April: One Second Everyday

Amazingly, I'm keeping up with my One Second Everyday videos! Here is a look at our April. 

Happy 10th birthday Ava!

The finale of the 10th birthday posts--today is the actual big day that she's been counting down to. Ava is officially double digits, two whole hands old. These three were up pretty late last night, but they woke up smiling and ready for the day. I made birthday waffles for the girls, and did my best to make Ava's plate fancy--but I'm certainly not the most artistically inclined. 

They are still having fun with those balloons! This time, the put static electricity on each balloon and stuck them all to the hallway ceiling. Sometimes it's the simplest things that create the best memories. 

Dave has been out of town all this time for a softball tournament in Vegas, but when he got home, we all headed over to KTR to jump and play for awhile. It was what Ava wanted to do for her birthday, and it's always a fun place to spend a couple hours. Tyler and Dave were there too, but looks like they didn't make it into any of the photos. 

When we got home, it was time for more presents! She got some nice clothes and a jacket from Grandma Jean. From us she got a Fitbit style fitness tracker, a book, a magnetic chess game, and some accessories for the phone she uses.

Happy happy 10th birthday Ava! We love you so much! I hope 10 is a fantastic year for you.

Ava's birthday party

Today is the big day, the day Ava has been so excited for! She got to celebrate her 10th birthday with her friends! First, her friend Natalie came over a little early because they had a school project that they needed to work on. Such a responsible kid....!

For her party this year, she wanted to take a few friends to As You Wish to paint pottery. All five of the girls she invited were able to make it, and it was the perfect sized group for the festivities. They each picked out a piece of pottery, and spent a couple hours painting. They all did a great job and had fun doing it.

Here they are with the finished works. Natalie with a seahorse, Lacy with a unicorn, Abi with a bunny, Ava has a narwhal, Jodi painted an octopus, and one more seahorse by Emme. They'll look much different after they're fired in the kiln, which they'll get back in a few days.

After the painting, we headed back to our house for pizza and cake. My mom went over to my house to be there when the pizza arrived because the painting took longer than I had expected. Luckily all of the girls were able to stay a little longer. During dinner, they played a few rounds of "telephone," and it had them laughing pretty hard!

Ava's ice cream sandwich cake was a big hit, and we had plenty left over for the next few days.

Next came presents, of course!

The look of excitement on this face is over some new vinyl stickers for her water bottle--a dolphin and a watermelon. 

I've found that the most fun the kids have at these parties is with a pile of balloons. They had a blast playing "don't let it hit the ground" and then they were laying on the ground and trying to kick them in the air as I tossed balloon after balloon at them. It was pretty funny!

Ava has made some good friends at school this year--here she is with Natalie and Emme. I hope they're in the same classes again next year.

This was one of the most fun things they did all night. They somehow discovered that the a/c filter sucked in air whenever the air conditioner was running, and the balloons would stick to it! They managed to get all 30 balloons on there at one time. It was hilarious!

Lacy and Abi stayed over night, and we pulled all the mattresses out in the living room for them. Ava had a great time with her friends today. It's hard to believe our little girl is ten years old already. She's definitely growing into an amazing young lady, and we love her so much. Happy birthday Ava!

What is this, college?

I took this picture at about 11:50 pm on a Friday night. It may not look all that unusual, if you know Tyler at all. No, he's not usually allowed on his computer that late at night, but he's actually doing homework here. He has been out sick from school with strep throat for a few days, and it took away time he was planning to use to finish up his semester-long project in his computer class at school. The project was due at 11:59 pm tonight. He came home right after school today (his first day back after 3 days out) and got right to work on it. I had told him he could go see the new Avengers End Game movie with Tim, Josh, and Matt tonight before I knew he had this project due. He thought he had time, so he got quite a bit done and then went to the 3+ hour long movie. He got home at about 10:45 pm, and had just over an hour to get it all done. All I could think of was how much of this was likely a preview of what he would be doing quite a bit in his later high school and college years. He's scrambling to get those projects and assignments done and turned in on time. I know he would have had this done had he not missed 3 days of school. It's interesting that even in 7th grade, he is turning in assignments online to his teachers. That seems like a college thing to me, but I guess the technology available allows this to be the way things are done, making it convenient for the kids and teachers. Also, this project was crazy! I was super impressed with the amount of work he had to do to make it all happen. It was essentially a college research project (had to research all aspects of 3 colleges), but he had to build a super complicated power point presentation to display all of it. He was doing things that I didn't even know power point could do! Nice work getting it all done Ty!

