Tonight, Sarah, Brittany, and I went over to Feed My Starving Children for a combined Young Men and Young Women Activity. We had about 60 of us there, along with about 30 others that were volunteering from other places. We worked very hard and ended up with:
We really love going over there and performing service! The food we packed to night is going to Guatemala.
Today, Zach had his last football game and was kind-of sad that it is over. Like the rest, they lost, but he had some great blocks! He played both Center and on the line today.
They kept getting better and better each week. If they had about 6-8 weeks more of games, they might actually win one! 🙂 Keep up the GREAT work Zach!
After Zach’s game, they had their football banquet over at The Patio Restaurant in Bolingbrook. Angela and I took him and we all had a fun time eating and watching the boys get their awards. Zach got his trophy and was also awarded the “most respectful player” award. 🙂 All the moms thought that this was absolutely wonderful. Zach is Mr. Congeniality! 🙂 He was definitely very polite and told his coach thanks after every practice!
Sarah worked today and had a great time. She really loves her job and the people she works with. Kirstyn just got accepted to a girls engineering program at Northern Illinois University (Naperville Campus) and attended the orientation for this program with Angela. It’s called NIU EEP (Northern Illinois University Enhancing Engineering Pathways) and is designed to get middle school girls interested in engineering fields of study.
After all of that, we had our Ward’s Trunk-or-Treat activity at the church. We brought soup and apple juice. The kids all dressed up and after eating, they had a parade for the kids and then everyone went out in the parking lot, went from trunk to trunk getting candy, and we enjoyed all the people’s decorated trunks!
Needless to say, we are absolutely dead tired right now. What a long (but very enjoyable) day! 🙂
Tonight, Sarah and Brittany took Zach and Ben over to the Gombert Elementary Monster Bash for Halloween. Zach and Ben got all dressed up and ready to do the games and such with Brittany, while Sarah volunteered to help out with concessions. She worked at the caramel apple stand most of the time which made her laugh. This is much of what she does at work. Unfortunately, the person who had volunteered to replace her didn’t show up so she just continued on and also helped clean up after it started coming to a close. What a sweet kid! She didn’t have to, but did anyway. Meanwhile, Zach and Ben wore Brittany out going to the cake walk (where they won some cupcakes), and playing all the games in the gym. They had a blast and came home totally tired!
While the four of them were over at Gombert, Kirstyn had a bunch of friends over for a Halloween party at our house. Kirstyn had all kinds of snacks, pop, pizza, and such and many of the kids brought over snacks to share. They played Apples to Apples, played on the Wii, and ate lots of food. The girls downed about 8 pizzas. 🙂 They must have been really hungry!
Unfortunately, we didn’t get too many good pictures of the party. They had a blast, though and everyone was totally tired by the time they left our house. Needless to say, Angela and I were exhausted as well from running around and helping. 🙂
Today was Sarah’s first day of work! She is SO excited to finally have a job and absolutely loved working at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory her first day. She did all kinds of candy and will soon learn the register. While Sarah was doing that, Brittany had her first facial at a nearby salon. She was kind-of nervous but when she got there, she relaxed and enjoyed the experience. While Brittany was doing that, Zach was having his very last football practice! Yea! We have loved football, but it does take a lot of time and we could use the break!
Tonight we Skyped with Mom and Dad Hobbs in Tokyo! They are looking great and are having a wonderful time on their mission! They are in the Mission Office right now taking care of finance and secretarial jobs, but will soon be back out with the people.
It took a bit for us to get connected because Angela was trying on her laptop that doesn’t have a camera and she couldn’t get the sound to work. We swapped out for mine that has a camera and great sound, and voila!
We each got to sit in front of the camera and talk to them. Ben and Zach were probably the most excited because not only could they see Grandma and Grandpa, but they could see themselves! 🙂
Tonight, Brittany had her first orchestra concert at Metea. Angela took Kirstyn and went. Sarah attended her Young Women activity, and I went with Ben to Zach’s football practice. It just seems like every activity we have, we are conflicted with many other things we need to do as well. It’s just crazy.
Brittany did a GREAT job and the concert (from what I heard) was absolutely wonderful. They sounded very professional. Mr. Liu is a great orchestra director and teacher. He is tough on the kids, but they really learn a lot and improve. Brittany’s confidence and skill has drastically improved, even over the last 2 weeks of private lessons.
Great job Brittany! Go Go Mustangs!
