Beehive Camp

My little adventurer has been gone since Monday morning at Beehive Camp!  

Can you believe this girl?  Totally happy and content to drag herself (and her boot) from one activity to another this summer.  She is tireless and unyielding.  

We took her to an orthopedic specialist last Thursday just to confirm what the ER doctor had told us before trek.  That little bone in her foot is indeed broken.  And she does have to wear the boot for the next month or so.  BUT!  She does not have to use the crutches.  He said as long as she keeps that boot on, she can walk around all she wants.  And so she has.  She has actually been on WALKS with friends.  She's gone to the mall.  She went to camp.  And she's babysitting tonight.  

Honestly, I have to say that if I were in her situation, I might find a lot of delight in just sitting on the couch with my foot propped up on pillows.  I don't think I would be walking around malls, and I definitely wouldn't have gone on trek.  But, Emma is clearly not me.  Her little spirit likes to be in constant motion.  And this kind of motion I can totally support!

I've gotten great reports and pictures from the wonderful leaders who made this camp possible for all the non-trekking girls (and a few of the ones who just wanted to fit in another Beehive experience before committing to Mia Maids...)  Emma is already 14, and therefore the oldest among this group of girls.  But whenever you move to a different class, it's so hard to leave your friends in the class you came from.  This was a great leadership opportunity for her.  As the oldest camper, she was able to lead devotionals, call groups of girls together, and share spiritual thoughts.  Oh, I just love the opportunities my kids have to learn and grow and spread their little leadership wings!  

And I'm super grateful for our friend, Dr. Rodriguez, who was the official camp medic and could take care of Emma when she overdid it...which she definitely did a couple of times.  

One more camp down, and another one comping up next week...stay tuned for Scout Camp adventures...

Fourteen

This cute little thing is 14.  It happened a whole week ago, but this post somehow got lost  among the last day of school festivities, trek preparation, and a broken foot...  

Fourteen years ago, on June 6, 2000, just after lunch, Craig and I walked into the hospital in Enumclaw, WA and announced to the handful of nurses there that we would be having a baby very soon.  They didn't believe us.  They told us to go back home, walk a little, and call them when my contractions were closer together.  We didn't go home.  We went across the street to the grocery store, walked around exactly one time, and then drove right back to the hospital.  Emma was born 90 minutes later.  

She has always been a little anxious to get to wherever she's going.  She is our speediest daughter.  She hates to be late.  She takes minimal time getting ready in the morning.  And she's always the first one in the car.  And surprisingly, she rarely forgets anything she needs.  

Emma is fearless.  She will try anything and everything at least once.  The more unique, exciting, and scary, the better.  She is always up for an adventure.  (Clearly, she did not get that from me.) It's so fun to watch her try so many things and find her true talents and passions.  She told me the other day that she wants to go to BYU Hawaii, major in criminology and be a crime scene investigator.  (That may have been influenced by her favorite TV show, though.  She's a pretty big Psych fan.)

Emma loves music.  She borrows Craig's iPad every day after school, and scurries off to her room to listen to Pandora and sing at the top of her lungs.  We've learned to just talk over it or turn up the TV because she has no volume control.  She is teaching herself to play the ukulele.  She auditioned for 9th grade girls' choir last month and made Freshman Select (that's the highest one.)  She is happy to sing anytime, anywhere, and in front of anyone.  

Emma is such a blessing to have in our family.  She is the first one (and sometimes the only one) to ask me about my day when I pick her up from school.  She is considerate and organized.  She's the best babysitter ever!  She loves change.  She loves her family.  And she loves the church.  She doesn't love to snuggle, but she has an innate ability to sense when I need that, and she will temporarily set aside her disdain for physical affection just long enough to give me a giant lingering hug at just the right time.  Those are my favorite.  

I am loving this stage of life with a house full of teenagers.  Really.  They are all completely different.  They have their own voices and opinions which they freely express.  But they are so much fun.  Some aren't the slightest bit interested in hair and make up, and others spend hours in front of a mirror.  Some are infinitely patient and others can't stand the slightest little noise in the background.  All of them like to talk, though, and their favorite place is flopped on our bed at night dissecting their days.  I marvel everyday at these kids that we get to live with.  They are amazing and talented and so much like us, but yet such little mysteries.  Each one of them is a perfect little blend of Craig's personality and mine.  And that is miraculous.  

