November Instagrams

Just me and her for the next 3 hours!! Oh, and our Christmas music too ;)

 Projects 1 & 2 started and finished today! Hope we can accomplish the rest tomorrow.

 We did all this yesterday!! The chevron still needs its borders. 

(We're done so no more sewing posts;) for now!!)

So excited for the championship game tonight!!! I hope this nasty weather passes soon!

 Surprisingly, these two hardly ever complain about homework!! 

Pretty sure that won't last.

Just SICK that I missed this game!! Noah played on the Allstar team and they won the tournament!!

Completely PERFECT season!!

Leftovers...anyone? We have enough for 3 more dinners!

This munchkin should be in bed, but...she's keeping me company while I work on Christmas presents ;)

The dentist

Today the kids all had dentist appointments. Thankfully, my kids all love going to the dentist! And they always have. I don't know what I would do if they complained about it.

The dentist office is on 100 S. So whenever we go to Target, or Gap, or pretty much just in town, we pass it. And every time, without fail, Lexie asks when we get to go again. So, the other day, when I told her that we actually had appointments set up, she could hardly stand it. All smiles for days!

Lexie and Noah were good to go. No cavities!!

Cutler wasn't so lucky.

I had actually seen his about a week before we went, but he never complained about it hurting.

I was very happy when Dr. Leavitt asked if he could just fix it right then.

I hate having to make another trip for that.

(I wasn't able to get back into the room to get a picture of Noah)

His numbness lasted for quite a while and we were getting a kick out of it. It actually kinda started to worry me that it was taking so long to wear off. But we took advantage of the laughing moments :)

Miller family pictures

It's our year for everyone to be here for Thanksgiving. 

Since Shan's family moved away, and Makayla doesn't live here either,

 we decided we needed to do family pictures while everyone was here. 

[besides the fact that the last time we had pictures, Lexie wasn't even born. Like, not even in the womb!]

Here's a few of my favorites

and I'm sorry, but I think my kids are beautiful and I love all of these of them ;)

We had a great week full of lots of cousin time. 

But it's never enough.

The week had to end, and cousins had to leave :(

Can't wait to see everyone again...soon!!

Thanksgiving

We were so excited this year to have our whole family back together for Thanksgiving! My kids could hardly stand it when we had to go home. Makayla & Shan's family stayed at my moms, so they just didn't understand why we had to leave but nobody else did. I should have just let them stay there too :)

My mom was able to convince her parents to come down, along with her brother and his wife. Their daughter lives here too, so they all joined us. It really was a fun Thanksgiving day!

 One of my favorite things about Megan, is she always makes up something for all the kids to do. Whether it's a game, or a race, or whatever...it's awesome!!

She has such an imagination!!

And all the kids always go along with it.

I seriously love it :)

These guys were all waiting their turn.

I'm pretty sure she had them doing horse races or something like that.

All Star Tournament

November 16-17
After our experience last weekend, I was worried we weren't going to get to come watch these boys one last time. I guess Colby & I did some pretty good convincing ;)

They played in Mesquite at this huge, amazing, outdoor sports complex. It was awesome. For the game friday night, I took Noah down, and Colby and Lexie stayed to watch Cutler wrestle.
We're right in the middle of two sports, and it's dang hard!!
There are 4 fields right next to each other, so there are no stands. We pretty much just followed them around on the field. Which I actually really liked, because I could hear the coaches, and I was determined to see that Noah got some time!

The game was a good one. It got super intense and close at the end, but we ended up winning!! And Noah played! Not a ton, more than usual, but he felt like he played the whole game, so that was all that mattered ;)

They even got new uniforms, just for this tournament.

On Saturday, I had something going on, Cutler had a soccer game, and Noah had his game.

I had a complete melt down (don't judge! I have the absolute hardest time missing my kids things but I had something else going on and honestly it all just hit me hard and I couldn't deal with it) so...Colby took all the kids to Cutler's last soccer game, and left just a little early so they could get to Mesquite on time for Noah's last football game.

