What Aubrey's been up to

Most days, Aubrey sings and dances through the house and through life.  It's just who she is.  Here's a rundown on her life right now.

School - Aubrey LOVES her new school - Vancouver School of Arts and Academics.  It's a great fit for her. Her classes this year are 8th grade math, Theater, Visual Arts, Vocal, Physical Science, and Language Arts/World Studies. For her Language Arts class she worked on the poster below. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the Oreos between the letters of the title (the Oreos are significant in the story) look real, but were cleverly made from foam board and paper and then mounted so as to create a 3-D effect.

 This is a watercolor she completed for her Visual Arts class:

 Theater - Aubrey was recently cast as Belle in Beauty and the Beast.  She attends practices three times a week, for about three hours each time. When we worry that this might be overwhelming, she laughs at us and says that it is just fun stuff.

I don't have a picture yet of her in her costume, but the costume designer for the show posted a photo of one of her Belle dresses - it is an exact replica of the dress in the Broadway production!

Hairdresser  Aubrey has developed a real knack for doing hair, and she practices on me and Bailey. In this photo she curled Bailey's hair for a Stake Dance.

  
A Loyal Friend - When Aubrey makes a friend, she is loyal to that friend forever!  Here she is with her friend Breanne (who lives in Utah).  They have been friends since Aub was 2 years old.  This last summer she spent a week with  Breanne's family on the Oregon Coast. Aubrey generally likes to hang out with one or two friends at a time.

Birthday time - Next up . . . turning 12 this week (with all the associated fun and festivities) and entering the Young Women's program at church.  Hooray!  She will be with me and Bailey every Sunday and on Wednesday nights.  Oh, and she will be going to Girl's Camp with us this summer, too. This coming Sunday she be ushered out of Primary with the Felida Ward tradition . . . she will walk down a red carpet toward the waiting group of Beehives while the kids in Primary sing "Onward, ever onward . . ."  Then she will be welcomed into Young Womens and begin a new phase of her life.

This morning she made invitations to her birthday party this Friday.  We will take her and two good friends to her favorite restaurant in the world . . . Olive Garden! More to come on this later.

We love our smart, dedicated, talented, beautiful 12 year old daughter!

Pain the neck

Ants, ants, ants, ants.  I hate ants.  Not as much as I hate mice, but ants are also on my list of things I really dislike.

Every spring we have lived in this house we are hit with an invasion of ants inside the house.  Some years are worse than others, and this year is the worst by far.  The tiny black ants infested our pantry, and we eventually had to throw out any food that was opened., which was a lot.  Still, the ants had free reign of the shelves, no matter what we did. For about a week I kept the vacuum right by the pantry door, and every time I walked by I would vacuum up any visible ants.  But there were always more and more and more . . .

So on Friday we had the exterminators come out again to spray.  Previously I didn't have them spray the pantry because of the proximity to the food. This time I gritted my teeth and spent hours removing almost everything from the pantry.  Even after throwing out about half of the food in the pantry (anything ants could have accessed), there was a LOT of stuff to pull out. It was piled all over the kitchen, which made actually using the kitchen a challenge.

 When everything was out we could see a trail of ants steadily marching in from a crack in the wall.

 

This time the exterminators had a new theory about why we are perpetually plagued by the tiny black pests. A year after we moved into the house we discovered a slow water leak from the main water line (it was leaking from the shutoff point - located in the pantry).  By the time we found the leak it had damaged the wood floor in the kitchen and hall and the floor and wall in the pantry.  All the visible damage was repaired, but the bug guys think that there is still some rotted wood somewhere in the wall. Apparently ants LOVE rotted wood, so they have set up residence there and sometimes venture through the wall into our home.   Lovely.

So, thus it is. So annoying.  I just had to vent today.

What Bailey's been up to

Bailey is enjoying a fun freshman year at Skyview High School. She is all about friends, fun, and  . . . . did we mention friends?

