The Trials of a Busy Mom

Category: Kids (Page 4 of 19)

Halloween 2012

Oh the Halloween festivities are so much fun!

Between the parties, the house decorating, the costumes and the candy, it’s no wonder we are exhausted.

We did the pumpkin carving last week when it was still cold, and as you can see, even the birds got into the fun. This is new for Larissa, so she was excited to to carve a pumpkin!

Saturday was our ward party and trunk or treat. Instead of candy, I gave out hot chocolate, and that was a big hit.

I was excited to dress up as Maleficent, from sleeping beauty. Can you believe some kids didn’t know who I was?

On Monday, I took the girls to Gardner Village to see the witches. They all played along and wore witch hats!

We had some fun shopping and seeing all the witches and Halloween decor. Not to complain, but it was almost too warm.

Halloween was a wonderful warm day. So nice, in fact, that Ryan decided to skip the festivities at work and stay home and work on his chicken house project.

I would never complain about a job well done, but I think he’s going a little bit overboard on this project. He might just install a tv in there and keep it for himself!

Those are the nesting boxes on one side, and there’s a feed “trough” on the other side. I helped with some caulking and priming before I had to dress up and go to John’s school party.

First we played the mummy wrap game, with two teams wrapping their friend up in TP. It was close, but the girls were the winners.

My game was the cup stack, and I had each kid try to stack the 36 cups in one minute.

Not many could do it. Perhaps I should have a made it a bit easier for them and had less cups to stack, but they still had fun, even if they didn’t all ‘win’.

By the time the party was over, I was feeling very sick, and starting to rethink our hugely busy plan for the rest of the afternoon. I LOVE Halloween, and I really want to do ALL the fun stuff we can possibly do, so we usually grab the kids right after school and go trick-or-treat at Ryan’s work. When I told him I wasn’t doing well, and didn’t want to go to his work, he said he didn’t really want to take the kids, and he didn’t care if we went or not. I knew the kids would be disappointed, but I broke the news to them that we wouldn’t be doing that activity, and no one threw anything at me, at least. I went upstairs and had a tiny nap, hoping to gather a little energy.

After a little bit of dinner, the kids were excited to go out.
They were all in costume, and the house was bedecked in Halloweeniness.

In case you can’t tell, we had the tootsie pop owl, pikachu, a cereal killer, spider man (although he changed several times throughout the day), and a hippie.

The kids all went out in groups, with friends or sisters, and I didn’t go out with any of them. I didn’t even want to go over to our neighbor’s annual donut night. I was just wiped out and not feeling good. I stayed close to the door and gave out candy to all the little trick-or-treaters, but I still felt like I was missing out on the festivities a little bit.

Megan and Larissa ended up going out later that night to movie parties, but everyone ended up safe and sound. Even though it was a middle of the week holiday, everyone got their share of fun! (Jenna and I even have a mother daughter costume party coming up this Saturday, so I guess it’s not time to put the costumes away JUST yet).

I hope you also enjoyed your Halloween, wherever you were.

A very merry unbirthday!

When Natalie said she wanted to do a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party for her birthday, I thought, “That sounds like fun. Not too hard. We can do that.” Hmmm. Well, I wouldn’t say it was easy, but it turned out to be so cute.

It pays to have an art teacher for a dad. He told me a while back that he had make a bunch of Alice in Wonderland decorations for a ward party, and that they were just sitting around. I decided to take advantage of his creativity and borrow all those decorations. Wow! There were so many, I could hardly find enough available wall space.

(GRRRR–I had this whole post almost done and when I went to save it, something went wrong, and now I’m back to this point. Well, I guess you get the shorter version, then.)

When the ladies arrived for the tea party, Natalie escorted them outside to play croquet. It seems the rules of croquet were cramping their style, however, so they just ended up whacking the balls all at the same time, running willy-nilly after balls.

You may notice that John seems to have bunny ears on. He made a night before costume decision that he wanted to be the white rabbit, and Larissa actually made those ears for him from tissue paper and a headband. It’s nice that Natalie didn’t shun her siblings and let them enjoy the party. John’s friend showed up right before it started, and I told him in order to participate, he would have to have a crazy hat, too. So, they went down to the costumes and found a wizard hat for him to wear.

