Charlotte Turns 10!

Last Friday Charlotte joined the double digits club, turning the big 10! We decided that she could have a friends party this year and that it would be on Saturday, so Friday night was the family celebration (and her actual birthday). She kept wanting to do big things like the trampoline park and go out to dinner. I talked her out of it because we were already spending a lot of money on her friends' party and would be buying pizza and other foods for that. We kept it simple and had Flautas from Costco for dinner. Then we warmed up monkey bread for the cake for the family party. We sang, watched her open gifts and ate "cake". Then because Charlotte had just finished reading the book "Matilda" for the first time and had never seen the movie, we all watched that movie together. The girls and I had also picked out individual treats for everyone when we were at the store earlier, to eat during the movie. It was a fun evening with just our family, but we do miss having grandparents there and Nikki.

She's all ready for school on the morning of her birthday. I bought that birthday shirt for her before Christmas and have been saving it until now. I found it at Goodwill. She was excited to take mini donuts and juice boxes to share with her class at school. She carried them in bags on the bus with her because she wanted to, otherwise I would have drove them over later.

Monkey bread for her "cake" with the family. 

Dad was singing dramatically and making her laugh.

She got her favorite candy bars for her birthday "snack" gift.

She finally got some heely's, shoes with wheels on them. She's wanted them for a couple of years.

Her first wallet that she picked out.

A custom yellow t-shirt with a picture of Milo on it that says "My dog Milo". She helped me take the picture, but she didn't know I was going to do this with it. 😁

 A new single strap purse that you wear across your body. She loves it.

A pretty cool book about Egypt that has all kinds of fun stuff inside. Her teacher has the same book, except an older version.

Charlotte wanted a wooden bow. She found this one on Amazon. The tips of the arrows are rubber and they slide through a hole on the bow. That's why there's no feathers.

He said he's Cupid.

Alice picked this stuffed dog for Charlotte.

Jack gave her his ukulele.

She's a happy girl.

They're ready to watch Matilda and Charlotte has her light up shoes.

Normally I like to make the kids something special for breakfast on their birthdays, but Charlotte said it could wait until Saturday since the boys leave early for work and school on Friday. I was so focused on needing to go get her big donut for her friends' party that I forgot about making the German pancakes that she wanted on Saturday morning. She didn't even remember either, so I ended up making them Sunday morning instead. 

Her friends' party was from 1-4pm on Saturday. She really wanted to have a pool party, but it was definitely not warm enough for that. I settled for letting her have a water balloon fight. The weather looked good in the morning but then it got cloudy and windy and cooler. After doing the pinata, I asked if they still wanted to do the water balloons and most of them still wanted to do it. Fortunately, water balloons are so much easier to fill than they were when I was a kid, so it only took a few minutes. At the beginning of the party while the kids were waiting for the pizza to cook, Charlotte took them out back to play a game. She had planned lots of different games, but they only played one. After food and presents and the pinata, they watched an episode of Rescue Rangers (an old cartoon on Disney+). Then it was water balloon fight time. Since it was towards the end of the party, they sat down to watch more shows and warm up. I even made Alice and her friend Laila (who came with her big sister) cider and hot chocolate. It was a little crazy at times with the kids running through the house, especially the boys, but I think everyone had a good time. I'm not going to lie, I'm glad it's over and we're done. I get a nice long break before another birthday. 😂

All ready to party! Her favorite color is yellow.

The last couple of parties I have tried to have some healthier food available besides just pizza and chips and pop. So we had carrots, celery with peanut butter, pineapple, and green grapes. The carrots went fast and not many took the celery but I ate a bunch of it. We also had veggie straws.

Eating their food.

She's ready to light up her huge donut "cake".

These candles had flames that were the same colors as the candles. You could see the orange ones the best.

Time to open gifts.

Some of the kids wanted to shoot the pinata with Charlotte's new bow and arrow first.

Then we switched to the blindfold and bat.

Water balloon fight!

Charlotte with her friends. One of them had to leave early. There were 7 out of the 11 that she invited who were able to come.

Then we added Alice and Laila to the picture. 

One of her friends gave her dog Legos. Of course she loves them and built them right away after the party was over.

She wore her new shirt that day. It's a little big on her but she likes it and says she'll grow into it. It's better to be too big than too small!

Charlotte had a great birthday. In 1 1/2 years she'll be going to middle school. I can hardly believe it. She still has her sassy attitude sometimes, but she also has a big heart and wants to love everyone. She's growing into a wonderful young lady.

