Ella Paige

Ella, the true example of a middle child. This little girl has never allowed herself to be pushed aside or forgotten. She is a true drama child and keeps us smiling and laughing most all the time. Ella is not only sweet, but affectionate, nurturing, out-going, bright, funny, friendly, and wise beyond her years.

She and I both have something in common...we're both going into the third grade this coming school year! Ha! After many years of teaching fourth grade, I'll be moving down to third. Ella's super excited, even though I won't be her teacher.

Ella turned 8 in December and is ready to be baptized. Like my usual self, I've procrastinated on planning and getting her baptism planned. After talking to a friend of mine recently, I was reprimanded into putting some plans in action. Mike and I have decided that the end of July will be when Ella gets baptized. It will be a special family occasion.

Ella continues taking jazz and is currently one of the younger students in level 3 jazz. We loved watching her shake those tail feathers at her recital last month. The did a dance to Viva Las Vegas. I could totally see Ella on a stage in Vegas! She's got those high kicks down! I can't say that Ella loves jazz, but I just can't bring myself to let her quit when I see so much potential. So, on Wednesdays, if you hear a lot of screaming and crying and ranting going on at our house, don't worry. It's just me getting Ella ready for dance class. Quite honestly, once she's there, she has a great time. Her true love and passion right now has to be soccer. She was so blessed this year to be on a new team with a fabulous coach. Actually she has two great coaches and a group of girls that work so well together. As Mike and I were weighing the pros and cons of staying where we are or moving to another town, we wrote down Ella's soccer team/coach as one of the cons to moving. Beginning in August, Ella will be starting piano lessons as well.

Miss Ella is our ray of sunshine on a cloudy day!

 Enjoying her chicken "arms"

 Modeling her hairstyle by Anna

 Boogie boarding 

 Visiting dad

 Flower child and  mosquito bait

 First day of 2nd grade

 "Orange" you glad you play soccer!

 Dancing with Big Mac

 Crazy hair day...Queen Bee

 Chef Ella

 Isn't she lovely

Viva Las Vegas!

Anna Claire

The other day at church, one of our close friends was giving a talk. This happened to be our young women's president, who was also Anna's fourth grade teacher, a co-worker and dear friend of mine, and the mother of one of Anna's best friends. As she talked, she went through and spoke about each of the young women and what characteristics she loved most about them. Listening to her describe each girl, it was obvious she loves each of them very much. I waited to hear what she would say about my Anna girl. She explained that as she had gotten to know Anna, she felt like she had such a sweet spirit that her body almost couldn't contain it. This was one of the sweetest things I've ever heard about one of my children. 

Anna is so sweet. That being said, she is my daughter, and is more like me than my other kids. In fact, my mom likes to refer to her as Jen Jr. My mom once referred to me as being like an M & M. Hard on the outside but sweet in the middle. That's my Anna too. 

Anna is 12 and going in to the 7th grade. She's excited about moving up to the intermediate school. She's in the band and shuffles up and down from 2nd to 4th chair most all the time. Although she claims to not be any good, I can assure you she plays the flute very well. Her piano skills have continued to improve as well. This spring she decided to play soccer. I'm sad to say she didn't enjoy it very much, but I certainly enjoyed watching her play. It's fun to see her interact with other girls her age.  Up until December of this past year, Anna wasn't much of a reader. She read only when it was forced upon her. This is not to say she's not a good reader though. For Christmas, she received a Kindle. Since then, she's become a reading fiend. I didn't know how expensive that little gift was going to be! Now reading is one of her favorite things to do. 

Anna is happy as a clam hanging out with friends or sitting in her room, listening to music, drawing or reading on her Kindle while eating Dove chocolate. 

 First day of 6th grade

 After piano recital in May 

 Isn't she cute in her glasses?

 Anna turns 12!

 Catching a ride with Chelbo at Cheyenne's wedding

 Anna as the "Mad Hatter"

 Enduring family pictures at the pumpkin patch

Boys' Campout

Mike and Brennan went to Lake Texana for a little father/son campout. They left Friday afternoon and came back Saturday afternoon. Can you tell what Brennan enjoyed the most?

I'm going to have Mike explain what they did and all that jazz...he'll be my guest writer on this post. Just can't promise when we'll get around to that.

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week to Me!

Dear Mrs. Greene-Uppencamp,

You are the most exciting teacher that I've ever had. Through out the year you have taught me so many fabulous things that sometimes I even dream about what you are teaching me! I especially loved Social Studies today.

