Lyman Family December 14, 2014

This week I traveled to Utah on Thursday through Sunday to take part in Kimberlee and Reed Arthur’s sealing at the Ogden Utah temple. They were sealed Saturday December 13, 2014 around 3 PM. There was a wonderful turn out of family and friends to support them. Blair and Rhonda Lyman and Ron and Laurie Arthur were there a long with lots of brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and friends. I’m so excited for them have the wonderful blessings of the temple in their lives.

Also this week Olivia had another indoor soccer game at Samba Soccer in Grass Valley. She loves playing and has a wonderful team.

Carrie did an amazing job running our first weekend respite in Yuba City at our new facility. Things went well and were excited to move forward with helping families in Yuba City. We still have a ways to go before we’re filled up but we’ve had a great start. Continue reading “Lyman Family December 14, 2014”

Lyman Family – December 7, 2014

Read the full letter to see our family pictures at the bottom of the post.

December is here. Only two full weeks until Christmas break (our girls are counting the days 😉 This week has been a wet one. On Thursday we had flash flood warnings a few times during the day. A few different measurements and reports showed over 3.5″ of rain in 24 hours. We’ve needed the moisture and this will help. Luckily we haven’t had any water problems in the house, although we got a little mud that came down along the side of our yard from the neighbor above us.

We had a great week. Ridgeline Yuba City opened for service on Wednesday. Tuesday was our open house and we had a good turn out from parents, community members and other service providers. How blessed we have been to have things run so smoothly when opening a new location to serve medically fragile children.

Quincee was back to preschool after a two week break. She had a blast and just loves her teacher Mrs. Mertens and the two classroom aides (their names escape me at the moment but I think Miss Patty and Miss Michelle).

We received report cards for all the girls (including Quincee) for the first Trimester. Wow, a third of the way through the year. Time sure flies! Quincee passed off all her colors, most of her shapes and numbers and is working on her alphabet. Kennedy, Madie, Olivia and Mya did great. They work hard and we have such responsible kids that try their best. What a blessing! Carrie is awesome for keeping track of all the girls and their homework and their school stuff. I’m not sure how she does it but she’s rock’n the mom of 5 girls in school thing! (And look’n good doin’ it!). Since Mya started school we’ve done this little reward program where (sorry for the math and complex formulas but hey… this is me 😉 The girls get a $1 for each A or B times by half their grade. Example, Mya is in 8th grade. She had 6 A’s (straight A student!!). So 6 A’s times half her grade (4) equals $24 for her report card. Anything lower than a B is not paid. It’s a little something for them to look forward to at report card time for their hard effort!

Mya had a Young Women’s white elephant party on Friday night. She got the biggest cat book I’ve ever seen (seriously 2’x 3′) and about 100 pages full of “super cute kitty’s” She’s been on cloud nine ever since and the girls are lov’n looking through the book at all the different types of cats. Carrie went too and said there were close to 50 kids at the party! What a riot.

The Jarman family invited us over on Saturday night to watch Polar Express with their family and the Tom and Lynne Rath family (Lynne was just called as the 2nd counselor in the Young Women’s organization and will be Mya’s leader) and Tim & Kim Mavy family (they’ve lived in the ward about the same amount of time as our family and have 3 small children). We had a good time eating hot dogs and chili and eating treats while watching the Polar Express

On Saturday we spent the day helping Scott and Danette Davis and their three kids (Asher, Shilo & Jeremiah) move into their new home. Carrie watched their kids on Thursday and Friday and was a huge help to Danette (who is a few months pregnant with their fourth child). Saturday morning we had 10 guys from the Alta Sierra ward come over at 9 AM and we moved all their stuff in less than two hours. It was rainy so we had a U-Haul truck even though the move was only a few house down the street. We wrapped up moving and cleaning and organizing with the Davis family by 3:30. We love their family and enjoy their friendship (Danette is our director of nursing at Ridgeline and Scott does our landscaping.)

Olivia had an indoor soccer game on Wednesday this week. She played hard and did a great job in goal as well on the field. They didn’t win the game but held tough with the other team. Most the teams in their league are all boys and Liv’s team is all girls so it makes for some unique opportunities for the girls on her team to fight hard and stand strong against other teams who might have a little more talent or physical ability.

Family Pictures – November 2014.

So… Pictures went better than I expected. Imagine trying to get 5 girls on the same page with outfits, hair, accessories etc. Then get them to a location, weather has to cooperate (which it didn’t the first day we scheduled and so we cancelled) and then get everyone to do their beautiful smiles and personalities at the same moment in time to capture it in “The Family Picture”.

