What Emma's been up to

Emma is still trying to figure out who she is and where exactly she fits in in Junior High. It's a daily emotional roller coaster and I feel like we are riding in the front seat without the lap bar. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Being the mom of a tween is hard!

We've warned her that junior high and high school can really suck. We've told her that she might not be totally comfortable with who she is until college or even later. (Paul and I didn't find ourselves until we found each other. Awww!)

For whatever reason she is anxious to grow up right now and doesn't always like our advice and counsel. Tweens! We are doing our best to keep her young and innocent. We try to remind her why she is here on this earth. It isn't to be popular, famous or rich. It's to be the best, most Christ-like person she can be and to gain wisdom.

Thankfully the one thing we do know is that she's a good student. She gets some weird assignments though. Most recently she had to make a mechanical arm. Say what? Thankfully we were able to go to the school to see some examples.

Here is her "arm".

We used PVC pipe pieces and a whisk with the ends cut off. She had to be able to pick up candy out of a 5 gallon drum. 

Practicing

She was able to pick up some of our candy but I guess the candy at school was bigger and harder to get.

She kept practicing even though she earned an A just for making it. She also practiced by chasing our cat around. It does a pretty good job of grabbing tails. 

Last Wednesday the young men and young women at our church served their moms dinner. Paul and his dad went to a BYU basketball game and Andrew went to Grandma Nancy's house while Emma and I were at the church. 

She served me my food then we sat with friends and had a great time chatting over dinner. We played a game "How well do you know your mom?" where the moms write something they don't think their child knows on a card. Towards the end of dinner they read the cards and the kids had to guess who wrote it. I wrote that I had always wanted to be a hairdresser and Emma guessed it. She also made sure to get me a brownie before they ruined it by putting nasty vanilla ice cream on top. I would say that she knows me pretty well. They sent each mom home with a bouquet of colorful daisies. 

It was a very nice night and it was fun to have Emma serve me.  

Emma has been dying to do something social stuff with friends. She finally got a mall outing set up with a new friend named Erin. She asked me to take them Friday night. I did so gladly. The mall takes almost 30 minutes to get to and she's young and I'm a teeny bit over-protective so I stayed there rather than drive back home. I should've taken a friend. I got pretty bored walking around alone and felt like a loser eating in the food court all by myself on a Friday night. Oh well. I love my baby girl and wanted to do this for her. She had a good time and bought herself a few things. Some I approve of (Tom's shoes) and some I don't approve of. (the dorky glasses pictured below) After we were done at the mall I took her to Erin's house where she "hung out" for a while longer. 

She got 100% on her shrinking and scaling mastery test in math. She got to go to another friends house to study science earlier this week. She sang a solo in choir (Eeeek! We are NOT singers so this had to be...interesting.) as an audition for next years choir classes. This is a requirement that would scare the crap out of me but she did. She came home crying, but she did it. I swear there are some days when I just want to put both kids in a bubble to keep them from getting hurt emotionally. That was one of those days. No one made fun of her or laughed but I guess it was still awkward. I hope she will be okay and will be able to escape junior high without too many emotional scars. This parenting thing is exhausting.