They won again, making them the Tournament Champions!!!

They got the whole team up on the stage and had them do the Gangnum dance!

I saw some video, it was funny ;)

Now that's a trophy!

Even Colby wanted a picture with it ;)

 We are so proud of Noah!

Proud of him for working his butt off.

Proud of him for going back out there, and not letting them scare him off.

And just proud of him for being the outstanding boy that he is!!

Congratulations Noah on a completely perfect season!!

Warrior Championship

We absolutely LOVED watching Noah's football team this year. 

He didn't play a lot. And he wasn't the star of the team.

But that's ok.

We loved going to every game, every weekend just the same!

They went the whole season undefeated!

The championship game was held at the Hansen Stadium against Cedar, November 9th.

They even brought around signs for the front yard.

It was freezing cold, but we weren't about to miss it.

It ended up being such a good game, (as far as the game goes) but I didn't pay attention to the score.

rocking back and forth together just before kickoff

I don't have a lot of pictures, 10 to be exact, and they pretty much all look like this one, 

and there's good reason.

As much as we loved this team, as much as Noah loved playing, and the kids he played with,

this game was actually a horrible experience!

[I honestly can't even believe I'm going to put this on here. But it's the journal!]

Noah didn't play. Not one play. Not one minute.

He didn't play. 

Period.

And to say I was pissed, is a HUGE understatement.

[even writing this now, my blood starts to boil]

I won't go into how the whole night went down, but here's a little recap.

When the game was over, the team went down to the other end of the field to get their trophies.

At this point I left my camera in the bleachers.

I didn't really care to take any pictures. 

But when I saw Noah, I wanted to still be happy for him. I had no idea what he was thinking or if he even cared.

(thankfully Sherie had her camera. I knew I would be mad about not having any pictures after all the dust had settled)

When they finally started handing out the trophies, and Noah didn't take his helmet off, I knew something was wrong. But I still congratulated him.

I mean, it was cool that they won.

Once they were all handed out, they took some team pictures.

Noah couldn't even smile. I mean, he did, but it was fake.

As soon as they were done, he came over to me, handed me his helmet, and immediately started bawling.

Bawling!!

[he doesn't really cry in front of other people]

He asked me to hold his helmet, and I asked him what was wrong. He told me he needed to go to the bathroom. I said Ok, but asked him why he was crying. I just wanted to see if he would say anything.

He finally said to me "I didn't get to play"

That did it.

THAT did it!

I said, "I know, let's go take care of that right now"

I walked him over to the head coach, said a few words, and walked away.

FUMING!

Right then Noah had decided he would never play football again. That broke my heart.

He loved football. He worked his butt off every night of practice, and never complained once. He would come home and kind of laugh while saying how mean the coaches could be, but he never complained.

I spent the next 2 or so hours literally shaking, blood boiling mad! Honestly, thinking of how I was going to get this settled. 

So...skipping through the madness,

the two head coaches ended up at my house a few hours later. They apologized to Noah, we talked about it all, the game, the whole season. And really, I felt better when they left.

I wasn't ok with it, I was still pissed at them, but I think I just needed them to acknowledge that they messed up, and wanted them to admit it, and to apologize to Noah.

Mission accomplished. 

I just wished it would have felt better.

Here was the kicker though...

A few weeks earlier, they had asked Noah to play on their all star team in a tournament down in Mesquite. So when this all happened, I wasn't sure what was going to happen. He had already said he never wanted to play again, and he had said he wasn't going to do the all star team.

I felt so bad for him. I knew he wanted to play, but they had ruined it for him.

We told them he would think about it over the weekend, and if he decided to play, he would be at practice.

It literally took the entire weekend, up until about an hour before practice on Tuesday for me to convince him to go to practice and see what he thought. 

Really, I just needed to lay in to 2 more coaches ;)

But he went, he loved it, and he played in the tournament!!

Now, let's just hope we get on a good team again next year, and that he remembers how much fun it really was.

Because honestly,

That's what it's about!!