Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Parker is Growing Up!

Boy #4 has been doing a lot of growing up lately and it needs to be noted. He’s in 5th grade which means next year he will be in middle school and I’m supposed to register him for his classes already. Yikes! I’ll put it off until I have a good cry that my little boy is definitely not so little anymore. 
Since Parker turns twelve this year, he was ordained to the office of a Deacon in the Aaronic Priesthood. This is such a big deal that he gets to pass the sacrament to our ward members each Sunday. It’s the first step of many as a priesthood holder. It’s also really cool that Parker is a deacon and Landon is a Teacher, Ethan is a Priest, Marcus is an Elder, and Randy is a High Priest.  All in my family! Thats a lot of priesthood power! Parker takes it all very seriously.   Parker is giving his first talk in sacrament meeting this Sunday so all sorts of BIG things are happening for him and I love it! 

I also got to take him to the temple for his first time to do baptisms for the dead. You can read about what that means here. He’s got a fun, but small, group of boys his age that he gets to do all these first with.  

Parker just started another lacrosse season and this year is a big deal because at his age level the boys finally play on a full-size field.  He participated in some Friday night clinics hosted by the Seattle Starz, the elite club team that Marcus played for and Landon currently plays for. Parker must have made quite the impression at the clinics because the program director reached out and asked if we’d consider having Parker try out for the team. Well, Parker did and he made it! And I’m the crazy person who gets to figure out how to juggle both Landon and Parker and their tournaments. Luckily we got a family discount!

Parker is also done wearing his Invisalign after a long year and a half. He’s going to have a great smile after the rest of his teeth grow in!

Friday, February 16, 2024

Happy New Year

We hosted the 7th Annual Ball family New Year’s Eve party. It was memorable because Randy was outside trying to mount our computer to a tree with duct tape while I thought he was upstairs getting the Prize Ball ready for the kids. When I discovered he wasn’t upstairs and the ball wasn’t done, I panicked and assumed he’d had a heart attack somewhere. So I enlisted the help of our boating brothers, Andrew and Stephen, to make the prize balls. It was hilarious!  They put so much tape around the balls that the kids could hardly rip into them. 

We did a small ball for the younger kids

The teens got a bigger ball with gift cards because….Randy. 

Randy showed up after the guys finished making the kids ball. It was hilarious watching them do this. It’s a workout!

Randy made killer punch that everyone loved.  Ginger ale + cranberry juice

So much food!





The floating lanterns are the new favorite part of the night. Everyone had a great time and we were all exhausted.  Happy New Year!


Thursday, February 15, 2024

January is the worst. Always.

January is always the longest month ever and this year was no different. I think I took about ten pictures to document our lives which means there wasn’t much to document.  Most noteworthy—we finally got the Christmas tree taken down and Randy is now responsible for it. Randy was super bummed I didn’t use the new boxes he bought just for ornament storage (did you know there is such a thing?) and so he unpacked everything I had packed. Then he repacked everything into small containers that he then packed into bigger containers. The big containers are the size of small coffins so in case any of our children die, I’m ready! If there is ever an earthquake in Sammamish and our house is destroyed, at least we know the ornaments will survive. 

My laundry room counter was visible for the first time in two months. I even sent this picture to Marcus. He was dumbfounded.  

My dad gifted us some money for a family activity for Christmas so we decided to go to Cheesecake Factory for dinner. We waited forever for the food so we played Catch Phrase and it was a lot of fun!  I’d say the clues, Randy would repeat the clues, and then Henry guessed the word :)  Also, salted caramel cheesecake is amazing. Almost as good as mango cheesecake. I recommend both!



Henry loves the mall. And posing for pictures apparently. 




Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Christmas


It's a good thing we've had the most boring month ever so I can still blog about December.  I'll be brief.  My kids loved Christmas despite all my talk about setting the bar low, no one needs anything, let's save our money, etc.  I must have really made it sound like they weren't getting anything because they were all surprised and said it was a great Christmas.  Yay for them.  

Christmas Eve was full of traditions--delicious dinner with English crackers, caroling, talent show, nativity, and talking about the Savior.  We had fun and then the kids went to bed while Randy and I wrapped all the presents that weren't from Santa.  Normally the wrapping and attention to detail is Pinterest-worthy but I finally got smart and realized my kids don't notice any of that stuff.  In fact, next year I might even put all their gifts in trash bags.  They'll probably love it.

Henry displayed his many Mario coloring pages.  He LOVES coloring and we are all just thrilled he doesn't ask us to choose which color to do next because that was a terrible phase.

Parker made quite the entrance through the front door as Eminem was blaring through the speakers while he performed all sorts of cool yo-yo tricks.


Landon tried to guess where each French fry came from.  He only messed up on two.  Only Randy would be willing to drive around to every fast food joint near and far so his son could eat their fries for a family talent show.

Ethan juggled again.  He's actually really good!


Randy sang again.  It was awkward again.

I predicted the future by doing a cool math trick that no one cared about but me.  Story.of.my.life.