I love that we get to celebrate this little 14-year-old today.  And I can't wait to see what the coming years bring for her.

Happy (LATE) Birthday post, Em!

Surprises!

My little Emma likes to be included, involved, out in the world, doing something.  She is a mover.  She's my earliest riser and the first one to finish her Saturday jobs so that she's ready to GO whenever the opportunity comes along.  And for her, it always does.  This morning, she woke up at 8:00 so that we wouldn't forget to take her with us to the Scouting for Food activity.  She eagerly and happily paired up with her little Cub Scout brother and knocked on doors to "scout" for food for the Allen Outreach Food Pantry.  She was enthusiastic and competitive, and I'm sure she motivated all those other boys to RUN, not walk to the houses and collect as much food as possible.  After two hours, when I told her we needed to leave, she was reluctant.  They had already collected so much and she wanted to see her responsibility through to the end (and she also wanted to see if she and McKay had collected more cans than any of the other pairs.)  We left before all the groups returned, but they collected 535 cans that they took to the Food Pantry.  Huge success of a day for all those scouts!

Emma lamented all the way home about how waiting another 45 minutes wouldn't have ruined our plans for the rest of the day.  We were just running errands after all??  I put her off as long as I could, but she would not stop hounding me about the urgency of leaving that fun service project.  So I finally said, "OK, well, I can't tell you where we're going, but you should wear something cute."  And then she guessed.  Oh, that girl is so quick.  

Last weekend, I got tickets for the two of us to see The Little Mermaid in Dallas.  What awesome timing that they decided to go on tour just after the middle school's production of The Little Mermaid.  I knew Emma would be so excited to go and I wanted it to be a surprise, but I'm terrible at keeping secrets.  If I know it, then everyone else usually knows it, too.  

Emma and I had such a great day today.  We were both in awe of the amazing music and singers that we heard.  Isn't it shocking that you can be so intimately familiar with the soundtrack to a musical, but still be completely overwhelmed when you hear it live??  I was completely overwhelmed not just by the music, but by the set, and the orchestra, and the great seats that we had, and all the little girls dressed up with mermaid tails.  The whole experience was just great.  And on the way home, Emma said, "Mommy, you know what?  This was a great day when I only thought I was going to a Scout thing and then babysitting tonight!  But this surprise in the middle makes it the BEST DAY EVER!"  I love it when my kids say that.  I'm so grateful that we were able to spend the day together and that we have opportunities like this that are accessible.   

Enough

I have a hard time knowing when to try to be amazing and when to just do ENOUGH.  Last night was the Cub Scouts' annual Blue and Gold Banquet.  I've been to a couple of these, but I've never been a den leader before so I've never really paid attention to what they looked like or noticed all the details of the "behind the scenes" efforts.  There's a lot more to those things than I ever realized.  And I wasn't even in charge of this one!

Early last month, the entire Cub Committee divided up responsibilities and I took TABLE DECORATIONS and COOKIES.  I really thought it would be a breeze to have the Webelos make little robots that could double as both Craftsman requirements as well as decorations for the banquet.  And I already know I can make sugar cookies in my sleep.  Seriously, I think I could actually do that.  So how hard could it be to get a few tin foil robots together and blast out several dozen sugar cookies.  Easy peasy, right?

Somehow the reality of it all is never easy peasy.  I don't know why that is.  Do you think it's just me or does everyone feel that way?  And I don't know why it is that everything turns into a small tornado on the day of an event.  Well, I do kinda know why that is.  I am the world's biggest procrastinator.  I pretend to prepare for stuff, but I leave a lot of stuff for the day of.  And PROCRASTINATION = TORNADOES.  

