October 2024

Tiny worked on her front flips.

She also turned her bunk bed ceiling into a bizarre storage area. 

General conference weekend, Saturday night at 6:30 P.M., Berry and I were the only conscious ones.

On Sunday, the girls made Halloween sugar cookies. 

I stumbled upon somebody's tooth (Tiny) because why wouldn't you just leave it lying around the house?

I got a sweet birthday card from Goosey. I think I went out for a birthday breakfast or two but don't remember much else about my birthday. Based on Ever's card, it's probably safe to say I didn't do much else. 

I did, however, get a lovely birthday bundt cake from Coco, over which Tiny salivated. 

We had soccer first thing on a Saturday morning at the SoCal Sports Complex and found fog so thick you couldn't see anything. It was actually really hard to find your field. Pretty cool. 

We continued making our way through all the eggs we had gotten / were getting from the neighborhood chickens. 

They moved their nest from the top of the driveway to the bottom of the driveway. 

During a couch rest, Jim was transformed by the littles. 

Tiny and I went to SeaWorld on a Saturday with her Girl Scout troop. It was so incredibly crowded. Lines were SO long. Really, the day was a bust. I would never return on a Saturday. But Tiny's cute.

We spent $50 on a very subpar salad for me and chicken nuggets for Tines. Super upsetting. 

Ever won student of the month at her new school (nominated by Ms. H, her science teacher and the ASB teacher). Super nice. 

The girls did a little afternoon soccer camp at the Wave training field with Wave personnel. It was underwhelming. 

I dropped my flour container, and the mess was far-reaching. 

We let Tiny graduate to a booster. Her car seat was absolutely filthy, stained with slime and many other things, and she had collected all sorts of trash (or treasures?) in the cup holder. 

Ever loved playing volleyball at the middle school and went to a number of open-gym nights. Pizza was provided, and lots of snacks and other junk food were awarded.  

Ever is in the front on the floor in a white t-shirt (third from the left). Alina Karner is third from the right in front, and Chloe Bunnell is in the middle in the back. 

In case I forget to write about this later, the last open gym culminated in a raffle for an e-bike. Ever had been begging for an e-bike for a long time; I had said absolutely not because I think it's so unsafe to ride them on the street, and kids get hit by cars all the time around here. When Ever heard they were going to raffle off an e-bike, she was intent on winning it, even though I never gave her permission to ride it anywhere outside the neighborhood. For many weeks, she talked about how she was going to win the e-bike. She and Chloe decided to pool their raffle tickets and split time with the e-bike if they won it. And win it they did. It is crazy how lucky Ever is. It was as if her saying she was going to win it made it so. I was dying when she called from the school and said, "We won. Pete's coming with the truck to bring the bike home." It's a really small e-bike that doesn't go that fast, which is fine by me. For the first couple weeks, she and Chloe took turns with it. Before long, though, it became just Ever's because Bunnells had a (bigger) e-bike already, and Tyler was driving (a car) all the time so Chloe didn't need have to share the e-bike with him anymore. (Side note: It was one of Ever's raffle tickets that won, so the pooling with Chloe was unnecessary.) 

Tiny played a game at school with shoes. (Kaia and Maya are directly behind her.) 

Mrs. Shimizu took Tiny's class on a field trip to the Cannon Art Gallery.

Kaia, Tiny, Maya 

Courtney Johnson (Kaia's mom) took this picture of Toby, Kaia, and Maya at school. Tiny is one of Toby's best friends, and their love is adorable. 

Maya did this depiction of her with her two best friends, Kaia and Tiny. 

Ever went on a youth temple trip to the Newport temple.

Cikaneks came with us to the trunk or treat at church. This year it was combined with another couple wards.

I don't think Wren and Cora Sorensen ever interact, but somehow a picture was taken of them together.

Over time, the girls have become about as low-key about costumes as their parents. For Halloween, Ever recycled witch stuff, Wren put black electrical tape around a yellow shirt and black pipe cleaners on a headband and made herself a bee, and Tiny recycled Hermione. Amazing for me.

Ever was highly interested in being scared and wanted to go to the haunted corn maze in Carlsbad after the trunk or treat. Ella Rondo couldn't go, so Ever had the idea of asking Ellis Martindale, with whom she had not hung out in many years. (They're in a different ward.) I texted her mom, Errin, who said Ellis was bringing a friend to the trunk or treat but could go if it was OK for her to bring this other friend. It seemed as if we had no choice but to make it a threesome, and that made for a very weird and awkward outing. We waited in a ridiculous line for over an hour before even getting to the buying-tickets part. Ellis used her phone to facilitate a game for part of the time, and that was helpful. After we got the tickets, I went to the car and the girls waited another while to get into the maze. (I learned that you have to go when it first opens or right before closing or else it's ridiculous.) When they made it back to the car after the maze, the girls were laughing and energetic (so that was good), talking about how absolutely terrifying it had been - to the point that they would have aborted if they could have. So... mission accomplished, I guess? 

On Halloween night, Ever wanted to do about 10 minutes of trick or treating to get a little candy and then watch a move. Because she was obsessed with fright, she asked to watch the scariest Halloween movie that I would allow - like right on the line between what I would and would not permit. I spent a lot of time researching movies, trying to figure out what I could be OK with her seeing, and I made a list. When we sat down to decide what we would watch, I went through the list with her, showing her trailers and describing the movies that I had picked as options (including Gremlins, The Watcher in the Woods, The Others, Poltergeist, and A Quiet Place). She immediately said they were all too scary and she didn't want to watch any of them. It was pretty hilarious. The desire to be scared was officially dead. Anyway, this is the only shot I have of Halloween night.  

After we trick or treated on our end of Henie Hills up to about the Rondos' street, Ever was ready to go home and watch our movie. In an effort to make it a fun night for her, I had made muddy buddies, so she ate a truckload of those and candy (and maybe popcorn, too? I can't remember). While driving to gymnastics class the next day, she said, "Mom, thanks for watching a movie with me last night. It was really fun." I agreed, and then she said, "Can we do it again next year?" That warmed the cockles.