More end of school year stuff

Evelyn was part of the 6th grade world fair. She and her friends were assigned Egypt.  They made the cutest and most informative slide show.

Seth got the Noble Knight.

I took Evelyn and Seth to play with Vivien and Thea.  They had a blast.

Ada's helping me clean my sewing room.  We found a closed box that turned out out to be the iron I ordered 4 years ago. That's how long it's been since I really had time for hobbies!

Syl

Vinn

Beautiful almost 12 year old with our giant snowballs.

 

Wilcox Family Christmas

 

My parents hosted their Wilcox Family Christmas on Christmas afternoon.  My Mom made hand stitched the edges of throw blankets for each person.  They turned out really cute.  Because we have a cold in the family, we wore masks and had a great time.

For the talent show this year, Ada showed some of her art.

Seth recruited me to help him sing jingle bells.

Sam played the flute for everyone.

Evelyn played the piano.

These cute nativity actors.

Thea's leg in the left corner

Evelyn, Ada, Seth, Jordan, Michelle, Aubrey

Vivien, Sam, Devin, Isaiah

Sam conked out hard.  We hadn't even finished the Nativity yet and he fell asleep.  That's what happens when you only sleep 6 hours over two days I guess!

Seth was a wiseman.

Sam was the shepherd and Thea was his sheep. Yes, I know his mask is down.  I wasn't about to yell at him during the nativity.... great spirit killer.

Ada was a shepherd too.

Miss Aubrey did so well with being the narrator!  She has some problems with reading because of some of her diagnoses, and she pulled off the Nativity so amazingly well!  And take a look at our 'Donkey-corn'.  

Cup stacking race.

Handy man

Jer's favorite desk chair was absolutely disintegrating, so he recovered it.  It looks spectacular.  It was his first time reupholstering anything and he did a great job.  He needs to not use his pocket knife to cut off his fingers next time though!

 

January

 

It's become popular this month to go visit frozen Utah Lake.  My friend took these pictures of the ice stacks.  I want to take the kids down, but I just haven't gotten to it.  Hopefully we will before it all melts.

Our neighbors, and Jer's ministeree family are trying to rebuild their house.  New Year's Eve they had set off fireworks and put them in their garbage can next to the garage.  At 2:30 in the morning, one of the single guys in our neighborhood was coming back from a party and saw their house on fire.  He pounded on the door and woke them up.  They were able to evacuate and got their kids to sleep in the neighbor's house across the street while the fire department put out the fire.  It didn't look too bad, but now that they have taken off the roof, you can see that all the rafters were burnt from the inside.  God knows what we need.  He knew that that young man needed to come home at that late hour, and he knew that they needed neighbors that were willing to help them at that time.  For now, they are living in a hotel until the  damage is fixed, but the construction is being held up because of building permits.

This is my 2020-2021 survival kit.  It has everything I have needed this year.  Thermometer and handsanitizer station for the daycare.  Disinfectant wipes and sprays after they leave.  Diaper station. Left over food for the food pantry from the Parent Organization.  Shoe drawers. And mask station.  I have made about 200 homemade masks in the last year. (Thank you Amy Hansen for the wonderful pattern).  Some I gave to the school, some I gave to the daycare, but about a hundred of them sit in the bags on the the side of the cupboard.  If we leave the house, we grab a clean mask.  When we come home, we put it in the dirty bag.  When the bag is 3/4 full or at the end of the week, I wash it.  Unfortunately they don't dry very well, so we hang them out to dry to keep them from molding.

I bought the cupboard for daycare, but I was so much more grateful for it when COVID hit.

This dress is one that I made for Ada.  Evelyn was so excited when I pulled out all of the sized 12 dresses from storage for her.  She's been wearing dresses and smiling for a month.

Appropriate

I inherited my Grandma Wilcox's quilting frame.  I hadn't used it until this week.  I think it's very appropriate that the first time I use it is to help a friend whose son was getting his Eagle.  Grandma would very much love the fact that it was for scouting and for a neighborhood friend. 

A grateful boy

And Lala is back with her boy.

Poor LaLa

All the stuffing has been destroyed, so I restuffed her while and anxious Seth didn't go more than two feet from me until I was done.

Curtain

I'm helping my Ecuadorian family make curtains. Their landlord feels a little weird and they have a 13 year old daughter at home without any curtains on the window. We decided to make some period one down one to go.

Ada's "Easter" Dress

I finally finished Ada's Easter dress.  She loves the ruffles on the back.  She picked out the material and pattern... I made the pattern bigger because they didn't have one in her size. 

Easter dresses

So Costco put out their Easter dresses. My girls got all dreamy eyed... So I decided to actually make the dresses that we picked out fabric for two years ago. Here's Evelyn's.  Now on to Ada's.

Halloween Weekend

Halloween happened the same weekend that we got our new exchange student, Naoki Shitanda from Japan.  I picked him up Thursday night and dragged a very tired 15 year old student to our church Halloween party.  We had chili, watched the YM direct piñatas and I took him home early to sleep.  Friday, I took him to BYU for him to bus up to a class on Native Americans in Salt Lake, then I drove our carpool to school and stayed for the Halloween parade (don't you love Sam on his broomstick?!) and for Sam's Halloween party. 

Sam as Harry Potter.

Ada as Professor McGonagall.

Sam's class.

Baby did not want to sit in the stroller... and he kept getting into the crayons, so I finally just gave him some recycle paper and let him have at it.

Evelyn stuck as close by Sam as she possibly could.  She played the games with him, made the crafts with him, and he gave her the spider hat that he made.

Saturday morning, Ada had a horseback riding lesson.  Naoki said he wanted to come, so the three of us headed out.  I showed him through the stables and showed him how to pet the horses.  He jumped about a mile when one of them whinnied.  Ada's horse, Cupcake, was STUBBORN!  She did not want to follow any of the commands that Ada was giving, and definitely did not want to walk.

They made peace in the end.

Then we went shopping for Naoki to find things for his parents and movie club.  We finally got around to carving pumpkins about 3 pm... on Halloween day.  Yeah, we were late.  Naoki thought it was a hoot.

Heading out to trick-or-treat. Ada and Sam were from Harry Potter.  Evelyn and Seth were from Rainbow Brite.  Naoki wasn't sure what we were doing, but by the time we got around the cul-de-sac Jer had convinced him to dress up in our fencing gear and go trick or treating for the first time in his life.  He told me after that it was very funny.

He's a cute sprite.

Seth didn't want to keep walking, he wanted to open all this candy that people kept giving him.  He'd stop any time he noticed his bucket and dig around in it for a while.  We finally ended up putting him in the stroller and pushing him.

Keith, Ada and Laurel

Down the street, the Pirates of the Caribbean return.... they even had a firecracker cannon that they used.

Naoki

Ada saying, "Nice to meet you." (Though that's usually what Evelyn says....)

This pirate kept telling pirate jokes.  The kids thought it was awesome! 

Evelyn, being her spunky self was telling the pirate off for "threatening" to make her swab the deck or something like that.

These two got in a duel... so Sam decided to duel the pirate with his wand... and instead of just pointing it, his boy and fencing self, hit the pirate sword with it and snapped it in half.

Baby was tired of riding and wanted to push the stroller... so Jer, as a joke, got in and the baby just kept on pushing.  The kids thought that was really funny and gathered around pretty quickly.

The loot was a lot smaller this year, thank goodness.  We only went about 1/3 of the way around the ward, didn't get candy at the ward party or at the Wilcox party, didn't go to Jer's work party, and the Robertsons were gone so there was no party there.  There were a couple from school and a couple from our Ward.... and I'm still all candied out.