Inside, the preparations were continuing. We had lots of cookies and small sandwiches. We wouldn’t want our guests to leave hungry, would we?

After the girls played croquet for all of 15-20 minutes (I had planned for that activity to last at least 45 minutes. Silly me), the girls came in and opened presents. While they were opening the presents, the Queen and the Mad Hatter arrived to officially welcome them to the party.

Oh, and the white rabbit was there, as well.

Now before you get all impressed thinking that I rented or bought these costumes, let me tell you the back story. On my way home from bells on Wed night, I mentioned to my carpool that I had this Mad Hatter’s tea party to do on Saturday and I needed to put up all these Alice in Wonderland decorations. My friend Janeen said, “You know I have the that Red Queen costume, right? You could borrow that.” WHAT? Why didn’t I THINK of that? She mentioned that she also had access to a Mad Hatter and an Alice costume, if I wanted to borrow them, too. No WAY! When we discussed some bell music that I could use, that clinched the deal, and I made a trip to Spanish Fork the next night to pick up all these things. Sadly, we don’t have a full shot of my in the costume, because with the skirt and the hoop skirt and all it’s pretty amazing. Don’t you agree? So, thank goodness for talented and generous friends!

Anyway, enough about me and how lovely I look in my fabulous costume….

Let’s talk about our birthday girl! Natalie looked pretty dolled up, too.

I thought it was fun how her friends came dressed up, as well. If they didn’t dress up in a skirt or dress, they at least hat on some kind of hat, which is the point of a Mad Hatter’s tea party, right?

After they had eaten their fill, the ladies retired to the family room to play Natalie’s favorite party game, Truth or Dare with the fuzzy Toss it to me game cube. And the party ended with a showing of Mirror, mirror.

I think it was a huge success. Of course, here it is, two days later and I haven’t returned the tea cups or put away the many tea pots.
Maybe I’ll have the servants do that, since I am the Queen after all.
Right.

Chime in–an update

It feels like I’ve been working forever trying to get this chime choir going. Feels like that, even though it’s only been a few months. Sometimes I have a hard time not understanding why other people don’t catch my enthusiasm, and then get discouraged because things turn out to be so hard.

In May, I realized that I wanted to start a hand chime choir in the school. I have a few friends who are directing chime choirs, and they were very encouraging. Two of them even got grants for their schools from the same foundation. “Great!” I thought, “I’ll just write a grant, people will give me money to buy a set of chimes, and we will start a hand chime choir in the school. Jenna and John can be in it, and this will be SO MUCH FUN!” So I wrote and sent in a grant proposal. And another grant, and another grant. In fact, I spent many hours in the summer searching for grants that we would even qualify, and applying. No, we are not a title 1 school, and, no, we don’t have a certain percentage of free or reduced lunches, no, I do not have an established program, no, I am not a full time teacher, no, I’m not looking to update our technology. All I want is $5,000 to buy chimes, folders, music, and maybe one of those cool conducting batons. I am surrounded by wealthy people here in the Highland/Alpine area, why is it that I can’t find someone who would like to donate to my cause?

Soon after I started applying for grants, I started getting rejection letters from grant sites. Letters like,

“Dear Mrs. Erickson,
Thank you for your interest in (insert name).
Unfortunately, it is not possible for (insert company name) to provide support at this time. While we recognize the value of the program for which you are seeking funds, economic circumstances and the numerous requests we receive throughout the year limit the amount of resources we have to support worthwhile causes and organizations. ”

I started asking for smaller amounts of money. $2,000 instead of $5,000, And looking for different companies to request grant money. There were so many hoops to jump through, forms to find, numbers to get right, the process seemed endless.
At our first PTA meeting in August, the PTA president gave me a letter that had come to the school. It was from a certain company that I had sent in a grant request, the one that TWO of my chime choir directing friends had told me was the one where they got money for chimes. I opened the letter with excitement.

Dear Paige,

Thank you for your recent application for a —- grant. This letter is to notify you that we are unable to approve your grant application.
Blah, Blah, Blah.

