Finally Some Free Time Again

 Wow, it's been a long time since I posted anything.  I was assigned to teach a temple preparation class in our ward and not just any class, but a four week class of my own design.  I was tasked with creating the curriculum using any church sources I wanted and design a class for both new members and lifelong members seeking to further their temple experience.  Needless to say, my month was immediately booked.  Every single preschool class time, I went to Kelly's bishop's office, because it's a quarter mile from preschool, and worked on my lesson until it was time to pick him up.  That left the evenings for everything I would normally have done during preschool and it felt quite hectic all month.  I have no regrets, though.  The class went wonderfully and I have never loved and understood the temple, its history, its purpose, and the doctrine taught there as well as I do now.  It really strengthened my testimony of Jesus Christ and his all-encompassing love for us.  Plus, now the curriculum is set - all the slide shows, videos, hand outs, and lesson outlines, etc. so I could teach it again and again with minimal additional effort.  All of that to say, sorry for the long hiatus and let's get to the photo dump, shall we?

Lifetouch, the company that does school photos, has been emailing me trying to get me to buy old pictures of my kids.  No, thank you, Lifetouch, there's a reason why I didn't buy those prints in the first place.  However, thank you, Lifetouch, for the adorable collages you've created for each of my kids!  I'll just screenshot those and be done.

Isn't it so amazing to see how much these kids change in so little time??  But you know what doesn't change much - Benjamin's shirts.  I think it's hilarious that he wore white three years in a row and then only barely changed for the next four after that.  The kid really takes after me.

The ridiculous hat picture in the last one of Benjamin's is a senior tradition - wear something ridiculous because it only shows up on your ID card.  They use a different picture for the yearbook.

Benjamin is in the middle of preparing his missionary application.  For that purpose he had to get his hair cut.  Not something he wanted, but missionaries aren't allowed long hair.  It took the barber 70 minutes to cut it, but the result was quite nice. 

Peter loves to play video games with his big brothers.  It's really cute to see them together.

The weather has been so unbelievably mild this winter.  Some days it's been quite hot by our standards.  On one such day the boys asked to have a water balloon fight!  Water balloons in February!  They had a great time and came in completely soaked.

Bella and Christian competed in yet another year of Piano Federation.  Bella felt great about her performance and Christian felt terrible, but in the end, they both got the highest marks a judge can give.  I'm always proud of how much work they put into this competition.  The tradition is that no matter how they did, though, we all go out to eat sushi afterwards.  It makes any bad scores melt away in a sea of soy sauce and miso soup.  No one can stay depressed when you're eating tempura fried banana rolls.

Cutie Peter - he loves to play with the toys at the library.

He has to do chores before screen time.  He regularly vacuums, folds laundry, cleans the bathroom sink and mirror, puts away the groceries, unloads the dishwasher, and puts away his own laundry and toys.  I'm learning from the mistakes I made with the others.  More chores at a younger age would have really benefitted my other kids, I think.  Peter gets a big kick out of getting them done.  He hates doing them but he always feels so good when he's done them, as I often remind him when he's complaining.

Christian had an assignment to go visit the archeology museum at the University of Michigan. Peter wanted to go too and didn't want to take off his iron man costume.  Everywhere we walked people would say, "Oh look, Iron Man is here!"  or "Hey Iron Man, thanks for keeping us safe!"  Peter loved it.  What a great age - go in public dressed as Iron Man and every one just thinks you're adorable, not crazy.  

I was excited to go to the museum, but I couldn't get the parking meters to work for me so I parked without paying and spent the entire time in the museum stressed about it.  We finally left early and I came out to find the parking meter reader writing me a ticket. Luckily he was super nice about it and helped me with the meter and didn't give me a ticket.