Young Women Fundraiser

 

Katie has enjoyed an early start to Young Women’s.  Because she turns 12 two weeks before girls camp she has been able to participate in all the fun pre-camp certification, planning and crafting.  It has been a lot of fun!  I can’t believe she’s almost 12!

The Heidelberg Ward YW have a great ‘Italian Restaurant’ Fundraiser Tradition and this year Katie got to participate.  The whole thing is so organized.  Families are seated at tables and the young women are responsible to take care of one or two tables.  Behind the scenes the girls and leaders are preparing and serving garlic bread, spaghetti and salads.  Then we have a giant well supported cake auction.   Bishop Tillett is our auctioneer and this year Ryan got to be his assistant.   It was a fun night and the YW raised LOTS of money.

Katie getting the salads ready… and Luke and Lissie at the front desk waiting to seat people.

  

Katie and Amanda getting ready to serve their salads…

End of School Year Stuff

Katie’s Student of the Quarter Party

Katie was chosen to be Student of the Quarter this last Quarter.  The teachers from each ‘team’ chose two students who they think are good examples both in academics and citizenship.  They are rewarded with a certificate, a school pennant, a pizza party and an afternoon to hang out at the bowling alley.  We joined Katie for lunch and then left her to bowl with the other 6th grade award recipients… luckily two of Katie’s best friends were also recipients… Emily and Rebecca Topness.

Katie had a sad goodbye at the end of the school year.  Kai has been one of her best friends the last two years.  They were in the same 5th grade class together and made the transition to middle school together.  We loved having Katie hang out with Kai.  What good girls. 

 

Ryan’s Middle School GRADUATION and Award Ceremony

Luke, Matt and I went to watch Ryan receive his Outstanding Academic Excellence award for his impressive grades this year. He does a great job staying on top of everything for his classes. Occasionally I get emails from his teachers keeping me updated on projects and papers and tests and when I ask Ryan about it he says, “Mom, I got it. It’s done.” and it’s something I never even heard of. How grateful we are to have such a hard working kid. Good job buddy. Can’t believe you’re on to High School next year!

 

Piano Recital

We enjoyed the kids piano recital early June at the Gillespie’s house.  Megan Gillespie has taught the kids for two years now and we REALLY appreciate her.  She is fabulous!  We are so glad (for multiple reasons) that she’s going to be here one more year.  Every Wednesday they walk from school to her house and hang out for an hour and a half taking turns with their lessons – then Chris picks them up on his way home from work.  

All three of them did great with their recital pieces and managed to practice pretty good even through our crazy soccer season and end of school fun.

 

Last Week of School

My goodness… we are really counting down the days.  I just couldn’t help but take a picture of my girls leaving the house for school.  I know I’m going to love the picture of what it looks like when I stand on the porch and wave as my kids walk down the street and turn the corner.  Cute girlies.

 

Megan had a great 1st grade year.  I just loved looking through some of her first grade work as she brought home arm fulls during the last week of school.

Some of her journal entries…

• Turtles!!!! Tutle’s are awsome.  I love the coler green and they are green so I love them.  They have lost of shaps on theres.  Did you know that tutles walk slow?
• When I grow up I what to be a teaher or a balerenia or work at the school and be a PE coch.  I think that would be fun.  I know about other jobs like a police man and a posion who makes close.  But I don’t want to be those things.
• Weather is so cool.  Weather can be everywhere.  It hapiens every socen.
• I love skunks.  They have black and white fur.  My friend have a pet skunk.  He is so so cute.
• If I was in a hot air balloon I would go everwhere I will see the prak or the shop.  I really like hto ari ballon.  I like where it goes up.  Mine would have pretty colors and the other guy will not.

End of the year memory book…

• My favorite memory of the year was… “coin parties”.
• My favorite book I read this year was… “Winn Dixie, Junie B. Jones, and Black Lagoon.”
• The best project I made… “The Living Museum when I was Ruby Bridges”
• The most interesting fact I learned was… “multiplication”.
• One thing I’ll never forget… “Mrs. Dysinger and her awesome classroom”.

 

A big year for Emily

We’ve noticed a lot of great changes for this girl over the last year.  She’s a lot more confident and outgoing.  On Friday’s in Mrs. Strawn’s class they get to recite poetry or sing a song for their class during SHARE TIME.  For the last several months Emily has been singing Taylor Swift songs for the class – either with a friend or by herself.   Who is this new Emily? 