The bright spot in this quest has been the set of loaner chimes I was able to get from the Guild of English Handbell Ringers. I actually met the ladies in charge of the chime grant back at the bell conference I attended in June, and she gave me hope at that time that I would be receiving the loaner 3 octave set. But then I didn’t hear anything all summer, and had to get really naggy in August and ask if I could indeed borrow the set or not. Well, my nagging paid off, and I was able to pick up the set of chimes from their storage place in Brigham City in August, right before school started.

But then when I dragged those chimes to Back to school night all prepared to set up my choir and get sign ups, the band teacher was kind of snippy with me and the principal said we’d have to work things out and go through the district music program. Sigh. So, I tried to get kids interested, even though I didn’t have the details, and wasn’t sure if I could even DO a choir. Well, eventually I got approval from the District to run the program, but one of the qualifications is that I have 20 kids in choir. I wrote up a letter to go home to all the parents to be sent via email. Sadly, I don’t know how many parents actually read their email, and when the Friday before we were to start, the office lady told me that there were two kids signed up. No worries, I told myself, maybe people will just come and bring their sign up sheet on Tuesday morning.

Since our school has two tracks, and you want the opportunities for extra-curriculars to be offered to everyone, the before school things are early and earlier. So the first session of band/orchestra and my bell choir were set up for 7 am. I got up early and hurried everyone along so we could be there before 7. Jenna and John were excited, and helped me carry in the cases of chimes, and we set up the tables. But no one came. Not a single kid. Trying to hide my disappointment, I told the kids that we might need some signs to point the way to the gym stage, since I hadn’t been clear on the email that went out. They were happy to make signs advertising the chime choir and go and hang those up. We did a bit of ringing with just the two of them, and then I let them go be with their friends before school started.

The 8:00 class looked a bit more promising. I had two kids make their way to the stage, and they were excited. I got their names and their phone numbers from their moms, and we waited a few minutes to see if any more kids were coming. These two kids were so excited; they could not wait to start. I had met them both at back to school night and they both have had music lessons. So, I got started with how to ring, how to dampen the sound, how to ring one and damp the other, some counting, and some chords, and that was about all we could do with only two kids.

After we were done and the chimes were put away (I taught them how to do that, too), I talked to the principal and asked him what he thought. Should I switch the 7:00 class to after school? Should I allow 3rd graders? Any suggestions? He said I should think about changing the earlier class to after school instead, and maybe send home another note. So, with my tail dragging, I went and made copies of my information/sign up sheet, and put them in the boxes of the 4th-6th grade teachers to send home, to try to get more kids interested. Then when I went home (tired, since I had to get up so early), I rewrote my letter to the parents and said I would allow 3rd graders IF their kids had previous piano lessons, and we would change the time to afternoon for the early group.

The next morning, I dragged the kids out of bed to get there by 7:00 AGAIN, with the same result. This time I had them help me put music in the bell folders (special folders that I purchased with my non existent budget) and we tried a few chords and even some scales, if we leap frog past each other. The same two kids came to the 8:00 class, too. We figured out Twinkle, Twinkle, and played as many notes as we could cover in one practice song.

Pitiful.

Since I had said in the email that we would be holding class in the afternoon, I had to actually go back to the school and HOLD class. Although that was just wishful thinking on my part. Again.

Do you see how by now I’m starting to get really Discouraged? No grants, no money, and no students. Why was it that I thought I could do this?

I went to bells rehearsal that night, still discouraged and not really wanting to tell my friends about my failure, because they have been so supportive and so excited for me to start this thing. I had to admit my failure and tell them that I had tried to direct a choir of 2. My friend Janeen, who started her school choir a few years ago, said, “Do you have the ‘Ring and Sing’ books?” Well, no, I don’t really have anything. “Well, every year, I teach my kids how to use the easy ring and sing, and then we walk about to the other classes and play a song for them. It gets kids interested, and it’s more exposure for the chime choir.” She even told me I could borrow her ring and sing books.

