Halloween

I know you guys have been waiting for this so here it is. Our family halloween zoo!
There will be several pictures of all of them together in their costumes because there is not a single picture where they are all looking at the camera and smiling and you can see all their faces at once. Some of the expressions are priceless though if you click on the pictures and enlarge them.
Just in case there are any questions I'll tell you what each one is. Emily is the bunny, Jonas a coyote, Adrianna a tiger, Preston a lion, Lydia a zebra and Adam a giraffe.
One of my favorite shots is Adam's face in the next picture.
Then check out Lyds with the tongue out and Odie and Pres grinning till their little cheeks hurt! I love it!!!
Ok many of you have heard the story, but through sales and and coupons I ended up with an insane amount of candy and spent the same or less than I usually do (which isn't much let me tell you). So after taking candy to a party last weekend and to the ward trunk-or-treat Friday this is how much candy I had left to give out on Halloween. Yes that is a wicker laundry basket, not a huge one, but still big enough for 8 big bags of candy. If the basket doesn't look very big compared to Adam look again at the above pictures to see how much he's grown. The boy is getting big!
We ended up with only 2 handfuls leftover. Our neighborhood is a good one for trick-or-treating, people really get into it. Jason and the kids walked less then half of the neighborhood and when they got home we combined all the candy. (This makes it easier for mom to control the sugar intake.) We just dumped it back into the basket. I think we ended up with more than we started with.

Report Cards

Well it has been an eventful weekend at the Guffey house. The kids brought home their first report cards of the year on Friday. They all are doing very well.
As a third grader, Emily got A's in language arts 100%, science 95% and social studies 98%, that's everything except math, she got a B. All her other subjects she's doing great! Her teachers' comments were, "Excellent class participation. Attentive in class. Conscientious worker." We also got back the official scores for the Measure of Academic Progress tests. She scored well above the average in Reading and also above average in Math.
In the second grade they only do numerical scores for Math and Language Arts. Jonas got 100% in language arts and 99% in math. He's getting high marks in all his other subjects also, they just score them on a different scale. He also scored well above average in both Math and Reading on his MAP tests. His teachers' said, "Joy to have in classroom" (he got that comment a couple of times) and "Excellent class participation."
In first grade they use a completely different grading scale. There is actually a whole code to understand it because they get graded not by subject but by standards in each subject. For example in Language Arts she was graded on 11 different things from writing legibly to reading independently to identify and producing rhyming words, ect., ect. It is similar with each subject being broken down into smaller incremental things like that. Suffice it to say she is doing very well and got high scores in all subjects and is progressing nicely. Her teacher's comments were the funniest! "Adrianna is an absolute riot! She keeps me smiling all the time! She is doing fantastic in all areas of 1st grade and I can always count on her to lend to class discussion!" Translation: Adrianna is hilariously random and off the wall but comes up with things that actually go with the class discussions, you just wouldn't normally think of a six year old saying them. (That is pretty much what her teacher told me at our parent/teacher conference a month ago.)
Jason and I are very proud of how well they're doing and how hard they work. The family even got to have pizza to celebrate on Saturday. Ok and that way we didn't have to cook before getting ready for Halloween either. So it was good for everyone. I know it will amaze you all, but up next the Halloween post!

School, Potato Flakes, Babies & Mud

Ok so things have been a little busy here, but we are finally done with traveling for a little while, settled in school and life is good. The 3 older kids are doing well in school. The first parent teacher conferences are this Friday. We got their first interim reports this week and they all scored above the benchmark indicators for the "Vital Indicators of Progress" in Language Arts. That made me very happy! I have been a little worried about my Odie Podie, but it appears she is doing very well. One of Emily's tests was how many words they can read correctly in 1 minute. The benchmark for beginning 3rd grade is 77 she scored 138. I was not surprised, she is my daughter after all. I will give you all a more in depth update after conferences this weekend.

Meanwhile back at home it has been a little different. The first 2 weeks the younger kids didn't seem to know what to do with themselves, they got over that pretty quickly though. Preston has realized the role of oldest at home now belongs to him and he's loving it! Lyddie pretty much does what she's always done and will only wear dresses and and changes princess dress ups about 4 times a day. Adam has realized there aren't as many people to stop him when he tries to do things like climb into the kitchen sink and play in the water or climb the pantry shelves like a ladder. He's also figured out that the #10 cans that I usually keep on the lower pantry shelves, because of their size, are easy to open and not all are heavy. Like the newly opened oatmeal and potato flakes that he carried into the front room dumped onto the ottoman and then mixed with his hand. I walked in while he was directing a symphony (yes those kinds of arm movements) two handed through the pile he had made and had flakes and oats flying around the room. They covered the couch, piano, side table, chair... and the carpet you may ask. Oh boy... they keep resurfacing from the depths, just oozing towards the surface a little at a time. The first few days every day I would go in and find more where I could have sworn I had already cleaned. Oh well, at least he hadn't added water, yet.

