January Busy-ness

Annmarie has been cheering at basketball and enjoying it. She has been doing more stunts and it's been a lot of fun for her.  Nathan was recognized in the January Gator Groove as being on the AB Honor Roll.  He missed the cut-off for A honor Roll by one grade in one subject, an 89 in RLA.  He was a bit disappointed in his performance and wants to do better next term.  Annmarie also had a cheer "Show-off" in January.  This is where the cheerleaders from all the schools in Wylie ISD perform their best work.  This included all three junior highs: Cooper, McMillan, and Burnett, as well as Wylie High and Wylie East.  Corey and I discovered while watching "Father of the Bride" that we are now older than Steve Martin and Diane Keaton were when they made the movie!  I still think they look older than us.  I got my hair cut during the week.  I do prefer to wear my hair short.  And Caleb let us know that he has a new girlfriend, a girl named Mechaella Montecillo (Mica) who is from the Phillippines.

 

Missionary Dinner and Home

We had one last Sunday dinner with our wonderful sister missionaries, Sister Tobie Jo Polanco and Sister Mikaela Christensen, before Sister Christensen goes home.  We have loved these sisters and they are such a great companionship.  

Also, this is a current picture of our house.  

End of the Month

So Travis had to leave his truck behind and we decided to sell it. Unfortunately, it has not been starting. So we had to tow it away to get fixed. It actually happened a couple of times. We will be selling it as soon as we get it back. Annmarie continues to stay busy with cheerleading and Jonah with marching band. Fall football season is one of the best times of year here in Texas!

 

Total Eclipse April 8, Wylie Texas

We had the awesome experience of having a total eclipse over our part of Texas.  People even traveled from all over to get a glimpse of it.  I was working during the day of the eclipse (did I mention I got a work-from-home job for a court psychologist keeping track of her cases and making sure all is in order with them?) so I went outside during the totality of it and took some pictures. I did steal a few pictures from my friends' Facebook pages as they had better quality photos than I did.  The kids were at school and got to go out to look at the eclipse with their eclipse glasses on as well.  It was very cool.

Giant Spider

We were throwing around the baseball in the front yard and discovered a huge spider that had built a web in one of our trees. There was actually another smaller one, same type of spider, in the other tree too. This one was so big. We put the baseball next to it for comparison. It didn't last long, though. I'm sure it got eaten by a bird.

 

Weekend Fun

On the Saturday of Homecoming, Corey worked. Travis did not go to Homecoming; instead he and his friends hung out and ended up driving to the Oklahoma border. Eliza went to the dance with a group of her friends. Annmarie had a gymnastics meet on the night of the dance. Nathan had a baseball practice during the day, and I had to have someone from his team bring him home because of the gymnastics meet.

 

Summer Fun

Summer was busy from the start this year.  The first full week of summer, we met up with Grandma and took Autumn along to see the Brown House on Ballard Street in down town Wylie.  There was a train display, which is relevant to Wylie because it started out as a railroad stop town.  

Then, Eliza, Annmarie and I went to see JJ Pearce's musical, "Mean Girls".  It won some awards to they were doing a reprise.  The show actually happened in the fall.  It was at Richardson High School because JJ Pearce's auditorium is under renovation.

Eliza had her interview for In-N-Out.  Jake Montoya is the boss over there and he has hired Westley, Caleb, Travis and now Eliza.  Eliza will get to work with both Caleb and Travis until Caleb leaves on  his mission.

Jonah and Nathan had some fun playing barber shop.  Silly boys.

I took a screenshot of our weekly conversation with Westley.  Might as well document what we are able to do with technology.  It used to be that missionaries only wrote letters home and only called twice a year--once on Christmas and once on Mother's Day. Now they can talk to us every week on a video call using Facebook messenger.  Pretty interesting how times change!

 

Start of March

March comes roaring in! Nathan and Annmarie had Superhero Day at school. Nathan was Captain America and Annmarie was Black Widow. 

I finally hung the school picture composites up on our bedroom wall.  I've been meaning to do it for a very long time. The only thing is that I plan on painting the room and was trying to wait until that happened but that is just not happening any time soon.  I did the name and birthdate on Caleb and Westley's because they have all the pictures filled in.  I think next year when I take them out to add the current picture, I will also add the names and birthdates to the rest.

I've included a picture of eating at In-N-Out for fun and also my fresh perm that I got.  The lady I found at the JC Penney in Allen did a great job.

 

Almost a Wrap

Annmarie just loves Shania Twain and she loves country music. She was playing around while dancing to "Any Man of Mine" so I took a photo.

I dropped my favorite mug that says "Life's too short not to live it as a Texan.  I got this mug when I was moving from Texas to Utah sophomore year of high school from my friend Debbie Neil.  Well, I posted about it online and in the next few weeks received two of the exact same mugs anonymously.  Someone must have seen it and decided to find it online and buy it for me.  Isn't that sweet?  I glued back together what I could and display it on my fireplace now.  And now I have two mugs to drink my hot chocolate from.