General Women's Meeting

For the General Conference Women's Meeting this fall, all girls ages 8 and up were invited to attend.  That meant that Brooke, Chloe, Ciera, and I got to go.  I took them out to eat and then we went to the church building for the broadcast.  It was wonderful!  We had fun, and were uplifted... but we missed Autumn.  (She tried to photo bomb our picture before we left!)  Dave and Autumn had a date night... lucky girl!  They had a great time too!

Book Character Parade

Today at Dodd Elementary, they had a book parade. The kids all got to dress up as their favorite characters and parade around the school. Brooke chose to be Hermione from Harry Potter. Autumn was Fancy Nancy. They both looked so cute. I couldn't be at the parade because I was taking Ciera and Chloe to school. I was sad to miss it, but at least I got these adorable pictures before school!

Selfies and Sweet Rolls

I have been trying to master the "selfie".  I am always taking pictures of my family, but I am rarely in the pictures, so I have been trying out taking pictures of myself.  Some turn out terrible (which get promptly deleted), but some turn out pretty good.  I haven't yet gotten any that I like of me smiling.  That is what I will work on next.  I like a few of the serious face ones though. I mess around with the filters, and viola!  Here are a few selfies for posterity.

I recently got a recipe from Dave's Mom for Grandma Betty Tanner's Butter Horns.  I have made them a couple of times now... they are so good.  The last time I made them was for Dave's Seminary class.  I made half of them butter horns and half cinnamon rolls.  Yummy! (This is when the were rising... I didn't get a picture of the finished product.)

Marching and Yoga

Ciera's band had their annual fundraising march-a-thon at the beginning of the month.  It was a Saturday morning, and the band marched a route through the neighborhoods of Wylie, stopping along the way to play for people.  They ended at Home Depot and Albertsons where they played in the stores.  It was hot and tiring, but turned out to be a great experience.

Brooke and Autumn were doing one of my Yoga videos, and I couldn't pass up the chance to snap a picture.  They are too cute!

Football, Band and the National Anthem

Ciera is up to her eyeballs in marching band.  She has practices all the time, and they play pre-game, during the game, and half time at the football games.  For the first home game, we bought tickets and all of us went.  It was "Future Raider Night", which meant that all the junior high band kids who will be attending Wylie East were playing with the band, all the junior high dancers and cheerleaders danced and cheered too, and the choir kids got to sing the National Anthem with the High school choir.  Chloe got to sing, which was fun.  Brooke and Autumn were so bored with the football game that we left shortly after half time.  (Our team was getting stomped anyway.)  It is fun to go and get to see our kids doing things they like to do... even when sometimes it makes me crazy how busy it all is!

Happy Birthday to Me!

As I said in the previous post, we went to Six Flags on my birthday, August 30.  Dave made me a yummy Oreo cake for my special day, and we went out too.  It was a really good day, even though I am getting old!

Six Flags Over Texas

Some friends of ours invited our family to go to Six Flags Amusement Park the Saturday after school began.  (Also my birthday!)  Our girls had never been before, and had not really been on roller coasters before, so we decided it would be fun to go.  The first ride they wanted to ride when we got there was the carousel.  I remember carousels being fun.  This one left something to be desired... maybe because it was in a little covered room that was really hot, or that we waited for a few minutes and it was over really fast, or maybe because I sat on one of the benches for old people instead of on a horse.  Whatever the reason, I was ready to move on to something good!
The first roller coaster we went on was the Titan.  Not having been there before, we did not know what we were in for.  It is actually the tallest roller coaster there with the longest, steepest drop.  Yikes!  All of us went on.  It was scary!  Autumn said she didn't ever want to go on it again... she looked like crying!  We ended up going on another one, I think called Thunder Mountain.  I thought it would be like the Matterhorn at Disneyland.  We talked Autumn into trying one more roller coaster to see if she would like a more "tame" one.  That was our mistake.  This one was in a big, dark room, and it whipped around and around super fast.  She hated it.  We rode the log ride after that, and she liked that one! After that, some of the grown ups took the little kids to the kids area, and I took the older kids to ride the Batman roller coaster.  The line was 1 1/2 hours long, and so hot!  The ride was running backwards.  It was fun, but not worth waiting that long for.  All in all, we had a fun time... but I don't know that we will be going back any time soon!