In other news I had an ultrasound last week and we found out we're having a ..... wait for it..... girl!!! Yes, through absolutely no power of our own we are sticking with the alternating girl,boy pattern that, so far, has run in our family. We are very excited! We already have a couple of names in mind but for a multitude of reasons I am not sharing them until we're closer to actually having the baby.

Jason is still working out of town, but we try to make weekends as fun and memorable as possible. Like this past weekend. Jason's sister Mollie was on a team to run in the USMC Ft Jackson Mud Run. It is over 4 miles of military obstacle course with over 30 obstacles many of which involve water, and, you guessed it, MUD. Unfortunately two weeks ago she fell on the stairs and sprained her ankle and partially tore some tendons and is now in a brace and orthopedic walking boot. So a week before the race she called and begged Jason to take her place so her team would not have to forfeit. Jason has been running but not exactly training for this kind of race, however for the sake of family, and of course the chance to do something we crazy people call fun and adventure, he agreed. His teammates, all women, showed up in matching pink tank tops. Although he didn't wear the fourth matching tank top he did concede to write the name of the team on the back of his gray t-shirt which was once again "Dirty Blondes". It was a lot of fun! Nana and Poppa came down to watch and Mollie and her kids were there to cheer on her team. Of course our clan went. Jason did really well and afterwards said it wasn't as bad as he was afraid of and that with a little more prep time wants to do it again next year. The kids got to participate in the "Polllywog Mud Run". Ethan, Emily, Caitlin, Jonas and Adrianna each did it about half a dozen times or more and Preston and Lydia even joined in for a few runs. It was a blast! My laundry room screamed in terror when we got home (knowing the messes my kids can make and get into that's saying something!) but other than that it was a fun weekend!

If I can figure out how to get pictures off Mollie's facebook I'll try and put some mudrun pics up, but no guarantees.

"I know a secret!"

"You can't keep a secret."

"I can keep secrets really good! I have my forgetting powers!"

"Can I make a rock slide down the sand pile?"

"Dat not a seekwet!"

"I'm gonna be a big brother."

Markers, Haircuts and a Lucky Shirt

Ok so I had a few surprises this morning. The first was that while I was upstairs Lydia got hold of an orange permanent marker and gave herself freckles like Mommy and Jonas. She also colored her hands just for fun. Any ideas how to get this off? Next we have Adrianna who last night pulled a Pedro. In case you haven't seen "Napoleon Dynomite" I'll explain. She was very hot and her ponytail had gotten knocked sideways so some of her hair had come out of the elastic holding it back. Instead of just asking me to fix it she got a pair of scissors and cut off the locks that were sticking to her face and neck. She then took out her ponytail completely before I could notice and fell asleep. When I went to brush her hair this morning I noticed. She had even cut of pieces of her hair that were still in the ponytail so I really had to cut it and do some creative layering this morning to try and even it all out. I fixed it for now but luckily Cami is coming up next week and can make it look a little smoother I hope. Some pieces will just have to grow out some more. She wasn't thrilled with the haircut but we had a long talk on the consequences of cutting our own hair. After all that Jonas came in wearing a very familiar looking camoflouged Transformers shirt. I asked him if hadn't he worn that yesterday, and the day before? (Luckily he had not been playing outside much). He answered in the affirmative and said this was the fourth time he had worn it without it getting washed because it was his lucky shirt. We had a little dicussion about how unlucky it would be if nobody would play with him because he was stinky or if he got sick because he didn't wash his clothes. He'll probably wear it again tomorrow but it is getting washed today.