Quincee refused to cooperate for the first 15 minutes of the photo shoot and we thought we were going to have to cancel and try again another day. However, she finally warmed up to the idea and we got some pretty cool pictures.

Enjoy the pictures and we love you!

Download the zip file of all the pictures (warning large file ~ 38 mb )

View the Pictures on Google+

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Lyman Family – Our Favorite
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Lyman Family #3
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Lyman Family #4
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Lyman Family #5
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Lyman Girls – They’re amazing!
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Lyman Girls #2
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Lyman Girls #3
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Carrie with the Girls
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Mike with the Girls
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Carrie & Mike
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Carrie & Mike

Lyman Family – November 30, 2014

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. It was a nice holiday at the Lyman home. We celebrated Carrie’s birthday on Monday and we celebrated a little last week as well. Carrie has been a little under the weather (never fun to be sick, let alone on your birthday). She’s on the mend and will be back to 100% soon.

The girls had school off for the whole week (Quincee for two weeks) and they were super excited. On Monday we went down to the Yuba City Ridgeline and spent the day working at the facility and celebrating Carrie’s birthday. We went to the Yuba City Mall, played at the park (check out this cool video from the park), shopped for a bike for Carrie and then went out to dinner with the West family. All the kids stayed at the new Ridgeline facility and had pizza and a movie while we went to dinner.

Tuesday we had a birthday party for Carrie and a few of the kids at Ridgeline in Grass Valley. Super fun. We played games, decorated and had cake and ice cream. It’s always a blast celebrating birthdays with our families and kids at Ridgeline.

The rest of the week we took it easy and enjoyed Thanksgiving at our house with Sister Alvarez, Sister Patterson and my mom. It was a fun day baking and cooking and enjoying a good meal with the girls. The sister missionaries were fun and we were grateful to have them. It’s been awhile since we did Thanksgiving at our house. Mya helped bake and cook a lot with Carrie and they made some super yummy food. We had fresh made cranberry sauce that Mya made and it was a hit (Madie loved it and called it cranberry jello). Carrie also made sweet potatoes and baked beans that were to die for!

We feel very blessed and thank the Lord for all our wonderful blessings in our lives!

Friday Carrie & Mya spent the day in Chico with Ali and Val doing some Christmas shopping and had a blast! I’m so glad we live close to family that make these types of trips possible.

Saturday we had the Ridgeline staff christmas party at our house. We loved having all our staff and their family and friends come and spend a few hours together. We had soups, cheese, crackers with all the fix’n. We played games and spent the afternoon socializing. How grateful we are for our wonderful staff and all the amazing things they do for Ridgeline and the kids! Val and Jer were able to come this year and brought all their kids.

Below are the school pictures for the 2014-2015 school year. Enjoy!

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Lyman Family – November 23, 2014

We had a great week. Carrie’s prepping for her birthday on Monday Nov, 24. She’ll be 38 😉 Hope she doesn’t mind that I share her age. She’s as young and beautiful as the day I met her… although she doesn’t keep her hair as long as she did, which is a shame 😉 We went out Saturday night as a family to the Chinese Buffet in Grass Valley. We tried it a few months back and it was a hit. Mya’s eating sushi rolls, everyone loves the orange chicken and everyone is practicing with chopsticks (Quincee calls them “poker sticks”). It was fun to celebrate Carrie’s birthday as a family! We had a lady stop by the table and tell us we had 5 beautiful and amazing girls! So true.

This week was great. We heard back from the state licensing division about our new PDHC in Yuba City. They’re finalizing the details and we should be open to provide services to the families of Yuba and Sutter County by December. It’s been a lot of hard work and we’re really close.

Mya is working hard on piano lessons. It’s fun to hear her practice the piano and the songs that I remember playing when I was taking piano lessons at her age. She is doing great in school this week, she works hard and her teachers all have great things to say about her. She’s working on her fundraising for her big trip to Washington D.C. and New York in the summer. It’s been fun watching her and her young sisters going around the soccer game crowds and selling candy bars. Every little bit helps!

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Olivia started indoor soccer this week and had her all-star game on Saturday. Indoor is a very different game. She is playing with many of the same girls as she played in outdoor soccer on a U-12 indoor league. Most of the teams they play are boys with a few girls. It’s a new experience playing against boys but Livy holds her own! She scored the first goal of the season on Friday for her indoor team. She was very aggressive and took the ball down to the goal and shot and when the goalie bobbled it she was attacking and push the ball in the goal. For her all-star game she played goalie the first half and had a perfect shut out, although the teams were so even that she didn’t see much action. The second half she was in as a forward and she scored the first goal of the all-star game! We’re so proud of her. She was standing by the goal during a corner kick and the ball came to her and the goalie and they fought for the ball and ultimately Olivia won the battle and scored the goal!