Getting birthday party ready!

Ava is having her birthday party with her friends tomorrow, so we spent some time tonight getting things ready for the big day. She wanted to make her own cake, and we settled on an ice cream sandwich cake. It was super easy, and was a big hit with everyone who tried it. She did it all by herself too (minus cutting up the Twix bars), which is class Ava!

Here's the super simple recipe.....layer of ice cream sandwiches, layer of Cool Whip, sprinkle with toppings of choice (we used Twix/caramel on one side, Oreos and chocolate syrup on the other), top with another layer of ice cream sandwiches and another layer of the Cool Whip and toppings. Freeze until ready to serve...so easy!

She has just over 24 hours left in the single digits....by Sunday she'll be two full hands old!

Great job, Ava...it looks so delicious!

This was funny. We picked up a few decorations at Wal-Mart tonight, and this Happy Birthday banner was strung onto the string backwards! I know it looks like you could just turn it around, but then some of the letters are facing the wrong way (and the other side isn't shiny). We had to take all of the letters off and re-string them in the right order. I guess that's what you get when you pay $.97 for a birthday banner. 

Streamers, a 10 birthday balloon, a properly strung banner...and we'll be ready for the party to start. She's having about 5 friends over, and she's really excited to celebrate! 

RM Summit Awards

When I first came to MCC Red Mountain, I brought with me a program we had done at Phoenix College, and adapted it to my new campus. It's an awards ceremony recognizing students for their success and dedication to our campus and their education. Faculty can nominate students for pretty much any reason, and we honor them in a ceremony at the end of the academic year. I had to share a few photos this time because all of my student staff were recognized this year. One of our faculty members who helps with this event did all of the decorating for me, which was so nice! I came in to work the morning of the event and she had done it late that night. I was so grateful to her! 

Here are the certificates and gifts the students get....

We just do light refreshments--appetizers that I get catered from a local Mexican restaurant and cookies and desserts from Costco. 

I'm going to miss this team of Student Ambassadors.  Most of them have been working for me for close to two years, and Luis has been around for at least 3. I'm sad to see them all moving on, but I'm very proud of their accomplishments over the last couple of years. It's so fun and rewarding to see students progress and achieve their goals during their time at MCC, and I'm always grateful to be part of their journey. It'll be so strange not having having at least a few of them around next year. Usually, I only lose one or two at a time, but I'll need to hire an entire new staff! Thanks for being awesome Ariana, Gabby, Kylee and Luis. I know you'll do great things.

Twinning with Cara

Ok, this post is totally random. Cara is my assistant at work, who took Ashely's role after she left back in August. Cara and I get asked weekly (at least, sometimes more) if we are related. Neither of us see it, but others obviously do. I'm not kidding you-it happens all.the.time. As if people didn't think that enough, we showed up at work today dressed almost identically. We had an event with our college President today, so we took a picture with him. We were both wearing a similar style blue dress, and the one she's wearing was actually mine before I donated it to our campus clothing swap. To top that off, we both had on the identical pair of sandals from Target and a similar color toenail polish. Is that weird or what?!

Venardos Circus visits the Roso Flyers

The Venardos Circus is still in town, and we invited them to come out to visit on one of their days off. We weren't sure who would come, but we managed to get a few visitors. As I mentioned in my previous post about this crew, I wrote that I met Kevin while flying at the Cotton Candy Club. With his busy career running a circus, however, he doesn't get much chance to fly anymore. He took a few swings, but mostly watched. They had one other guy, Brian, (on the far right in the photo below) with who was a catcher and flyer by trade and had run some schools before. He got up in the catch trap and caught a few of us. We had a good round trip split, which was exciting and somewhat unexpected. I think he was pretty thrilled to be back up there again after not having many opportunities since he's been on the road. They also had another young lady with them (she wasn't in the show, not sure what her role was) who had done it once or twice, so she had fun trying it again. Brian caught her too, which they both enjoyed. Many of us wore our new Venardos Circus shirts to welcome them. It's always fun to share our beautiful home with fellow circus enthusiasts, and it's especially exciting when we have "real" circus performers out to visit! Thanks for a fun night!

It's so fun to see Kevin living his circus dream! I'm very glad we were able to cross paths again after first meeting 5 years ago. If they come to a city near you, but sure to check them out!