Yesterday, I agreed to meet the Cub Committee Chair (is that even what she is?  I'm not sure) at the church at 10:00 in the morning to decorate for the banquet.  I planned to leave at exactly 9:55 which would get me there right at 10:00…except...recyclables that have been barely glued together by 10 year old boys and precariously perched into strange robot forms are not as portable as plain old recyclables.  It took me 15 minutes to load the Jeep.  So I was already late…

My vision of the "set up" went like this…I will carry in the robots from my car, put table cloths on the tables, set the robots in the middle, and then go to lunch with a friend.  Nope.  My 10:30 target exit time came and went while we hauled stacks of tables and chairs out from under the stage in the gym and set them up.  I honestly have never done that in my life.  I just assumed everyone's husbands were responsible for tables and chairs.  Apparently not.  Please don't tell Craig that I'm ridiculously spoiled and sheltered.  I don't think he knows. 

We set up 9 round tables for seating and three long tables for food.  And then I got to the part where I was finally able to put table cloths on them and select the perfect robot home for each of the boys' creations.  They looked a little sparse to me, so I sprinkled some nuts and bolts that I had fished out of Craig's tool boxes and brought with me.   

At that point, I was technically finished with my part of the banquet, except for the cookies which were still at home and not quite ready.  But as I looked around the room, I wondered if we needed MORE.  More what?  I don't really know.  More flash?  More robots?  More inventions?  More tin foil??  That's the point where my mind starts to wander and the regret sets in for not starting things earlier.  If only I had started in January when I found out about this, I could have made a LIFE SIZED robot that could have greeted the boys at the door!  If only I had started last week, I could have wrapped the entire gym in tin foil and hung giant nuts and bolts from the ceiling!  ugh…I have a serious problem.

Fortunately time was not on my side for any grand plans and I had completely booked the rest of my afternoon with a lunch date and another batch of cookies still left to make.

  
In less than two hours I made 4 dozen robots and threw in an extra 2 dozen...those are gears, not grey flowers...because what if one of the boys didn't want to decorate a robot?  What if someone just wanted to eat an already frosted cookie?  And I think in the past, they usually just buy a giant sheet cake from Costco for dessert and what if the adults were disappointed that they would have to prepare their own dessert this time??  I bought frosting instead of making my own,  but I decided that I didn't want it to just be plain white, so I scrounged through my food coloring and mixed like a mad chemist to get the perfect shades of bright, bold, BOY colors!   Except gears can't be frosted with bright colors or they might be mistaken for flowers, so I mixed up a half batch of royal icing and tried desperately to make it look like a very industrial, very non-floral, metallic grey.  Instead, I got that color up there.  

Am I making your head spin yet?  Wait there's more...

I realized at 5:15 that the boys might not know what to DO with the unfrosted cookies and that I should have made a poster or a prototype or something.  EEK!  I hurried and stuffed my hair in a clippy and put on my Scout uniform which I still do not love and absolutely dread putting on once a week.  Even sparkly earrings and lipgloss can't make that thing look feminine.  And I left the poster to Emma who was very capable and more than willing to help me get it done.  No flashing lights, no fancy details, just the necessary information combined with a few juice box robots to make it interesting.  

McKay, Emma and I loaded all that stuff into the car…posters, cookies, frosting, trays, my camera, and whatever else I could think of, and drove to the church for our 6:00 call time.  We got there at 6:10.

The point of all that madness is not to prove to you that I'm a lunatic, although I probably did do a pretty good job of that.  The point is that all of the craziness and time spent worrying yesterday was completely unnecessary.  The boys absolutely loved the night, and therefore, the parents and the leaders loved the night.  Other people filled in the gaps that I thought I had left out.  And the evening was a huge success.  

Emma and a few of the other "big sisters" who came were such a huge help all night long.  They served food, made sure little hands didn't reach for their own pickles, helped younger kids build burgers, and then rationed out frosting for the cookies.  I love those girls so much.  The food portions of the evening would have been complete chaos without them.  

The lesson I keep learning over and over in my time here on earth is that less is ENOUGH.  Little boys don't miss things like LIFE SIZED robots, and no one was expecting the room to be wrapped in tin foil.  Even the women don't need or expect all that fluff for RS meetings.  A grand ice sculpture can never substitute for a great spiritual message and time to connect with sisters.  The church doesn't have to be perfect.  My house doesn't have to be perfect.  The food doesn't have to be perfect or even completely ready when friends arrive.  People prefer comfort and warmth and a relaxed hostess over perfection, I've found.  

