Love at home

Although the weekend included Variety Show and wrestling Regionals, we actually had more time with the 5 of us at home than we have all year, I think!  Jeremy has been working really long days, including Saturdays, but there may be a little reprieve for a while.  Friday night he brought home pizza and we all ate supper together!!!  He even sat down and played a little Wii with Annah and Caeden.  It was just wonderful to be home enjoying each other's company.  I love these moments the most!

 After the Variet Show, Morgan came home with us and spent the night.  She went to church with us on Sunday while the boys went to wrestling regionals with her family.  We love having Morgan around!

I don't have any photos of Caeden at regionals, but Coach Dad says he wrestling really well.  He was .5 pounds over the limit of the weight class he's been in all season, so he wrestled up a class.  He had some matches against really tough wrestlers, and though he lost, he did well.  That's the end of the season for him, and we are proud of him for working hard--especially these last few weeks--and learning and improving and growing good relationships with his teammates.

What time is it? Summertime!

It was the last full day of school yesterday, so the kids all brought home as much stuff as they could from their desks and lockers.

These are most of Annah's papers from 8th grade!  "What do I do with all of these, Mom?"

Last evening, Caeden went to stay with his friend Nathan and we borrowed his 2 sisters, Morgan and Katelin, and picked up Isabella too.  Sylvia finally got to have her sleepover!

It was a beautiful, beautiful evening, so after supper the girls went outside.  They got out the little parachute!

Our irises bloomed this week!

The girls asked me to come outside and take pictures of them!  

Katelin came up with poses for everyone.

Such sweet, silly, happy girls.  What a blessing to have good friends!!

Sylvia wanted to do the Cool Whip rescue game we had done at Annah's birthday party last fall.  This time we rescued fruit snacks from the Cool Whip.  

Sylvia let her guests choose what movie they wanted to watch, and they all decided to have a High School Musical marathon!  They watched the first 2 last night, and the 3rd one this morning--all the singalong versions.  

We had french toast and grapes for breakfast.

And they wanted to play the Skittles and straws game too.  

We had such a good time!  Yay!

Annah's 14th Birthday

Annah turned 14 years old today!  

She had cereal for breakfast with her siblings, like most other days.  

At school, she enjoyed watching the cast of the high school play put on the first act of Straight from the Horse's Mouth for the junior high.  (We're excited to see the whole performance tomorrow night.)

3 of Annah's sweet friends from church came at 5:30 tonight for a party.  They are awesome girls, and I am SO glad for their friendship to Annah!!!

They danced in the living room to Taylor Swift's Shake It Off, and Emma showed them how to waltz. 

It was a busy evening around here with the girls arriving, Jeremy getting home with food from Avanti's and a few other random things I had him pick up, trick-or-treaters coming to the door, and Jeremy taking Caeden trick-or-treating too!  

These girls all love music, and spent quite a bit of time around the piano tonight, taking turns playing and singing together.  I love it!! 

After we all finished eating and the trick-or-treating stopped, we played a few silly "Minute-to-Win-It" type games.  For this one, they had to use a straw to suck up Skittles from the table and get them into the cup without using their hands.  It looked really tricky to me, but Annah's friends were amazingly fast at it!!

Sara and Emma tied to win.

Sylvia and Caeden found it really challenging!

The goal of the next game was to bounce pencils off their erasers and into a cup.  Sara got 2 in, and Sylvia got one in.  Everyone else just got frustrated and silly with it.  It was fun for a moment though.

"Rescue the Animals" was definitely the favorite of the night.  I put 3 animal crackers in the bottom of each bowl, then covered them with Cool Whip.  They had to rescue the animals without using their hands.  We all cracked up, and the girls all said it was super fun and worth all the mess!

Somehow Annah didn't get into it quite as literally as everyone else...

Such fun!!!!

We all gathered in the living room to watch Annah open presents.

I usually love Amazon Prime, but this week they screwed up everything I ordered and it won't arrive until next week.  I printed out pictures of Annah's presents and wrapped them instead.  Fortunately, she thought it was fun.

We have reached the point where Annah's clothing taste is quite a bit different from mine and we need to go shopping together to pick out clothes.  So tomorrow, we will have a little shopping date after I take her friends home!

Jillian has a new facial expression every time a lens is pointed at her!

Annah received several items for her clarinet--a leather Rovner ligature, a thumb rest, mouthpiece guard pads, and a humidity controlled reed case.  She was pretty excited about them.

Caeden gave Annah the new Pentatonix EP on her iPod.  She has pretty thoughtful siblings!

She loved sweet Sylvia's gift, an enlargement of a photo I took of the two of them together in our back yard several years ago.  

Annah asked for an angel food cake--tradition!

How blessed to have fun friends!

The girls settled into their sleeping bags about 9:30 or so to watch Ella Enchanted.

When that was over, they decided to watch Holes.  I think it was about 1:30 when that was over and they all decided to go to sleep.  A fun night, for sure!!