Road Trip Day 5

We headed to Salt Lake today...

I'm not sure how much fun Christian had today...no pointe shoes for her and she had to spend the afternoon at IKEA...but hopefully she'll enjoy the cliff divers at dinner tonight...and she DID say her onion rings at lunch today were "amazing". :)

The princess, meanwhile, got the pointe shoes she's always dreamed of. She also got a new duvet cover at IKEA so she really scored today!

Road Trip Day 4

No photos, but Marty took us to a delicious lunch at the Coppermill with all the family, and then the kids took in the movie "Rango". It was a big hit!

Beautiful Rainbow

Tonight, after a good rain, we saw a wonderful, HUGE rainbow. It was so big that I couldn't get it in one shot. It was much brighter than my pictures show it to be. It was Beautiful!

Road Trip Day 3 Bowling

Nice bowling shoes.

Christian's shoes are really Shelley's cool bowling shoes, but they fit her!

Yep, her ball matches her outfit--of course!

We called this the rock-n-roll ball.

Mom, helping Andy line it up.

Mom's abilities weren't cutting the mustard, so cousin to the rescue!

Road Trip Day 2 ZILCH and DOODLE DICE

Family Game Night and two fun games: Zilch and Doodle Dice. Good times!

Here we go!
495 miles under our belt...
only 2,123 miles to go before we get home
5 encounters with road construction
3 stops for fortification

Still to come:
4 outlet malls
ballet pointe shoes
IKEA (for me)
M & M World
Coca-cola World
Roller coaster at NYNY in Vegas
Arizona HEAT
More cousins
Bring on the fun!

Happy Birthday Amanda!

Have a great day Amanda.

This is one of my favorite photos of you--

right down to the freckles!

Happy, happy!

Happy Birthday Jackie!!!

Hope you have a WONDERFUL day,

and a GREAT year!

Wacky Weather

While flooding in this area has stopped, and the clean up has begun, there will probably be more to come. The mountain snows are only now starting to melt. We had no "spring" to speak of, so the 80* temps expected the next couple of days will cause quick melting with more potential flooding. Not to worry thought. More rain and 60* temps are expected later in the week. Yikes!

Here in town.

We had never seen this before.

It was beautiful, but scary.

More local trouble.

Cows caught when the river flooded.

They all survived.

The local mountains last weekend.
Fresh snow is not "normal" this time of year.

I have a friend in Colorado. She said some of their mountains are expected to be open until July 4 to skiers. They expect flooding from all the snow too, but not until later in the summer.

W.A.C.K.Y!!

Promoted

With another school year behind us, these two smarties are now 11th and 8th graders! Yep, that's a small tear you see in my eye. Time is moving too quickly.

Spring Concert

Back in the early spring the prince and young Daniel were invited to come back to Middle School and play in the May concert. They learned a couple of Journey songs, came to school on a couple of high school days off to practice with the choir, and that was really all they needed. The Middle School Rock Band was back in action!

While another choir sang, they waited. Notice they are too cool to sit in the bleachers with everyone else. This must be the equivolent of "back stage" at a rock concert.

I do give them props--they look really nice and did sort of try to stick with the regular choir colors. They could have worn their grungiest rock t-shirts if they'd wanted to.


Jammin! Best of all, there's a CHICK on drums! The dude on the right is an eighth grader, and he really tried to be as cool as our high school boys, but he couldn't quite pull it off. Maybe next year Edwin. Maybe next year.



Final song. They had trouble hearing themselves in the first song so they had to move in a little closer to the amps for the final number.



They did great. I don't know if they'll get this opportunity again. The current music teacher is moving on, and there will be someone new in there next year. Rock On little Middle School Rock Band!

Dance Awards

Dance awards were held the other night at the lake. It was a great night for it, if not for the dumb wind. Still, I'm pretty sure a good time was had by all! These two had fun.

Waiting with the bestie.

Level 4 dancers, minus Nicole.

Cuteness!


The princess isn't taller than most people, but she is taller than her coach, Angelica!
Angelica said nice things about her, like how high she can leap and how sometimes they have to say, "Okay. You can come down now." :)

Each dancer gets an award for the number of years they have danced with the studio.

Here she is with her 4-year award!

About "House Rules" By Jodi Picoult

I am hit or miss with Jodi Picoult. I think she often tries to have too surprising an ending to her books. (Did you know that they changed the ending on the movie "My Sister's Keeper" when they adapted it from her book because audiences didn't like the book ending?) So I'm always skeptical when I pick up one of her books. "House Rules" drew me in because it's about a high-school-age boy with Asperger's Syndrome. Working at a school, I know kids like this kid and was curious to learn more. I think she did a great job of explaining the syndrome, though she would often speak as that character and seemed to give him abilities he wouldn't really have by the definition of Asperger's that she had previously defined. Anyhoo...this book started out getting only 1 star. It's a slow starter, people. In the middle though I was totally hooked and decided it was worthy of 3 stars. In the end (mostly because of the ending), it got bumped back down to 2 stars. I contemplated only giving it 1 star because I HATE the ending. I won't give the ending away, because I'd love to talk to someone who has read it. Let's discuss!

