Fire Prevention Night

Part of Ada's cadet experience was helping out with the Fire Prevention night for the city.  She had a lot of fun and we went along to support her.  We've never been to one before. It was pretty fun.

The Cadets and instructors

First Aid

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Learning the jaws of life

Seth liked the life flight

Ada helping take off the car door to demonstrate the jaws of life

Teaching fire extinguishers

Teaching extinguishing oil fires.

Grandma and Grandpa Robertson stopped by before Aubrey's birthday party.

Seat belt awareness

Seth got a little football from the ball drop.  They had a net full of balls that they dropped from the fire truck's ladder.  The net wouldn't open so the firefighter pulled out a pocketknife and had to cut it.

 

Misc

Instead of an herb garden this year, I just scattered wildflower seeds.  They started coming up just as that hail storm destroyed everything... but just a couple of weeks later here they are.

Ada said that Seth looked like the Harry Potter Lego characters with a carrot wand.

Here are my mom's and my first "assignment" in our watercolor class.  We were learning the difference between hard and soft edges.  (more water and less water mostly). Mine is the one on the bottom and the one on top is my mom's. I love hers!  It's like a very patterned quilt. Next we're learning about atmospheric colors in a landscape.

 

Ada's Birthday

My Fire Cadet is 17 years old.  I couldn't be more proud of her and the woman she's becoming.  She's working hard and getting to do things that most people don't. So as a celebration of her.... here's a couple of the things that 17-year-old her is up to....

She LOVES FBLA.  She and her friend, Alexx, are co-presidents of the club.  She's learning managerial skills as well as all the professionalism that the business world demands.  She cares about the quality of the work attached to her name and isn't afraid to learn new things to help her with her goals.  Along with organizing and completing presentations, service projects, concessions at sports games, and the school store, she and Alexx will also be running a kids finance club after school at Seth's school.

She's taking guitar, welding, Seminary, her internship, Calculus BC (which is really hard and she's putting in a lot of work), financial literacy, and AP Language.  Her internship and two AP classes take up most of her time.  

She works for my cousin, Tiffany, a couple days a week.  She picks up her 6th grader and hangs out with the 6th and 8th graders until Tiff gets home from work.  Sometimes they play games, sometimes they do homework, but they all love each other and I'm actually kind of excited about the next Bear Lake week we have together.  She also is licensed to be my daycare assistant on school breaks when needed.  

Ada got released as the YW's class president, which is nice while she's so busy, but she's still working on the Family History and Temple committee.  Sometimes she joins us to sing in choir and the choir director loves having a nice strong soprano with us. He's had her sing a couple of solos to accompany the choir too.  It's fun because he never asks me about it.... her just talks to her and arranges it with her (I'm the pianist).  That's when I know that she's getting on her own merits.

I love hearing Ada's more mature singing and piano.  She doesn't have a lot a time for them, but she's come into her mature voice.

She's loving her internship and I have a separate post about that.

Her best friends are Alexx, Rachel, Eleanor, Aubrey, Devin, Jimmy, Brenton, Donnovan, and of course far away cousins and friends like Rachel, Anya, Grace, Mariah, Hannah, Sage, Maisy and Wesley.

So, the Tarkington family came to town for their Fall Break.  Eli had his 17th birthday on the way out, and it was Aubrey Bingham's birthday too.... so, we got together for cake and Marg suggested that we go The Wild Robot movie.  It was very sweet, and I was in tears. We basically had the theater to ourselves, and it was fun.

Cute Cadet

Fire prevention activity with the city.

Ada's marvelous YW's leader (Rachel Libutti) asked if she could decorate "Ada's" car for her birthday.  It was so cute and I'm grateful for wonderful women like her that show their love for their neighbors. (I will serve her in turn... Her older daughter has recently decided that she likes singing time in Primary and says hi to me every time she's out walking her dog.)

I asked her if anyone honked at her.  She said that no one was out when she went to early morning seminary with Sam and Alexx, and because she had an FBLA meeting after school she missed most of the traffic.... but one person honked at her and scared Alexx to death on the way home from school.

 

Things that make me happy

I love our nightly scripture study.  Sometimes it's hard, but most of the times it gives us a minute to laugh and talk together.

Sam brought back these noodles for me as a gift from a Phillipino? family in Ireland.  He'd been talking about noodles and they gifted this one to him.

Tired cat

Tired girl with cat

Ada made these in her welding class.  The class started a little uncomfortable (she didn't know anyone and she's the only girl in the class), but I'm so proud of her and how well she's taking uncomfortable things and moving forward to learn new skills and make new friends.

One of the perks of doing daycare.... on calmer days the little girls like to "help" me.  Sometimes that's moving laundry to wash their bedding, cleaning toys, repairing books.  Their favorite is to pretend that my yard is a baby and they're taking care of the "baby" while I frantically try to finish my project before everything gets tangled.  It's so funny.  This was while I putting kids down for naps.  All the kids lay down and then I sit with them while the 2 year olds fall asleep and any 4-5 year olds that are still awake come upstairs with me afterwards.

This was during General Conference.  We had a first this year.  The YW all got together to have french toast while they watched the Saturday Morning session.  Ada and Evelyn loved it.  It was really quiet with only 2 kids watching with us.  Then we joined my parents for the afternoon sessions.  Ada, Jer and I popped out for a little bike ride and to add some paint to the library between sessions.  Sunday morning, Evelyn made her traditional "tent" though she's very much too big for her favorite spot.  Then we went to the Robertson's for the Sunday afternoon session.

I had to get a picture of Sam watching Uncle Brad and eating his Cadbury chocolate from Ireland.

Notetaker... Ada did a spectacular job taking down notes and had lots of good things to say when we were talking about it later.

We had a busy day and decided to pick up sandwiches for dinner.  These two were my helpers.

Ada's loved gardening this year.  We're going to have to look up some tips for next year.

This cat decided that Evelyn's scripture case was like a box.... If I fits I sits... It made it hard not to interrupt scriptures, but it was funny.

We drove the Alpine loop the other day and these guys were so funny.

These are Judy's dad's rocks from the different mines that he worked in.  It's fun for me too because my great grandpa was the engineer in at least two of the mines that Judy's family worked in at the same time.

Painting between sessions... My mom painted a castle, knight, unicorn.... I'm working on the starry starry night sky.... Ada's painting the house front with a dinosaur and stained glass window.  It's going to be so cute.  She going to add a dragon, vines and flowers in the windows and a telescope in one of the windows. 

 

Fall Music

 

So Sam has been gone and missed many of the Jazz band football games, but he's back and has played at football games, a jr high showcase for incoming students next year, and his regular performance.  He even did a solo for Jazz.  He's learning such cool skills.  He's nervous that when he gets his braces off, he'll have to relearn everything.

Wind Symphony

We didn't get the memo that it was concert black...Jazz band

Evelyn is in Concert orchestra this year and is making such huge progress!  I love showing her how to string her violin and hearing her practice.  Her current new skill is tuning her own instrument.  That's a pretty big deal with strings.