New matching pajamas.  Again!  White Santa, black Santa, and brown Santa for the win :)


Brothers Gift Exchange is always the best


We sang Happy Birthday to Jesus, at the most delicious chocolate cake ever, and called it a night.  

Christmas morning




The only picture I took on Christmas Day because Marcus called me right after this.

Christmas morning started at 8am.  It felt glorious!  Marcus called us shortly after we started opening presents so it felt like we were all together.  Randy bought me a fancy carry-on suitcase.  He loves it.  I bought him a bidet.  I love it.  The boys got more hoodies, Nikes, video games, and some random things they didn't ask for that I thought they'd like and for the most part, they do.  By 5pm I was ready to take down the Christmas tree and declutter my house.  So instead I took my Grinchy self for a long, solitary walk while I caught up on Marco Polo with my sisters.  It felt like the right thing to do, and it was!

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

More December Chaos

I started off December in Las Vegas with Landon for a lacrosse tournament.  More on that later.  The tournament put me behind at the worst possible time.  
We arrived home Sunday evening and Monday morning the cookies from Suss arrived just in time for me to start packaging them and getting them out to dental offices.  We give annual car wash memberships to our top referring dentists, car wash coupons to the offices who give us some referrals, and cookies to all the rest.  I HATE this part of December!

These two tagged along on some Christmas errands and picked out some Christmas mugs to paint.  These might accidentally get thrown away before next Christmas rolls around :)


Randy pulled off yet another incredible seminary extravaganza!  This time the other seminary teachers insisted on helping so Randy only pulled one all-nighter.  I even went to check out the action.



In all my free time, I put together Christmas gifts for the women in the ward that we distributed at the annual Relief Society Christmas dinner.  This was my third year planning a Christmas dinner and we've got it down to a science.


We had dinner catered by Tanoor, a favorite local Lebanese restaurant.  After dinner we heard a few women share some of the Christmas traditions they do in their families.  It's a fun night but I'm always glad when it's behind us.


This is my current Relief Society Presidency.  I love these ladies and the support they give me along with their ability to not be super annoyed at my frazzled brain and inability to be organized.   



I don't have pictures from our ward Christmas party but we got to bring home the giant coloring page and we all enjoyed helping Henry finish coloring it.  Better than doing a jigsaw puzzle where I'm the only one who ever works on it.


Everyone had Christmas parties except for Parker and Henry so I treated them to dinner at Dough Zone.  My boys LOVE dumplings.  It's so weird.  They won't eat hamburgers but they'll pig out on dumplings.  


And there you have it.  Our December was super busy and then super boring.  Next up is a post about Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  





Sunday, January 7, 2024

Christmas Break When We Had Nothing To Do

We are a week into 2024 and the Christmas tree is still up even though I was ready to take it down on December 26th. Naturally if my tree is still up it probably means I’m behind in every other area of my life, including the blog. The month of December was INSANE for the first two weeks. Worse than usual. Mostly because of dental marketing, visits to women in my ward, and the kids busy schedules. Then the kids got out of school and life came to a grinding halt. No school, no friends, and no plans. I debated driving to Utah but none of the boys wanted to go since their cousins were still in school. The screen use hit a high that I haven’t seen since the pandemic so I dug deep and tried to find a few things for us to do. I even posted it on Instagram so I can remember for next year. Funny how people probably saw those posts and thought we were having an amazing break when really I was just desperate to do something that broke up the boredom.  Oh well! Here are a few things that required my kids actually getting dressed and leaving the house….

We raced to the Alderwood Mall—about 35 minutes away—on a Sunday evening ti catch the giving machine before it closed and moved to Portland.  Randy’s parents gifted us money and we put it to good use and then some.  We purchased chickens, a goat, shoes, sports equipment, and food.  Super fun! We left without going to Shake Shack which was a huge sacrifice for Landon but it was the Sabbath after all.




A fun first-time thing this year was helping with Toys for Tots.  We delivered bags of toys to cars as they pulled up to pick up their gifts.  I don’t know how families registered for this but each family had a list of toys/baby supplies/gift cards  that they requested. The supplies were all bagged and tagged with a number so the people just pulled up, gave us their number, and we found the bags assigned to them. Luckily it was a beautiful sunny day or this wouldn’t have been nearly as fun.  



Landon got to use his muscles and load up a bike. The woman cried as delivered it. 

After recovering toys, we went to a fun park nearby and then got lunch at Dicks. 

Landon is still obsessed with cheese burgers and somehow manages to eat one a few times a week. It’s just crazy that he’s so skinny because he eats a ton!

We stuck to tradition and delivered cookies in our car decked out in Christmas lights. Everyone whines at first but eventually they all love it. Especially Henry. The Santa hats made it even more fun. 



We also went to a movie during this week of nothing to do.  I haven’t been to a movie theater in ages because they’re just so darn expensive and not worth the money. I did some research and discovered that movies are $6 on Tuesdays for Regal Club members so I told my friend and we took all the kids to see Wonka. Apparently she and I are the last two people on the planet to know this trick. I’m so excited to see movies on Tuesdays now. And we loved Wonka!