Great Little Happenings - November, December & January

Here's a glimpse of the activities over the past few months that I never blogged about - small, lovely little happenings that I don't want to forget.

Eliza played basketball with a great team and really fun coach during November and December. Lots of her best friends were on the team. Sadly, many of the games were scheduled during her dance class on Tuesday nights so she had to miss some dance classes and some basketball games (and I gave the Parks and Rec department a little talking-to about changing the game schedule after we'd already signed Eliza up to participate). But despite the scheduling challenges, Eliza had a great season and was so fun to watch. She really got aggressive out there and did a great job getting the ball where it needed to be. Plus she made some great points.

Here's Liza with a couple of her best friends:

One evening, everyone else was somewhere else and the twins and I went on a special Mommy Date to get them some new ties at the mall. We don't end up at the mall much so it was kind of fun and special for them to be in a festive shopping environment like that. They were overjoyed when I let them ride the little train that went all over the mall - even though it was sort of a rip-off at $3 each. It won't be much longer that they beg to do little-kid stuff like this so it was fun to indulge them.

Ashton doesn't love having his picture taken. But if he's allowed to be on the computer, he'll pretty much let me do whatever I want. Ashton has had to be banned from computers here and there over the past few months - he gets sucked into Minecraft and other fun and generally harmless computer activities when he's supposed to be doing something else. We're working together to define where "harmless" can become "harmful" because it's taking away from the other good things we could be spending our time on. Ashton's learning about respecting limits and we're learning about what to accept and what to insist upon. This teenage parenthood isn't the easiest thing but Ashton's showing us the ropes and he's so much fun to talk to and hang out with (when he isn't being surly, grumpy or antagonizing).

Self-portrait by Ashton:

The first snow was really beautiful.

The twins were pretty amazed to see what the snow did to their bikes:

We went to see cousin Portia perform in the musical, Grease. Eliza and her friend Rachel had a ton of fun with the confetti they threw out in the last scene. And somehow I didn't think to get a photo with Portia in all the post-play craziness. We love having some fun cousins living not too far from us.

Jared fully celebrated "No-Shave November" and grew himself a nice beard:

After getting sick of the beard, he tried out some other adventures in facial hair. And in the end, he went back to clean-shaven, which I have to say is my favorite look for him even though it was interesting to be married to a different-looking guy there for a while.

Isaac was in a Spanish play at school (that's him with the blond wig). He was "Fred" in "Scooby Doo." I didn't understand much of the play (which sure seemed long given that I couldn't understand anything) but it seemed like Isaac did a wonderful job! 

Here's a close-up of "Fred" (who actually looked a bit like Ashton with that blond hair...)

The twins lost lots of teeth and are now getting some pretty crazy new teeth coming in at odd angles.

The twins' hair got long enough for some cute hair-dos before we cut it.

We spent a really nice day at the Ogden Nature Center and learned all about local animals, birds, spiders, bugs, you name it.