Karate

Ashley is a natural dancer, but for some reason she pretty much hates it!  She has been asking me to quit every week and it's a fight to get her to dance.  I realized that there's no reason why she needs to be in dance, so I can take her out.  At the same time, Ashley's been asking to start karate for awhile, so in November we let her start to see if she liked it.  She LOVES it!!  She asks everyday when is her next karate.  How long til my next karate?  When is my next karate? :-)  She LOVES it!! For those of you that know her, karate seems to fit her true personality so I'm not that surprised that she loves it.
The teachers at karate seem to think she's a natural at karate too.  I think she's found a new love in her life!  It's so fun to see her love something and have such a good attitude about it!

 They spar, learn karate and taekwondo moves, play games, and have a blast.

 Ashley LOVES it and kinda loves being allowed to kick the other kids butts! :-)

New family pictures

When we were down with my dad for Thanksgiving we tried another round of family pictures.  It's always fun to post the good and not so good/funny pictures as we try to get some good ones. :-)  Enjoy!

The girls were a little scared to start ;-)

The true personalities

Tyler, not sure about what he's doing ;-)

"How many more pictures mom?"--Tyler

 Luckily we did get some good ones!!

 The kids sure love their Grandpa

 I love these three so much!!

This one was our favorite that we blew up to an 8x10.  I sure love new and updated family pictures!!

Reflections 2013

I love that Emily is so artistic.  I love that she wants to do Reflections each year.  I didn't love that she wanted to make a movie this year, but I was supportive and helped her get it done.
As usual, she totally surprised me with her artistic mind and made a really cool movie.  The theme was Believe, Dream, Inspire.  She wanted to learn how to do the monkey bars and made a made a movie about believing she could do it, dreaming she could do it, working hard to accomplish the monkey bars, and then inspiring someone else to try the monkey bars.  I wish that I could upload it, but I can't, so this description will have to do.  It turned out very cute in my opinion and she won an award at our school and now it goes on the city level.
I love that Emily does these projects because she loves being artistic, not just for the trophy.  Don't get me wrong, she's very happy when she gets a trophy, but her project is more important to her.  I hope it can stay this way as she gets older. :-)

Halloween

This year's Halloween was a lot of fun, like always.  Emily had known for a year that she wanted to be an artist, and she made a super cute one if I do say so myself. :-)  Ashley decided at the last moment to be a witch, which really fits her personality!  She made sure people knew that she was a good witch though. ;-)  Ty was put in the M&M costume at Grandma's and we thought it was cute so we left him in it.  They had a blast and came home with quite the loot!
This year's Halloween was quite different for me.  I went totally out of my comfort zone to dress up with my 5th grade team like punk rockers.  At first I was very hesitant, but once I got everything together, I gotta say, I totally LOVED it!  It was so fun being and looking crazy for that day.  My students loved it too, but I was asked many many times that day if my nose ring was real. ;-)  I guess I did well!

 Ashley's witchy face

My beautiful artist

 Me and my girls

My Rockin' 5th grade team!

Emily and Ashley's Birthday Party

This year for Emily's party she didn't know what she wanted to do.  Finally a few days before, she decided she wanted a Build-a-Bear party.  We obliged.  Ashley had never gotten a friend birthday party for her birthday during the summer (with my knee and everything, it was a rough summer), so we let her bring a few friends too.  It was great.  They did it all and everyone had a blast.  Great day!

 Tyler had fun too, until he decided to wander off down the mall.  We found him pretty quickly luckily!!

 Playing fun games while waiting for bears to be stuffed.

 The gang with all their loot!

Because we lost Tyler I didn't get any shots of presents and cake eating because we were in super speed mode.  Parents had already come, so she just ripped open presents, gave a huge thank you and sent them on their way.  So here's one present that Em unwrapped from us that as you can see she was just a little excited about. :-)

Our new Adventure

We bought some four wheelers!  Yes, this might not seem like us, but Kenny wanted some and I obliged.  During Fall Break we took them down with Kenny's brother and family to the Little Sahara sand dunes to try them out for the first time.  I had never been on a 4-wheeler before and wasn't sure what to expect.  It was SO much fun!  Emily never wanted to get off the 4-wheeler and had a blast driving it herself.  Ashley preferred the calmer rides and Tyler was just happy to be there and get to run around wherever he wanted.  It was a super fun weekend and we'll definitely be doing it again soon.

 I promise that Tyler always had his helmet when riding. :-)

 Tyler loved the trailer as much as the 4-wheeler

 Kenny getting some air

 Playing in the sand dunes is always fun too