Painting Helena's room

Here is a photo gallery of the painting process for Helena's bedroom wall. She wanted 3 white walls and one red one. I then suggested that I paint white graphic flowers onto the red wall that would reverse to red flowers on the white wall adjacent. Hard to put in words, but easy to understand in photo!

Here is the layout of the flowers in painter's tape...

...and me in the middle of the whole process...

...and the finished red wall!

Surprise photos of Helena

Sometimes I sync my camera to the computer and find fun photos of Helena. She will steal my camera and have an impromptu photo shoot. This one is taken in our back yard in late November, early December.

This will probably be one of the last gems I find on my camera, however,...she got a digital camera of her own for Christmas.

Christmas!

On Christmas Eve we spent most of the day working hard on getting the basement ready for the following day. We finished the trim painting in the bathroom, the painting of Will's room, and moved Will and Helena down to their new rooms. Then I cleaned up Will's old room and readied it for Matt, who was struggling to travel across the country to reach us and spend the holidays with us! He left North Carolina at 5:30 am and didn't arrive in SLC until 10:00 pm! We are so glad he made it, though!





On the topic of Matt, he finished his training in North Carolina! After his 14 day leave, he has to report to Miramar, CA (the "Top Gun" base in San Diego) as his permanent duty station. Rough life!!! I am glad, though. It means we can plan trips to go see him without shelling out a ton of $.

Will was very excited to have his brother come for Christmas. He was counting days until Matt came, not until Christmas day.

Here is a photo of Matt torturing Will. Isn't brotherly love wonderful?

And a video if still images are not enough to enjoy!

Christmas has been wonderfully snowy this year!!! Christmas is the only time I love snow. After New Year it can all melt for all I care.

I have to go take the troops on a shopping spree now...more to come later!

the kids' school photos

I have to confess now, that I am rather hot/cold with this technology thing. I go for stretches of plugged in modern me, followed by stretches of old fashioned, don't look at a computer for weeks at a time, me. I get particularly unplugged when I am on break from school. Sorry!

So, here are Helena's and Will's school mug shots!

Cats and dogs, and Dogs and cats

Everyone is friends now! The kitten, Pepper, absolutely rules the roost. When food is put down for the cats, Tigger will wait while Pepper eats. I have come across the cats sleeping and grooming together. I have also come across the kitten sitting in the dogs' bed with them and wrestling with them. He loves to attack their tails.

Bill will feed the kitten anything off his plate! When the kitten got sick and puked, Bill grumbled about having to clean it up. I just smiled at him and thanked him for doing it. I didn't really feel the need to point out that the kitten was probably puking up whatever funky people food he ate off of Bill's plate.

Yesterday, Bill was finishing off a plate of beans, cheese, and salsa. I should note that Bill likes his salsa ON FIRE! as it were. That hot salsa was a bit too much for the kitty, but Pepper was VERY interested in Bill's egg nog. So...Bill poured some egg nog onto the left over salsa on his empty plate and put it down for Pepper. After a moment's hesitation, Pepper licked the plate clean!

Then, I sat down to eat with my plate of food.

(I should note that we don't currently have a dining room table due to the remodel, so we eat on the couches in the living room.)

Pepper came over eagerly to find out what I was having and to share it with me. Now, I DO NOT share my food with animals! I hissed at Pepper and he backed off at once. Will thought that was the most funny thing. It seemed to work, though. Terrible that I have to remind a little snip of a thing who's boss in this house. He thinks we are all there to entertain him.

Getting a Christmas tree

We bought our Christmas tree yesterday. We decided that since the whole house is in disarray; we would get a little tree and put it in the basement family room. Little is right! This is the smallest tree we have ever had! It is only 5' tall. Helena spent the evening decorating the empty room, then the kids decorated the tree this morning. I think it is beautiful even if it is small!

The torture of parent/teacher conference!

