Last week

Starting on Monday (the 23rd):
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(or maybe a couple of days before that)
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When I went to Lethbridge on the weekend of the 20th to dip chocolates with my mom and Marie there was too much fondant and not enough time, so I brought 3 batches home to do myself. Monday morning I drove Jaclyn to seminary at 6:30am, came home and made lunches for the other kids, and by 7am I was rolling fondant. Carmen volunteered to stay home with me and help, which I totally took her up on. Carmen takes an interest and holds talent in all homemaking areas and I was glad all day to have her help me. We got all the chocolates finished by the time I had to pick up Steven and Chloe from school - I never could have done it by myself.
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One thing now missing from our Mondays is horse riding lessons. I've been feeling sick/run-down for a month and I decided it was linked to my being maxed-out so we dropped riding and indoor soccer. Carmen is fine with it and I am grateful grateful that we have our Monday afternoons back. (Chloe is of course ecstatic to be out of indoor soccer.)
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Tuesday:
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Tuesday afternoon Steven made the senior boys basketball team. Two other eighth-graders made the team, but his best friends will be playing one more year of junior ball. The senior team means more travel and tournaments but no games on Thursdays so no conflicts with Carmen and Chloe's choir: Woo-hoo!
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Tuesday night Jaclyn had a special opportunity to go with the Social Justice Club (I only found out she is in this club last week - she tells me Ken knew) from school to sort out Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes headed to 3rd world countries. She and the other students removed contraband items from boxes and she has some helpful hints about how to do a better Christmas box, which maybe she'll share in the comments?
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Wednesday:
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Jaclyn participated in the Grade 9 Open House at the high school. She spoke to the students interested in entering the AP Science and Math programs about the benefits she herself has experienced. I would have liked to have been there (Jaclyn wanting me there - not so much) but I went instead to parent-teacher interviews where I determined that the new "descriptive" report cards the school division wants to switch to are really the worst idea to ever hit report cards. Report cards with no grades. Come on! Steven's science teacher forgot to record a percentage grade on the current "hybrid" report card and I can tell you that the report card meant nothing until the teacher filled in that blank.
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Thursday:
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Carmen is directly below the suit of armor
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Ken stayed home in the morning, trying to burn up some holiday time. (He did it again this morning but there is no way he is going to get all his holidays used by the end of the year - I know, rough problem to have, but the extra vacation time came with the high price of pay cuts, how envious are you now?) Anyhow, he didn't stay home long enough to come to the 5th Grade Medevil Feast and Reader's Theatre, but I had a highly enjoyable time. Carmen has a confidence and dramatic flair that made 'Reader #5' a pivotal role.
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Thursday night I went to the worst continuing education class ever. The speaker informed us at the beginning that she was no expert, and then went on to prove it. What waste of 3 hours and $50.
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Friday:
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Friday started out with the zipper on Jaclyn's winter boots breaking leaving her trapped in a boot that wasn't done up, but also wouldn't come off. I freed her and told her that her next boots are going to be zipper free, because this is 2 years in a row she has needed new boots due to zipper breakage.
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Friday night was dubbed *Fabulous Friday* by the Relief Society (think: Super Saturday). The laurels were invited so Jaclyn brought her knitting and came with me. I was prepared to make all my Christmas cards, but when I opened the prints I'd ordered online through Walmart they were TERRIBLE! For a moment I considered using them anyways, but the color was so off I just couldn't. I left Jaclyn at the church, went home to put the photo on a CD, took the terrible prints back to Walmart where I got excellent customer service and my money back, but not better prints. I then took my photo CD to London Drugs, where I should have gone in the first place, and returned to the church. I enjoyed the dinner and program, but I was still mildly frustrated by my lack of productivity darn it. Jaclyn played a Christmas medley piece on the piano during the program, but with no project to work on we didn't stay any longer, so we went boot shopping. And then to see New Moon which was, um, entertaining. For both of us. At least the couple sitting next to us were also laughing and we didn't make anyone mad.
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Saturday:
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I made the cards. Jaclyn went on her first date (it's been a big week for her, yes?). Steven played hockey. Carmen, Chloe, and I ran the indoor track at the YMCA with a little friend and her mom. Chloe ran 4km with no walking, but Carmen needs new shoes. Maybe I'll get around to that today. After all, we don't have riding lessons.

Coolest Neighbour Ever

(Recent Developments)
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This is our neighbour, Phil. He lives directly next to us. He's friendly and pleasant (and quiet) and a good neighbor. Until recently the only distinguishing thing I could have told you about him is that he needs longer shorts for the gym. I'm embarrassed to write that now, after his kind offer we took him up on yesterday.
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Phil owns his own plane. I know! Trust me, he's my only neighbor in this bracket. Anyhow, he invited us to come to Springbank airport to go for a spin through an official program called Young Eagles where pilots take kids up and give them a taste for flying.
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Phil's plane seats 4 people, so Ken went up with Carmen and Chloe.
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Carmen took the first turn as co-pilot and got to control the plane once Phil got it off the ground. She helped fly to High River where Phil landed the plane and Carmen and Chloe switched seats.
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(Poor Ken didn't get a turn at the controls.)
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I guess when Phil gave the controls over to Chloe she didn't have the arm strength to maneuver the plane (it's a one-handed control for both altitude and direction). Phil suggested she try two hands, and when she reached across her body with the second hand and grabbed on to the stick the plane banked heavily to the left which provided some real excitement until Phil quickly corrected Chloe's turn. (By the time I heard the story it was funny.)
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When the first threesome returned to Springbank Steven and I went up.

