Thanksgiving already???

 Man, November flew by. Now that the tournament is over, Colten keeps busy with wrestling, normally three days a week but this week he only went on Monday. He seems to be picking up on it. Zac had two dads from the football team tell him they were glad that Colten joined. Aspen was busy working Monday and Tuesday and keeping up with school. 

Wednesday morning I dropped Aspen and Colten off at the bus to spend Thanksgiving with their dad. I ran a few errands for Zac while I was in St. George. When I got back, Tashlee, Annika and Channing got dropped off for the their Thanksgiving sleepover. Annika and Channing were playing well together but when it came time to go help Zac at the shop, things didn't go so well. Zac ended up texting saying that we didn't have time to load the trailer and since the girls weren't behaving, he would just come home. Spencer, Sandy and kids were coming to go shooting that afternoon. They all fell in love with Piper and Thor and were amazed at all the lizards in our house. We finally made it up to the range and it was windy and cold. Zac and Spencer shot the most but little Nixon got in a few shots. Maddie and Talan each shot a couple of different hand guns. Our girls stayed in the windless Escalade and I joined them after the wind and cold got to be too much. Despite the outing not being as long as they would have liked, I think Spencer and Zac had fun.

Once we got back from shooting, we had to head straight to the shop so we could load the parts to deliver to Robbie. The parts had been sitting at the shop for a couple of weeks but were done. So, to get rid of the parts and out of his life, Zac delivered them. We went to Burger King for dinner and then went to Wal-Mart to shop for our Thanksgiving breakfast. We kept it pretty simple, lots of sugar and headed home. The girls watched a movie and Zac and I chilled in our room.

Thursday morning we got up and had breakfast. The girls loved the donuts and all the sugar. Zac dropped the girls off to their mom's and we headed out to my parents with our dogs. We got over there to watch the first football game of the day. Hollee and her family joined us around noonish. Of course, Oaklee and Raven love the puppies but as soon as Jonah saw that they laid in their pee in the playpen, he was like "kids don't touch the dogs". Hollee made a chip dip that was a huge hit. Justyn, Rachel and Issy joined us a little later as well as Kayleeya and Alijah. The puppies were in their laps pretty much until dinner. Oh and Darcee, Jay, Jeramiah, Paige and Trent (although at different times) joined us so we had a full house. It took a little longer to prepare dinner so by the time it was ready, we were ready to devour it. The food was delicious and filling. I had made popcorn earlier that day and did the caramel after dinner for caramel popcorn, which was devoured as well. All in all, we had a great family day.

Friday, Zac decided to stay at home and work on somethings he needed to do around the house. I vacuumed the floors, and cleaned two ceiling fans before I was done for the day. Annika and Channing joined us when their mom went to work. I played a math game with Annika and discovered she pretty much has a song for multiples of all the numbers 1-12. She did really well too. There were a few other games that I want to play on her paper that I want to try. I played Spot It with Channing but taught her the Hot Potato version. I discovered that she is really good at Spot It. Zac said that is why she likes to play it. The girls had a much better day than Wednesday, except when their mom came to pick them up. Channing was a little difficult.

Saturday we headed to my parents again, with the dogs, to plan our trip out to the Indy 500. My dad watches the race every year, and for the past couple Zac and I have joined him. Well, my dad had mentioned that he would love to get back and watch the race live one more time in his life. Well, Zac said that he would go and that brought us out to their house to plan the trip. We got the whole trip pretty much planned. After the planning meeting, we went out and helped my dad get all the palm leaves loaded onto the trailer.

Sunday Zac and I had a quiet day, mainly watching football from our bed, attending church and just enjoying our time together. To me, it has been a short break but definitely needed.

Ugh...busy two weeks = no blog update :(

 Well, Colten's team got eliminated from the regular season championship but they were still participating in the USA Invitational in Mesquite so he had practice. But to add on top of football practice, Colten decided to do wrestling to help him with his footwork and strength for football. He went to football for two hours and then straight to wrestling for another hour to an hour and a half. He said that he is actually enjoying wrestling. His height may work against him in wrestling but he is doing pretty good. After his 4th practice he went and did an open gym where he was able to do three matches. He won one of the three. He said that on his last match he was just so gassed lol. Wrestling also requires 90 seconds of go hard while football is usually 10-15 seconds.

