Fun Stuff Last Week

Last Tuesday Jack had a band concert. It was the first indoors concert of the year. The marching band was instructed to wear their uniforms for this concert. They played their "Thor's Hammer" songs. Since we were in the auditorium, the band just circled around everyone, standing in the aisles and in front of the stage. The color guard performed on stage. It was fun to listen to them again. They did so well this year!

It almost looks like this lady is pointing at Jack for my picture, lol.

Thursday night was our holiday Relief Society dinner party. I am on the activity committee and so I got to help. One thing I did was to make one of the desserts, which was a white chocolate-strawberry tiramisu. It was basically a fancier strawberry short cake but it was delish! I wish I would have gotten a picture of it. I did however get pictures at the party. It was held in a special room at the Life Tribute Center. It is owned by one of the families in our ward because they own a funeral home. It was a really nice room and that's why they have it here instead of the church. We ate a really nice dinner of chicken parmesan, ziti pasta, green beans, salad, and baguette bread dipped in olive oil and seasonings. The youth came a helped serve, including my two boys. I thought we would have a hard time getting them to come, especially Garrett, but he seemed to be in a good mood the day of the party and had no problems coming. Both of the boys enjoyed being waiters. Then of course, we had the dessert. Dinner was followed by 3 speakers. It was a nice evening and I'm glad I got to be a part of it. 

 

The youth were getting instructions.

My boys started the trend of folding over their aprons so it was a waist only apron. 

This is about half of the women that showed up. I sat at the table closest to the camera on the left.

At the end of the night, some of the youth got permission to climb into the atrium behind the glass. They had so much fun posing for pictures.

The boys had a great time and we ended up bring home the entire dessert I had made because it wasn't needed (4 others had been brought) and a bunch of rolls. All of my kids liked the dessert, except Jack didn't try it since it has a lot of dairy in it.

Curtis started a Biggest Loser contest with some of our family members a week ago Sunday. The people that are joining this weight loss challenge are Stillman, Michelle, Ricky, Jenna, Shauna, Mom Butterfield, Curtis and myself. Most of us have reached our first week weight loss goal. Mine was 1 lb. I ended up losing about 1.5 lbs. I've been doing better at eating smaller portions and healthier foods. I also wait longer before breaking my fast in the morning. Usually, it's around lunch time when I finally eat. Having our dog Milo, helps me get my exercise because I either go out and play with him or take him on a walk. It really helps being in this group because we have more motivation to stick with our good eating habits. Going into the 2nd week, it's been a little tougher. 

One thing I have been stressing about since having gotten a puppy is what to do with him when we go out of town. He's too young and doesn't have all of his vaccines to be able to go to a doggy daycare. We're going to Nampa for Thanksgiving because Garrett has an orthodontist appointment the day before. We'll be staying with Curtis's sister Jeanie. She said we could bring Milo if we needed to but we really didn't want to try packing him up. There isn't much room in our van. Fortunately, I put out a plea for help on our ward Facebook page and a couple of families said they could help. One of the families happens to have two golden retrievers. The girls didn't have school on Friday and so we took Milo over to meet them. They were very excited to meet Milo. He was a little nervous but finally after awhile he got comfortable and started running with them.

They are both females. The white one is called Charlie and the other is Leia.

This family has a boy with autism and so they have this cool room set up for him with sensory things. My girls loved playing here and thought it was the coolest room. Of course, Charlotte wants an indoor swing now.

This family will be watching Milo for the day this coming Sunday while we drive to Lewiston for Alex's fairwell talk. Then when we go to Nampa, they'll have him for most of the days. Another family will take him for part of the time.

Last Saturday we finally built shelves in our pantry! Curtis and I went to Home Depot together to get the supplies and then he built them while I worked on a dinner menu and grocery list. After he finished the shelves, we went grocery shopping together. It was fun filling up the pantry. I even emptied some more boxes from the garage. 

We have so much space in there I wasn't sure what to do with it all. It's great!