School - She got good grades last semester and is in the Science, Math, and Technology (SMT) program at school (although she says she might not stick with that program because she technically doesn't really like science, math, or technology).  This year she is taking Pre-AP Biology, Geometry (yuck - she would say), Calligraphy, Dance, Tech Tools, French, and SMT English. She does a lot of her homework sprawled out on the ground of her bedroom. I'm not exactly sure why we bought her a desk?? 
Here are some pics of her recent school Dance recital. They demonstrated some Zumba, country line dancing, etc,

 

Party time - Last weekend she invited 10 guys and girls from her "friend group" from school to our house for an end-of-semester party. We are really grateful that she has a fantastic group of friends.  We're happy to host activities to get them together. So, Dan, Bailey, and I spent all day Saturday cleaning the house and prepping the house for a party. (This was an especially big job because we recently sold our big entertainment center in the bonus room and replaced it with a small console and flat screen TV. That means that all the tons of stuff which was housed within the huge entertainment center was piled around the room. We worked frantically to sort it into piles and dispose of/store it so the bonus room was ready for company.)

Dan and I ran out to Costco and the grocery store to stock up on all the essential teenage food groups - sugar, salt, and grease. It was awesome . . . and very tempting to the rest of us, who ate way too much pizza, M&Ms, chips, brownies, fudge, etc.  The party-goers got along great. They played some party board games, played Just Dance on the Wii (my favorite moment is when all the boys did a rousing rendition of the "Barbie Girl" dance), ate lots of food, ran up and down the stairs about a bajillion times (sitting in our room at about 10 p.m. and listening as a herd of boys thundered up and down the stairs, I wondered if the house was going to literally fall down.  But it didn't - all is well.)  At about 10 p.m. they all played a pickup game of basketball outside in the cold. As parents came to pick up their kids, several of them assumed that we had kicked the kids out of the house because they were driving us nuts!  No, we were tired, but we hadn't locked them out of the house . . . yet.

I didn't take any pictures of the party, but one of the girls snapped some photos (not surprisingly, the photos she took were of the guys . . .)  Here they were goofing off after playing Just Dance. Joseph was right in the middle of the fun!

Basketball - In January Bailey participated in our ward's YW Basketball team. This meant she pushed herself way beyond her comfort zone. Bailey is frequently asked if she plays basketball because she is so tall, but she didn't have a lot of confidence with the sport.  At the beginning of the season she agreed to attend the practices and games just to cheer on her friends, but soon found herself practicing with the team. And she realized that she has a good shot and was having some fun. So she somehow ended up playing in the games. The first time she entered the court she said, "NOBODY throw me the ball!"  And she would do everything possible to NOT touch the ball.  Her teammates, the refs, our coaches, and even the girls on the opposing teams were supportive and helpful.  For instance, when she was in "the key" too long, someone from the other team pointed it out to her and then explained what "the key" is. And when she made a basket in a game EVERYONE - the spectators and everyone from both teams - stood up and cheered! With her permission, her are some excerpts of Bailey's letters to Brandon which better describe the experience:

"I'm playing on the church basketball team. Against my better judgment that is. I literally knew not one rule in basketball before I started. And now I know about one more rule than I did before. Case in point, on Saturday I shot into the other teams basket. Twice. And almost made it both times. No one informed me before hand that there were 2 different baskets that were assigned to certain teams at different parts of the game. Now I know. Kind of. Even after they told me, I did it again. That one's gonna go down in history. I also did not know the meaning of "open". I was also informed of that. Did you know it meant able to catch the ball? Because I definitely didn't. All in all, this whole experience has definitely taught me a lot. Like duck when a ball is flying towards you. And don't stand in the "key" for longer than 3 seconds. Whatever that means. Also, basketball is a lot more fun when you know what you're doing. I'm pretty sure I'm now the laughing stock of the stake but at least I had fun doing it! Well... kind of."

