The Howard Happenings

We had a very fun and busy week so I thought I would write a bit about it.
Wednesday Night: Kolby had his Cub Scout pinewood derby. He did his car again this year almost completely by himself. Very impressed with his Duke Jabari Parker #1 car. Carson wanted to make a car this year too so I decided I better find some better tools if I was going to have to cut that block of wood. I bought an attachment for the Dremel to help make things easier, but not easy enough! Needless to say, his car is still not cut out. Maybe it will be ready by the time he can truly participate in the pinewood derby. ;-)
Also that night, Eliza had her first ever volleyball practice. She had so much fun and has a few girls on her team from school so I think it will be a great seasons. Our backyard neighbor is her coach, which is kind of fun too since it will help us to get to know our neighbors better.
Thursday morning Kolby participated in the Tulare County Office of Education Poetry and Prose competition. He and 9 friends from his class memorized "Casey at the Bat". Kolby played the part of Casey in the performance and did a great job. Their group earned a "Superior" rating, which is the highest you can achieve. The best part for him was getting to miss a couple of hours of school to go and perform. Glad he likes to be so involved in everything.
Thursday night was Art Night at school. The kids had so much fun working on their little projects and created some wonderful additions for our "Masterpiece" wall. There was a silent auction and Eliza was dying to get a large art set and an easel for all of her painting dreams. We were late enough to bid that nobody could outbid us before time ran out so she is very happy and actually wanted it so badly that she was willing to pay for half of it. Reminder to self: I still need to collect the $$.
Friday afternoon we spent prepping for Kolby's birthday party. It's only 3 months late, but he really was hoping to have a party up at the snow at Wolverton. But that didn't work out this year because there was way too little snowfall. So we decided a March Madness Basketball party would be perfect. That night the kid watched "Frozen" with the babysitter while Geoff and I made a trip to the temple
Saturday: Helped out at Tyler Kimball's eagle project, building benches at the Shannon Ranch baseball fields. Fun project..we could only stay for a little and spent all of our time trying to dig 2 holes. Not sure how much help we were but the kids definitely appreciated the donuts afterwards. That always makes everything worth it! We headed from there to Carson's baseball game. He did awesome! And then we headed to Kolby's game and he did great as well and his team won their first game this season. Hurray! It felt so good to win!
We rushed home after the game and i headed to Costco to pick up the cake and Trader's for pizza while everyone else stayed home to clean up a bit. The party started at 3 and there were 10 boys here and Kolby planned a 2-0n-2 trampoline basketball tournament. Each team picked their own team name and then made a team jersey and then headed out to the trampoline. Kolby and Miles were a team and they chose to be the Clippers. I think everyone had fun in the tournament and the trampoline barely lasted. Spring by spring it is slowly but surely falling apart. Sad day for our family…that trampoline gets so much use I'm wondering what we will do now! The boys watched some of the NCAA tournament, ate lots of junk food and pizza, drank lots of soda, played a basketball game in the front yard and had cake and ice cream. Seemed like everyone had lots of fun and Kolby said it was the perfect birthday party. Mission accomplished! Everyone was exhausted by the end of the day, especially Logan. He was running around, keeping up with everyone in the hot sun all day long and then went MIA during the party. I came inside to find him snuggled with his blankies on the couch fast asleep. He is still recovering…
Fun times with our fun family and friends. I feel blessed to have such sweet good kids that like to have fun. :-)

Eliza has been working hard with mrs,Falat and a group of students from school putting together the "not so haunted house" performance for odyssey of the mind. they worked really hard and competed last Saturday and came in 4th place out of 16 teams. we are really proud of her hard work and dedication to it and felt sad that she was heartbroken by not getting to move on to the state competition. But now they know what they will be up against for next year...she was the queen ghost. Fun!

such a fun and beautiful way to spend our day off of school and dad got to come along which was the best treat ever. Kids loved the swings hanging over the river and loved just running around exploring. Kolby was our tour guides I since he had done the hike with webelos just one week before.

Love all my little Valentine's and my big valentine too! Celebrated with our special breakfast and love gifts and then changed up our tradition and opted for the Habit instead of in'n out cuz we r crazy like that. Ha!

So happy to see grandma and grandpa! we had so much fun hanging out with them for a few days. We miss them!

Carson's first tooth came out today! Must have come out when he was eating his pizza toast for lunch and he gobbled it right up. Eliza was the one who noticed when she got home from school and said, "what? You lost your tooth! When did that happen?"
We all laughed and Carson was a little grossed out that he ate his tooth, but was happy to head to the potty and see if it would come out that way. :-) gross! We're pretty sure we saw it but decided he will just draw a picture for the tooth fairy. Thanks for the excitement today, Carson!