I am so grateful to be involved in Cub Scouts for a short time.  There are lessons to be learned here.  It is a huge blessing to get to work on all these requirements with McKay for the next few months and to see what actually goes on behind all these Cub Scouts' scenes.  I am immensely grateful for all the people who have worked quietly and in unspectacular, but much needed ways over the years to bring together things like Blue and Gold banquets and Pinewood Derbys and Rain Gutter Regattas.  I had no idea how many hands it takes to efficiently organize a little pack of Cub Scouts.  

High Five for Friday

Happy Friday the 13th!  We used to have reservations about this day, but now that we have a little boy whose birthday falls on the 13th and thinks that 13 is the luckiest number he's ever encountered, we embrace all the 13s in our lives.  Here's what's happening around our lucky #13 house this week...

1.  Sky Ranch

McKay had such a great time at his first ever sleep away camp.  Two whole nights and three whole days without his parents or his sisters.  He LOVED it.  Fortunately for me, my neighbor was one of the chaperones for this trip and texted me pictures/updates every few hours.  Hooray for watchful neighbors and successful camp experiences.  

2.  Lunch with the greatest neighbors on the planet!  

Lunch was great...because how can Mexican food not be great!  But I loved the company even more!  My neighbors, Jill and Karryn are the BEST!  (Of course they're not in the picture, because we're always too busy talking to remember to take pictures.) I am SO grateful to know these women.  Their kids are best friends with my kids.  They are surrogate parents, alternate carpool drivers, additional sets of watchful eyes, house sitters, emergency contacts, and most of all...dear, dear friends.  I could not have picked better people to live next door to and across the street from.

3.  11:11

Do you see this time of the day as often as I do?  I know, it happens just twice every 24 hours, but I seem to ALWAYS catch it every time it rolls around.  I don't know if it's lucky, or if I'm supposed to make a wish then, or if it means someone's thinking of me, but it's a fun coincidence that I've noticed A LOT lately.  I recently watched this blog video post on why all those 1111's cross our paths so often.  A little way out there, but kinda interesting.  

4.  Emma's Show Choir Dress

(please ignore the lovely bathroom background...)  Emma's show choir dress finally arrived.  We had to custom order the sizes, so they took a little longer to get here, but they turned out SO cute!  The color looks kinda purple in the picture, but it's actually a gorgeous royal blue.  It's so flowy and girly and will be so much fun to dance in.  The boys' will have matching royal blue vests and bow ties.  I can't wait to see them perform.  

5.  McKay's Clean Room

This has been on my list of things to do since we got back from Florida, but I just kept putting it off.  The kids all have their daily and weekly chores that they are responsible for, but every so often (usually right after school gets out and right after Christmas) we have to do some MAJOR cleaning and purging.  I decided to finally take on this job without McKay around to help (which made it so much easier and less traumatic.)  I got rid of a whole trash bag full of trash and half a box of old toys and clothes that don't fit.  Hopefully it'll stay like this for a while after he gets home.  

Hope this Friday the 13th is a great one for you and that you're having a wonderful September!  

Winners

Emma is the luckiest girl I have ever met.  She wins drawings, contests, bingo games, pretty much any random thing she writes her name on.  At the Allen Celebration, we all stood in line at the Allen Americans (local hockey team) booth to spin a giant wheel and potentially win a prize.  If you combine Thunells and Rodriguez's, there were about 8 of us who spun.  The first 7 of us won little flags, or 8x10 posters, or those awful snuggy things you put around cups to insulate them.  Do you know how many of those I have in my kitchen??  And then Emma walked up, spun the wheel and won four tickets to the hockey game of her choice this season!  AND she got a bonus spin and won a hockey stick used in a previous winning game and signed by the entire team.  Serious??  She went on to win Chick-filA sandwiches, free drinks, and other little trinkets throughout the day.  We've all gotten used to her unbelievable luck.  (I really should have that girl fill out a few Publisher's Clearing House forms for me...or maybe not, after what I now know.)

So...last Monday, Emma informed us that she had entered a Radio Disney contest to see a One Direction concert and she had received a call that she was a finalist.  One of five contestants chosen from the random text entries they had received over the last three months.  Craig and I weren't totally convinced that it was a legitimate contest, so we looked up the website and read the email that Emma had received from the contest official who had called her.  It looked pretty legitimate.  

