Tessa's 8th Birthday

 
Tessa turned 8 on Thursday!! Tessa is such a sweet and caring girl. Her teacher at school, Mrs Pontius, has reached out to me several times to express what a sweet friend Tessa is to everyone in their class. She said that she wishes she could clone her and have a class full of Tessa's. :) Tessa is so quick to help out if she sees anyone struggling with something. She writes us sweet notes, gives us hugs, and tells us how much she loves us.

Tessa has a great sense of humor. She makes us laugh every day. I have always loved her spunky, quick wit. She doesn't take herself too seriously and isn't afraid to be silly. I hope that remains throughout her life.

Tessa loves loves loves animals. She can't wait until she's a mom so she can have pets of her own. For now, she settles for stuffed pets. She has so many stuffed animals, and every one has a special place in her heart.

Tessa also loves to read. When Damon gets a new library book from school, he shows it to Tessa as soon as she gets home and she sits right down and reads it. Every night she reads past the time we tell her she needs to turn her lights off because she's lost in her books and just wants to finish them.

Tessa loves to play with her friends, and can make friends everywhere she goes. She loves gymnastics and dance, playing pretend with Damon, laughing with Rockwell, watching tv, listening to JoJo songs, going on bike rides, and doing the monkey bars. 

Happy birthday beautiful Tessa Girl! We love love love you and are so grateful you are in our family!!

Paul went into work a little bit late on Thursday so he could make crepes for Tessa's birthday breakfast.

She had told me she wanted brownies and ice cream for her dessert, but changed her mind two days before her birthday. She told Paul that she wanted a cat cake, like how he had made a dog cake for Damon's birthday. Paul stayed up until 1:30 Wednesday night making her the cutest cat cake I have ever seen. 

He showed it to her that morning, and said it was worth the late night just to see her face. She LOVED it!!

She had a great day at school. A couple friends gave her presents and made her feel special.

She opened presents when Paul got home from school that afternoon.

Our ministering brother, Sam, made her this hat. That was so nice of him!

She loved it all!

She was so excited to play with her new toys that she didn't want to go to dance. Instead we hung out and enjoyed her new presents.

She chose Cafe Rio for dinner, and so we drove to American Fork since that's the best one around. We had cake and ice cream when we got home.

School Week 13

 Governor Herbert put out a new mandate that limits social gatherings to families that live in the same household for this week and next. The numbers of daily Covid-19 cases have gotten into the high 3,000s lately, and experts in the field believe it is being spread at social gatherings where large groups are getting together and not wearing masks or social distancing. He is not closing schools or businesses, but is requiring masks everywhere in the state. All extra-curricular activities have been canceled at schools, which means the kids haven't been able to go to art club this week. That was hard, along with not being able to play with their friends. We've tried to have fun spending most our time at home this week. The kids played play dough one afternoon.

Damon is continuing to learn and progress with learning to read. He passed off his Kindergarten rainbow words this week. He has more lists that he'll work on, but he got a pack of skittles for learning all of the sight words that they want them to learn by the end of Kindergarten. I love love love to see him so proud of himself!

Tessa and Damon have been earning Cold Stone coupons at school. By Friday we all needed to get out of the house, and so we went to Cold Stone and ate our ice cream in the car.

Then we went to Walmart because the kids all wanted to buy a new toy. Rockwell bought himself Legos and has been building a train.

Damon chose a dog that walks and barks.

And Tessa bought a humungous unicorn.

We decorated for Christmas on Saturday. It's early, but a lot of people are celebrating early this year. I think everyone is looking for joy in their lives a little more than usual, with the pandemic and presidential elections that were very ugly and divisive this year. I like having the extra beauty and reminders of Christ in our home.

School Week 12

We had the birthday party for Mel and Tessa on Sunday. Tessa loved her new earrings, notebook, jacket, and koala.

Hallee wrote Tessa such a sweet note in the notebook. I'm so glad these girls have each other.

Rockwell brought home his plate from art club this week. I think everything he has made there has had at least one penguin on it. :)

My friends and I had a girl's night at Katie's house to celebrate Audrey's birthday. It was fun to have a night out with my friends.

I finally ordered the first couple blog books and they arrived this week. It has brought me so much joy to see the family reading them and loving them. It's a lot of work to blog, and I have loved seeing that Paul and the kids enjoy reading them. It's so fun to read them and remember things that I would not remember if I hadn't written them down. 

Rockwell has loved 5th grade so far. His favorite thing about it is that his teacher "doesn't give homework." It was a hard realization recently when he understood that although there aren't daily assignments he has to do, there are big projects that need to be done at home. His 6-page book report on Fablehaven was due this week, he will give an oral report on Fablehaven next week, and his Science Fair project is due the following week. He's been spending a good amount of time on these projects lately, and I'm so proud of the work he's done. He even stayed up late Wednesday night to finish the book report early since Boston was coming over Thursday. He wanted to be able to just play with his friend and not worry about finishing it. I thought that was very responsible.

Damon has been playing indoor soccer in Lindon. It's a fun, no-pressure league. He was pretty confused the first game on which goal was theirs because kids from both teams were scoring in both goals and everyone just claps whenever anyone makes a goal. :) He's got the hang of it now though, and is playing great. He's made a couple goals, and really likes playing defense. We thought it was so cute to see him taking defense seriously yesterday. He's #6. :)

A lot of our leaves fell in the front yard and the kids loved making piles and jumping in them.

Rockwell loves it when Paul plays games with him on his laptop. And I love listening to them laugh together while they play.

School Week 11 / Halloween

 The kids have been having so much fun in the leaves in our backyard.

Tessa has been playing with Morgan a lot lately, and I feel bad that Morgan always goes home with leaves all over her hair and clothes. But when I hear them laughing and having so much fun, I just don't want to stop them.

The Young Women from our ward did a Chuck Your Treat From the Street activity this week. They walked around the whole ward with wagons full of candy, and threw it to the kids in their own yards. That was a fun idea.

Tessa brought home the plate she made in art club this week. I love that they get to do so many cool projects there. Her plate is so cute!

I went to see Jekyll and Hyde with Mel and Ataiya at the American Fork Community Theatre. It was a really cool production with a lot of talent. It was a good Halloween show since it was really intense and a little scary. :)

Al invited the kids over to play, but Tessa was already playing at Morgan's. She asked if Damon wanted to come play with Hallee, and Damon was thrilled about that!! He and Rockwell had so much fun playing with their cousins.

The kids wore their costumes to school on Friday and had Halloween parties with their classes. They didn't do a parade this year with Covid, but I'm glad they could still have a party.

We did our Halloween dinner Friday night, with ghosts, mummies, witch fingers, and pumpkins. The kids love this dinner. :)

Saturday was Halloween, and we decided not to go trick-or-treating this year. Instead, we invited the Ham Fam over for a Halloween party. The kids were very disappointed about not trick-or-treating, but they were okay with it when they found out they could party with their cousins and still get a ton of candy. They had fun helping me set up the decorations and the candy.

We played games for a while and then had some pizzas and vegetables for dinner. I made a mixed drink that ended up really cute and yummy.

The kids played outside a lot of the night.

The teenagers sat in the hot tub, and we made a fire too. It was a really fun party, and I didn't miss trick-or-treating one little bit. :)