I was being ambitious this year and decided to hang our outside Christmas lights one day while everyone was at school/work. It was going well until I got to the high parts of our roof. When I tried to get the ladder to extend up that high, the ladder came down on my hand. It hurt! Luckily for me, Courtney came home soon afterward and helped me get the ladder up to the top and finish hanging the lights.
I think the lights turned out well though.
Each time Ethan calls, he and Courtney goof off. Sometimes Ethan will tease Courtney about something that happened that week. Sometimes they will show each other their tonsils (or lack thereof). And other times, they will just look into each other's eyes...that means that they put their eye balls up to the camera. They are weird.
Walmart had some fun tree toppers that we had to play around with. We went out in the mid-morning on Black Friday, when all the crazy people had gone home. Things were pretty picked over but we had fun in the Christmas section.
This was hilarious! It was the blind leading the blind on this one. Courtney was going to have Bryan help her with her science experiment, but we were home with nothing to do so she decided I could help. Honestly, there was just too much we did wrong that it would take forever to explain.
The gist of the experiment is: Courtney wanted to know which turf field made the ball go the fastest. Her hypothesis was that the older fields would be faster because the softness would have worn out and the ball would be going on, basically, concrete. She was testing the fields at Snow Canyon, PineView, and Desert Hills.
This is Courtney's contraption with the soccer ball in its place at the soccer field at Snow Canyon High.
No, the app didn't work right, but it was completely user-error. We got the weirdest measurements but didn't know what we were doing so I thought it was great that we had part of her project done.
The next day, Bryan took her out to PineView to do the experiment on their field. After a bit, he realized that things were not going as they should. They ended up having to re-do all the previous work so that it would be accurate.
The app we were using was a baseball speed app so you had to push a button when the ball leaves the pitcher's hand and then again when it hits the catcher's mitt. We were just pushing the button once and trying to figure out why it wasn't recording anything. Also, the measurements were in miles per hour. Haha! The ball is lucky to go feet so that measurement wasn't accurate. It was great.
In the end, Bryan and Courtney figured it out, got the data from PineView and Snow Canyon, and Courtney knows what to do in order to get accurate data from Desert Hills.
Bryan had a birthday! At work, they gave him a huge box of the best donuts I have ever eaten (yes, there were some to share when he got home although he did eat 2 while in traffic outside of Mesquite). I think this store is close to his work so it may be a bad thing to know they exist. There were all kinds of them and they were good!
I think he had a good day!
We don't have Sirius radio but our van is equipped with it and, apparently, you can get some stations for free. Our van suddenly decided it wants to listen to Elvis on Sirius radio. Each time I turn on the van, no matter if I was listening to the radio or if the radio was off, it will start the Elvis station on Sirius radio. I can't figure out why it does it or how to get it to change but my mom would love the van if it were hers!
Courtney has some great friends at Success Academy and in our neighborhood. One of her friends, Hayley, had a birthday and I had to document the funny pics that were posted for Happy Birthday posts for her.
They have a favorite study room in the Holland Building at DSU but I don't think much studying actually is done in that room. They have made Tic Tocs there and have taken tons of pics. They are a fun group.
Once again this year I made a paper tree for Ethan. Thanks to Facebook and our Pack family reunion, I was able to get pictures of family to put on the tree. I had a hard time this year because I didn't have the same resources I did when I made the tree last year. I was working at the middle school so I was able to pay for supplies there and use their die cuts. The city library doesn't have the same resources. But the woman at the city library was amazing. I asked if I could buy 6 feet of green butcher paper from them and she told me they don't sell it to the public. She gave me ideas of where I could go to buy some and then asked why I needed it. I told her I was making a Christmas tree for my missionary son and she said "Oh, I'll just give you what you need." So I got paper!
I had to improvise on the lights too. Last year there was a die-cut of Christmas lights but this year I had to use a teardrop and then a square to make the same shape. It worked and I think it turned out really cute!
I will send it at the end of the month with his Christmas pillowcase so he can decorate for Christmas in his apartment.
Courtney had to make a soccer ball kicking machine for her science project. She came up with the idea and made the machine. I only had to drill a hole in the mallet (that made her a bit nervous). Here's hoping that it works ok and she gets the information from it that she needs for her experiment.
Courtney is on the practice team for the Olympic Development Program. That means that she made the first cut and is practicing with the team. They are training 30 girls and then will choose 16 (I think) to be on the final team and go to the games in Arizona in January. She is kind of enjoying it. She likes the new swag for sure.
She will practice with the team through December. They have 2 exhibition games in December and then the final team will be chosen around Christmas (I think).
There is a new store in town that has a bunch of fun stuff. Courtney and I were exploring and found it. We found these inflatable things that you wear and then can bang into other people. We had to try them so we bought a pair. It took forever to blow them up (luckily we had a pump) and then Courtney tried them. She was going to ask her friend to come over to try them but it never worked out. The problem Courtney had was that she couldn't get out of them on her own. That is hilarious! I took pity and helped her. However, it caused her hair to have static cling and that was even more hilarious! I think it was a great purchase all around!
Did you know that Courtney loves to eat burned turkey bacon? Yup. She likes the regular stuff too but she eats burned turkey bacon each morning. I have had some days when I used a different pan and it didn't burn quite right. But I think I have it all figured out and perfected.
Courtney does personal soccer training with her old Galaxy coach. I love it when people from the neighborhood see Courtney and take pictures to send me. It's fun to see her working hard in the off-season (although it is club season so she really doesn't have an off-season).
Bryan walked outside this morning and there was a HUGE spider on our front porch and it was ALIVE! We had to put something else in the picture for size reference.
When I cut down the honeysuckle, I sprayed it really well for bugs. For a week afterward, there were bugs on our doorstep each morning. I would sweep them away with gratitude that they were dead and not alive. But this guy was alive!
Bryan tried to do the humane thing and get him to the field across the street without killing him but ended up crushing a spider leg when he tried to pick him up nicely. Oh well, he tried. I hope this guy doesn't have friends!
I have ruined our children for restaurant breakfast. Ethan likes it okay but Courtney doesn't like going to breakfast because it doesn't taste like it should. She doesn't like store-bought syrup and the pancakes don't taste the same. We wanted to go to breakfast so we decided to go to Bishops, which has huge scones that Courtney loves.
That's a plan she can always get behind. ;)
Bryan and I went to California to Disneyland/California Adventure for our 23rd anniversary. We drove down on Monday afternoon and ate dinner at Bubba Gumps. It was good food and I knew all the trivia the waiter asked us.
Tuesday morning we woke up and played the crazy game to get tickets to the new Star Wars ride. You can only ride "Rise of the Resistance" through a virtual queue. The way you get the ticket (or get in the virtual queue) is extremely stressful!! You use the Disneyland app to get in line. At 7 am, they release tickets and they are gone within a few minutes. So you get on your phone, with your tickets all linked, at 6:55 am and then you refresh at exactly 7 am, press "Virtual Queue" and hope that you were quick enough to get a virtual spot in line. Luckily, it worked for us and we had a space in the late morning. If you miss the window, they open another window at noon and you can try then, but it is crazy stressful.
We ate a quick breakfast of stuff we had brought with us and then we rode the bus to Disneyland. We didn't know how the bus system would work yet so we were late getting out to get on. That meant that we missed the crowds waiting to enter Disneyland but we still got there close to opening.
We had already linked our tickets and had them on the app so we got in without a problem. We weren't in too big of a hurry but I did want to run to the Haunted Mansion first thing because the line had been the longest (I had been watching on the app for a couple of weeks beforehand).