The next day, I was reading my friend Tess’s blog, and she wrote something that really hit me. Even though she’s talking about a book, and I’m talking about a choir, the idea is the same. She said,
“I am so glad I didn’t give up! For all the times this story was rejected … for all the times my earlier work was rejected … for all the times I wondered if I could really have a book published on a national level — I am so glad I didn’t quit. Dreams take time. But here’s the thing, If you keep trying and learning and believing, they will come true.”

I could cry. In fact, I did.

Dreams take time. Yes, it seems like I’ve been working on this project forever, and it feels like it’s never going to get off the ground, but in reality, it’s only been since May that I’ve been trying to get this thing going. I have these chimes for a year, and hopefully by the end of this year, I can get funding to buy another set for next year. And hopefully I can get 20 kids interested enough in joining a chime choir that I can run this program. If I don’t? Well, maybe I can make it work with less kids. I don’t know.

I do know that this week has been difficult, but I haven’t given up. I will get creative, and I will keep on trying. There are more grants to apply for, and more children to reach.

Maybe for Christmas I’ll buy myself half a set of chimes. Maybe I will go door to door to seek donations. Maybe we’ll… well, I’m open to suggestions. But I am not ready to give up. Dreams take time, and I need to be patient.

I can do this.

Superhero Party

Our son turned 9, and that warranted a party.
We decided that a superhero party would be “Super!”.

The boys all dressed as their favorite superhero.
When they first got here, I had them draw their own superhero, as kind of a filler activity before all the kids got here.
Of course, some kids are just super even without a costume, and they are welcome, too.

Since the party started around dinner time, we decided to jump right into the food. Besides, do I want a bunch of superheros around who are hungry? I don’t think so. We had superdrinks,

chips, breadsticks, veggies, and lots and lots of pizza.

I actually over planned on the pizza, but that’s ok, we don’t mind eating leftover pizza.

The super heros gobbled up their fill of food, and were ready for some activity.

We had a few training areas set up, where they were to practice throwing small objects (sponges through a hula hoop), jump over buildings (cardboard boxes) and shoot bad guys.

They also had an obstacle course (around the playground)

They seemed to lose some of their secret identity and stick with their regular clothes as the activities wore on. I mean, who really wants to run and swing in a cape? Once they were all limbered up and trained, we did some races.

I always seem to forget how quickly these kids plow through all the planned activities, but that was no problem. We let them just play. They got out all the scooters, did some balance work, and practiced their flying on the trampoline.

As it was beginning to get dark, I herded them into the house, and we did some present opening, cupcake eating, and watched a little Spider Man.

And more pizza, too. Had to break out the pizza just in case some of our super heros hadn’t eaten enough, or were hungry from their intense workout. And some of them were hungry again. One young hero ate 4 cupcakes, I think.

We then went to the basement for some pinata power. Unfortunately, our pinata couldn’t hold up to the weight of the candy and the hitting, and promptly broke from it’s holder after about two hits. I tried to string it up again, but it met with the same demise. It didn’t break open, just fell down. I ended up just shaking all the candy onto the floor, and the kids went wild.

Those kids don’t really care how the candy is delivered, so it was all good.

Even though they wore me out with all their super-ness, one little boy was very pleased with his party!

The first of many BYU related posts

BYU fall semester starts today.

We helped Cole move into his new dorm home on Wednesday so he could be there for freshman orientation. After me asking and nagging to get his room organized and packed.

He packed his bike and belongings into his sweet ride. And by “sweet”, I mean the ’88 Camry that used to be Ryan’s parents. We wonder if the drivers side door or the clutch will go out first. But it’s a perfect car for a kid who we don’t want driving too far or too fast, right?

While the parking situation there at May Hall was not good (too many parents all bringing their kids at the same time), we managed to finally find a place to park and haul Cole’s belongings into the dorm. First he had to check in.

I’m sure they will get this place personalized in no time at all.

After we went to the Wilkinson center to get his student ID card and took him to lunch at the Cougareat, we hugged him and said goodbye.

