Award, Library, and Skating!

Tuesday afternoon I attended an assembly at the girls' school because Alice earned a citizenship award. Her teacher had told me about it during our parent teacher conference. The way they do assemblies here is different than the other two schools in Nampa. They had us meet in the cafeteria. I thought, there's no way they can fit the whole school in this room, plus parents and teachers. Well, they split the school up. They did Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grades in the first assembly and then the older grades after. I was fortunate enough to get a front row seat where the parents were sitting and this is the closest I've ever been to be able to see my child, so I liked it. The only bummer is that Charlotte didn't get to see Alice get her award but that's okay. I'm so proud of all of my kids and I know they don't need awards but it was nice for Alice to be recognized. She definitely earned it!

I also decided to take the girls to the library after school that same day. It was their first time and they loved it. Charlotte was convinced that because the ceilings were so high that it had to have two floors but I kept telling her it didn't. It's very open and spacious, like the new Nampa library, but on one floor. It is a nice library and even has a fireplace in one area for people to sit by. I saw a couple of homeless people sitting and sleeping by it, which was a little creepy, but I'm glad they had somewhere to warm up.

It looked like their story time place had a puppet show, so the girls put on a little puppet show for me. 

After the puppet show, we brought the little chairs out in front and I sat behind the curtain to read the girls a book. They loved that! There was another little boy that would walk by and stop to listen and then walk away again.

This is part of the children's area. I have to say I'm glad there are NO tablets here for them to play on like at the one in Nampa. I would much rather them do some coloring or reading. There are computers on that table next to them, but it looks like they are for checking out electronic books to read on. It says you need to sign in with your library card.

They were both coloring on one paper. It was cute to see them sharing and working together on it.

I saw the fireplace from the children's area. It's purposefully darker over there so it can be a cozy place to read.

We didn't stay over there long because the homeless people were on the other side sleeping.

Here's a picture of the library as we were leaving.

As far as house projects go, Curtis did some sanding on the doorways and he had frustrations like I did. The doorways are definitely not perfect but we decided that 4 of them were good enough to paint. I did primer on Tuesday and then painted them on Wednesday, two coats. We still need to do the family room and closet doorways but our priority was the bedrooms and bathroom. We also decided to wait to do the trim in the basement later. As soon as we get the doors done, we'll turn our focus to the upstairs. We figure it will be easy enough to move things out of the way when we do the trim. Since that was the case, I wanted to clean up the family room so we could move things down there.

I am so happy to report that Garrett came home from his mutual activity at the church on Wednesday and said that he made a new friend! He said he got brave and went up and talked to this friend, whose name is Dallin. He told me that Dallin also likes to play Dungeons and Dragons and they set up a time for them to play after spring break. Yay!

Yesterday I took a break from working on the house and did some shopping! I drove around to Walmart, the dollar store, and several craft stores like Hobby Lobby and Michaels, looking for glass gems to fill vase jars for our kids to be motivated to do chores and other good things (like saying personal prayers and reading scriptures). Once the jar is filled, we'll reward them with something. It could be money, or going out to dinner, or buying them something. I got a little discouraged because all of the stores had about the same variety of colors. We were trying to get colors that the kids picked but the stores did not have most of the colors they had asked for (Garrett wanted blue, Jack wanted purple, Charlotte wanted orange, and Alice wanted pink). After searching, I decided to wait on buying anything yet and went to Costco, then home. I decided that I might as well go back to Walmart because they had some on clearance and the gems were a lot better price than all of the other stores I went to. Charlotte and Jack were going to have to get a different color than what they asked for but at least I found some! Jack gets red and Charlotte gets clear/white. The great part is that 3 of the colors were on clearance. 

I had found and bought the vase jars the first time I went to Walmart that day. (They were also better priced than the hobby stores for the exact same thing.) I paid $3.18 per vase and then just under $10 for all of the gems. Not bad at all! The red and pink gems were only 10 cents per bag and I bought 5 bags for each color. The white ones were in a different container and $1.50 on clearance so I bought two. The blue ones regular price was 98 cents per bag, and I got 5 bags. The other stores wanted anywhere from $2-$6 a bag!

 For now, we are keeping the gems in gallon bags in a drawer in our kitchen, that way they are easy for everyone to get to when they need to put a gem in their jar for doing their chores. And I put the jars on the kitchen counter by the sliding door. I may move them later. Hopefully this will help to motivate them to do chores without us nagging them and to do other good things as well. I thought about just filling the jars with pom poms but the gems look much nicer to have out on our counter. I told the kids that we're doing this like they do in Harry Potter. Doing their chores and other good things can earn them "points" or gems, any rule breaking or fighting, etc. and they could lose some. We'll see how this goes!

I took the girls to a school skate night last night at the Rollarena in Richland. It was the first time we had been skating here. It is similar to the Rollerdrome in Nampa. My body finally feels good enough to do skating again. My knees, neck, and shoulder are all doing better. They did several activities at this roller rink that I had never seen in Nampa. They had a big screen showing videos of the songs we were skating to and at one point blew some fog out over the floor (not too much though). They had a hula hoop contest and I can usually do really well on hula hoops, but not with skates! They did two hula hoop contests because there weren't enough hoops for everyone. Charlotte and I did the 2nd group and Charlotte won! Her prize was a free small soda from the snack bar. They also played a dice game where they had a huge dice they threw in the air that had three colors on it. We would skate while the music is going and then when it stopped we would pick a wall that had either red, yellow or blue lights shining on them. After the dice was thrown, whoever color it landed on was out. We were in the first group to get out, lol. The coolest thing though, is that they had these contraptions that kids could push to help them skate. It was such a great idea whoever though of it! Alice used it  most of the night. Charlotte even used one later after saying she fell down several times. The girls and I had a great time!

These are so much better than her trying to hold my hand the whole time. 

She would even try to go faster with it and by the end of the night did a little skating without it.

Charlotte did most of the night without using the contraption.

Since Charlotte won a soda, I bought one for Alice also.

While we were gone skating, Curtis was back home trying to hang doors. He ran into problems with each door! All of them are just a little too tall. The laundry room middle hinge did not line up with the cut out on the door frame either. Bummer! We're going to have to cut the doors to trim them up to fit. I was so hoping we would be done with them before the weekend, but like I keep saying, everything is taking longer than expected! It's a good thing Alivia and Cory canceled their trip to the coast this week. They were going to stay with us for one night and we are just not ready to make that happen.

On a happier note, spring is in the air and we're starting to see some blossoms in our yard. Our tree by the pool looks so pretty! I have no idea what kind of tree it is though.

I took this picture just this morning before kids went to school.

There are also some purple flowers blooming out front by the sidewalk where the girls wait for the bus. I haven't gotten a picture of them yet but I love seeing flowers now!