Sheesh – We now have a teenager living in our house. She has entered her teen years in proper fashion – with no sleep, too much silliness, and a lot of chocolate.

It began last night with her “sleep” over party (Ashley stayed at a friend’s house). One of her friends brought her a fun hat to wear.

We liked the alien on top. She had 7 teen girl friends here, including the girl who moved to Wisconsin. Her dad was willing to drive down the hour or so to deliver her for the party. Come morning, the basement looked like some scary scene out of a zombie movie, with bodies all over that groaned and stretched when forced to come alive. Kayla doesn’t do birthday cake, she has me make truffles instead. This morning, we had pancakes, so I stuck some candles in a cup and the girls sang.

After a shower and a nap, Kayla opened some presents.

Next, we ran some errands and ended up at Great Grandma’s house, where Kayla amazed (scared) us all with her ability to put gloves on her feet. Somehow, she could flex her toes in such a way that the thumb of the glove moved. Great Grandma was well entertained!

We all went to Kayla’s favorite dinner place, Sweet Tomatoes. Aunt Kim, Uncle Chris, and Greyson came, Gramma and Grampa came, and Aunt Erin, Uncle Jules, and Caleb came too. We had dinner and fun. Somehow, Sweet T’s knew we were coming, because the special ice cream flavor was chocolate mint!

Caleb liked his cone with sprinkles!

He likes his cousins too.

Caleb also likes when the girls do the Llama song. It might be hard to hear with the restaurant noise.

And just to prove that teenagers really are weird…..

I realized it had been a month since I updated, and I don’t even really have many pictures! We have been super busy around here, and the next two weeks until Spring Break are just as packed. Here’s our breakdown:

Monday March 10th: Kayla has an evening rehearsal for a special band concert from 6-8PM.

Tuesday March 11th: Kevin is downtown until late, so we had to cancel Ashley’s piano lesson because Kayla has her special band concert at Grant High School at 7PM. It’s one of those combined with other middle schools and the high school kind of event.

Wednesday March 12th: Ashley has karate. A fairly low key night.

Thursday March 13th: Ashley has rehearsal after school until 5:30pm for the elementary school Variety Show.

Friday March 14th: Pi Day! (I had to put that in there).

Saturday March 15th: 8 budding teen girls come to our house all night.

Sunday March 16th: Someone turns 13!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Monday March 17th: Ashley has dress rehearsal for the Variety Show

Wednesday March 19th: Karate night

Thursday March 20th: The Variety Show at 6PM at the Elementary school

Friday March 21st: SPRING BREAK starts at end of day!

Makes my head spin! These are the weeks when it is super important for us to plan out what we are eating for dinner so it can be ready and everyone gets fed before running off. Kayla has to finish eating 30 minutes before she plays her instrument, which is a challenge on some of these nights. She ends up eating half of dinner at 5PM and the other half at 8PM or so to make it work. This also takes organization skills – my strength – to make sure we know who picks up which kid where and that homework gets done.

On the subject of dinner, we had another Komac Dinner Party last Saturday night.

Kevin had the entree. He made an orange and ginger glazed pork. The girls liked it!

I had the side dish, so I made a ginger fried rice. The girls didn’t really care for it, but we loved it!

Ashley had vegetable, so she chose to make sauteed kohlrabi. It looks like a tiny cabbage but has the texture of a broccoli stem and a mild flavor. You chop, slice, or shred it. Kayla would have liked it better if it had been super soft and less black pepper. Ashley said “no thanks”. We liked it.

Kayla was on dessert. She made apple turnovers using the puff pastry dough. Liked by all. She glazed them too!

Ashley has been sick this week with some respiratory bug. She missed 2 days of school, and now we start the unending cough. She is having to use her albuterol inhaler a few times a day right now to keep things open. She did bounce back pretty fast and was a hyper little thing yesterday to go back to school. I hear her coughing now as she is waking up this morning. Everyone else has been pretty healthy.

But we are getting sick of snow! A few weeks ago, we had a visitor to our front sidewalk.

I am thinking kitty? Here was the snow pile level back then.

See how far up the bush that snow is stacked? And here is a few days ago.

Our area has received over 6 feet of snow this winter all told. It hasn’t seemed so big because it comes in lots of little amounts – 6 inches, 3 inches, 4 inches. But it really piles up! That’s our sitting wall missing under the snow.  It is starting to melt now, so maybe spring will be coming soon.

Once all of the concerts are done, I will upload some videos. Aunt Letty – remember how Ashley was just learning the Titanic song, and I said “Just wait 2 months”? Well, it’s been two months and that’s the song she is playing at the Variety Show. Just wait until I get that video recorded!