When I got her latest report card I enjoyed reading what her teacher wrote about her… “This was Emily’s year to shine.  Her reading level remained high and steady and she soared as a writer, poet, mathematician, scientist and friend.  Emily began third grade with advanced academic skills and guarded confidence, but she ended as a well rounded student with confidence to apply her advanced thinking skills.    Emily’s sense of humor and positive attitude is contagious and makes her a natural leader in the classroom.  It was a joy to teach such a willing student.”  Way to go Emily!   

 

Megan’s Multi-Age Family Picnic

It’s tradition for the multi-age classrooms to walk down to the huge park on base and have a great big family BBQ.  They really go all out and it was really fun.  Even Dad came for lunch.  I just love that picture of Luke trying to eat his hot dog.

 

 

End of School Date Night on the Haupstrasse

Finally the schedule empties a little so we can go on a date.  We tried a new German restaurant on the Haupstrasse with some friends.  Fabulous cheese spaetzle and cherry gelato!  Yum!  Then games until midnight.

 

Last breakfast alone for a few months…

  A huge table with multiple chairs and they have to be squished on the SAME chair.   They make me laugh.

 

LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!

The kids only had school on Thursday, June 14th until 10:30.  They really didn’t even have to go but they wanted to say goodbye to their friends and spend the last couple minutes getting all of their friends to sign their yearbook.  Ryan came home with pink hair.  His buddy Mark brought pink hair dye for the group of them.  Katie and her friends all wrote “7TH GRADER” on their arms as an official declaration of being done with 6th grade!  It’s officially summer!  Yeah!!

These three kids were happy that school was done for the summer but Megan burst into tears when she got home.  I gave her a big hug while she sobbed, “I miss Mrs. Dysinger!”    Poor girl.  After a half hour or so she was excited for summer too.  She just needed a moment to deal with the transition.

Spring Soccer

Soccer has taken up a LOT of our family’s time for the last 10 weeks… but it was so much fun! 

Monday – 5:00 – 6:30 Katie’s team practice – Chris coaching

5:30 – 6:30 Megan’s team practice

Tuesday – 5:30 – 6:30 Ryan’s team practice  – Chris assistant coaching

Wednesday -- 5:00 – 6:30 Katie’s team practice – Chris coaching

6:30 – 7: 30 Megan’s team game

Thursday – 5:30 – 6:30 Ryan’s team practice – Chris assistant coaching

Saturday – 9:00 or 10:30 Katie’s team game – Chris coaching

12:00 or 1:30 Ryan’s team game – Chris assistant coaching

 

Megan’s Team – THE SHARKS

This was Megan’s first season playing soccer and she was so excited.  She was eager to get dressed and ready to go really early for her practices and games.  When her practice was cancelled one day she begged Dad to let her go to Katie’s practice, which he OKed happily.  Megan did lots of running, was quite aggressive and played great for her first season.  Her coach immediately called her a go-getter.   Megan’s coach was Coach Rachel – who is Kai’s mom – one of Katie’s close friends.  So, Chris coached Kai, and Kai’s mom coached Megan.  It worked out perfectly.   She had a great season and can’t wait for the fall.

 

     

After the last game of the season Coach Rachel handed out medals.  What a fun season.

Katie’s Team: THE SPARKS

Written by Dad… “Katie had a great season.  She was on a team consisting almost entirely of kids from the ward and one of her best friends from school.  Although we lost a couple of games, I was really proud of the improvement I saw in her team over the course of the season.  Katie's individual skills really improved as well and she was a critical member of the team.  I started playing her at midfield and striker at the beginning of the season to help her develop more offense skills, but realized by the second game that we would lose a lot of games if I didn't keep her on defense.  It was so fun to watch her chase down big and talented boys who got behind our defense and take the ball away from them when they thought they had a free breakaway to the goal. Katie has a real desire to practice and get better and is asking me to take her to the park all the time to practice soccer.  I am really proud of her.”

Megan on Ali’s back, a favorite friend to all of our girls --- and Katie with Kai, one of her best friends.

 

Our team was full of friends and players we’ve had for several seasons now.   Ryan Glazier, Katie, Ian Patterson, Tate and Lindsey Gillespie.

Soccer moms… it was so much fun to go to all the games and watch and cheer together every Saturday.

This was Ryan’s first season in the 13-16 age group but as you can see he still considered himself an honorary member of this team… especially since his best friends are on the team. He practiced with them a lot this season.   Megan wishes she was playing and not watching… and Matthew is totally in the middle of that huddle helping with the team cheer. 

 

Chris has had so much fun coaching.  He had a hard time deciding between coaching Ryan’s team or Katie’s team but chose to stick with Katie’s team since there were so many ward friends requesting it.  This is his fourth season coaching here (although one season we were really gone so much that Chris just let his assistant coach take over) and it’s been really fun to be a part of the program for so long and meet so many great soccer families. 