"Saturday was our supposedly "last" basketball game. We played Salmon Creek, which is a VERY tough team. The absolute highlight though was I MADE A BASKET FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER IN AN ACTUAL GAME!!!!! It was kind of far away too! I made it and it seemed unreal for a minute then I jumped up and down. I was surprised to realize that I had to actually still play, even after my basket. haha. When I turned around after I made it though, my whole team, plus the majority of the crowd had given me a standing ovation! It was crazy! Afterwards Mom took me to Muchas Gracias and Yo2Go from a burrito and frozen yogurt. Yum!"

 

 

Look closely at the look on Bailey's face below as she waits for the rebound:

 Joseph, his friend Gabe (coming straight from their soccer game) and Aubrey watching Bailey's game.

 
Moneybags -  Bailey is a sought-after babysitter, and she makes an exorbitant $10 an hour, which is the going rate here for babysitters. I'm just glad we have built-in babysitters now, because I'm not sure I could handle paying that much for a a night out!  She puts a hefty amount of her money into the bank (where, under the agreements of the "Porter Bank," any money she deposits for long-term savings is matched 100%). The rest of the money she spends on clothes, especially clothes from Forever 21.

Dances - Every month there is a multi-stake dance, and Bailey and her friends never miss them. Every fourth dance (when it's hosted by our stake), Dan is the deejay. That means he stays on top of the current music, so whenever Bailey's friends are around he "tests" songs on them to decide what he should play at the dances.

The end of January - on Dan's birthday - he deejayed our stake's fancy "Yule Ball" dance.  It is for 16 and older and dates are arranged between Laurels and Priests in the stake.  Everyone in the stake donates extra prom dresses for "Fairy Goodmother," where all the girls are able to choose a beautiful prom dress to wear to the dance.  It is quite an event - amazing decorations, a very nice dinner, free pictures, dance instruction, etc. Dan did a GREAT job running the show that night, and had found some fun, new, appropriate music. Bailey was the only lucky 14-year-old in attendance, as she was able to come as Dan's "music helper."

Mostly her role was to sit by him and gave advice about which song to play next. But she was mesmerized by the spectacle, especially the girls all dressed up in their fancy dresses. As she watched all the couples, she was already picking out what type of dress she wants to wear . . . in two years. We had a really fun time together that night.

We love our intelligent, beautiful, witty, fun 14-year-old daughter!

6 boxes. Seriously?

Yesterday Dan brought home a bag from work with 6 boxes of Girl's Scout cookies.  Someone's daughter at work was selling them, so he thought he would help out the Scout and surprise me with them. Except that I wasn't super happy.

"Whaaaat?  6 boxes?  Are you serious?"

Because, as we have previously established, my ability to resist certain sugary items is very, very weak. And I'm trying to resist them and eat foods that are better for me, because I feel really healthy when I do. But, it is has been very, VERY difficult. First I used all of my available willpower over the past few weeks to keep myself to only two big bags of Valentine's candy hearts (minus the green ones), and that was difficult. I thought I was out of the woods, but then we came to Valentine's Day, which is full of temptation. Especially since I bought a groupon for fudge from a store in downtown Vancouver, and it turns out that the fudge is very good. And the groupon entitled me to 5 huge squares of fudge.  Let's see . . . 3 squares for 3 kids and 2 for . . .  me.  All which I consumed yesterday.

And I deserved every last bite. The day began with our discovery of an ant infestation.  When Bailey woke up for early morning Seminary we discovered ants crawling all over the kid's backpacks in the mud room (attracted by the remains of their lunches, I'm sure). So, at 5 a.m. I vacuumed backpacks and shook out schoolbooks through bleary eyes before getting Bailey out the door.