Aspen had a school project where she brought the mechanical baby home for two nights. Well, her and Tashlee had them at the same time. It was fun to watch her wait on "Tesla" hand and foot. The first night was a pretty easy since Tesla only woke up once, at 5am. Aspen was able to feed her and go back to sleep for another hour. Apparently she had a friend that her baby woke up 13 times that first night. The second night wasn't as easy though. She was up 6 times and a little ornery that morning. I think she was happy to give Tesla back. I asked her what she learned from this project and she said "Babies are hard". I said "They are but if you have them when you are married, you'll have someone to help you".

That weekend, Colten and I had planned to go to the 8th grade championship since it was the first championship that Snow Canyon wouldn't be in it. But I never got the notice that times were changed so we missed it. It was changed to 3 hours before we had planned to be there :(. We had gone to Grandma and Grandpa's house for a little bit before the game so since we were already in St. George, we decided to do a mom/son date instead. Colten was a little sad that we missed the game but found a new VR/console place with some free things on the Starving Student Card. So, we headed over to Washington and he played 30 mins of virtual reality. The place had a TV where I could see what Colten was seeing, without having the controls. It was cool to watch him make moves and go after people. We will definitely go back there again.

After the video games, we headed over to Black Bear Diner to get something to eat. We both got a hamburger with french fries but man were those plates full. And after dinner we hooped over to Culver's for some concrete ice cream. We then headed home to play a little Star Wars Risk. Colten is determined to play the "dark side" and win the game.  Unfortunately, that wasn't the case that night. He is 0-4 but getting a little closer. It was a fun, much needed, night.

Rocket has made great strides since getting the puppies. He seems to not enjoy them but is learning to tolerate them. He has been more cuddly since he has watched us carry the puppies around. We are definitely enjoying this new Rocket. Now if he will just learn to listen, we'll be good.

Colten had a busy week with more football practice and wrestling. But the football tournament finally arrived on Thursday. Coach Matua had arranged for us to scrimmage against Brigham City to see if we were prepared enough. We held up pretty well but lost 12-6. There was a lot to learn but we held with them. So we headed back to Hurricane to spend the evening. The next game was on Friday night against Bingham so we headed down after school, this time with Annika and Channing. Unfortunately for all of us, the weather was not in our favor. The wind was going about 20 mph and after the sun went down, the colder it got. We were definitely not prepared for the wind. The girls played on the playground for a little before coming to get the blankets. After about half-time they finally got up and ran around for the last half. In the meantime, Zac and I were pacing the sidelines to keep ourselves warm. Grandma and Grandpa showed up at about half-time as well. This game went much better than Thursday's game. The wind meant there wasn't a whole lot of throwing by either side but Colten did have a fumble recovery. The defense scored a touchdown in the 1st quarter followed by an offense touchdown. That was all the points we were able to score but the defense did a pretty good job of allowing one touchdown thus Hurricane won 12-6. Winning the game got us to the championship game on Saturday. So back to La Verkin we went.

Saturday was a busy day for us. Started with getting Rocket groomed. While he was getting beautified, Aspen and I stopped at Wal-Mart and picked up some flannel for a service project the Young Women will be doing on Tuesday. Once we got Rocket back, we headed down to St. George for Annika's friend birthday party. Annika was able to have a couple of friends go to House of Jump with her. Oaklee and Raven were able to join in so Hollee and Jonah were there. Grandma and Grandpa joined us and Hollee and I were able to give Grandpa his Christmas presents...Grinch gifts that is. I found him a Christmas ornament of the Grinch wearing Broncos, pooping in a Raiders toilet with Chargers toilet paper and Chiefs footstool. Hollee found him some yard decorations and a Grinch light thing that he can put on his garage. All the kids had so much fun jumping around for an hour before we went to McDonald's for lunch. Zac, Colten and I went to Grandma's and Grandpa's until we had to leave for Mesquite one last time. The girls all headed back to La Verkin to enjoy a sister's evening. I think they watched two movies and got candy and TV. We headed to Mesquite, again early, but we were able to watch the Hurricane 7th grade team win their game. It was fun to see the 8th grade team warming up in the end zone and cheering on the 7th grade team trying to score. Unfortunately, they didn't score that time. Our game was at 5pm and there wasn't any wind but man it was cold. We were a little more prepared, except my toes. They were bricks by the end of the night. We were playing Herriman, who apparently liked to throw the ball a lot. We won the coin toss and deferred so we started on defense. First play, they throw the ball and Colten intercepted it. That set the tone for the rest of the game. Sure, we had a few mistakes, missed tackles but the boys held up. Daxton, Colten's friend, even scored a touchdown on the last drive of the game. Hurricane won 26-8 and became USA Invitational champions. We probably spent another 45 minutes doing the ceremony and taking pictures. After we were finally done, Colten said "I'm hungry" and I mentioned Panda Express so he said "I haven't had that for awhile, let's go there". We were able to sit and talk about the game and just let Colten how how proud we were of him. Then we made our last trek back home to La Verkin one last time.