Last Weekend

Last weekend was great! Friday night the girls and I walked to drop off a birthday invitation to one of Charlotte's friends, which happened to be the same house where Milo stayed last November with two other Golden Retrievers, Charly and Leia. Milo had no problems warming up to them again. I don't know if he remembered them or if it's just the nature of all 3 of them being Golden Retrievers. They had so much fun running around and playing in the backyard. The girls also played with their friend, Emery. She's actually two years older than Charlotte but they don't mind that. 

He's finally their size.

After letting them play for a while we had to say goodbye to go deliver another invitation. We walked back to our house first and got in the van since it was a little farther away. We drove over to the McShane's where Charlotte gave Ashlee her invite and then we visited out front. We were able to get Milo to jump into the back of their truck. He had to get a running start to be able to do it at first but by the end of the night he could just jump right up. Milo kept jumping in and out of the truck as the girls would too. While visiting with ShaRae, we made plans to get together again the next day so we could take the girls to the park to skate. They have an outdoor cement skating rink that they use for hockey also. 

The McShane's had a funeral to attend Saturday morning and the girls, and I drove out to Richland to watch a musical choir that a bunch of kids from our ward are a part of. We didn't even realize Charlotte's friend Jane was in it until we got there. Jack's friend Cam was in it too and Jack would have come to watch him, but he went to Lewiston with Curtis to visit with Stillman's family and so Curtis could help Stillman with electrical groundwork on their new shop. Originally, Curtis and Jack were going to go on a campout with the young men, but that got cancelled. So, this was a good alternative activity. Garrett stayed home with us girls. 

Anyway, the singing group is called The Tri-City Choral Fusion and they have different age groups that perform. The younger groups just sang a few songs. The teenagers did most of the singing and dancing.

It was at an old movie theater that has been converted to a performing arts theater.

The middle school aged kids.

The middle school and younger groups singing together.

The teenager group. 

After we got back from the show, I called ShaRae and they invited us to have pizza for dinner with them also. Garrett, the girls, Milo and I all drove over there. (They said it was okay to bring Milo.) Curtis and Jack joined us a little later after they got back in town and cleaned themselves up (and rested a bit). When Brother McShane went to pick up the pizzas, the girls (us moms too) and Milo all walked to the park (which is basically in the McShane's backyard, right over the fence). The girls skated for a little bit. I would have let Milo in with them but there were a few other kids in there also. Then the girls played on the playground for a bit. We walked back and ate dinner. Curtis and Jack showed up a bit later. After eating a visiting for a while, Curtis drove Jack over to the stake dance in Pasco. When he came back, the 4 adults played Rumikub while their boys and Garrett played videogames. The girls were in and out of the house going from the playset to the trampoline to playing with playdoh and playing in their room. We played a few rounds of Rumikub. The first one took a long time because Jason (Brother McShane) couldn't play any tiles to just get the 30 points he needed to start, until the very last round, after we had drawn every single tile that was available. He could finally go and then he went out and won the round! It was crazy!

I love that they have this outdoor skating rink and that it's so close to us!

I think the McShane's are quickly becoming some of our favorite friends over here. Their girls are friends with our girls. Their oldest son Dallin is friends with both Garrett and Jack. They have two other sons as well, but they don't really hang out with our boys. And we get along great with Jason and ShaRae. Their girls are just like our girls. Ashlee, who is a year older than Charlotte, is a lot like Charlotte in that she doesn't really like pink and she likes to wear t-shirts. She's not a girlie girl. Then the two younger girls, Alice and Laila, are a lot alike and that they are girlie girls and like pink. Laila is a year younger than Alice. I swear, I think our families were meant to be friends!

Garrett having a great time playing games with Dallin. He needed this because he was starting to feel depressed again.

Milo chilling out on the back deck.

Milo loves to pick up two toys at a time. He's so cute.

We stayed until 10:00pm and when we got home and checked the mail, a birthday card had come for Charlotte from Grandma Vernie and Grandpa Tony. 

The next day we also fed the missionaries. We have been feeding the missionaries more than we ever have the past couple of years because our boys are getting close to that age. Garrett told me a couple of days ago that he's still planning on going on a mission. That makes me happy. 

On Tuesday Curtis went out of town to Kent for a business trip with Stillman. That day I was also putting some food in our Crockpot to cook for dinner when it fried and tripped our breaker. I'm so thankful it didn't start a fire! I didn't even realize anything had happened until I noticed the fridge wasn't on. Fortunately, it wasn't off for very long. It wasn't until after I moved the crockpot to a different outlet that I realized the cord was the problem. It left some black marks on the counter and the cord separated from the pot. Fortunately, I was able to borrow a crockpot from a sister in our ward who lives down the street. I was able to just put my pot in her base and it worked. Thank goodness, because it was very full and layered.

