For Better or Worse

David and I are IN the St. George Marathon. I don't know which is tougher- finishing the marathon, or getting into it in the first place. We didn't make the marathon through the normal lottery since we registered as a group so one of the members of our group had already contacted one of the charities so we were at the top of the 100+ people on that waiting list to get in.

Now we just have to come up with donations to St. Jude's Children's hospital. If you would like to donate to this cause in our behalf click on this link http://www.stjudeheroes.org/ and click on sponser a hero then put in our name.

Anyway, we have 145 days to go, and so far we are feelin fine. :-) Hope we stay that way in our 40+ bodies.

The pic for the day is of me and Anna & Kamryn walking to school this morning. It is a memory I don't want to forget because one day they won't want to be so close to me. Every morning on our walk to school Anna holds my hand.

Mother's Day was the BEST! I Love Mother's Day! My family made me breakfast in bed, and I got presents, then after church they made dinner, and cleaned it up while I took a nap. Then we went on a walk and came home to eat brownies and ice cream. I couldn't ask for a nicer day.

I hope every mother is treated as royally.

It's All About Soccer

I have decided that there is not life after soccer at our house. Mikaela's season is over, Anna & Kamryn finish in 2 days, and Derek in 2 weeks. Then we can find our former lives again.

Mikaela probably will not play next year so it was a bitter sweet finish for her. Her JV team finished with a 10-3-1 record. But since they are only JV they don't go to any play offs.

Derek's team is quite a drama. He came down from the top league team for this spring season, and it has been the best decision. He is so much happier and likes playing soccer again. Because of coaching and politics in the highest team (his old team) they are not having a very good season, and Derek's new team is ahead of them in the standings. SWEET!

Kam's team has done great this season winning all but one team they've played. They have even managed to shut out almost every team. Kam's a goalie, so that it sweet too.

Anna's team is all about having fun, but they are little goal getters too. Anna has scored her fair share, and she is a great defender too. I did take her team's pictures and made 8x10's of the team and individual photo on photoshop. It has become my team job. I did the same for Kamryn's team.

David and I aren't playing soccer but we follow our kids around, and David makes spread sheets of Derek's league to see how they will finish in the league. When we aren't following soccer we are beginning our preparation for a marathon. We find out today if we are in or not. I am extremely nervous. I said I would never run a marathon, but what used to seem so scary doesn't sound so bad anymore. If I, a non-runner until the age of 32 can do it, then anyone can.
My mantra is endure to the end, and hope I don't get injured along the way!

Here's to life after soccer!

Happy Birthday Kamryn!

The birthday began WAY too early today. You all know what a "calendar girl" Kamryn is, and how she is always on top of everyone else she knows birthdays, so I had to be all over hers. I frantically ran around yesterday to get birthday gifts when today would have been a much easier day to get that done, but it was not to be. For some reason I haven't figured out why, we now have to wake the birthday person up at the crack of dawn to give them gifts and breakfast. It probably has something to do with people having to get to seminary at 6 a.m. and work, and then in the evening we are here, there, and everywhere... so the only time we have together is 5:30 a.m. or 8:30 p.m. and we certainly CAN'T wait until 8:30 to receive presents! So the crack of dawn it is. So I came out of my room at 5:30 to go down and get breakfast started and who is waiting outside of their door for us? Yep! Kamryn... she set her alarm :-)

Kamryn is having a mystery theater party on Friday. Thanks to a tip from my friend's blog I purchased a party from "Dramatic Fanatic" online. The girls come dressed as actresses, dancers, cooking show hosts for an awards ceremony. They have little lines and commercials that they make up. Then the golden trophy goes missing and they have to solve who stole it. I hope that it goes well. I found the perfect pinata at Constructive Playthings. It is a golden trophy! So then we will have a pinata, and I am going to rent "Nancy Drew" for the sleep over portion of the party. Should be a fun night... of course then I have the obligatory sleep over crepe breakfast to make the next morning.

Anyway... you are only 10 once Kamryn! It has been a thrilling decade with you in our lives... except for those 1st few years that we try to forget :-)

10 qualities we admire about you

1. Great with little kids

2. Loves animals

3. Very organized

4. Great Student

5. Amazing speller

6. Good cook... loves to help me in the kitchen

7. Competitive athlete... loves soccer, swimming, bowling, and wants to try volley ball

8. Good Friend... never leaves anyone out

9. Thoughtful

10. An example to me in reading her scriptures every day!

You're amazing Kam! Happy Birthday

Prom Night

I have started this post a couple of times, but I couldn't download pictures from prom so then the post was not saved. I will try again... I will persevere with the post. That is the story of my life lately. Start something, get distracted come back, get distracted again... finally finish after the kids go to bed. In this case it is the middle of the afternoon, but the computer is free so I will seize the rare opportunity when someone isn't doing homework, looking at myspace, or playing webkins.

I wrote a nice blog about Prom on Monday, now it is so long ago I can't remember it :-( Mikaela was lucky - her games were cancelled on Saturday due to snow that hadn't melted from Thursday, so she didn't have to referee soccer. We started in the afternoon doing Mikaela's and her friend Erica's hair. They had a book with some vague descriptions of how to create the "up-do". Mikaela's hair was lots of slip knots pinned & glued to her head with bobby pins and hairspray. We used 40 bobby pins to make the creation. I was not on board with it in the beginning, but Erica's mom kept on tying knots and pinning and eventually it started to look like a real hairstyle. Erica opted for her hair to be down in curls so we didn't have to pin anything on her head.