(Jaclyn stayed home - too much homework)
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Steven helped pilot the trip south. We were interested and asked questions but Phil told us he was getting a lot fewer "Cool!"(s) and "This is awesome!"(s) from Steven and I than he got from Carmen and Chloe.

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I tried to be more expressive and conversational when I got my turn at the controls, but I still failed to match Carmen's enthusiasm I'm sure. I was nervous to take the controls - not that I was worried I'd crash the plane, but just that I wouldn't do well. I'm glad I didn't let that get in the way of trying because it was fun and interesting.

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Steven was a little bored in the back seat and I can't say I'm sorry because he took some pictures out the windows. Here are the mountains covered in clouds in the late afternoon.

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We flew past Steven, Carmen, and Chloe's school and right over the house of Steven's friend Sean, which we didn't get a picture of.

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Steven's view of the city from the west.

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Steven has been on a commercial flight before, but he way preferred this small plane. As he told Phil, flying commercial is like riding a bus. This was Carmen and Chloe's first time in the air and they loved the bird's eye view of things as well as the feeling of flying. Ken has gone on business trips in a small plane before, but just to exciting places like Saskatchewan. Phil has flown himself and his wife as far as the Caribbean!

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I know Steven has already posted about this on facebook, and Carmen and Chloe can't wait to tell their friends tomorrow. We'll remember this chance we had to fly a plane for a long time.

Have to look at my pictures to see where I've been

I remember my dad laughing about a friend who went on vacation and spent the whole trip behind his camera. He told my dad that he had to come home and watch his own slide show to see where he'd been.

I've had someone home (sick) with me all but one day in the past two weeks and I thought to myself tonight that maybe I'd see if I had any pictures on the camera to see what else has been going on:



A few years ago Steven went trick-or-treating with his friends and at the end of Halloweening they sorted through their candy and decided that since they weren't going to eat the Coffee Crisps they'd use them as weapons instead. Thus began the Halloween Coffee Crisp War. Carmen went out trick-0r-treating with the next generation of essentially the same group this year (younger brothers of Steven's friends) as well as Steven's friends who still trick-or-treat (Steven does not - he wants the candy but is way too old to go out in a costume begging for it). Coffee Crisp Warfare now includes the making of forts before the battle begins (maybe it always did), dividing into teams, and then the mini chocolate bars are hurled back and forth. Carmen was a casualty this year, taking a hit to her eye. When she came home Steven was very interested to know who had done the damage (his friend Triton) and I thought I saw a glimmer of older brother protectiveness, but I'm happy to report Triton didn't get punched in the eye himself at recess over the incident.



By Tuesday Carmen's eye was still a little red, but much better. Better enough to learn how to knit with the laurels. She came wandering into our room where we were working and asked if we would show her how. Jaclyn had just learned that night and muttered something about watch Carmen learn faster than she did. Carmen heard her and predicted she'd learn 20% faster. Which she did.

Carmen is now knitting a pot-holder for a senior sister in our ward.

Steven is lined up in the bottom right hand corner.

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Football came to an end on Saturday. The boys lost in the city championship, which means they won't be moving on to provincials. Bummer. However, later on Saturday night Steven's hockey team won their game with him scoring two of the goals, which certainly put the football loss into perspective.

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On a related subject Chloe just had a conversation with Ken this week about baseball being over, but professional football is still going strong, which overlaps with hockey and then baseball begins again. She wasn't too happy to discover that TV sports are a never ending thing. Poor girl - I know how she feels.

Dreams can come true, it can happen to you

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Last Sunday night I had a dream that Chloe and Carmen were singing a duet, accompanied by Jaclyn. It wasn't difficult to figure out where the dream came from: earlier that day we'd had our Primary Children's Sacrament Meeting Presentation and Carmen and Chloe each sang a solo part in the music. In my dream Jaclyn accompanied because she's Jaclyn and I don't know why else.
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At breakfast I shared my dream with the little girls (Jaclyn was already gone to school) and Chloe's response was, "But it wasn't a true dream."
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Later that morning I opened my email and found a request from our Ward Music Chairperson asking if Carmen and Chloe would sing a Christmas duet in December. I guess we had the same dream, probably for the same reasons. Well, Carmen and Chloe couldn't believe it, but they turned immediately to making dream requests that we 'live in the country' and 'have a horse' and 'have an amusement park in our backyard'. I haven't been able to dream any of those things (let alone dream them into life).
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Thinking of Jaclyn accompanying, I haven't blogged about something she did in seminary a couple of weeks ago. She usually plays the piano for the opening song, and right before she played that morning the seminary teacher bemoaned how high and difficult he finds the hymns to sing. So she transposed the hymn. On the spot. On the fly. As she played. (This should blow your mind right about now.) It is really something else. It doesn't just mean playing all the notes lower, it means changing the key which means changing the sharps or flats. I can do it if I have a piece of staff-lined paper and a pencil and half an hour, but I can't do it by ear - by ear and while looking at the wrong/higher notes! Jaclyn seems to think I'm overly impressed because according to her, it was a hymn she knows really well.