Love,
Francisco (alias)

No Rest for the Wicked

If that phrase is true, that there's "no rest for the wicked", Mike and I must be terribly wicked. For about 3 weeks now we have been working on getting our yard looking better and believe me when I say, there was only one direction for it to go. This began with hiring a cowboy tree cutter to cut down a huge Oak tree in our back yard along with many branches on most all the other trees in our front and back yard. The weekend after that was done, there was more than a weekend's worth of raking leaves and cleaning up the front and backyards. Kids did their part, all the while whining and arguing and being generally normal kids. Thankfully, Nana saved the two little ones for awhile and Anna had a friend over which kept her out of our hair while we could continue to work. Poor Mike busted his nose and got a terrible case of poison ivy. There's another phrase that rings true after the first weekend we worked on the yard...it's got to look worse before it looks better. Unfortunately, I only took pictures AFTER the clean up.

This in only half of the leaves, trash and such we left for big pick up.

Front yard after clean up.

Another view of the front yard after clean up.

Part of the back yard after clean up.

Other half of backyard after clean up.

By Monday, Mike and I were moaning and groaning with every step we took, but truly enjoyed how the yard was looking, even if it still looked pretty bad. That next weekend we went camping and left the yard is it was.

This past weekend, we were at it again. Talk about dropping some cash! While focusing on the flower beds around the front yard trees, we bought at least 14 bags of soil and about 8 bags of miracle grow soild and about 8 bags of mulch (honestly I lost count). The kids helped us at Lowe's while we chose flowers and plants to use. Purslane, heather, dusty miller, and pentas were chosen to start off with.

Anna fell in love with some of the cactus plants. We didn't tell her, but Mike and I had just been discussing how much we dislike cacti in flower beds. However, we did buy her a pot that had several really good looking cacti in a nice looking planter. Anna's going to find a place in the backyard to keep her cactus plants.

Oh, I almost forgot my favorite...we got a lemon tree! This coming weekend it will be planted in the backyard.

We are grateful and ungrateful for the previous owners. For whatever reason, they filled their flower beds (surrounding the trees in the front yard) with small pieces of busted up bricks/rocks. It left like we had to dig to China to get to all of it, yet we never actually got all of it!! Finally, we said, "Let's just plant the flowers!!"

We are grateful that the previous owners left so many landscaping blocks and bricks that we were able to use those instead of having to buy new ones right now. Later we want some other type rocks around the flower beds, but that will come after we recover financially from what's already been done. Here are two of the flower beds we actually got done last weekend. What you won't see is the second pile of trash (similar to the first one) set out for heavy trash pick up. I'm sure that our garbage men LOVE us!

One of the front yard flower beds.

Ella helping with planting the flowers.

The other flower bed we finished.

Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday we woke up to the two little ones whispering loudly about what the Easter Bunny brought them. Mike and I laid in bed enjoying hearing them. Anna had crashed on the floor that night (see earlier post) so of course Ella and Brennan woke her up. Anna told them, not in a whisper, "You guys know Mom likes us to wake her up before we look at anything!" Dutifully, they all came and climbed in to bed and cuddled with us for a few minutes before we all ventured out to take a closer look and to search for those Easter eggs that were hidden.

Getting ready for church was as if it was a regular old Sunday...Satan sure does tempt me into staying home from church even on EASTER! Eventually, everyone was ready and we went to church. All three speakers' talks were centered around the true meaning of Easter.

When church was over, my sister, Melissa, and my neice came over to help me get some pictures of every one dressed in their Easter best. I've posted before about Easter pictures how they are like licking a tootsie roll pop...how many clicks does it take the get a good Easter picture?

The best part of the day was spending the afternoon and evening with my family. There was good food, kids played together (they love it when their cousins are all together), and I wouldn't have wanted to spend the day in any other way.

Easter Eggs

In our family, we haven't missed a year of dying Easter eggs. This year, I thought we would skip it. The kids didn't ask about it, but it kept nagging at me. Even though we had just gotten back from camping at around 5:30, we managed to continue our tradition late that evening. While I went to the store, Mike boiled the eggs and made sure kids were ready for bed before we started on the Easter eggs. All three kids helped with gathering 12 mugs and 12 spoons (which was quite the task because there were only about 5 clean spoons. We were making "marble magic" eggs. That means you add vinegar, water and vegetable oil to the dye tablets. As you can tell, Brennan is concentrating extremely hard on gently rolling his egg over and over in the mug to get that creative marble design.Everyone needs help...

every now and then. Except Miss Independence, but she got help whether she wanted it or not! (Or maybe was just being picked on)

The kids wanted to double dip their eggs to get a multicolor marble effect. Then Ella and Brennan decided to dip them three times must make them even better! Mike taught them that triple dipping in Spanish would be "tres dippios".

Earlier this week, the Easter bunny got a letter from me asking him to please not hide our dyed eggs this year. In the past the eggs have stained parts of my furniture, floors, etc. After 11 years, I guess I finally learned a lesson!