School Friends

Yesterday morning as I dropped off carpool, I thought to myself "How cool is that that 5 of the 6 kids in this awesome group have older brother's serving missions!!" They've got siblings in England, Bolivia, Argentina, Guatemala, and Ecuador. And the one girl who doesn't have an older brother serving let us know that she's got a cousin on a mission, so she's good too. I'm so grateful for all the good examples around my family and my children. And me! I just love all the families in our neighborhood, the moms and dads are awesome. One of the mom's gave Abi this picture of the temple for her birthday yesterday. Abi put the picture by her bed, the angel holding a candle was given to Abi by my mom for her bday

So that picture was painted by Abi's teacher at church, Sis Chandler, but she had made it to be offered as a gift at an auction during the Salad extravaganza activity/dinner for the ladies in our neighborhood last week. Abi wanted to bid on it, but it came up near the end of the evening and we had to end, so the auctioneer just said "Going going gone" before Abi had a chance to bid. Well I asked the lady who won it, the lovely Aubrey, if I could trade her that painting for a gift I got, cause Abi wanted it. She didn't know Abi wanted it and said no at first, but then when she found out it was for Abi, she took it home, wrapped it, and brought it over to my house for me to give to Abi. That totally made Abi's birthday so special, and it will be a good memory too for Abi to remember Aubrey and to learn from Aubrey's example of thinking of others, and how much it meant to Abi that she thought of Abi more than herself. Anyway, again, I love the mom's in our neighborhood and I'm grateful to call them friends.

A few other things - we went over to Iveth's house last night for Maria's birthday. Nothing like b-day parties at 10pm!!!

They just do it that late cause they wait for the dad to get home from work, which is nice.

I got a picture of a rose this morning, lovely!

And Peter tried to pull himself up today!! Go go Peter!

He's getting so big!!!

One other thing from today - the high school boys all came home laughing! Which was a nice change. Usually they all have scowls and I say "How was school?" and they say "Worst day of my life, what do you think?!?!" - quoting Napoleon Dynamite. So Ethan and Wes were commiserating about how much they don't like wind ensemble. And Hyrum was laughing cause he's so glad he's not in there. And I'm just thinking "Your poor teacher". Both Ethan and Wesley say it's a joke. Wesley is 4th chair trumpet, and Ethan plays the clarinet, and is 4th chair too. Ethan was practicing for his audition tonight though so he could get a better seat. Which is kinda funny, but he just doesn't care or try. And so he doesn't even play the right notes, he just plays "Careless Whisper" the whole time every time for every song. No, he corrected me - it's "just when I get lost. ...which is every song."

And he has to be in Wind Ensemble and Jazz band if he wants to be in Crescent, cause of some deal between the school music teacher and the Crescent producer or something? I don't know, but he'd really rather not get up early everyday of the week for jazz band, but he has to. So tonight as they all raged about band Ethan was making me laugh as he said "I could try to learn the right notes, but I don't want to. You can make me go, but you can't make me participate. He's the one making me do band..." But then he said, as he pretended to break his clarinet on his knee - "Final year, first chair baby!" But he really just pulls it apart. So he's not really being an asset to the Skyline Music Department right now. And again all I can think is "You're poor teacher" and how I'm so glad it's not me there dealing with flippant teenagers all day. But I'm glad that a frustrating music class gives them something to bond over.