Today was our annual primary program at church, where the kids sing, give little parts and talks. Kirstyn, Zach, and Ben all participated. Kirstyn was one of the main narrators, and Zach sang most of the songs. He is such a funny kid… He came to church with a tucked-in white shirt, tie, and sport jacket. By the time he finished his program (up on the stand facing everyone), he had his jacket off, his tie off, and his shirt untucked! Given any more time, his shoes and socks, and possibly shirt would have come off! 🙂
Ben also participated. They brought all the little nursery-aged kids up (2-4) and they sang “I am a Child of God.” Ben knows this song pretty well, but when he got up in front of the congregation, he froze. He wouldn’t sing a lick. 🙂 It was pretty funny! Every time we would mouth to him to sing, he would just bite on his finger and timidly shake his head. He had the people behind us laughing. 🙂
Today, Zach was really busy! He had an early football game and had a TON of fun, even though his team lost again. 🙁 He played on the offensive line today and had to go against a really big kid that I swear is not in first grade. We were joking that maybe he is a 3rd year 1st-grader! 🙂 One of the dads got some great pictures of him!
It was rainy and cold and but the kids still played hard and enjoyed the game. Zach didn’t have his best game, but he had fun and he won the weekly crunch bar for doing great against kids that most of the time were way bigger than him. Go Zach! 🙂
After the game, Zach went over to the Gatorthon at his elementary school. It was a walk and activities to raise money. We sponsored him and he was pretty excited to get lots of prizes and other “stuff” for his efforts. He came home with a load of things and was excited to set it all out and have a picture taken. 🙂
We were all exhausted by the end of the day when you add all those activities together, plus all the house cleaning we did. We rewarded ourselves by having a family party that night with a movie, some games, and just hanging out for some much-needed “together time.”
Today was a busy day that took us in all different directions! Angela took Zach to football practice, then dropped Brittany off at the church for our semi-annual youth temple trip. She was very excited. I was bummed that I wouldn’t be able to go this time. While Angela had Zach at practice and was watching after Ben, I took Kirstyn and we went up to see Sarah perform in her first band concert of the year (Angela gets to go to the Orchestra concert while I do the football duty in the next week or so). 🙂
Sarah did a great job! One of the highlights for her is that she gets to wear a solid black dress instead of the black pants, tux shirt, bowtie and cummerbund that she had to wear last year. She looks more “professional” in the new outfit. 🙂 They played great and she had a piccolo solo that she nailed!
You can’t see Sarah very well from the picture above (only the top of her head on the far right). 🙂 They were warming up in this picture. She has been practicing more lately which makes us happy! Maybe we’ll put her back into lessons if she keeps practicing. She wants to have lessons again, but $170 per month with no practicing is not worth it to us. Keep up the great work, Sarah! 🙂
Today, Kirstyn started Intermural Basketball at Still Middle School! She’s pretty excited! She will do this for the next few weeks in the mornings before school. She is looking forward to the fun and exercise! She also had Activity Days at church and had a GREAT time decorating cupcakes and cookies for Halloween!
She was VERY proud of her creations and so obviously, we had to take pictures! 🙂
Today was a crazy day. We got up early, got ready, and went to the funeral of our friend. The services were very positive, and the priest gave many encouraging words to the family. This is the first funeral mass that any of our daughters had been to so they were a little confused as to what was going on, but we explained it to them as best we could. We paid our respects and then we were off to the picnic that followed. Sarah stayed the entire time with her friend again to be there for support. The rest of us grabbed something to eat and then took off to get Zachary to his football game.
Today Zach got to be a captain and go out for the coin toss. He was pretty excited, although we’re not quite sure he knows exactly what that means! 🙂 He played pretty good today (one of his better games) but they still lost. He is still doing great at starting Center.
After the football game, we went back over to the picnic and hung out with the family pretty much until it was over.
After we got home from football and the picnic, Angela and I took off and drove to Lyons for a 40th birthday party for Tracy Raketic. We had a great, relaxing time, sitting outside around a blazing fire and enjoying talking with people we have gotten to know but only see when we visit the Raketic family. 🙂 After the hour drive home, however, we were totally exhausted and fell into bed.
Tonight we attended the visitation for our friend, Lonny Greenwald. Sarah went over and spent the whole time with her friend, trying to comfort and help her out. When we got there, we saw many other people that we knew and also met some that we didn’t know before. Their neighborhood (near ours) is so much more friendly and outgoing than ours is. Everyone seems pretty close. Sarah’s friend Taylor printed out a copy of one of the pictures that we took together at homecoming with the dads and daughters and displayed it in a frame there at the visitation (Lonny is in the blue shirt in the front). It was very surreal.
We wish our very best to the Greenwald family and hope that you will find peace and comfort in the days, weeks, and months to come.