Then the other kids got up and we dealt with a myriad of I-forgot-to-do-my-homework and my-tummy-kind-of-hurts issues before driving them both to school and getting them there barely on time.  I got back home to discover that the ants have also found the treasure trove that is our pantry (yum - lots of crumbs left on the floor and shelves by foraging children).  So I spent an hour cleaning out and vacuuming the pantry. Before tackling the rest of the depressingly messy house. And spending a few hours doing some preparations for a big Young Women's activity the Mia Maids were in charge of that evening.

I had just showered and settled down for a nice phone visit with my sister when . . . . what do you know? The elementary school was calling.  And Joseph (who was the one with the my-tummy-kind-of hurts issue) had thrown up at school.  Right in front of his friends.  All over the wallball court during recess.  I dashed to the school to retrieve my sickie and then spent the rest of the day cleaning up throw-up messes  - one of the things that makes motherhood just super duper fun.

And then I got dressed in some non-throw-up clothes and ran to a meeting for Joseph's new baseball team (sans Joseph), and then directly to Young Women's, where I helped pull off a chaotic but fun activity.  And then I returned home and dealt with more parenting crises until . . . midnight. Yes, midnight. And then it was back up again at 5:30 this morning.  For a day which involved more parenting challenges, another sick kid, an even more depressingly messy house, two orthodontist appointments, two pick-up/drop-offs of kids at activities, more ant infestations, an evening soccer game, and a Stake church meeting after that. 

Which brings me back to those darn Girl's Scout cookies. Because when days are like this - and they are certainly like this often - I do not reach for carrot sticks. I reach for sugar. And the only thing that keeps me from reaching for sugar is not having it in the house.  So I am going to have to give away the boxes of Girl's Scout cookies.  Any takers?

The end of an era

I knew the day would come eventually. My little boy is growing up and is ready to part with his many superhero costumes.  We made a pile of costumes to pass on to cousins in AZ or friends in the neighborhood.

As this stage of life ends, here's a walk through the past . . .

From the time our little guy could run around, he improvised costumes and pretended to be a superhero. We bought him a pair of Superman pjs when he was two, and he never wanted to take them off!
 
So for Halloween we bought his first real costume - Spiderman. It had super cool muscles built right in.

For years he wore the Spidey costume almost every day, to do every possible activity, including going to the store and to playdates.  We did draw the line on wearing it to church.

After three years of continual wear, the costume was a little short (can you say wedgie?), was almost worn through in the rear,  and had a few rips.  Within a few months of this picture the Spidey costume found its way to the garbage can.

When we realized that superhero costumes were Joseph's passions, we started buying costumes on clearance after Halloween.  We amassed a fun collection.

Joseph didn't limit himself to only superhero costumes. He combined pieces to make all sorts of creative inventions.  Below, Ninja warrior.
 
 And his Pirates of the Caribbean costume.

 And some sort of Indiana Jones/Chinese guy/pirate.

And I have no idea what this is.

All his buddies loved to come over and dress up. They would run around the house for hours playing elaborate superhero games.
 

When he couldn't wear a costume he wore the next best thing . . . his Superman shirt. Dan bought it at Goodwill and Joseph wore it for at least two years. It had a cape which attached at the shoulders with velcro.  For the entire 3 year old year of preschool he wore a superman cape to school almost every single day. And on vacation. In this picture we were in Williamsburg, Virginia and he was pretending to be "Super Colonial Boy".

Dressing up with cousins is the best!  Here he is with Lauryn (Kara and Dave's daughter)

and with Carson (Rich and Lindsey's son).

These pictures are from Halloween when he was 4 and 5 years old, but he didn't limit his costume wearing to the month of October. It was a year round activity . . .

. . . until it wasn't. The other day we were thinning things out of his room and I realized that the pile of costumes hadn't been touched in many months. I asked him if he still wanted to keep them and he shrugged.

"I don't know," he said. "I'm really more into Legos and dart guns now.  And football and soccer and basketball and wall ball and sky ball."

