Planning the Wedding

I told you we were in for a crazy week, and in spite of that, I'm feeling pretty good about the day. Part of the garden froze last night so we picked 4 huge bowls of tomatoes and made them into sauce. I used some of it for dinner and my sweetie is going to use the rest to make chili for the wedding party on Saturday.

Bridal bouquet made by Drama Queen.

 While I was in the kitchen, I made 3 layers of the wedding cake and should be able to get the other 3 done tomorrow. I was nervous about it, but honestly, it was about the same as making birthday cakes only bigger. My off-track kids worked on Reflections stuff. Curly and Scout made beautiful wreaths and Baby Doll used her flowers to make an arrangement in a glass vase.

This is my favorite bridal pic.

Crafty was throwing up this morning so she stayed home from school and got in on the fun as well. She didn't feel well enough to finish her wreath, but it has some real potential. Thankfully, she still has a couple of weeks before her deadline. Drama Queen used her flowers to make the bridal bouquet for Fajita.

Finally finished the guest book today. You ever try to sew paper with a needle and thread?

The wedding is pulling together steadily and I'm hoping to have everything together by Friday night. Did you like the preview pics? We keep adding a few things here and there, so I'm guessing we might still be throwing stuff together as we head for the church!

Visiting SCARY Cherry Hill

It was an incredibly busy day as I expect this entire week will be, but we were so excited to spend Family Home Evening at SCARY Cherry Hill!

It was pretty cold and the forecast suggested rain, but we stayed dry and a light jacket was good enough for almost everyone. We picked up Sport's friend, Kaitlyn, at 4:00 and then we drove across the valley to pick up the Cat Lover. There were 9 of us altogether. My sweetie was stuck at work, and you know Crafty, she would rather dance than breathe.

It was about 5:30 when we drove up to the nearly deserted Scary Hill. We started on the miniature golf course and it wasn't long before a couple of other families were following our lead. The course was the same as the one we enjoyed in the summer except that they had all kinds of fun Halloween decorations, all completely family appropriate.

After golf, we saw that the wagon ride had no one waiting so we climbed aboard. The lady giving out our tickets at the store told me it was best after dark, but we sure enjoyed it both times we rode. They have more than 100 skeletons dressed up as various characters; from cartoon people like Captain America to Star Wars to Pirates. My favorite was the chess players because all the little pieces on the board were also skeletons! Even after traveling the course twice, I'm not sure I actually saw everything.

Then it was time for rock climbing. Only Curly and Baby Doll were up for it this time and both of them quickly scaled the wall to the top and rang the bell. The kids loved the Aeroball game and we all enjoyed the maze except for the brief couple of minutes when Baby Doll was lost, although it wasn't really that scary because foot traffic was light and we were able to climb the stairs to the top of the maze so we could look for her easier.

Bounce houses were fun for the kids, but not so much for the adults. We played 3 games of Blasterz and enjoyed every one! There were some other things for little ones like the ball pit and bumper boats, but since Baby Doll will be 7 on Saturday, we didn't really have any little ones with us.

We climbed back into our van about 8:30, only slightly chilled, and happy for another fun family adventure.

Happy Birthday from the Family, Crafty

We had sort of a different family birthday party for Crafty today. Since it was General Conference (my kids fondly refer to it as "church on TV"), we thought it would be fun to start the party at 11:00 with Belgian waffles. Then the kids could just hang out and watch conference with us.

It didn't work out quite the way we had planned.

Princess and The Frog didn't come over until 5:00, so they missed almost everyone else. Beauty and The Beast only stayed for a little while and we didn't see Prima Donna at all. Grandpa missed the party too because he was helping usher for conference down on Temple Square.

I didn't have time to wrap the few extra clothes I bought for Crafty because the gift we really gave her was a used CriCut paper cutter we bought from Princess last month. But it was fun decorating the cake with Crafty and she was pretty excited for the fondant cutter, new cupcake frosting tips, and measuring spoons we put on the cake.

This week we are heading into promises to be crazy and hopefully fun. Fajita is getting married on Saturday and Baby Doll is turning 7. Can you believe we have been blogging for nearly 7 years? She was only 4 months old when Twelve Makes A Dozen was born.

So many changes since then. My sweet little 11-year-old Crafty is now 17, and we won't even talk about how old I'm getting...

More Football Games

It's 1:30 AM and we just finished watching the afternoon session of General Conference. I know, that is pretty late, but we weren't able to watch it earlier because youth football is taking over my life!

You don't understand how crazy or how important it is until you have actually sat on the sidelines and watch these kids pour their whole hearts into bringing home a win. Today was rough on us. Both of the grandsons lost their games and Scout's team was totally decimated, 41-7. Curly came out victorious, 31-0, but the game I want to tell you about is Sport's.

A ridiculously big donut for last week's ridiculously big win!

They were down, 6-0 early on and it looked like the game might end that way until late in the second half when the boys managed to score a touchdown of their own. They were playing Olympus and these guys were fast! Sport was playing Center on the offensive, so he was snapping the ball, but he was also playing defense which almost never happens.

Unfortunately, our boys missed their extra point and the game ended 6-6 which meant overtime. Bingham got the opportunity to score first and the boys didn't disappoint. They came off with a touchdown and the extra point. Then Olympus had the chance to score. They came up with the touchdown, but missed their extra point in an extremely emotional win for our guys.

Sport is #99 on the far left

I love watching the kids play football. They learn so much about discipline, disappointment, hard work, and team work, but sometimes it is just so stressful...