What a mess!

 I decided that I am going to deep clean all the bedrooms in our house.  I'm only going to tackle one each week.  I decided to start with the one that needed the most work, Kierra and Katie's.  To be fair to Kierra, she tries to keep her room clean but when you get two girls in one room, that's a lot of stuff to keep organized.  It took longer than I thought to pull off this task.  It took most of two days.  The picture above is what their room looked like after I pulled everything out of the closet.  That doesn't include the 3 huge rubbermaid containers full of stuffed animals and dolls. They are still in my room because I don't want them back in their clean room.

After this little project, I grounded Kierra from bags.  While going through her room, I found at least 7 bags full of all sorts of different things.  I knew exactly what happened.  Every time she cleaned her room, she would have a pile of stuff that she didn't know what to do with.  So, she would find a bag and stuff it all in there and then stuff it in her closet or under the bed. 

 Check out this drawer!  It has notebooks, bras and cereal in it. Strange combination of things.

 I did most of the work while Kierra was at school.  When she came home, she thought it was so funny how frustrated I was.  I put her right to work cleaning out her desk. 

 Look how much better her dresser looks now!  This is also the area from the first picture where Kierra's bed use to be.

 I love the closet!  I don't know how long I'm going to be able to keep those rubbermaid containers out of there since my room is next and I don't want them in my room anymore.  I wonder how successful a winter garage sale would be!

Kierra and Katie were so excited when the project was finally done.  Katie loved her nicely made bed and told me she would try really hard to keep it clean.  She then told me that if she messes up again, I can clean it up for her.  I'm thrilled to report that it's been 4 days since we finished and it is still clean and organized.  I hope they can keep it up at least until I get all the bedrooms done.

Happy Halloween!

 Katie as the cutest witch I've ever seen.  She had so much fun on Halloween.  She went to the parade at the school with me and loved every single princess, butterfly, barbie, flower or anything girlie costume!  She helped me get the pumpkins ready to carve while the kids were at school.  She was so excited to go trick or treating.  I wish I would have had a video camera going the whole time we were trick or treating because she was so funny.  She stayed with us to the very end and got tonz of candy.

 Kyson the vampire.  A week before Halloween, we went through the costume box and the kids picked out what they were going to be.  Kyson was pretty excited about being a vampire.  On Halloween morning while we were getting ready to go to school I had to work pretty hard to convince him that it was ok to wear the fake teeth.  He was afraid he was going to get in trouble.  He ended up wearing them.  There were 5 kids dressed like a vampire in his class.  He, of coarse, looked the best!

 Jake picked a werewolf costume but since you can't wear masks to school, he had to be something different at school.  He was a Utah fan.  He did wear the werewolf costume for trick-or-treating but I forgot to get a picture.

Kierra was Sandy from Grease.  The funny thing about her being Sandy is that she has no idea who she is.  I explained a little about the movie and now she wants to see it.  I think she can wait a few more years for that one.
I didn't get a picture of Jaxon because he left early to go trick or treating with his friends.  He was a baseball player.  This was Jadon's first year not to go trick or treating.  He was a trooper and still came with us.  He and Dale tossed the football around as they walked.  Several people felt bad for Jadon and gave him candy.  The kids all got tons of candy.  The first thing we did was set 25 pieces aside to make our Christmas countdown banners.  Goodbye Halloween, Hello Christmas!

Happy Birthday Jax!

 Jaxon has been very excited to turn 12 and has been counting down the days for quite a while.  In our family, we don't allow our children to get handheld electronics until they are 12.  They also have to pay for half of it.  He has had the money for a long time.  He had a hard time deciding weather to get a psp go or an ipod touch.  He researched the differences between both of them on the internet.  I think he decided on the ipod touch once Kierra got hers.  He was very excited to go get it and had a hard time waiting until after Jadon's football game. 

 Jaxon requested pizza and a chocolate fountain for dinner so that's what we did.  We haven't gotten the chocolate fountain out in a long time and the kids had a great time dipping strawberries in it.

 After dinner, we played the candy bar game.  Who doesn't love the candy bar game?  We had a great time and no one even cried.

 After that, Jaxon and Jadon went to the Utah game.  Doyle was able to get some tickets for them.  They were amazing seats.  It was fun to get them ready and they had a great time.  They even showed them on the jumbo tron!

 Jaxon was ordained as a deacon today by his Dad.  Dale gave him a wonderful blessing and it was neat to have our whole family, plus my parents, in there to hear it.  It makes me so happy to have two of my sons hold the priesthood.

It's hard to believe that Jaxon is already 12 years old.  My kids are growing up so fast.  He is one of a kind.  He's a very talented athlete and is good at anything he tries.  His favorite sport is whatever he's playing at the time.  He is a great student as well.  His competitive nature helps him in school because he doesn't like anyone to do better than him.  He is very affectionate and hugs me all the time.  He has a very strong personality and I hope he uses it to become a leader one day.  He is a huge pressence in our home and when he's not there, it feels weird.  I hope he had a great birthday.  I love you Jax!

Goodbye Jenny

 After a long time of trying to make a very hard decision, we took Jenny to a new home today.  I have a lot of guilt about this decision.  Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that I don't like dogs.  I should have know this because we didn't keep the last dog we had.  My kids really wanted a dog and I thought I would try it again.  It just wasn't working out.  I know that if I liked her, it would have been a lot easier to keep her, and I feel horrible about that.  My kids liked their dog but they didn't give her the time and attention that she needed. We decided that we needed to find her a better home.  I truly feel that Jenny will be better off in her new home.  She is going to be trained to be a service dog.  She will probably end up with an older man with diabetes who is in a wheel chair.  I think she will get the chance to be a loyal companion to someone who needs her as much as she needs someone to love her.

She really was a good dog and I hope that my children will not hate me for doing this.  I hope they will have some good memories of the dog they had for a short time.

Congrats Kierra!

Kierra has worked really hard and earned her Young Women's medallion which she received on Sunday.  We are really impressed with how hard she has worked for this and how much of it she did on her own.  I had to help her with one of her projects but she did everything else by herself.  She is a very independant girl who gets things done on her own.  She has set some great goals for herself and is developing a strong testimony.  We feel lucky to have such a sweet daughter!

Way to play prairie 10 ward girls!

Sabrina and Kierra waiting for the game to start

This week our the girls in our ward finished up the region volleyball tournament. A week ago was the beginning of the tournament.  Their first night, they won 5 out of 6 games.  It was awesome!  They played great and the games were very exciting and fun to watch.  The next night, unfortunately, they got beat by another ward in our stake.  Since it was a two loss tournament, they got to play this week.  For their first game, the other team forfeited, so that was a win for us.  The 2nd game didn't turn out so good.  They lost both sets.  That ended the tournament but we had a great time playing.  The girls had such a great time together.  One of the nights, the girls went out for ice cream after the game.  I drove a bunch of them there and they were all laughing and having a great time together.  I looked around at the girls in the van and realized they ranged from 7th-10th grade.  That didn't matter at all.  They all still got along great together.  I love that!  I'm so glad that Kierra has the oppurtunity to hang out with such a great group of girls. 

Kierra usually does pretty good with serving

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The girls getting ready to rotate positions

Our winning team!

The boys of fall

I love everything about fall! The changing of the leaves, the cooler weather, wearing hoodies and making soup, getting out the fall scents for my scentsy and watching my boys play football.  I don't really get football but what I love is that all the boys in the neighborhood gather in somone's yard to play.  They usually play right after school until it's time for dinner.  It doesn't matter how old you are either.  They usually range from 5 to 15 years old.  It's so awesome to see them all play together!