I knew it couldn't last forever. Eventually kids grow up and find new interests. But I thoroughly enjoyed this superhero costume dress-up stage with my Joseph. And I'll miss it.

Housecleaning

The other day, after I spent hours trying to stem the tide of disorder which arises spontaneously in our house, I had this thought: "any intelligence I used to have has surely been squeezed out of me by the endless hours of tedious tasks I do every day."  And I meant it, at least kind of. 

Every parent would agree, I think, that keeping the home at an acceptable level of cleanliness is an arduous task. Things that are clean don't stay clean. Even after we have cleaned the house on Saturday, by Monday morning it looks like a tornado touched down.

And shall we talk about laundry?  It never ends - at least not in our house.  I am in awe of several of my friends who manage to do the laundry on a scheduled day about once a week, and then they efficiently  remove any trace of dirty clothes from the home completely. I feel like I have to stay on top of the laundry monster EVERY DAY (or almost every day), or it takes over my life.  And there are always a few dirty clothes in view in our laundry room, which happens to be visible from the front door of our home.

I don't believe in doing all the chores myself, even though I am lucky to be home during the day. I make sure to leave the kid's assigned chores for them to do, even though it is more work for me to enforce their chores than it would be to actually do them myself.

I believe in the principle of "if it doesn't look dirty don't clean it."  And I do my best to not look under things very often - like couch cushions.  When we recently sold a couch and chair, I vacuumed and spot cleaned under all the cushions. It did occur to me that the hidden areas of the couch and chair had not been that clean since the day we purchased them from the store. It's just not a high priority.  The only exception to the "if it doesn't look dirty don't clean it" rule are bathrooms and kitchen sinks, which harbor all sorts of invisible pathogens, so they get a regular scrubbing or swipe with an antibacterial wipe.

Dust in the corners of my home or under the furniture or on high shelves bothers me not at all. I'll get to it when I have time.  Ha ha ha ha . . . that was a joke.

I don't stress over sorta messy kid's rooms. I figure, for the most part, that their rooms are their domain and stewardship. As part of their Saturday chores they have to straighten their rooms, and I try to model for them the advantages of a tidy room and made-up bed the rest of the week, but it doesn't worry me that their rooms aren't design-magazine-worthy the rest of the time.

Oh, I could go on and on about the very un-fun topic of housecleaning, but then I would never get to my main point.  This is my point . . . I was talking to my Dad last week and he said that he had really enjoyed the privilege of cleaning the temple recently. Their ward is regularly assigned cleaning duty after-hours for the Draper Temple. We talked about what a sacred experience it is to do the mundane tasks of vacuuming and cleaning the temple so that the Spirit can be present within and so those who visit will be comfortable.

And right at that moment a thought popped into my head . . .cleaning the temple is really not that different from working to keep a home clean.

I want our home to be a place where the Spirit can reside and where our family can be comfortable.  It is very true that in our home we have a harder time feeling the Spirit and feeling peaceful when we are surrounded by chaos and dirt.  Like I said, I don't believe in striving for housecleaning perfection, but I do think it is important to consistently restore order and cleanliness - I think it makes a difference.  Now that my time is a little more flexible during the day, I really try to sweep through the house at some point during the day and restore order. Not perfection, but order.  My hope is that when family members walk through the door they will feel the peace and calm which I want to exist in our home. And I hope to not be distracted by things like laundry or dirty counters when everyone comes home so that I'll have time to talk to them and listen.

I do feel it is my sacred opportunity to do the mundane cleaning activities which create an environment where the Spirit of the Lord is welcome.  It is sanctifying to continually offer small acts of service, mind-numbing and repetitive though they may be, for a greater purpose.  Like vacuuming the rooms in the temple.  Like vacuuming the rooms in my home.

Our two hours of snow

Last Friday was supposed to be a day off of school, a on day break between the two school semesters.  However, school was in session to make up for our "snow day" on January 18th.