It’s a bittersweet time for a mother. I have so many hopes and dreams for that kid.
-I hope he meets friends. Good friends. The kind of friends that he will laugh with, cry with, share with, and still be friends with in 10-20 years.
-I hope this job actually happens. He got this ‘great’ job that was supposed to start in June, then has gotten pushed back and pushed back. I hope it really happens, and that it is a job he really enjoys.
-I hope he does well in his classes, and is not overwhelmed. Because of his AP classes, he’s leap-frogging over a couple of things, and starting out with Linear Algebra (math 313 or something like that) and some 200 level programming class. He’s also got American Heritage, Book of Mormon and Psychology.
-I hope he gains confidence in himself. He is a wonderful kid, and he’s going to be a strong and secure man someday.
-I hope he dates and has fun. I’m all about the fun, and those years at BYU I had the most fun of my life. Yes, it was hard, and often times stressful, but there’s really no other time in a young adult’s life when they can explore, learn, meet people and have new experiences than in college.
-I hope he remembers all we have taught him. Remember who you are and what you stand for!

And so many other things. In my heart, I know he will be fine and be safe, but my head still worries about him. Does he have enough money? Did we teach him well enough? Will he be lonely? Will he be organized enough to not get behind in his classes?

Thankfully we all have cell phones and I can text or call him, and he’s really only a half hour drive away.

He came home last night for dinner and to pick up a few things that he had forgotten. He told us a bit about his freshman orientation, the meetings and socials, and church in his new BYU ward. He wanted applesauce and pears so he could eat in his room and not always in the Cannon Center for every meal. He also brought home a couple of shirts that had ended up in his stuff but weren’t his. He seemed excited about today and all that would happen.

I will continue to worry and pray and call and do whatever I need to do to help him succeed, just as I do for my other kids, I’ll just worry a bit more since I don’t have him living here in our home.

Good luck, Cole, and enjoy your FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!

Yep, we’re different, all right

It’s been almost a week with our new ‘daughter’, Larissa. She seems to be adjusting well and fitting in nicely. Soon the newness will wear off for all of us and we’ll hopefully just consider her one of us. Right now, I’m still trying to ‘make a good impression’. That basically means I’m not yelling at my kids, I’m folding laundry, I’m making dinner every night, and trying to keep up on the war against clutter. In a way, it’s kind of like you would feel if you were being filmed for a reality tv show, only we have an audience of one. I want her to think we are organized, nice people. (I don’t know why I try, she’ll soon learn that while we ARE nice, we are NOT organized.)

It was nice to read her blog and NOT see anything about how insane her host family is. No lamenting about how she got the lamest family ever, so that was reassuring to me. She did list a lot of differences, however, between America and Germany. As I read over her list, I can agree, that yes, all of her observations are true.

She said,

Well, this is a short list of all things which are different here (okey, actually there are too many things to write them on this blog, but these are the things I regognized immediately):

Evereything is bigger (cars, houses, meals, shopping centers, school, streets)
You do everything by car (including the 5 minute walk to your freinds house)
People eat differently (the meals are just different, I can’t explain it :D)
You do what your teacher tells you to do
You don’t always have to raise your hand if yo want to say something in class
If you need to go to the restroom or need to make a call in class you need to use a hallway pass. If you don’t use the hallway pass, you get extra credit (=better grades)
You (at least at my school) can look up your grades, teacher’s comments, schedule etc on the internet
People here are just friendly. The neighbor that you don’t even know says “hi” when you see him, everybody helps you when you need help – with a smile 😀
Everything’s easy going (except school, but now I also saw that it isn’t hard to get a good grade if the teacher just see’s that participate a little little bit)
If you buy something you usually look at the price. Let’s say, something costs 1.50$. You will always pay more than the prays say’s because of taxes!
Here are many fast food restaurants (but I guess that’s not new)
All meals taste very good, milkshakes are sweeter than in Germany, salads taste better etc. (Today there was a girl, my host sister’s friend and she bought a pizza in the school’s cafeteria, but she didn’t like. I wanted to try it. I liked it and told her: “Hey what’s up with this pizza? It tastes normal, just like German pizza.” She said, she would never buy a pizza in Germany. What I want to say: American pizza must taste really good, because I even liked the American “bad” pizza :D)

While I wouldn’t know about school in Germany, I would agree with her assessment. Yes, we are friendlier here, and yes, things are bigger. When she saw our Suburban in the garage, she just about fell over. Yes, welcome to Utah, home of large families and large cars.

