It's only fair that I write about Ainsley and her teenage "ugh" moments that have also tested our parenting skills and given us gray hairs! She's definitely had her fair share of attitude moments but she is one that almost always listens to us... is the first to apologize when she's made a mistake or has had a snarky moment. For the most part she's always been the kiddo that you only had to give the "look" to before she'd sob... apologize... give hugs and beg for forgiveness.

It all started with officially having her driving license. Idaho law states that if you are not 16 then you can only drive during daylight hours, until you turn 16 and you can only have 1 non family member in the car with you as well until you are 16 years of age. I was fine with letting her drive the couple blocks to school events held at night or to head to her BFF's house also just a couple blocks away at night, but that was it. Well one night she asked to go over to her BFF's house and of course we said fine... but remember you are NOT driving around... it's there and back. She has a little location tracker in her car that gets us a discount on car insurance... and yes we check it periodically to see how she is doing on her driving skills... it tracks speeding... hard breaking and maps her destinations. Well guess who did not just stay at said BFF's house but decided to drive all over and when asked what she did that night... she LIED to us and said she was where she wasn't!! She got caught and luckily when confronted she did tell the truth.. she got grounded for the weekend and banned from all night driving until she turned 16 which was about a month away at the time.

Secondly she has had 3 accidents in 4 months of driving by herself... all in the high school parking lot! The first one occurred when it was super cold out... she was pulling into a parking spot and clipped her light on an old metal truck bumper... it shattered instantly.

Luckily it wasn't a big deal... a $10 side light part on Amazon and it was fixed... there wasn't a mark on the truck and when she went to find the person at lunch they had already left. The second was NOT her fault but man was that a stressful situation!! She was driving down the aisle in the school parking lot and someone reversed right into her... the driver drove off and so not knowing what to do, she came home... had lunch... and then texted me at work! When Stewart was right downstairs... ha! This one I left work for... came up to the school to figure out how to proceed... which was good since the girl that hit her had said SHE got hit!! It sucks because now the back door doesn't open and the damage was more than what the car is worth!

Then the latest... she needed to drop off something at someone's car... she passed it and put it in reverse to back up... she looked in her rear view mirror... only saw the balloons that she was dropping off and reversed... into someone else's front end... OH MY! This poor car is starting to look ready for the demolition derby!! She texts me again and says, "I got in a wreck... it's all good... we exchanged information... both of our cars are pretty much fine and the girl was really cool about it!" Ainsley tells me also that it's only a scuff on her back bumper... and that the girls license plate got dented. She gets home and we check it out... the bumper has broken off all the clips that hold most of it on... the trunk lid is buckled and yes there is also a scuff!! No idea about the other car since she didn't take any pictures!! Grr!!!

Ainsley was asked by her ceramics teacher if she could enter some of her pieces into an art exhibit! This was a huge honor because this is usually only reserved for Junior and Senior students!

She actually won an honorable mention for her musical instrument cups... received a certificate... a ribbon and $15.

The next exhibit was held at ISU and open to the public...

Her ceramics teacher entered her musical instrument cups again and also her last project... the Aspen vase. I had only seen stages of it and so was excited to finally see it completed... this might be one of my favorite pieces!

She was super excited to view her pieces in a "real" art show!

Thankfully these 2 take turns being in trouble...(and no Ainsley isn't as tall as Walker... she had 3 in. heels on!)

A month ago Walker was really testing our parenting skills! I got a notification of some missing assignments and this lovely grade was recorded in English... an F!!

There was just a couple weeks left in trimester and so we had a huge talk about being responsible... staying on top of assignments and how he was going to fix this problem since he is very capable of getting an A in English etc. He knew he messed up and what had to be done to fix the grade. He had a couple assignments that were finished and just hadn't been turned in.

After our little "heart to heart" parenting talk, he knew the consequences would be no computer time until things were back on track. There wasn't really any arguing about this decision and I thought "Wow... good job us... he's really getting it."

Oh MY HECK... this cute boy one week later... same story different class and this time with added ATTITUDE!! He had assignments due back from December and he just didn't care to do them! (This is where I really get irritated... school will accept any and all assignments up until the trimester is over... with out any sort of % off for lateness!..grr)

Walker Jack has taught me patience... oh my has he taught me patience.  He has taught me to be very level headed when the yucky behaviors come. I wasn't always that way but I have grown and learned through many trials and errors. So the day he says, "I'm not listening to you and ignores you by shutting the door in your face." I about came unglued. It was all I could do to not burst into tears... I took a breath... grabbed a hug from Ainsley and Stewart and went back into battle with the 13 year old. "You will not be disrespectful... you will look at me when I'm talking to you... you will finish these assignments... you will turn them in and you will be grounded with no electronics or friends for one week and if this behavior continues you can kiss your computer goodbye for good... do you hear me?" I also threw in a "I deal with this type of behavior at school... I should not see it from my own child who has been taught better than this."

So the F in the end got replaced with a C... far from the A he is very capable of doing. He did apologize the next day and he's back to giving this Mama hugs. Thankfully in the end they take turns... because a couple weeks later it was Ainsley's turn to test the parenting skills!!

A weekly occurrence is Ainsley going to High School games... right now it's basketball. I love when I spot her in the newspaper photos... can you spot her??

After 7 months of having braces Walker's mouth shifted just enough to add on the bottom braces...

The next day he was not smiling... his mouth hurt so bad. Good news this week he is back to his usual smiling self.

Ainsley took another ceramics class this trimester and the assignment was to take a famous art picture and create a coil pot. Her inspiration was Van Gogh's Starry Night...