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Kennedy also had all star game. She played awesome and the end score was 0-0. She loves playing soccer and being active. Madie is doing great this week. She loves to print pictures from Google image search. We’ve had to limit her to 1-2 pictures a week to conserve ink. He favorite character Elsa from frozen is what she likes to print the most. However, the other day she searched “madie lyman” and she found pictures of her and the rest of our family on the Internet from Lyman Universe. She thought it was so cool that we were all “famous” because we had google images on the internet!

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Quincee is doing great. No preschool this week so she’s been home all week. She’s getting very old and “responsible”. She loves to play with her sisters and have a great time with friends and church. She comes with us to Ridgeline during the week when we go and loves to play with the kids at Ridgeline and hang out with the staff.

Quincee with her "designer outfit"
Quincee with her “designer outfit”

Lyman Family – November 16, 2014

Sunday – November 16, 2014

We had the last soccer games of the season. Mya, Olivia and Kennedy all played soccer this fall season in the Gold Country Youth Soccer League. Mya played goalie fulltime, Olivia played goalie and mid-field, Kennedy played mid-field. They all did great.

Mya’s team lost 1-0 on a penalty shot due to a handball (which I think was a bogus call because the girl was covering her chest with her arms and the ball hit her). Mya almost had the save but the ball was shot high and hard and was just out of reach. We’re proud of Mya and her commitment and dedication to her team. Her coach pulled her aside after the game and complemented her on a great season and for always being there and doing a great job this year. He told her being goalie is tough, especially the older you get and that Mya played the position great!

Olivia’s team won 6-1 and they finished the season on a high note. After the game they had a team party and everyone got trophies and pizza! Livy was selected to the all-star team as goalie. She plays next Saturday. Yeah Livy, we’re proud of you!

Kennedy’s team tied 4-4. They were ahead 4-1 with only about 15 minutes left to play. I think they got a little too relaxed and the other team was able to come back and tie the game. Those can be tough to not get the win. Kennedy played great and has really progressed in soccer this year.

Grandma Cheri had Knee surgery on Tuesday Nov. 11. It was orthoscopic day surgery and Karina and Tim and their family came out to help Mom during surgery, etc. The surgery went well and Cheri is doing great. She’s up and walking although still some pain and such. Doctor says about 6 weeks to recovery. We’re rooting for Grandma to get 100% better and get going with all the great plans she has for being here in California!

This week was the final week before the state licensing survey for our new Ridgeline Pediatric Center in Yuba City CA. Carrie and I along with our staff worked diligently all week and we had the survey on Friday. Things went good and we’ll find out the final details of the survey on Tuesday. Hopefully we’ll be able to open the doors in a week or two and start helping the families in Yuba City. Our facility in Grass Valley is doing great and our director of nursing Danette Davis is doing a great job managing things while we focus on Yuba City.

Carrie is working as the first counselor with the Young Women in the ward (Alta Sierra Ward) and I am the ward mission leader. We enjoy our callings and it is fun to help people and strengthen testimonies (our own and others ;-))

I went hunting last week with my father, Blair Lyman and my brother Kevin Lyman. We drove around the area of south-eastern Idaho from Rexburg, to Dubois, to Hamar. We were hunting Elk and although we saw a herd of 100 head of Elk we determined that they were on a wildlife management area and could not be hunted. We took the opportunity to get up close and view the Elk. We didn’t end up getting an elk but had a wonderful time with Dad and Kevin.

We enjoyed having Karina and Tim and their family this week too. Besides the help with Cheri’s surgery it was a great week to hang out and have the kids play and also have their help putting together the Ridgeline Facility in Yuba City. We did an early thanksgiving meal on Saturday night and it was amazing (thanks Carrie and Tim for putting it together)!

On Saturday the younger west kids (Max, Bryn, Dallin, Jared) came to our home to stay for a few days while Jer and Val are away on a business trip. We took them to church today and it was tons of fun. All the kids are really well behaved (for kids right 😉 and we really felt the spirit and enjoyed the lessons and talks and music.

A wonderful week! We love you everyone!

Mike & Carrie Lyman ~ Mya, Olivia, Madalynn, Kennedy, Quincee