DRAMA

One day last week Claire had a rough day and got her 3rd strike which in our house means 1 hour early bedtime! For those of you that don't know Claire very well let me tell you..... she does not handle negative things very well. We joke all the time that she is going to need anti anxiety medication by the time she is 7! We laugh about this because we don't want to cry. Claire is very much a perfectionist and rarely gets in to any kind of trouble so you can imagine how 3 strikes in one day was the end of the world for her! When it was time for bed she very slowly and dramatically went up to her room where she threw herself on her bed and cried very quiet yet heavy cries. Finally after about 10 minutes I really wanted her to go to sleep and knew she wouldn't until she felt all was back to normal. I took my camera upstairs and started shooting and this was the result. I knew there was no way Claire could stay upset with a camera in her face!

Harrison goes to Alaska!

A couple of weeks ago Harrison got a fabulous opportunity when he was invited on a five day trip to Alaska with his friend Kaiden. We were a little apprehensive at first and actually almost said no ( Mom did not like the idea of him being so far away for so long) but then we realized that we were NEVER going to take him to Alaska in the middle of winter and it was too good to pass up. Kaiden's mom Jennifer has a friend who lives in a beautiful home in Alaska and was gracious enough to host them all. The boys had a great time shooting guns, four wheeling ( in the snow??) and seeing wildlife. We are so grateful that Harrison was able to have this opportunity and will ever be indebted to Jennifer! He had a great time. We all missed him a ton and decided we like him a lot and think he should stick around a while!

100 Pieces of Gum!

February 3rd is our schools 100th day of the school year. Claire's first grade class is celebrating by making posters with 100 objects on them! Claire decided she wanted to do 100 pieces of gum. That was fine until she decided she wanted to spell out her name with the gum! We were a little confused about how to do this with gum sticks. I suggested we use something else ( beans, noodles??) but she was very excited to use the gum. We ended up chewing the gum to make her poster! Gross I know, but she got to spell her name and use the gum! We started chewing with just Claire, me, and Carma and our jaws quickly got sore. Harrison just happened to be going to piano lessons at the McGary's so I loaded him up with gum sticks and a tupperware in his piano bag. Thankfully,all the McGary kids were not totally grossed out by this and dutifully chewed and collected for us! We would like to add a very special thank you to Chase McGary for adding some of his own gum collection so that we would have more colors than pink and purple. Notice we only got to the Y in Holyoak with 100 pieces which is why the O, A, & K are written in. This might go down in history as the most disgusting school project ever. I am sure Claire will have the only poster with "ABC" gum on it even though I am sure it is some sort of health code violation to even take it in to the school!