The black marks on the counter from the crockpot.

I wasn't using my brain when I took this picture. That wire was live because it was plugged in! But hey, you can see that it disconnected from the crockpot. 😂

But our meal survived thanks to Sister Zimmerman! And it was delicious. Ravioli with layers of sauce, sausage and mozzarella cheese. 

Since Curtis drove to Kent I told both him and Nikki that they're only half an hour away from each other and that they should get together, so they did. Curtis and Stillman drove down to Tacoma and they went to Applebee's with her and her friend Cyrus. I think she needed that too. I'm glad they were able to meet up. 

Our Next Activity

I'm so glad I got pictures of all of the flowers and blossoms when I did, because only a couple of days later we had a warm weekend, and our tulips did not look good after that. Our trees have pretty much dropped all of the pink petals also. 

Speaking of flowers, I did some looking online for ideas for our next activity days and I found several flowers made from pipe cleaners. I tested out a couple and decided it was simple enough and fun to do and it would make a great Mother's Day gift since our next activity won't be until after Mother's Day. Sister Gale liked the idea also, even though she's out of town again and won't be here for it.

These were the first two I made, a tulip and daffodil.

While shopping for the flower materials I decided that maybe we better just do one type of flower because the cost was adding up quickly with all the different colors. Charlotte said she likes daisies and so I found a YouTube video for how to make a daisy. It was still simple enough and so I bought the materials I needed. I had gone to Walmart, the Dollar Tree and Hobby Lobby looking for things but found most of the items I needed at Hobby Lobby.  As an added bonus, the clay pots I bought were 50% off at Hobby Lobby and I didn't realize it until checking out. I love those kinds of surprises! A week before the activity I had Sister Diaz and Sister McShane come over to practice making a daisy so that we would be ready to help the girls. Sister McShane said she could help while Sister Gale is out of town.

We each made one and put it in the pot for display for the girls. We used black beans for the "dirt". They were still a little flimsy so I later bought foam and cut it to fit inside the pot and stick the stems in. That helped.

We bagged the beans for each girl so they could take it with them and fill their pot at home if they wanted. It was a lot less messy at the church also. We also cut out tags that I had printed from online and cut the yellow pipe cleaners in half and cut string for the tags.

Here's the foam I had to cut up.

Our activity was this last Monday (the 22nd) and I went in early to set it all up. I was excited that Brother Brown taught me how to cast my phone screen to the TV in the Relief Society room so that I could show the video to the girls on how to make the daisies. The TV is a permanent one they have attached to the wall so we don't have to get one from the library. It's so nice!

All set up and ready for the girls.

Each girl had enough materials to make 3 flowers if they wanted. Some chose to make only 1 or 2. And we always start out with a snack at the beginning since the girls come straight from school to the activity.

Having fun outside afterwards.

Last week I finally was able to watch Jack play in a tennis match. He and his teammate (and friend), Luke, are doing well considering they're both beginners on the JV team. Jack has a little experience from playing in 6th grade but hasn't played much since then. They didn't win but that's okay. They both said they thought they played well and improved. It didn't help that it was windy that day.

Going for the serve.

One day Alice spotted our cat, Coco, making himself cozy in the bathroom. She asked if she could use my phone to take a picture. Our cats crack me up sometimes! I saw him do this multiple times in our old house but this is the first time I've seen him do it here. It's not really a habit I want him to get into though!

Last Friday our girls school had their annual Jog-A-Thon and I was able to help this year. They had us use an app on our phones to scan the tag that each child was given with their name on it. Sometimes the scanner had a hard time scanning but I later learned that I was probably holding it too close to my phone. The older kids went first and so I helped Charlotte's class in the morning and then in the afternoon I came back to help Alice's class. The morning was freezing and I had to wear two jackets on top of a long sleeve and short sleeved shirt, plus gloves! By the afternoon, I didn't need any jackets or gloves. Charlotte ran 16 laps, which is 2 miles and Alice did 17 laps. I was so proud of my girls. I kept worrying about Charlotte though because she has mild asthma and has had to use her breathing treatment a lot the past few months, but she did just fine. I think it helped that I had started giving her an allergy pill every day for over a week. She hasn't had to use the machine since. 

Alice with her friend.

I forgot to get a picture when doing the race but got one after school. Every student got a t-shirt.