I smell fresh backpacks

We had kind of a bumpy start to the school year.

With a new exchange student, there are a whole new set of things to do. We picked Larissa up on Saturday afternoon.

She is a very nice girl from Germany, and her English is GREAT. I need to practice my German, but I don’t really have a need to speak German, because her English is SO much better than my rusty German. We’ll work on that, though. By Sunday afternoon, we were putting her to work making pies with the girls.

Monday morning, we were off to try to register her. There was some confusion, as the doctor who had done her TB test hadn’t given us the proper form, and we left her passport at home, but after a little bit of shuffling and a rescue from Cole, we got her done at the district office. Then we went to the high school. We were sandwiched in with all the other parents and student who were trying desperately to change their schedule to get into that one class, so there was a lot of waiting. When we got in to the first counselor, she gave us some grief about the TB test, too. Ugh. But she put her in the system and sent us over to wait for another counselor to help build her schedule. Since she is in 10th grade, he put her in to the typical sophomore schedule (SOPHOMORE–Anyone from Brighton remember Mr. McCallister’s whole speech about the “wise fool”?), which includes health, English, History, PE. She is also taking Chemistry, French 3, and dance. There was one 1/2 year class we couldn’t work out, so she ended up with Child Development 1, which didn’t thrill her, but maybe by second semester we can work that one out.

By then it was noon, and I was already worn out. But after making lunch for the family (what? The oven decided it’s done and won’t light anymore? Typical appliance behavior when Ryan is out of town —toaster’s giving us trouble, too, by the way), we headed to the bank to get her more money, since registration had taken all of her cash. That didn’t work out so well, and we aren’t sure how to actually get money with her ATM card, but we will work that out soon. She did have enough to buy the few things she needed at Walmart.

Soon after that, it was time for back to school night, time to find classes and meet teachers. Thankfully, I talked Cole into taking Megan and Larissa to the school to walk around and find all the classes. I don’t really know how to navigate that school anyway, and I was glad that he took them.

Our night before school starts dinner? At McDonald’s. We wanted to see where Cole’s been working, and he needed to pick up his check. I used the oven not working as an excuse to take the kids out.

This morning, I got everyone up early enough to get a couple of kids showered. I put Natalie’s hair up in hot rollers, but it was straight after 10 minutes. Don’t know why I bothered.

John picked his own clothes, and wanted his newly cut hair styled in a “duck butt”. Ahem. I think the proper term would be “duck tail”, but whatever, he’s cute no matter what you call it.

Jenna, who has been sick with a cold or something all weekend, was crying and upset. She said her stomach hurt and she felt like throwing up. I hope it was just anxiousness and I sent her to school. I feel so bad, but I really don’t know what’s wrong, and I don’t want to set a bad habit of staying home everytime she’s nervous or upset about something. If she really is sick, she’ll call me and I’ll go get her, but I didn’t want her to miss the first day of school! I didn’t even get a picture of her in the morning. (I checked on her during school and her teacher said she seemed fine. She also seemed happy and healthy when she came home, so I hope it was just nerves.)

Megan, who is such a procrastinator, wore sloppy clothes because, as she put it, “I don’t have a SINGLE shirt!”. In my defense, I asked her what she needed for school, and she said jeans. I did buy her jeans, new underwear, shoes, and a shirt or two. She just can’t ever find anything. This one also didn’t have a lunch made, didn’t have the parking sticker on the car, and made me late so i missed the whole breakfast at the bus stop, waving to the kids and taking pictures. But she did drive the truck to school, so hopefully she and Larissa made it to class on time.

But they are all gone, for now, at least. I expect a call from Jenna anytime now. Cole is upstairs asleep. He can move into Helaman halls at BYU tomorrow.
Cole’s BYU job, of course, is postponed again. Worried about that one. But there’s really nothing I can do about it, so I’m trying to be calm. His job today is to clean up his room. His stuff is mixed with John’s stuff, and it’s pretty much all a mess. We have got to get all his stuff together so we can move him into his dorm tomorrow. Ack! I can’t even think about that right now!

So, Happy Back to school 2012!