Last night was parent/teacher conference at the Junior High. They used to have all the teachers take up seats in the cafeteria and commons area so that parents could see which lines were shorter and make informed decisions about which line to stand in for the most productive use of their time. I liked it that way. Apparently, someone didn't. Now, all the teachers are in their classrooms and parents have to slog around the whole building, standing in long lines, wondering if there is some teacher they need to see just sitting there with no line! You don't dare leave the line you are in to find out, though.
With 2 students at the school, I had 18 teachers to see. I didn't see about 5 of them. I did spend 3 hours and 45 min. trying to see the others, though.
I have to say, my kids do have some wonderful teachers! Helena's orchestra teacher understands that ballet is Helena's first priority and excuses her from orchestra performances that conflict with ballet performances (this happens shockingly frequently). Mrs. Smith (the teacher) is just glad Helena is such a hard worker and loves to have her in the class. I think between the 2 of us we can convince Helena to continue with the orchestra for another year.
Will's English teacher is fantastic! She is the most plugged in teacher I have ever known. The level of communication coming out of that classroom is phenomenal! She even has Will writing! He showed me the start of a story he is making up; and if you know Will at all, you will know what a miracle that is!

A really bad day!

Yesterday my son, Will, called me at school to tell me that he burned his finger on hot glue in the art classroom at the Jr. High. He wanted me to tell the secretary that he could have Tylenol. That was first period. The burn left the entire pad of his right index finger white and blistered. Fourth period for him is PE. He didn't want to play basketball with the class because of the burnt finger and asked the teacher if he could write a report instead of participate. The teacher said 'no, just use your left hand'. So he did. He managed to jam the middle finger on his left hand when someone passed him the ball. When I picked him up, he was in tears with an icepack on his left hand. He was sure the finger was broken. I wasn't sure, neither was the doctor when I took Will to see him. So we spent the evening at the hospital waiting for x-rays to reveal the truth.
The truth? No breaks. Still, it was a pretty rotten day for Will. Now he has bandages on both hands and rehearsals for his band concert next Thursday.

A Driving Permit!

Helena got her driver's permit last week! She is actually doing great. She is a much better driver than I was even at 18 years! She is only 15. She drives every opportunity I give her. I won't let her drive to or from school, however, because it is too crazy, busy with pedestrians and impatient parents driving. I also don't want to play Chinese fire drill every morning in the midst of the chaos.

Thanksgiving holiday?

You know, Thanksgiving is not a very restful holiday. The whole time food is being prepared, family is visited or else you are frantically cleaning your own house in preparation for company.
And, of course, there is Black Friday! Helena and I got up at midnight in order to stand in line at Best Buy for the opportunity to buy a laptop at a screaming sale price.
Most of the break I woke up early because I couldn't sleep. Isn't that always the way of it? You struggle to get up and get the kids to school on time on normal days and look forward to sleeping in on holiday. Nope, some demented internal clock snaps you awake at an ungodly hour! You lay awake thinking of all the things that need to happen in the upcoming day and decide it would be for the best if you just got up and got started on all of it.
I ended up coming down with a cold just in time to go back to work. Probably a combination of lack of sleep, too much work, and standing out in the cold November air for 5 hours on Friday.

The extra work pays off!

The directors of The Nutcracker have evaluated all of the girls dancing the Chinese part. Helena's extra practices paid off; she's in! Some of the girls will not be performing it, however. I hope they don't get too discouraged. Helena plans to put in more extra practices just to make sure she is very ready to perform. It is a big deal to her because Chinese is a triplet dance of only 3 girls on the stage. She has always been one of the background dancers before. This is the first time she will be receiving applause meant for her specifically.
For those of you in town who would like to see the performances, she dances with Utah Regional Ballet. Their production of The Nutcracker is performed annually at the Covey Center for the Arts on Center Street in Provo. There is a link to both the ballet company and the Covey Center on the right side of my blog.

The life of a hardened criminal.

On Nov. 19th, a county sheriff pulled me over and gave me a ticket for failure to signal! GOOD GRIEF! Failure to SIGNAL?! I am so glad he is out there protecting all the rest of you poor, innocent, helpless citizens from hardened criminals like myself! I probably would have gone on recklessly failing to signal for the rest of my born days if he had not intervened on your behalf. I am a chastened and reformed former criminal who has seen the error of my ways now that I have relieved myself of the burden of $82.00; payable to the county justice court.