It's birthday time again

I have the best family ever. Seriously my husband rocks. My kids are awesome and I am so grateful for them. My birthday was this weekend- and they sure know how to treat me like a princess! I wasn't allowed to lift a finger- as they waited on me, cleaned, massaged my feet and made me dinner. They are so thoughtful and I am the luckiest girl ever.

Decorating

The house is decorated and now it's time to start getting ready for Christmas. Matt spent Saturday helping my Mom move, so I decided to get Christmas decorations set up while he was gone. Christmas decorating is one of those things that Matt HATES to do, but helps me without complaining, and hates it the entire time. The kids love to help- and they sure did their share! Camden was not the biggest helper, but he made up for it by being so cute and excited about everything we pulled out. "Oh- wow! Awesome! It's perfect!" Now- if I can venture out and get Christmas shopping- we will have an awesome Christmas season.

New Calling

I got a new calling this week and am so excited. I will be in young women's, as a beehive advisor. There are 18 beehives- so we are splitting the beehives into 12 and 13 year old groups. I am really excited to be with Morgan. They sustained me on Sunday, and I had so many people comment about the "priceless look of excitement" on Morgan's face when they read my name. She may change her mind once I have been in for a while, and she realizes I am everywhere that she is. :) They also re-did the beehive class presidencies, and Morgan was put in as the 1st counselor. It was really special that we both got set apart during young women's on Sunday.
I have not been released from scouts yet. When they talked to me about my new calling they said I need to hang around in scouts for a while. They said scouts and nursery are the hardest callings to fill, and they hadn't even talked about any names yet. I have a feeling I will be there for a while! Oh well- I get to hang out with Dillon and Morgan- so it's okay.

Family Night

Last night for family night we had our lesson on being thankful. For our activity, we gave the kids leaves to write things they are thankful for, to put on a tree. They will continue to add things they are thankful for, for the rest of the month. I didn't think Camden would get what being thankful meant. So we were asking the kids what they were thankful for, and Camden shouts out "CANDY and DORA!" I guess he does get it. :)
We told the kids we would add more leaves every family night until the end of the month, and that they could add some on their own, if they thought of something during the week. Logan has added 11 more leaves since family night last night. Today he wrote "rocks" on his leaf, after learning about rocks in school. He said he didn't have room to write igneous rocks, but that's the kind he was talking about. :) All in all not a bad family night. Even though Camden thought my tree was a spider. I have NO artistic talent whatsoever- so I can't blame him. In defense of my tree though, it didn't have leaves yet. Although today he said "The spider has leaves!"

Report cards

The kids got their report cards and did so great! I am really proud of them. Junior High has had a ton more homework than elementary did. Because of that, I was worried that Morgan might get grades like I did my first semester of college. (Not being used to the workload- and too many classes and playing!) Thank goodness she is smarter than me. She got straight A's! She came home telling me all the kids that get paid for each A. Most of her friends get paid $10 an A. Wow! I never was paid, it was just expected, so I kind of feel the same way. We did tell her we would pay $.10 an A. :) For elementary school, the district changed the grading this year and only gives 3's, 2's and 1's. Dillon did great too. I think he got 2.75 in a couple things, but the rest were 3's. Logan got straight 3's. I am especially glad, because after they changed the grading, they said it would be much harder to earn 3's, and they wouldn't give them out very often. Great job kids! Phew.... Now onto second term!

Prayers by Camden

Camden has started saying his own prayers lately, and it is so cute. He'll always say, "Thanks for Dora, thanks for cookies and candy, thanks for Elmo." etc." He'll just open his eyes and look around the room and start saying thanks for anything he sees. Like the other night and he saw a bug crawling and he says, "Thanks for the spider on the ground." Morgan HATES spiders and screams right in the middle. Kind of hard to be thoughtful when that's going on. :)

Logan's soccer

Logan finished his fall soccer season. He loves to play with his friends, and loves being active. He gets to play with the same team again in the spring. He played goalie the last quarter, and he stopped them from scoring 3 times- so he was pretty excited about that.

Logan in his goalie "dress"
The last game, it was his turn to bring a treat. Since it was at 8:30 am, he wanted to bring doughnuts. We bought them for the team, and told him not to take one, because we had a special one for him later. We found this doughnut, and had to get it. I have never seen one this huge!
We should have put something next to it for comparison- but this box usually holds a dozen doughnuts. Of course, he took two bites and was done. Even after all the kids had some, there was more than half of it left. :)