A month or so ago, I told you we went to meet Shannon Hale at the Provo Library because she's one of Emilia's favorite authors. On Monday they had another meet the author night, this time with Cressida Cowell. She is the author that wrote the books that How To Train Your Dragon was based on. We love that movie around here and last year I read the first book in the series to the girls. Emilia read another seven books in the series (though there are 12 total, so she didn't make it through all of them.) Steve wanted to go to the BYU basketball game that night with his parents, so I decided to take all three girls to the AuthorLink.
Cressida was a great presenter and the library was very organized for the signing. They had crafts and coloring for the kids and everybody got a letter that grouped them for the signing order. Unfortunately since we got there late, we had to wait to the very end to meet her and get our books signed. My poor girls were up until almost 10pm. It was craziness.
But they did come home with a dragon each that they made themselves, a hero mark (dragon "tattoo" from an ink stamp--it was pretty cool), a poster, and two signed books. I think they had fun for the most part. I think I had fun for the most part, too. ;)
Steve enjoyed his basketball game. BYU won. He got home just in time to help me put the girls in bed. And since BYU scored more than 80 points, his ticket became a coupon for BOGO pizza at Malawi's--and they have gluten free pizza, so of course I took advantage of it. I haven't had pizza since the beginning of October!
The girls had dentist appointments on Tuesday, which wouldn't really be noteworthy except it was Cecily's first appointment. Everyone was so impressed with her courage. She didn't hesitate to get x-rays done or let people stick their hands and noisy instruments in her mouth. She is my brave girl. That's for sure. She was mostly just excited to be big like her sisters. Mira was brave this time too. She used to throw screaming/punching/kicking fits. She was TERRIFIED of having her teeth cleaned. But she had no problems this time. I was glad. It's awful to hold your child down when they're scared. (I wouldn't have done that either, except Mira got these black deposits on her teeth when she was younger that wouldn't come off with normal brushing. So we had to have the dentist do it, but it was not fun.)
Wednesday my parents came to visit us. They are hosting the Staleys the week of Thanksgiving (so this week) and we had a day bed/trundle set we weren't using, so they came and got it.They were nice and helped me clean out my garden, too. I pulled up all my peppers and tomatoes and potatoes and cucumbers, put away my cages and chopped down my multitudinous marigolds. I had so many that I gave my mom a bucketful, made six bouquets to give to friends and kept five bouquets to display on my table. That was after doing 22 tables worth of marigold centerpieces last week. That's a lot of marigolds.
I had a three-hour presidency meeting to plan our Christmas party, plus I spent five hours researching service projects to do since the bishop is insisting we do LOTS of service this year instead of having a big meal. It's great that he wants to do service, don't get me wrong, and I'm all for changing up tradition. I guess I just didn't realize it would be just as much work to do service projects as it would be to do a meal for 300 people.
Saturday Steve took the girls to a pizza party. I didn't go so there are no pictures. But it was the person in our ward who owns a brick oven pizza foodtruck. It would have been yummy if I could eat the crusts. Hopefully next time!
We also went to another BYU basketball game Saturday night as a family. Nick and Wilda were out of town, so they gave us their four tickets. So it only cost our family $8 to see a basketball game. Which is good, because our kids complained through most of the the 2nd through 4th quarters. They only stopped because we handed them our phones. :/
I don't remember what day it was, but I also took the younger two girls to the mall to look for new shoes for Cecily. We didn't end up buying shoes, but it was such a nice day, we had a picnic. The new fountain apparently has the capability to do musically choreographed displays, so we stayed for two of them and the girls were in love. I can't wait to take them to see the Bellagio one day.
While we were there, Mira took the phone and decided to take some shots. She's a photographer in the making.
Also, when I woke up Saturday morning, this is what I found. Mira was "reading" to Cecily.
