hair cut, school program, and a gutter problem

It wasn't a very busy week this week, but I wasn't feeling well for a lot of it, so that made it seem longer.

Cecily did get her hair cut on Tuesday as promised. I think it looks adorable.

As always, I helped Julia that day. This time she had me sew an army-quality duffel bag that she was planning on giving away to the thrift store. I had to cut the end off and reattach it to cut off the holes that were around the edges. Then I had to patch the two holes in the bottom (actually, I patched them before I reattached it). Then she had me zigzag stitch all the other edges so they wouldn't continue to fray. All this so someone else could have the benefit of having a nice duffel bag. Always an adventure with that lady. But she is an interesting friend and I love her.

Wednesday, Cecily and Mira had gymnastics again and that evening was Emilia's school program all about Utah. She had a speaking part that I think she did very well. She isn't nervous, so she speaks slowly and enunciates, so I could understand her part better than many of the other kids. Although, I had helped her practice, so I knew what it said. That could have made a difference, too. ;)

Emilia got to have her "school" birthday on Thursday. Since her birthday is in the summer, they pick a day to celebrate during the school year. She wanted me to bring donuts for a treat at the end of the day and I wasn't going to because donuts are like $.80 each and I'm too much of a cheapskate to buy $20 worth of treats to celebrate her fake birthday. But when I went to Walmart to buy her second choice, ice cream sandwiches, there were day-old chocolate iced donuts and I could buy enough for her class and her sisters for $5.50. That was a score!

I had a doctor appointment inconveniently at 6:15 on Friday night to check on my thyroid medication that I started a couple months ago. But because of that, Steve and I couldn't do our usual Friday night date. Plus, I've been gone the last two weekends, so we decided we absolutely had to go on a date Saturday.

But first, Steve mowed the lawn, the girls and I cleaned bathrooms, and Steve and I cleaned out the gutter on the rear of our house. The gutters on the front of our house are three stories above a slab of cement and we're going to pay somebody with the right equipment to do that safely. Those strapping, hearty weeds were growing in our back gutter. That's when you know you've waited too long to clean them out. We had a large pile of very nice compost at the end. :D

After we showered and had a lovely steak and knoephla dinner at home, we went to that restaurant in Provo, Good Moves, that I've told you about before. We didn't get food this time, we just played a game we hadn't played before called Five Tribes. It took us over two hours to set up, learn, and play the game. It was a lot of fun though, especially because I won. :) I don't know if we'll get it for home just because there are few people willing to play a two-hour-plus game (even we have a hard time playing a game that takes so long most nights, just because we are tired and don't have the brain power after the kids are in bed). After we finished the game, we grabbed a couple of Praline Creme Swamp Pops and headed home to enjoy them. It is probably the best tasting soda I have ever tried. If you ever get the chance to have one, do it!

One last random picture: I made Cecily carry all of the shoes upstairs that she'd left downstairs. She was so proud of how many shoes she was carrying, she made me take a picture (and that wasn't even all of them). Silly kid.