He does such a great job with the team keeping them discipline and having fun and I think the kids really like to play for him.   It’s no surprise that Coach Johnson likes BYU.  I think he wears a BYU shirt to every practice and game.

For the team party at the end of a great season they had a parents against kids soccer party.    Chris was up front dribbling through his players and scoring goals and I was back in Defense just standing there as an easy obstacle to dribble around – I tried but that’s just what kept happening.  After the soccer game we went inside and ate cupcakes while Chris handed out medals and talked about each player. 

 

Ryan’s Team: H20

Ryan was part of a really great team this year.  He had a lot of friends from school on this team and they worked hard and had a great time playing together.  Coach Nochera agreed to coach the team without much soccer experience so he welcomed Chris’ experience and gladly made him Assistant Coach.    It worked out great… plus there was no conflicting game times or travel for both Ryan and Katie’s teams so Chris could make it to all the games.  It was nice.

Written by Dad… “Ryan had another awesome season.  I ended up coaching his team as well as Katie's and I am so glad I did.  His team was full of respectful and coachable kids and it made for a very rewarding season as a coach.  Ryan's team destroyed every team they played.  The last game of the year, they were actually losing at halftime 2-1 which was a result of not having a game for 3 weeks and some overconfidence.  But we made some adjustments at halftime and they defeated the other team 6-2.  Ryan played Striker for most of the season, although I switched him to center midfield a few times (like the second half of the last game) to control the middle of the field.  He really improved his vision of the field and his passing skills, and made some improvement with his ball control as well.  He scored a few goals and had a lot of fun.”

  

Cool to be #14 when you’re about to turn 14.

Here’s Ryan with his coaches.    Ryan’s team party was the exact same night as Katie’s team party really close to each other so Chris and I ran back and forth.  After the parent versus kid soccer game for Katie’s team Chris and I ran over to Ryan’s BBQ to watch all the kids get their awards and then back over to Katie’s to do the same thing.  Woohoo!  Soccer’s over until the fall!!   

Luke-isms

Luke: “You know who’s better than the best?”     Mom: “Who?”   Luke: “R2D2!  He’s AWESOME!  He says ‘beep, beep, beep and the shiny robot (C3P0) says. ‘what on earth are you talking about?”     Luke’s in a big Star wars kick right now.  Loves it.

Luke’s prayers just crack us up all the time.  “Please bless that we can eat potatoes.”  “Please bless that we can play Wii, go to the movie theater, that we won’t fight or scrunch each other.”  “Please bless that my friends can come over to my house like Spencer and Sammy and that we can play together and that Ryan can have his friends come over and play too.”

Luke and Matt do a great job playing with each other – not perfect, but pretty good.  They like to play in the tub with their water animals, dress in Spiderman costume, watch a show and eat fishy crackers, play Geotrax, play Wii, play playdoh, go to the park, jump on the trampoline, color pictures, play on Starfall.com

Now that it’s summer time the sun is up a lot later than what we’ve been used to.  When I said to Luke at 7:30pm, “Time to get ready for bed!”   Luke said: “What?”  Me: “Yep, bedtime.”  Luke: “Mom, you don’t know anything!!!”  Me: Whoa.  That’s not nice.  Say sorry.”  Luke: “Sorry. but am I the only one seeing the sun right now??”

Luke: “Mom, Matthew accidentally touched it on accident and I accidentally touched it on purpose.”

Luke still hasn’t mastered the whole wiping his own behind after he goes to the bathroom.  One day (in March) Luke called to me from the bathroom “Mom come and wipe my bum!”  Feeling frustrated about constantly going in to help him and busy with something I said, “You do it!”  Then a minute later I wandered in to see how he was doing.  “So, how’s it going, Luke?”  Luke: “Well, I wiped one bum, now I need to wipe the other.”   I guess he needs more practice.

Luke: “Matthew, you’re the cutest big boy I ever had.”

Luke: “That applesauce is 1 yummy but this berry sauce is 31 yummy!!!”   Luke likes to assign numbers to how he feels about things…  one day he said to Katie… “You’re 150 beautiful!”  Katie: “Oh, thanks Luke.  You’re 150 awesome.”  It was a sweet  moment for Katie until Luke walked over to Megan and said, “Megan, you’re 190 beautiful.”

I was reading a story to Luke about Samuel the Lamanite and I said, “Samuel is telling the people ‘DON’T BE BAD, BE… and Luke said “…HAVE!”     That wasn’t what I was going for but it works too.  Just behave!!