My New Room

I know you are all shocked and amazed that I am finally updating. I found the cords to my camera at last so I am able to have pictures to download. This post is going to have pictures of my new room. Now most of you know I am not a great house keeper. But the fact that half of our bedroom has been used as a storage room pretty much since we moved in is bad even for me. My incredibly amazing sister-in-law Suzanna came down last week with her four kids and in four days we completely transformed my room. We dejunked, decluttered, trashed, and cleaned then refinished furniture, painted and decorated. That would have been a feat in and of itself but the fact that we did this with 10 children ranging in age from 8 years to 2 months "helping" was incredible. Now I will warn you of the graphic nature of the first few pictures. This is picture above is the storage area that was supposed to be my bedchamber. These are the before and they were taken after we had started the sorting process so even though it looks awful believe it or not there was some order to the chaos. In the picture above you can see the opening to the "bedchamber" on the right. No matter how hideous this looks remember the end results speak for themselves. Above is the main room where the bed used to be. The head of the bed was against the wall on the right. The bed used to be where the cabinet and drawing table now are temporarily. This part of the room is not yet finished it will become a library/sitting room (with a fireplace between the windows eventually). Jason will be starting on the book shelves this weekend hopefully. Now I know you've been waiting for this so here it is. The finished bedchamber. This obviously is the straight on view. The side tables are the same green and gold ones that were in grandma Peggy's house we just refinished them along with the head board we haven't used in years. It used to have a green and cream crackled finished and where you see the light panels those are actually bamboo place mats cut to fit into the panel recesses. And Daddy, thank you for the Moroccan pillow shams. Don't they look just perfect?!Now to the left side notice the awesomely huge mirror.( It weighs a ton, well you know what I mean, that's why it's not hanging.) However, I actually like it leaning like that, go figure. Now to the right. Notice the same shelves that were in the other room minus the clutter (and several pictures that I actually really liked, but just didn't go with the look). Heather and Suzanna picked out the pictures above the bed which are hard to see in these pictures (they are purple flowers on a chocolate brown back ground) and the plants (hope you notice the second one). They also picked out a little round lamp on the left hand night table that in the picture just looks like a ball of light. It's really pretty though. Anyway I love my new retreat and can't wait to have a "library" in my room! (Those of you who know me know that is like a fantasy for me.)
For anyone who is wondering we used mostly things I already had and were able to do this with very little money spent. To be honest I didn't know I had such good looking stuff.

It's Only Been A Month

Okay.... I know Easter was almost a month ago, but I couldn't stand it. Here is how we celebrated Easter in the Guffey home.

When we got home from church we found out the the Easter Bunny hid eggs in the back yard by the construction zone! (Okay, the retaining wall we're working on). Everyone had so much fun, and we found all of the eggs!

The End!

Coming Soon

I will get to my team the "Dirty Blondes" in the next day or so, just be patient with me please.

The Mud Run - Dirty Blondes

Well, here it is as promised and only a week late. I'm not sure how this will turn out because when I downloaded the pictures I had them oriented to the left and not center so the text may not match the pictures exactly.

The "Dirty Blondes" consisted of me Janet, Andrea, and Mollie (my sister-in-law). This whole thing was Mollie's big idea and we even had shirts with our team logo done on them. We found out later that the color of the mud splatter printed on the shirts was almost the exact color of the real mud.

Anyway, to start we had to get down on the ground, when they shouted "up" push up into plank position then hold it till they yelled "go". Two teams started at a time as you can see and the team behind us were the "Dirt Daubers". As we were waiting we got to talking about different races and they told us all about the Fort Jackson mud run which you will hear all about later since Jason and Mollie are already planning teams and training for (it's in September.)

Ok so finally we're off. I was the slowest runner on the team, but the other girls were very understanding since I volunteered to boost them over the walls. Of course I got some help too since the teams behind us didn't want to wait while I struggled to heave myself over, they gave me a boost. Unfortunately we don't have any pictures of that. Those would have been rich.





We had fans cheering us all along the way! They didn't think it looked too hard. Of course these are our strong boys Preston, Jesse (Chad & Suzanna's son), and Jonas. They said they want to be on Team Huge next year.


So when we came up to the "mud pit" this is what we saw...

A sand bagged area filled with red dirt and being flooded with water. Very cold water.

Andrea was the first one through, then Janet and I together, then Mollie. Notice how Janet managed to keep her shirt clean. Mollie hugged her later just so she'd be dirty.

The creek bank was slippery, but we negotiated it with no mishaps. And finally made it to the finish line where we promptly removed our shoes as they weighed about five pounds apiece at that point.



We waited and our fans soon joined us as we cheered for Team Huge and celebrated the fact that we finished.


As we awaited results the kids wanted to run their own race so Jason organized a few sprints for them as well. It's never too early to start training I guess.