Blake's 1st Church Callings!

Blake got his 1st church callings!  They called him to be the Priesthood Pianist and the 1st Counselor in the Deacons Quorum.  I love that he sits down and plays the piano just about every day since they asked him to serve...before he had to be forced to.  He plays all sorts of church songs and also some songs just for fun.  He is such as talented young man.  He can think of a ton of other things that he would much rather be blessed with in the talent department... but one of these days we are hoping he will see what a gift it is.  Some of his friends didn't even know he knew how to play the piano!  I haven't broken it to him yet, but unfortunately it just goes down hill when they start giving you musical callings at church...it seems like you never get to do anything else.  

Sager Middle School Basketball

Blake is so excited to be able to play on his Middle School's basketball team this year.  Their first game was last week on our first snowstorm of the year.  The roads were nasty so luckily it was a home game.

 They played Rogers which is the 7th Day Adventist private school in town.  We were a little nervous during warm ups...that team has some really big kids!

 Blake was excited to be in the starting line up and played a huge portion of the game.

  We were ahead the entire game and really did well....

..however the last 5 minutes they caught up and it was back and forth lead and Rogers won the last 7 seconds of the game.  It was so fun to go and watch.  He is finally playing legit basketball where you have to earn your play time and all the rules count instead of babying them.

 Almost his entire team is made up of LDS kids too, so it was fun to sit with the parents and cheer.  There are 2 kids on the lower team from our ward and 2 on the 8th grade team but basically his deacons quorum is a huge part of his team.  I love that he has such a big group of kids from church that he is involved with for school activities!

Boomwackers In Mom's Room

One day last week Ashlyn got to meet up with me at my school for the last 15 minutes of the day and hang out until it was time for me to go home.  I am in the middle of a rhythm unit and have boomwackers out to use with my older classes. 

  Ashlyn had never used them before and had a lot of fun figuring out how to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with them. 

I love this time I am getting to teach music class at a local elementary school!

Happy Halloween

 Since Blake is in Jr. High this year he didn't get to go Trick-or-Treating...some how he felt he was too old for all the other Halloween festivities too.  (We did get him to participate making Halloween cookies, but some how I forgot to take pictures.)

And since Dad has never been excited to carve pumpkin Ashlyn and I worked on the one she brought home from school together and the boys missed out!

She just wanted a traditional pumpkin this year...nice and easy.

Her costume choice was even easier!  She wanted to be a punk rocker and dye her hair pink.  We added some leg warmers, lots of bracelets, hot pink lip stick/blush and bright blue eye shadow to add to the effect...and of course a rock star shirt - by 8 year old standards that meant Ross Lynch.

Then instead of going out alone we invited her best friend from school for the last couple of years to come Trick-or-Treating with us.  The girls were pretty excited and ran from house to house all around the neighborhood and us moms lagged behind and enjoyed chatting.

And no Halloween would be complete without the traditional "dump your bucket to swap and organize candy" event at the end of the night.  It was a lot of fun so they are already planning for next year!