Here's what she had potentially won...

Round Trip tickets for three to Los Angeles to see One Direction in concert.   Hotel accommodations, transportation, concert tickets, and the opportunity to see a live sound check the night before the concert.  Oh, and $1800 spending money.  

But...there were catches.  Because aren't there always catches?  As we read further, we realized that this concert trip would occur over the weekend of August 1-4 (right in the middle of our two week vacation to Florida.  We're scheduled to be in the Keys that weekend.)  And then we noticed that there was a 1099 form attached to all the liability and press release forms we needed to sign.  I did some research and found out that contest winnings are taxable at a 30% rate, which for an estimated $8900 prize value, would be $2700, which we would be responsible for next April 15.  Ugh...even if we used the $1800 contest money to offset the taxes, we would still have to come up with $900...for a One Direction concert???  That's $300/ticket...!!  We had already said no to the $80 concert tickets to see them in Dallas.  Why would we pay $300 to see them in LA?  

We received the notification on Monday night and the paperwork needed to be signed, notarized, and faxed back to Disney by Thursday at 12 CST, in order for Emma to qualify as a possible contest winner and be announced on the premiere of Teen Beach Movie on Friday night.   Craig left on a business trip on Tuesday morning, and Megan's friend challenges started Tuesday night.  Oh, and McKay had a small meltdown on Thursday morning when he accidentally deleted the saved Lego Batman Wii game he's been playing for 4 months.  (I have no idea what that means, but he was distraught for the entire day.)

Craig is mostly unavailable when he travels so our conversations about this contest dilemma were brief and mostly via text.  He wasn't much help.  So for 48 hours I stewed.  I Googled.  I calculated.  I polled the audience.  I considered.  I called the Disney contest rep and asked her all my questions.  She said we could not change our concert location to the Dallas concert on July 20.  She said we could definitely fly out of Miami to see the LA concert.  And she assured me that they would be reporting the exact amount of our contest winnings to the IRS.  And as I was about to hang up, she said, "By the way, there really is no difference at this point between a POTENTIAL WINNER and a WINNER.  If you return that paperwork, Emma's name will be announced on the Disney channel and she will be able to go to Los Angeles."  (great...)

Finally, after exhausting all of my other options, I sat down with Emma and laid out the whole thing.  We talked about missing part of the vacation.  We talked about how FREE isn't always FREE.  We talked about how if we did this, we would have to come up with $900 between now and next April.  She offered to give up her allowance for the rest of the year.  (Which was a grand gesture, but $5/week for even a whole year wouldn't quite add up to $900.)  We talked about the dangers of spending money NOW and then hoping to be able to cover it LATER.  It was a good talk.  She was very reasonable and very understanding, but at the end of it, I saw her little eyes fill up with tears, and I almost changed my mind and signed all that dang paperwork.   But, we decided that night...together...that we would not be returning the paperwork, and therefore would forfeit our prize.  She slept in my room that night and the next morning we got up early and re-read all the paperwork again to see if we had missed anything.  We hadn't.  12:00 came and went.  Later that afternoon, the Disney rep called to confirm that we were forfeiting the prize.  

Part of me wanted to give her the opportunity of a lifetime and see the concert of her dreams.  But the practical part of me who knows that there are show choir costumes, private lessons, instrument rentals, sports registrations, and a cruise coming up in the near future, was not willing to take out a $2700 loan for a One Direction concert.  

I wonder if my parents would have let me win that contest if it had been The Osmonds??  I'm sure I would have been more devastated than Emma if they had said no.  

Blah...the things we have to do as parents.  I had more conversations last week and more distraught children than I've ever had at one time all by myself.  I let Craig know that his timing was crappy last week, and that in the future, I would appreciate it if he could schedule trips when everyone is happy and no major decisions need to be made.  He said he would try.  :)

I'm so grateful for a brand new week.  What an amazing blessing it is to be able to have a blank slate every 24 hours.  We are all looking forward to going back to our regularly scheduled summer laziness this week.  

Happy Monday!  

High Five for SUMMER!

Here's how we spent the last day of school/Emma's birthday.

