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Kyrie was chosen to participate in the school’s spelling bee! There were only 12 kids total who made it out of all the 3rd-5th grades. We were so proud of her!! She did great and made it to the final 5 before she missed her word. This was the only picture I could take, which was before the spelling bee started. You can see Kyrie there in about the middle of the back row.
Go, Kyrie!!
We heard about a local farm that had a huge tangelo/lemon/grapefruit grove, so we decided to check it out today. They had a special for a couple weekends only where the tangelos were dirt cheap (as in, $.20 per pound!), so we knew we needed to take advantage of that. We had a great time! It was especially nice to be around all the greenery and feel like we were in a little oasis in the midst of Yuma. The tangelos were actually pretty hard to get off the trees most of the time. The picker they give you to use is pretty awkward, but the kids loved trying to use it. Asher and Bri loved standing on Daddy’s shoulders to reach the ones that were really high up.
Some of the tangelos were beyond HUGE! I swear there were some that were a pound all by themselves. Kyrie found a really good sized one and was pretty excited about that.
I felt so in awe of the beauty of this place and got a few pictures of the scenery. The one on the far right is of Asher right after he’d walked through this arch of trees. I just loved that little bench and thought it would be such a perfect spot to read a book!
Cambria insists on having me put her to bed each night. I was in the middle of finishing up an assignment and told her I’d be right in and to pick out her story. Then I went back to what I was doing. I got up about 2 minutes later to head into her room, and I found her like this.
I guess she was too tired even for a bedtime story!
So a few weeks ago, Derk was talking to Kyrie about her upcoming birthday and said, “Hey, why don’t you have a sleepover with a few of your friends for your birthday?” I hate sleepovers, so I gave him a little glare. Then he went on, “How about if you invite, oh….7-8 of your friends?” I stopped him right there and asked him if he had ANY idea what he was getting himself (read: ME) into. He said, all innocently, “What? How bad could it be? It’s just a few friends sleeping over…” I told him getting 8-9 girls together for a sleepover is a recipe for disaster (not in a bad way, of course – just NO sleep, lots of noise, lots of mess, etc). He insisted it would be fine, so I decided to let him learn his lesson. The hard way. 
It turned out that Kyrie’s good friend Brianna has a birthday around the same time, and the girls had unknowingly planned their parties on the same weekend. When talking to her mom, we decided we’d just have a fun joint party for the girls instead! We said we’d host the party at our house, and she said if we were going to be THAT brave (see, SHE knew how crazy it would be!
We ended up having 8 girls, and it was beyond crazy. They were quite a diverse group of girls, let me tell you. One girl said she’s not allowed to eat food at anyone else’s house, one girl was beyond rude the WHOLE time and refused to do what we asked (to the point where I threatened to send her home…), and one girl would drop to the floor at random times and start doing sit ups (LOL!). They had lots of fun playing games, jumping on the trampoline, eating pizza/snacks, and watching movies. Instead of cake, I just made cupcakes and let the girls have a blast decorating their own. You know, cause letting 8 girls get hyped up on sugar when they’re spending the night at YOUR house is the way to go…
Cupcake time for the birthday girls.
Here are the 2 best buddies after opening gifts!
It was a loooooooooooooong process getting those girls to settle down and go to sleep. We told them around 10 that it was time to put on a movie and start calming down, but they didn’t actually end up falling asleep until after 2am. And that’s only because Derk finally went out there and threatened them that he was going to sleep with them if they didn’t GO TO SLEEP.
Once Cambria started ballet, the other kids decided they’d like to do something as well. Asher wanted to do karate, so I began my research to find the best place. We found a great place right by our house, and they give every new student a free 2 week trial to make sure they like it before you sign up. Here’s Asher on his first day of the trial. He was a natural! I was so proud of him, and he actually surprised me by knowing a few of the moves already. The sensei has a couple of brown belts who help with his classes (that’s part of their requirements to move up to the next belt), and the boys were SO nice to Asher. It brought tears to my eyes to see how much they helped him, and they were so patient with him. I love the look of determination on his face!
(Kyrie is leaning towards wanting to do karate, too, but she’s not quite sure yet.)
I love seeing my kids having fun! It’s definitely one of the best parts of being a parent.
Today Cambria had her first ballet class! This girl has been begging for months and months to be in ballet, and she could hardly stand waiting until the studio’s new semester started up in January. She was the cutest little ballerina in the class! 
Once we got to the studio her shyness took over, but she got excited pretty fast. When we walked in they gave each child a name tag. We were a bit early, so I snapped some pictures of Bri waiting on the chairs for class to start.
Parents aren’t able to actually be IN the room during ballet. There’s a sliding glass door that we can watch through (the kind where we can see in but the kids can’t really see out, to prevent them from getting distracted). So I wasn’t able to get a good picture of her once class started. But I did snap one last picture of her after class before heading home.
See? Cutest. ballerina. ever.
How is this possible?! Seems like only yesterday she was this little sweetie:
And now she’s a wonderful, beautiful, too-smart-for-her-own-good 10 year old! She is growing up so fast and is now becoming such an amazing young lady.
She had a great birthday. We started by opening gifts because what kid is patient enough to wait until AFTER breakfast?! 
After presents, we had cinnamon rolls – Kyrie’s request for her birthday breakfast. I had never made them from scratch before, and it was definitely a bit of a learning process. And by that I mean I need to learn to read ALL the directions before I dive right in.
Happy birthday to our Kyrie!
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