And she created this vase...

This is my all time favorite piece she has created... love it and I can't wait to put some flowers in it this spring!!

The kiddos are at the age where they do more with out us (insert sad face)..they are out with friends... at school events... at scouting events... aka they are starting to have their own lives... which is a good thing most of the time. :) But since I love pictures and stories and still want to experience life with them... even though its from the sidelines. I always say, "Don't forget to take a picture!" Most of the time Ainsley humors me since she loves taking photos too... but when I'm given the eye roll I calmly say, "It's either that or I'll just show up and take a picture for you, to put in the scrapbook."  That response always gets a, "okay... I will." I think they secretly fear I will actually show up!

Now that Walker has a new to him phone and cloud storage I finally get to see snippets of his life. This is the picture he took on a recent scout camp out...

His SANDWICH... and it must have been a darn good sandwich he made, since he went into details when he got home! Ha.

Getting this kiddo a driver's licence was definitely an experience...

The process started way back in May with Driver's Ed and then the summer of accumulating 50 hours of driving experience... with at least a waiting period of 6 months and then finally she was ready to take the skills test. So weird that Idaho requires you to take the driving part of the test first. You don't just head to the DMV and do the test with a cop, you have to schedule the appointment with an outside driving instructor... which are virtually impossible to get a hold of during the day... but she did and had an appointment the first part of December. It snowed and thawed and rained 2 days before the drive and so we did a little "crash course" on winter ice driving just before the appointment. We waited and waited and then we get a call... the drive instructor realized her own driver's licence had expired and when she went down to the DMV to renew her license... the ENTIRE STATE of IDAHO DMV's computers were down!

So yep we went from the happy girl face to this...(went for a milkshake to ease the stress)

It took like 4-5 days to get the DMV computers back up and working and so a week later with still no word from the driver instructor, she called again and left a message asking if she could reschedule her drive. The person never called back!! She begged me to call someone else for her but I said, "If you really want your license then you will suck it up and call... she started at the top of the sheet and called every single person until someone answered!

Her drive got scheduled just before winter break and when we woke up that Saturday morning it had SNOWED... like 4-5 inches and was continuously snowing... I really debated whether we should cancel. I knew she was going to have to go on the interstate and going the speed limit while the roads were crap was something she didn't have experience in... she wanted to try it and so down to the parking lot we went and we waited and waited for the drive instructor. Thirty minutes after our scheduled appointment he shows up... he says sorry for the delay the road were awful driving in! But she went and guess who had to sit in the back and not talk during the worse day of the year to take a driving test?!?

She got docked when the slush on the freeway started to pull her off the road and he calmly says, "I need you to move over more into the center of the lane." While I'm gripping the back seat! And then the other point she got docked came when she made a right hand turn from the center lane because the snow was covering up the lines and it was on a road she was unfamiliar with... but low and behold she passed!!!

During the middle of all this December craziness... there were Christmas choir concerts, and Christmas piano recitals and last minute projects due... plus all the prep leading up to Christmas. And in the midst of all this I ask my coworkers if they have ever bought a car at the auction... which we decided to attend. My friend says, "Wait my son is planning on selling his 96 Honda Accord."  I'm intrigued and ask her to get me the details... it's a stick shift! So one late night... we go and look at the car and do a little crash course in "how to drive a stick" to see if this is even a possibility or a deal breaker...

I think she was pretty determined she was going to make this work for she did fairly well and we felt confident enough that she'd get it with more practice... plus the price was right...$500 and it just had new tires and brakes a couple weeks before. It needed a deep cleaning... a stereo and some little projects that the Daddy was super excited about!

It came home with us a few days later and we went to get it licensed... can you believe how perfect the plates were that got issued to us... I mean seriously her initials and she's 15!! So Cool.

She wasn't officially an independent driver yet... she still had to pass the written test. We suggested that she reread the driver's manual again since it had been 6 months but she certainly thought she was ready... ya nope didn't pass! She missed the cut off by 2 points... she was so mad..did not want any "honey you'll get it next time comments". We came home and she said, "I am going to go sit in my car and do my homework." Ha! We wait the required 3 days and she must have done some better studying for the 2nd time she got a 100%!

She is officially an independent driver... well a daytime driver at least until she is 16!

Music fills the soul and gladdens the heart...

Ainsley had Cabaret every night until 11pm last week. She was in her school choir group "Great Scots" that did 2 songs in Cabaret and after this experience she really hopes to make it into Trouveres at the spring audition. She tried out last year but didn't make it but after participating in the Cabaret this past week... she absolutely loved it... and she is determined to make it this year, by already thinking about her song selection for the audition.  Trouveres is a show choir... similar to the Franklin Singers she did in Middle School. Once you make it you are in for the entire school experience... so availability fluctuates from year to year. These are some of her besties that also sang with her.

We bought tickets for the performance and it's so awesome to watch her perform on stage... she still has that "cheer smile and the cheer expressions"... she is fun to watch because she just really enjoys it all. She and friend Elise (next to her with the capri-sun in hand) were moved to the front for their awesome dance skills... so it was even a better experience for us parents to watch since ours was front and center!!

Little Bug had his Franklin Singers concert last week too! So handsome in his blue bow tie!!

They had a new choir teacher so it wasn't the same as previous concerts but he did a fantastic job! I was waiting for them to dance with their partners but they didn't do that at this choir. Hopefully at the Spring concert we will see his dance moves!

Willow has been so naughty lately... she's been standing up on her back feet and checking out what is on the kitchen counter!! She got yelled at and then I took this picture...