The more the merrier

Things are busy around here. Beds moving, closets getting cleaned out, school supplies being purchased. It’s not your average back to school time. You see, we’ve got Cole leaving for college next week, and that involves a lot of organizing, purchasing, and getting ready. Since he will be living at BYU for most of the year, he won’t be using his room quite so much, so we are moving John into that room. Poor Cole now needs to clean out his closet full of STUFF that he’s been collecting for the past 10 years. Sadly, he doesn’t have any of those nice purging genes (messy parents, both of us), and sorting and organizing are NOT high on his list of talents.

On the other end of the house, we need to vacate John from Jenna’s room. When a girl reaches a certain age, you see, it’s no longer cool to room with your brother. I’m amazed at the amount of legos, star wars figures, stuffed animals, etc, that I have pulled out of that closet.

My trash can is uberfull, and we just took a truckload of bags full of stuff to DI.

Why the rush, you may ask. Well, we are expecting a new addition in the Erickson household. Calm down, calm down. It’s not a baby. We are hosting an exchange student for the school year. Her name is Larissa and she is from Germany. She arrives on Saturday.

You might say we’ve been working up to this decision for a long time, with our short term exchange students from all over. We had a host family coordinator contact us about a year ago, to ask if we would like to host a student. While it wasn’t possible then, when she called again last winter, we thought that we might have the basement finished, and with Cole leaving, that might be a possibility. We chose our top three choices from the profiles we were given, and then didn’t hear much. In April, we found out that our school district only accepts a certain number of students, and they really have to be in the top of their class to come, and none of our picks made the cut. No problem, I thought. WE don’t really NEED that extra stress in our lives. But our coordinator was persistent, and eventually got slots transferred from other schools who were not using them. We picked from a short list again, and eventually we found out that our pick had been accepted, and we would actually be host families for a German girl.

Yes, I did have a little say in her nationality. If I’m going to have someone in my home for that long, I want someone I can actually communicate with, even if it means dusting off my rusty German. We’ve spoken on the phone, and she seems like a really sweet girl. Her English is also very good, so that’s a plus.

She comes in on Saturday. School starts on Tuesday, but we’ll have to try and register her on Monday and hope we can get some classes for her that she likes.

Besides all the cleaning and organizing, which we aren’t loving, we are excited to have her here. Since she’s here for school, not just a ‘vacation’, we won’t feel like we need to entertain her all the time. Hopefully she will be making friend and meeting people, and it will all be a great experience for all of us.

In the meantime, wish me luck. I still have the rest of the closet to clean out, beds to move, carpets to clean, and bathrooms to organize. In addition to that, I kind of promised one little boy I would take him to Seven Peaks SOME time before school starts.

Graduation!

Yesterday was Lone Peak’s class of 2012 graduation.

How is it that we could go from this little boy to that high school graduate?

I don’t even want to go there. I mean, really, it seems like it was only a few years ago that we were celebrating MY high school graduation.

Cole’s graduation was at UVU, the first one of the day, 9:00 am, so our goal was to get there by 8 am to get a seat. Cole was supposed to be there at 8 am to practice and line up, too. We let him drive his own car so we wouldn’t slow him down.

I got this banner for him, and it even came in time. Hooray! Not sure what we’re going to do with it NOW, but we’ll let Cole decide, I guess.

Since Lone Peak lets all the graduates sit with their friends, it was pretty hard to find Cole in the SEA of graduates,

(Think you can pick him out?)
but I snuck a peak and a photo when they took their caps off for the National Anthem.

The talks were good, (and short) and I’m sure they hurried to get through all 600 plus graduates. I didn’t get great pictures, just a blur of him walking across the stage, but I might get better shots from my dad. And by 10:30, it was over. They moved their tassels from one side to the other, and they were done!

Then we had to meet up in the sea of graduates and family outside.

Thanks to cell phones, we eventually did find him so that we could congratulate him and take some pictures!

Since Ryan and I feel like WE earned this graduation, we decided to put on the hat, too. Plus, Ryan said he had NO pictures from when he graduated. I doubt that, but now we have this one.