The Relay

First of all, this post should have happened WEEKS ago, but it got lost in the shuffle.

Second, if you follow this blog at all, then you know the following about the prince:

1. Track is a social sport.

2. He's a thrower, not a runner, and with good reason. When he runs, he's what's known as a "thumper". He does not run heal to toe but rather, thump, thump, thump...

3. He will try almost anything once if it sounds like a good time.

And that's what happened at this meet. Back in the 80's it was politically INcorrectly known as "the fat man's relay". Thrower tend to be a little less lean than runners. Not all throwers, but a lot of throwers. This year the throwing coach did NOT call it "the fat man's relay" but did tell the boys that there were enough of them that they could form 2 teams in this relay (the long one where they each run a lap around the track, though I can't think of what it's called--4 X 1600, maybe?), and the team that didn't come in last (it was a given that they would come in last and 2nd to last) would get to skip conditioning the next week. The prince was all over that because he already had conditioning as a PE class with the HEAD FOOTBALL coach! He wanted that break from a second conditioning a day.

So what follows are the photos. They did get two teams. But each team had to recruit a runner, which in the prince's case, happened to be good buddy Daniel. When it was over, those throwers we sucking up air like they'd just run for their lives, and Daniel hadn't even broken a sweat! (KNOW YOUR STRENGTHS!) The kids seemed to have a pretty good time, and we parents were cheering fools in the stands!

That's the prince on the far right. Check out the Chucks. He would not normally run in Converse, but his locker lock was jammed, and he couldn't get his track shoes out so...

Getting a little last minute advice from the runners. (Runners wear the skin tight singlet--I don't know why--while the throwers are in black shorts and white tops).

As luck would have it, the prince was assigned the outside lane, which meant that he was able to start out in front. Yep, for awhile he was in FIRST PLACE!! ;)

If you click on this photo it'll be bigger. See the kids on the field in red? That's the prince behind them--STILL IN FIRST PLACE--with "real" runners on his trail!

Ready to pass on the baton! He did great, thumped right along, and his team came in NOT LAST so he didn't have to do track conditioning the next week! Good times in track!

And here are a couple of photos of what he really did at that meet. If you pay close attention to his shoes, you'll see that he had borrowed someones throwing shoes for shot but was still wearing the Chucks for discus!

I hope he goes out for track again next year. It's a good time!

Happy Birthday Little Richie!

Happy Birthday to the King!

We just love you bunches!

400 Cookies

Amid all the wedding preparations, my sister took it upon herself to bake cookies for the open house. She warned us that when we got there, there would be 400 sugar cookies to frost. I was adamantly opposed to such a chore. It doesn't go with my diet, especially since I'm known for licking frosting off my fingers when necessary. So I let her know often that I would not be frosting those 400 cookies. When we arrived she informed me that I would be frosting those cookies, but that there were only 200. Where I got the 400 is anyones guess. She did make 600 cookies (200 of 3 varieties), and in the end, I did frost 1/3 of those 200 cookies. I'm a giver. What can I say? I only licked my fingers a couple of times, and I'm proud to say that I did not eat ANY of the 600 cookies or additional 200 mini pretzels with Hershey's kisses and M&Ms melted into them (they were so cute!). I did have a couple of M&Ms though! Hey, a girl's gotta have some fun!

I was in charge of the green cookies.

Employee Of The Month

The Tech Department would like you to know that "laptop" spelled backward is "potpal"!

The Training Session

My sister taught my mother and me how to properly fan napkins before the wedding open house. It was much harder than it looks, and it was much funnier than it looks. We got it down eventually, but I must admit that my mom and I mangled a few napkins in the process. Shhh...don't tell Shelley, but we just put the mangled napkins at the bottom of the pile so she wouldn't see them in the garbage and know we had wasted some napkins! As luck would have it, there were plenty of napkins left over when the open house was over. If you ever need some lessons, my mom and I can "hook you up".

Dissecting Frogs

Wednesday the princess "got to" dissect a frog in her science class. These photos aren't too gruesome--I spared you. The prince spent most of the week dissecting a rat. Did you know that rat intestines are 1 meter long? Now you do. Luckily for you, I don't have any photos of that. And luckily for the prince, his allergies had him all stuffed up so he was not really able to smell the rat until the last day.

This is what she thinks of dissecting frogs! Me too!