Luke: “Matthew, we’re going to have scrambled eggs.  Scrambled eggs is not only eggs.  It’s eggs and scrambled stuff to make it yellowy and that makes it so so gooder.”

Luke came in crying and rubbing his forehead after a fall.  Megan said, “WOW, Luke, that’s really red!!”  right before I bent down and kissed it – like a good Mommy should, right?  Luke was mad.  “Mom, I wanted to see the red mark and now it’s going to be gone!!”    I love his faith in a Mommy’s kiss.

It was quite hot the other day and our house, without air conditioning, was pretty warm. When Chris helped Luke get ready for bed Chris said, "Luke, just don't wear a shirt to bed tonight." His eyes got big and he said, "You mean I'm going to be AWESOME the whole night?"

This month Luke says he wants to be a juggling clown, a baseball player or IRON MAN when he grows up.

He says his friends are Sammy, Spencer, Matthew, Cole and Joshie.

Favorite song: “Para, Para, Paradise” by Coldplay

Luke has a big crush on 17 year old Lissie in our ward.  She’s a cutie so it’s not surprising – but what’s surprising is how bold he is.  He tells her all the time that he’s going to marry her.  It’s pretty funny.

I heard Luke screaming in the other room and went to go see what was the matter.  Luke said, “I was mad at Spencer and I yelled.  My brains were telling me to do that.  It got in my head and it came out my face.”     I love it.  So funny.

Luke was making a spaceship sound when all of a sudden he said, “Whoa, that was totally a sound of lava coming out and the mountain breaking called a volcano.  That was awesome that I just did that. Wow.”   Then Matt said “Taltanoes Blow!”  Luke: “Hey, he doesn’t know anything about that but he knowed it!”  Matt: “On Diego der is a Taltano!”

Me: “Give me a kiss.”  Luke: “Not on the lips.”  Me: “Why not on the lips?”  Luke: “Because then it would make you my wife and me the Dad.”

Matthew-isms

“When I turn ‘free’ I’m going to be weally, WEALLY,  W E A L L Y   BIG!”

This is funny because it just shows how much I sing this song…  After a long day sight seeing Matthew held up his hands and said, “MOM, Hold me, hold me, never let me go.”   Typically I sing the whole chorus when my little toddler says ‘hold me’. 

Me:  “Matt, you can have a little bit.”    Matt:   "I don’t want a little bit!  I want a big bit!”

It’s just funny how often Matt says, “Oh, I LOVE…”  Whenever he comes into the kitchen and sees me making something he likes, or whenever he hears me say something he loves he can’t help but exclaim it.  Always the same way…

• “Oh, I love brown cookies!”
• “Matt, should we go to the park?”    “Oh, I love the park!”
• “Matt, you and Luke can go play the Wii for awhile.”    “Oh, I love the Wii!”
• “Little Lizzie is going to come over play.”    “Oh, I love little Lizzie!”

Matthew dances with his eyebrows.  They move up and down all the time.  It’s adorable.

He says ‘yets’ instead of ‘yes’. 

He kind of loves all digital games– which makes life tricky.  He LOVES to play on the Wii and play on starfall.com on the computer.  He LOVES it when Ryan lets him play on his iTouch (that’s what started this whole ‘love of all digital gaming’ thing) and has been known to sneak into Ryan’s room hoping to find it and sit on his bed playing for as long as he can until he’s caught.  I don’t mind if he plays a little – especially the starfall.com and it is nice that he’ll do things I ask him to do so that he CAN play.

He LOVES going to nursery on Sundays – but other than that he gets frustrated about Sundays because of the no Wii thing.  After church he constantly asks, “Is it still Sunday?”  and is really excited when he wakes up Monday morning and says “It’s not Sunday!!” which he repeats again on Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning.  Yep, we have a problem.

Matt is off sippy cups.  When we got home from Spring Break we just threw them all away.  He hadn’t needed them for the week so we just decided it was time.   After 14 years we are a sippy cup free house!

Matthew loves corn dogs, eggo waffles, cereal (which he asks for multiple times a day), bagels and cream cheese, (but he has a hard time eating it because he doesn’t love the cream cheese getting on his fingers) and Mom’s red juice (crystal light fruit punch).  He also really likes ‘ficky fackers’.  (fishy crackers).

Me: “Matt, come here!”   Matt: “OK, Mom.  I’m coming here to you!”

Matthew loves Diego and Little Einsteins.

Matthew is really into Super Hero’s right now.  He LOVES Spiderman and Superman especially.