next four hours setting up all the tables and games but we didn’t quite finish so I headed over early with the boys and they helped me finish up the last final touches. 

Caleb is safety pinning the fish and air bubbles onto to Go Fish game.

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Austin is putting the circus peanuts into the jar, keeping track of exactly how many so people could guess.

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Once we were done getting ready we had few minutes so we took some pictures at Selfie Station. The teenagers that came that night had a blast at selfie station!





The night was a total success! I can not believe it went over so well. The bears took their roles very seriously and managed their assigned game like a professional carnie. They did such a good job in fact that the adults got to sit back and relax. The food for the night was your choice of a nachos with taco salad toppings or a hot dog. For dessert they could choose between a cupcake or cotton candy.  A very special thank you to my little sister Sadie for making the adorable invites, signs that went in the picture frames and the signs for each game! 


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Two days later on Saturday we finished out the month with the annual RACE Trophy Dash in the morning and a delicious dinner that night. RACE is the swim team that boys swim on and it stands for Rockwall Aquatics Center of Excellence. Normally for a swim meet the kids who place first through eight get a ribbon but at this meet every child who comes in first in their heat gets a trophy. What is a heat? Well lets say there are 70 kids who want to swim the 50 yard freestyle, they can’t all swim at once right? Since there are only 10 lanes. So they break it down into heats so that int he first heat the fastest 10 kids swim and then each heat gets slower and slower. Caleb came home with three medals and I was so proud oh him!


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Austin didn’t get a single one. As his mom it was a heart wrenching meet to sit through. It was an emotionally draining day but that’s a post in and of itself. There were lots of tears that day and they weren’t all Austin’s. After the meet I took Caleb to a birthday party and Jaren took Austin to go run some errands. A little while later I got this text and I was so glad to see smiles on his face!!! 
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That night Austin and Gracie made dinner for our family and the Zollinger family. We got together twice the week before and they planned out what they wanted to cook and made a grocery list that they then gave to me and Kaity. So on Saturday on the way home from running errands Jaren and Austin picked up Gracie and they came back to our house to cook. I stayed in the kitchen to help clean up behind them and other than cutting the pineapple they did everything them selves! 

Making the cookie dough. They made these first and then set them aside while they made the rest of the food.



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IMG_4181.JPGSaturday nights dinner menu consisted of Cheese or Pepperoni pizza, breadsticks (those were super yummy) and fruit salad. Cookies and graham crackers with frosting for dessert and fresh squeezed lemonade to drink! They literally spent three plus hours in the kitchen and all the food they made was delicious! Thank you Austin and Gracie! By all means, do it again sometime!

On the very last day of the month I took the boys to swim practice like we always do on Mondays. I was a little worried about brining Austin back there after the somewhat traumatic day we had there on Saturday but it was their last practice before we left for Hawaii so I followed the normal routine by picking them up a little early from school and heading across the bridge to swim. I am so glad I did! So! Glad! Austin’s coach sat all the kids down and went through each child and told them how well they did on Saturday. He gave them their ribbons that they earned and Austin even got a medal!!! I cried, unlike Saturday though they were happy tears. 




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