Since we had had a full schedule for 3 days, we relaxed on Sunday enjoying some family time.

Halloween, cold weather and football

 Well Halloween was a success if you talk about amount of candy lol. Aspen went trick or treating with her friend Kailee and her family, although they went to the same area as us. Zac and I took Annika and Channing out and tagged along with Hollee, Jonah, Oaklee and Raven. We started on Sycamore Lane where the neighborhood shuts down and many houses do major Halloween decorations. We started early and were able to beat the major crowds. There was a Harry Potter house and a house that did Hocus Pocus and 3 ladies dressed up as Sanderson sisters, and sang songs from the movie. I had to leave a little early to go grab Colten from football practice and was planning on meeting the others back on their trick or treating route. But Zac called and said they finished that neighborhood so we were meeting up at a gas station. Colten had a rough night and ended up walking home but we headed over to Sky Mountain to do a little more trick or treating. And man, we should have just done that neighborhood. The girls got many king size candy bars. One house had many different movie theater candy, then 4 bowls of candy for the kids to pick one from each and soup and hot chocolate. It was a great Halloween for 3 out of 4 of the kids.

Wednesday brought in cold weather. Poor Colten and his team had to practice in the cold weather. And we've had the girls staying with us this week to help Brandi out. It has been fun having them join us for the evenings. Wednesday evening while hanging out as a family I mentioned to Zac that the breeder had more puppies for sale. So, naturally he wanted a picture and found that she had some cute ones. We had a family discussion to get another puppy. Aspen said she would help pay for one and I said I could help pay as well. So, after much discussion and a lot of texting back and forth with the breeder we decided to get two puppies, a girl and a boy. The breeder was able to meet us so we planned to go up on Friday morning and allowed the kids to miss the day of school and drove up as a family. The puppies are as cute as ever and everyone loves them. Rocket is not liking the puppies and showing his jealousy. But we are trying to show him love as well.

Saturday was Colten's playoff was Saturday morning. Hurricane was playing Desert Hills who they hadn't played in two years. It was a rough game. DH went up 22 points in the 1st quarter. Our boys were finally able to figure out how to stop them. The offense struggled to get points on the board. There were a couple of dirty plays, one on McKabe that got called and one on Colten that didn't get called. There were some other calls that were questionable and the refs didn't call any holding or pass interference calls. When Hurricane was finally able to get on the board, it was too late. Hurricane lost to Desert Hills and ended their last attempt at a championship. Grandpa Higgins, Darcee and Jay were able to show their support and give Colten congrats on playing hard, which he did. He was sad but nothing a little food couldn't fix. We had planned on staying at Grandma and Grandpa's house until the other playoff game that even, even though G & G weren't there. We had taken Rocket, Piper and Thor so they weren't home all along all day. We did stop at Petco where I found a cute Broncos jersey for Rocket, which I totally bought for him. 

We had planned to go get a few free deals left on the starving student card but the first stop was Lightfoot in Santa Clara for hot dogs and drinks. But it was too late and instead the worker told us we could have the food under the heater because he had already written it off. The food was a little crispy but everyone got full so we headed over to the Snow Canyon vs Pine View game. We sat on the Snow Canyon side because Colten wanted too. We were expecting a good game but Pine View pretty much shut Snow Canyon down. SC was without their starting running back, who was injured the last game they played. But Pine View ddi to Snow Canyon what they did to Hurricane. Snow Canyon didn't get on the board until the 4th quarter but their defense was able to to hold PV to no points in the second half. Unfortunately, they didn't have enough time and lost. Colten was like "it is going to be weird to not have Snow Canyon in the championship since they have been there every year since 3rd grade". We will be going to watch Desert Hills take on Pine View next week in the championship game.