This was the extent of our winter:

There was a lot of excitement 'round here because a storm was forecast. Events on Tuesday evening were cancelled (hooray) in anticipation of ice or snow.  Sometime around 11 p.m. snowflakes started to fall. There weren't many of them, but the school officials made the call about 4 a.m. to cancel school for the day.  I don't blame them, because it was hard to tell what direction this storm was going to go. For instance, Seattle was slammed by the same storm, and it took them over a week to dig themselves out of the piles of snow.  In Vancouver/Portland, however, what you see here is the totality of our storm. And it was decidedly unimpressive. Everyone ran outside in the morning to play in the snow before it melted. Luckily, the snow was pretty wet, so it packed well. Joseph made a snowman with Bailey's help (Aubrey was playing in the snow with a friend).  When I left at 10 a.m. to a hair appointment the roads were slushy but definitely not slippery.  By the time I returned home the roads were mostly clear and the snowman was mostly melted.

It was a fun two hours of winter!

Candy hearts

It's a fresh start, a new year, a time to repent of bad habits and get back on track and all that. Several of my resolutions involve healthy eating, and I would say that we have been doing quite splendidly lately.  Quinoa, healthy soups, protein shakes, lots of fruits and veggies (including brussel sprouts, which I'm embarrassed to admit we had never cooked before), whole grain breads, and a bag of Brach's conversation hearts.

What?  Something isn't right in the previous paragraph.  How do Brach's sugary candy hearts fit into this new- year-healthy-eating-plan?  Well, they don't, but I've been eating an awful lot of them anyway.

Because I seriously can't help myself. I have no self-control when this particular candy is involved. Right after Christmas when the Valentine's candy is set up in the grocery stores, I purposely don't even walk over to the aisle with the candy for as long as possible. I can usually make it until the end of January before I succumb.  Because I know that once I break into my first bag of the season, it's all over.

They call to me.  I eat just a few and then I crave just one more, and then another, and another, and before you know it I have eaten almost an entire bag.

All except for the green ones.  I hate them, so I leave them in the bag.  Yellow is the best. Followed by peach, and then pink. White and purple are just fine too.

And, let's be clear:  I am not the least bit tempted by Necco's Sweethearts.

My own sweetheart Dan bought me a box of these last week.  Because it was such a thoughtful gesture, I ate them. Well, I tried. But they were disgusting. The flavors were not right.   So I slipped them surreptitiously into the garbage can in the laundry room, so as not to make him feel bad.

Unless I am driving while eating hearts (which is often), I like to read the phrase on the heart before popping it in my mouth. There are some old standbys, "Be True," "Luv Me," ""Love You," "Hello," "Be mine," etc.  And now there are a whole slew of new conversation starters: "U Go Girl," "Text Me," "UR mine," "LOL," "Tweet Me," "You Rock," etc.  You can trace the evolution of popular culture through the phrases on the conversation hearts over the decades. It's really very educational in a sociological research sort of way. You should try it sometime.

I even have a secret for finding the freshest, best conversation hearts. I don't like the boxes - they let it too much air so the hearts are hard and chalky.  I like the bags of regular size (not jumbo) hearts, and I have found through intensive research that the bags that seem "vacuum packed" with no air inside have the softest, most delectable hearts.

By the time Valentine's Day rolls around I am desperate for my temptation to be off the shelves for another year. (But I have been known to comb the discount bins the day after Valentine's to see if just one more bag is remaining.  Pathetic.)

It's a good thing that I have never been tempted to try alcohol or drugs. Because apparently my self control with addictive substances is minimal.  I guess sugar is my substitute drug. And a very good one, too.

I can't explain why I like this candy, but I always have.  I am entirely aware that this non-food has no redeeming value and is completely bad for me in every way. But it doesn't stop me. And every time I pop a squishy yellow Brach's conversation heart into my mouth, I feel exactly like what the heart says in tiny red letters . . . "Awesome."