Happy Halloween

Emmy and her friend Olivia planned to Trick or Treat together in Hickman. They were both volleyball players and at the last-minute Emmy added some black eyes and blood for a zombie volleyball player. They were cute. We had come up with the idea to cut up a cheap volleyball and make it their candy bucket. They got a lot of compliments on these. The Hickman community is so great about being a fun place to trick or treat. There are always a ton of kids and people have their yards decorated and a lot of them are dressed up. The night was beautiful, and we didn't even need coats, hats and gloves like previous years. The girls wanted to hit as many houses as possible to we walked around for a couple hours. This year Halloween was on a Monday, poor teachers on Tuesday! So, we tried not to get home too late.

Olivia and Emmy

Olivia, Emmy and Lexi

Emmy and her babysitter Quinn

They had quite the haul! She even shared some with me. 

Abby went to Hallam with Kaylee and they went trick or treating too. Abby was a devil and Kaylee was an angel. She didn't take any pictures for me though. 

I had been asking the boys for a week or more what their plans were and in true teen boy fashion plans were made at noon that day. I got a text while I was at work that said, "Can we have people over, Like A Lot of people???". Oh boys! Robb has really tried to convince me to roll with it and be flexible because we want our kids at our house, and we want to know their friends and then we know what they are doing. So, I said sure through gritted teeth. I didn't get any pictures of the party just a picture of a lot of shoes by the door. The boys had a blast! Caleb was super proud of himself for pulling together a 30 some person Halloween party at lunch the day of. They really do have a great group of friends. They played pool, poker, video games and used the golf net. There were teenagers everywhere. Caleb stopped at the store and picked up drinks, and snacks and they had a fun night.

 

Picnic with Friends

Abby's friend Sydney and Maggie had a picnic birthday party. This set up was adorable and so creative. All the girls got dressed up cute for the night, which is not something you see often. Girls this age and kids in general live in joggers, sweats and hoodies so seeing them dressed up is so fun! Abby has switched up her friend group a little this year and the girls are really sweet. We just want her to be happy. 

 

Emmy's Volleyball Team

This was Emmy's first year playing YMCA volleyball. She enjoyed the practices, but the games weren't as fun as she wanted them to be. At this age it is just serving and not a lot of volleys going on. Since Abby serves overhand that is the only way that Emmy was willing to practice. She did get a couple over but needs to get a little taller and stronger yet. Robb did a great job coaching as usual and all the girls loved giving him a hard time. 11 girls were a bit too many to get to work with on the skills that they needed help with. Abby did help at a couple practices until she got busy at school and then one of the moms stepped in to help. 

We might not of had a winning streak, but they are adorable!

 

Bryce has a Girlfriend

Bryce and Bree have been friends for a while now but just recently did it turn into dating. This is a very weird stage of life to navigate as a parent because you still think of them as a little kid, but they clearly are young men at this point. The current thing to do is to make a sign to ask the girl to go to the dance with you.  Bryce had found a couple options online, but he needed help in the execution of this project. In comes Abby, Emmy and me. While Bryce had the master plan, we did all the grunt work of cutting and gluing everything. I think she was excited about it because her mom had told her not to make Bryce make her a sign because that was a lot of pressure. Welcome to being a boyfriend. The sign was really cute!

 

Future Babysitter

A friend of mine had a baby about 3 months ago and asked Emmy and I to babysit Nickalynn and Nina while she went out for her anniversary. Emmy was such a big help! She loved playing with 3-year-old Nina and couldn't get enough of the baby. She will be an amazing babysitter some day!

 

Roca Scary Farm

The kids had a Friday off and the weather was great, so we decided to go to Roca Scary Farm. The kids have grown up going here and it is fun that we live so close now that we can hear people screaming from the Psychopath at night. Abby met Kaylee and Tamrin there and we took Kenzley and met up with Mikayla and her family there. The girls are little social butterflies.

Kenzley, Emmy, Abby, Kaylee, Tamrin

Since it was only Norris that had the day off, we had the place to ourselves, and the kids saw lots of friends. We stayed until around lunch time when it started to sprinkle for a little while. 

 

School Spirt Days

Emmy asked Bryce if she could wear a jersey for school spirit day. She looked adorable in a jersey!

This cracks me up that she actually wore a bikini top over her t-shirt all day for Hawaiian day.

Caleb and his friend Brody dressed up for Adam Sandler day. The one that I wish I would have gotten a picture of was " Anything but a Bookbag day" Caleb took a red wagon to drag his stuff around in all day. It also sounds like he gave lots of friend's rides. I didn't get a call from the school, so I guess it was okay.

 

Intermural Volleyball

This volleyball season Abby made the Intermural team, which was a bit of a letdown to her, but she was with her friends, so in true Abby fashion she took it in stride. They practiced Mon, Thurs, Fri am at 6:30. Abby is not a morning person so she would crash as soon as she got home. Her and Maggie were both pretty disappointed that they hadn't made the B team and they felt like the coaching for intermural wasn't helping to develop their skills as much as they would have liked. They got together and asked the coach if they could come on the off days to practice with B team. I thought this showed a lot of maturity and drive on their part. They faithfully showed up to practice 5 days a week. The intermural team played round robin games on Friday mornings at 6:30. Robb and I took turns going to the games, so we at least got to watch her play once in a while. There was a team of the girls that took volleyball more seriously that all were all on one team. They pretty much dominated each and every game. About halfway through Abby's coach asked her to move to a team that was really struggling. She wasn't thrilled with this and was upset because the girls didn't really try. I felt bad for her when she got moved. She seemed to like it a whole lot less after this. I know sports are more competitive now than they have ever been, but I hate that in 8 grade she didn't get to be on a team! I guess the hard things are the growth and learning opportunities which is what I have to tell myself every time there is a hard thing that I can't fix for the kids. 

This was the spirit day that was bring anything but a water bottle. This silly girl brought a syrup container.

Rag Tag Football

Bryce played on the unofficial football team for the sophomores this year. It was funny, all of a sudden, he had football practice and football games except he didn't play football. The school let them use the field and they got a team together for each grade and played each other for bragging rights. The sophomores ended up winning it all, I guess. This wasn't something we were permitted to attend but from some pictures snapped it looks interesting!

I have so many questions!

1.What are they wearing and why?

2. Who's cleats, and football gloves is Bryce wearing?

3. Why does it look like that kid is wearing ski goggles?

4. Did you have refs? Who refed this?

5. Are you sure the school is ok with this?

It sounds like they had a great time and classmates even came to cheer them on. I'm not positive but they may have had more people go out for rag tag football than for real football.

 

Weekend with Weston

Mitch and Courtney were in town to celebrate their anniversary and Weston got to stay with us. It is always fun to have him stay. Even though he is an only child and I imagine their household is much calmer than ours, he always jumps in and acts like he is always here. Him and Emmy caught a ton of grasshoppers and fed them to the fish in the pond. They did find out that if you put a bunch of grasshoppers in a jar, they start to eat the heads off of each other so there is that bit of knowledge that we learned. Disturbing! Abby showed them how to use the .25 setting on the iPhone to take crazy pictures like the ones below. They thought it was pretty great!

We also hit up the new cool park in Hickman. 

 

Doggos

 On my days off, these 2 are my co-pilots. They love when I am home, and they follow me everywhere. I am their person. So, we get pup cups, take car rides and walk the trail. These 2 might be a lot of work and fur, but I love them.