We are SO proud of all of our kids. It’s a joy to see how different they all are, and we rejoice in their accomplishments. We are proud to say that Cole will be going to BYU in the fall, and we hope it’s a wonderful experience for him.

PROM!

At the beginning of the school year, I informed my son that it was his duty as a man to ask two at least two girls out this year, and one of those dates had to be prom. Whether he wanted to or not.

Unreasonable of me? No. Boys need to practice their social skills and need to know that it’s ok to ask a girl out, not just ‘hang out’ with friends. And if boys aren’t asking out girls, the girls are sitting at home, dreaming of going to prom, but NOT going. I also informed him that I would be financing the operation, so it’s not like he would be spending his own money (I’m laughing to myself as I type this, by the way. ‘his own money’–what is that?)

Once the new year rolled around, I found out when Prom would be, and started to talk it up. We got more serious by the end of March. He would have to ask someone before spring break. I even took away the pressure to be creative, as I said, “Just choose who you want to ask, and I’ll come up with the rest”. I love this creative stuff, anyway. So, once he told me who he was going to ask, I was at the grocery store and saw the giant tub of cheese balls. This could work, I thought.

And if he didn’t like my idea, I knew they wouldn’t be wasted. I told Cole the idea, and he came up with this little poem.

Hidden inside the container was a capsule with Cole’s name on it, so she would have to search or dump out the cheese balls to find out who it was from. Not TOO complicated and not over the top, but still kind of cute. Then, under cover of darkness, the stealthy little brother (who had an encounter with some asphalt that day, darnit. And notice how he’s in his pajamas?)got to leave the package on the doorstep and ring the doorbell and run.

A few days later, this little mouse appeared on the doorstep.

Cute!

So the date was on.

I then spent the next month encouraging him to find a friend who was also going to prom to double date with, since these things are much more fun with a group. After he was done with his big trip to Nationals for Academic Decathlon, we had to get serious.
Time to:
rent a tux –where the guy was totally grumpy and voiced his displeasure that 3 schools in the area were all having prom the same weekend, and where there were only 3 styles of 38 long to chose from

pick a coursage–where I went to the flower shop TOO LATE and they practically laughed me out of the store and told me they would not, could not, make me a corsage for the dance the next night. So shoot me! We have been busy around here and I put it off! I ended up ordering from the Flower Patch in Orem, and called in a favor from my dear friend Robin, who picked up the corsage and brought it to us on Friday afternoon.

Photos--They didn’t want just the plain old dance photos, so I arranged for a photographer to meet them at a park in Draper, after they had picked all the girls up. I was working on Friday, but when I checked my phone at the end of the day, I saw a text from the photographer letting me know that she could NOT make it because her husband was having a kidney stone attack, and she had to take him to the hospital. Always thinking I have to solve every problem myself, I spent the next hour trying to rearrange my life so that I could meet them at the park and take pictures. I finally had it all worked out, including many texts to hubby and friends to see who could help out with baseball and snacks and the other kids, when my son said, “Oh, Ethan’s dad said he could do pictures.” Nice to know, kid.

Cole’s group had planned a fun date for the night before prom, where they went to a dance class and learned the tango. Unfortunately, Cole’s PE teacher had also planned long jumping or pole vaulting or something for PE on Thursday, wherein Cole sprained his ankle. Great. He went dancing anyway, and could barely walk when he came home. Ice and ace bandage time.

The group changed from 6 to 4 when one of the guys was very sick on Thursday, but I guess he got well enough to go by Friday, so they were back to 6. Good thing we had both a car and a suburban at the ready. ( He ended up driving the suburban, which unfortunately had my snacks for the baseball game and John’s mitt in the back. Oops.)

In the end, everything turned out fine. While I don’t have any pictures of his date or the group (yet), I do have pictures of Cole looking so spiffy in his tux.

When he got home, he was happy and excited and said the date had been GREAT. I didn’t get too many details because it was one in the morning and I was asleep. This morning, I woke him up at 7:30 to go take a practice AP test. Even though it’s Prom weekend, the boy still has to study, right?

So, I am glad I stuck to my guns and ‘made’ him go to Prom. It’s the only one he will get to go to, and I hope he always has fond memories of high school and his senior Prom.

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