Then we went to one of the girl's houses for pictures. Why the kids like to have so many people involved in this production I don't know. It was VERY hard to take pictures of 22 kids in one entry way. Every kid had 1 or 2 parents also in the entry. I didn't get very good pictures. Then they went off to dinner and then to the place where the dance was held. "Moonlight on the Nile" was the theme for the night. After the dance they change and go to an all night party held at "Mr Biggs" formerly known as "Fat City". The go-carts were the big hit of the night she said.

Then Sunday morning she came home and went to church in her dress and up-do from the night before. Same make-up too. She was tired. We all were. It was a busy week-end.

Tuesday Kamryn & Anna went back to school!!! And that very morning I went on a very windy bike ride around Chatfield Reservoir. It was a lovely day by myself (and the wind).

Spring in Colorado

We have had a pretty nice spring for Colorado. It has rained/snowed during the week, but the weekends have been nice. This has made for a good soccer season so far. That may change tomorrow. It snowed yesterday, and hasn't melted away as it typically does. So we may have cancelled games tomorrow.

I have to say that this has been our most successful season of soccer across the board. Anna has won 3 and tied 1. Kamryn has won all of hers with shut-outs (this is even sweeter because she is one of their goalies). Mikaela's high school team has won 6 and lost 1 (their best record in a while) Then there is Derek's team. They are playing in a tough bracket, but they have managed to win 2 and tie 1, and lose 2 so they aren't too bad off. I am actually a little hopeful that the games are cancelled tomorrow so we can have a Saturday off :-) I may actually get David to clean the garage instead... what do you think my chances are??? (Not good)

Tomorrow is also the long awaited Prom Day. Mikaela being the Jr. Class President has been planning this for almost a year. Prom is much different from my day, when we had it in our high school gym. They have a rented space, a decorator, a caterer, and a DJ. She and her "group" have their dinner reservations, but no limo this year since they're only juniors, their picture spot before dinner, and after the dance they go to Mr. Bigg's for an all-night party. We bought her dress 6 months ago in Utah, so yesterday we went and found the shoes and accessories, now I just have to create an "up-do" tomorrow, and manicure and pedicure.

Kamryn and Anna are nearing the end of their off-track. Hallelujah! Today we went to see Nim's island. It was fun, but could have been a better adventure (what's up with the volcano?)

We also went skiing for our last time on Tuesday and it was the perfect ski day. No lines, it wasn't cold, and great powder. We were spoiled!

I will post pictures after prom next time. Here are some attempts to take their portraits myself and not go to JC Penney. Kamryn's was for her birthday party invitation. She is going to host a mystery theater so she is being a movie star.

April Fools!

I have done good pranks in the past, but when you pull pranks, you get pranks pulled on you, so I have ceased with the pranks, because I don't like to get got. What I would like is some good pranks that are funny that nobody gets mad. I liked the year I put a big heavy rock in Mikaela's back pack, it made her stronger right??? But she got me back by putting a rubber band on the sprayer on my sink and it sprayed me good. Now how did that help me???

Today my prank was that I actually woke up at 5:30 and made waffles for my family. Of course they were suspicious, but we were going skiing remember. I took them to seminary and then went back to bed.

What are some good pranks you have done?

Think Healthy Thoughts

OK, I've had enough of being sick. It was kind of nice for a while to slow down and let some things go that I should be doing, but after thinking I was on the mend yesterday, today I have digressed and I'm sick of being sick. In the hopes that drugs will help me I just went back to the grocery store for a different cold medicine, and I had to show them ID, so it must be good.

Kamryn and Anna are off- track again. I know, doesn't it seem like they just went back, as I have had very few posts since they were off last. This break has been far less fun than the last. Mostly because #1 we're broke from the remodel, and #2 I'm sick, and #3 I'm teaching a few sewing classes, that I have to get ready for. So anyway today was supposed to be a big field trip to go on our last ski day of the year, but as many of you heard there was a little 70 car pile up on I-70 yesterday and this morning when we got up at 5:30 and turned on the weather it was still chain restrictions and another car roll over on westbound I-70 so we took that as a sign that we should stay home today. We'll try again in a week and I think the snow will stick around a little longer. My friend Shauna tells me the snow is great in April. We shall see. So as a substitute field trip I took the girls and 2 friends to a rec center pool, the first one we go to is closed for maintenance this week, the 2nd pool we go to they got in for 15 minutes and they blew the whistle to clear the pool for some foreign object floating in the water. We don't go to the pool that often, but this type of occurrence happens many times when we go. Hence the multiple signs around the pool area urging parents to buy disposable water diapers at the front desk. Apparently someone missed the signs. So they took a really long shower while I read a photography magazine in the hall, and we came home.

Stay tuned for tomorrows grand adventure an apecoectomy. I don't know how it's spelled, and I really wish I didn't know what it was. I am not at all excited for the visit to the endodontist. I need to load some really good songs on my i-pod for the visit though. Wish me luck!

Here are a few pictures from Saturdays soccer games.