1.  Talent Show at the Middle School.  Megan and Emma sang For Good from Wicked.  Megan was SO nervous before school that she couldn't even do her own hair.  Her hands were shaking.  She couldn't sit still.  She couldn't breathe.  But everything went SO great.  They were both happy with their performance, but I think Megan felt especially fulfilled to have made her singing debut on the very last day of 8th grade!  No one even knew she could sing...well, except her family.  She has an amazing voice, but she's always chosen to be in orchestra rather than choir.  Today when the choir director hunted her down after she sang and asked her where she had been his whole life, I think she felt pretty great.  And then when she continued to receive texts and compliments all day from her friends, that sealed her confidence.  It was a great thing to watch her live that vision she's had for two whole years!

2.  Annual Last Day of School Lunch.  Last year, when Savannah and Megan both had early release days on the last day of school, I took them and about 6 of their friends to In-N-Out for lunch.  This year, we added Emma and a friend to that group of older, early release kids and met my friend, Amy, and her two daughters at In-N-Out.  I brought cupcakes and we tried to get the whole restaurant to sing to Emma, but they were too busy eating.  :(

3.  Annual Water Gun Ambush.  Last year, the older girls found the water guns Craig had bought for Scout Camp and asked if they could spray all the kids with them as they came home from the elementary school.  He thought that was a great idea so he joined them.  This year we borrowed not just water guns, but SUPER SOAKERS from Megan's friend, and everyone who walked past our house ended up SUPER soaked!  They loved it, even in the overcast drizzly weather.  

4.  Otter Pops.  I decided that since we were planning the water gun ambush, we should also have something nice to give the kids on their way home.  OTTER POPS!  Those just scream SUMMER, don't they?  Well, guess what!  They don't even make Otter Pops in Texas.  Is that crazy or what?  In fact, none of the kids even knew what an Otter Pop was, so they all looked at me like I was crazy to call them that.  I made a valiant effort today to convert the kids on our street to calling them Otter Pops.  I don't even know what they're really called here, and neither did anyone else, so they happily adopted OTTER POPS as the official name for these yummy things.  I took a bowl of about 36 fake Otter Pops outside and came in an hour later with a pair of sticky scissors and a bowl full of wrappers.  

5.  Oh, yeah...Emma's Birthday.  After In-N-Out, I dropped Emma and her friend at a pool party.  And then picked them up two hours later and drove them to the friends' house where they are having a lateover/movie night.  I haven't even seen my birthday girl, except from a distance or in a crowd, for more than an hour today.  I guess this is what birthdays look like when you're a teenager and you have to share the day with The Last Day of School.  The pictures are staying up.  And we'll have an official present-opening/birthday dinner on Sunday when everyone is home from business trips and pool parties.  

It's been such a long end to such a long week.  I'm ready to sleep in, lay around by the pool, and start on that mountainous stack of books on my nightstand.  

Happy SUMMER!  Hope you have great things planned.  

13

I am so amazed by this girl.  12 has been a good year for her.  I'm a little sad to see it go.  BUT! If the upcoming year is anything like the last one, I will love that just as much...maybe more!  

Here are some of Emma's super powers...

1.  She is a friend to everyone.  
2.  She is quick to help.
3.  She is organized.
4.  She is outgoing, daring and adventurous.

5.  She is confident.
6.  She tries EVERYTHING without doubt or fear.

7.  She is a loyal friend.  
8.  She is artistic and crafty.
9.  She is thoughtful.
10.  She is creative.
11.  She is steadfast and immovable.
12.  She is content to hang out by herself once in awhile.

13.  She is positive, energetic and excited about life...always!

I don't remember when she moved from stuffed animals to hair products.  Or when she stopped playing dress up.  Or when her best friend was no longer Barney.

But as much as it breaks my heart a little to look through all those pictures and know that those days are long gone, it's also so exciting to think about the years ahead.  She is doing such an amazing job of watching the things her sisters before her have experienced, and learning from them, and then carving out a place in the community, in our church, and in our family that is uniquely hers.  

Their faces are all so similar and they are all so close in age, that Emma is mistaken for Savannah and Megan on a regular basis, but she is definitely her own person.

I am so proud of her for all that she tries to do and for the amazing young woman she is becoming.  Thirteen is going to be another incredible year.  

Happy Birthday, Emma Lou...