And... {he's off}

Things I've learned recently:

Full ride scholarships may pay for tuition, but....  

Books are expensive.

Housing is expensive.

Meal plans are expensive.

Graphing calculators are expensive.

Sending a kid to college is DANG expensive.

However, 

Hearing their voice on the phone is priceless.

Having them come home for a visit is priceless. 

Hugs... are priceless.  

Homesickness will probably come, but for now, he's seriously having the time of his life.  We miss you tons, bud, but we're so happy for you.

Awards

Last night marked the end of the golf season at school.  The coach found a few pennies laying around and he put on a nice banquet and awards ceremony to honor the kids for all their hard work.  

This is our varsity team... 

 Seniors.  

 Arilee played varsity every tournament and earned her letter.  She worked hard but needs to learn to keep her feet planted and how to putt.  Her coach even razzed her a few times during the ceremony about it. She's such a good sport.  

 Justin also played varsity every tournament.  He placed three times, was finally given his "bars" to add to the letter he received as a freshman (which he's earned the past three years but never awarded) and was given a plaque because he is one of them super cool seniors.  

Both of them did fabulous this season and I am very proud of them!

Miscellaneous March

Beyond taking a picture a day, which when life gets chaotic, I am not very good at... 

other things have happened at our house.  

Ishee was clearly under the weather for a couple of days.  

Otherwise, she'd never take a nap in the middle of the day.  

 We had the relief society birthday party and the 

ward clerk asked me to take a few pictures for the ward history. .  

We had a fabulous sister in our ward talk about getting to know each other on a personal level.

 Cody's grandpa turned 85 so we all went down to Pocatello for dinner with the

extended family at Mama Inez, and then back to grandma's house for 

cake and icecream.  

 The girls were being super silly one night. 

It was fun to just laugh and laugh at them. 

 Justin turned 18!  We didn't do anything special, because we are boring like that.

I made a coconut cake with salted caramel frosting and 

even found the candles that were on his cake when he turned

one and eight.   We had hamburgers at the inlaws house, cake and icecream, 

he got 18 different candybars and balloons from his aunt Wendy and lots of money

then we went home and watched "Despicable Me" with his girlfriend.

 Air-bear was in a play at school.  We've already forgotten the name of it. 

The spotlight broke right before it started, and while it wasn't

necessarily needed, it would have made for better pictures.  

She played the loud, opinionated, smart-alek.

In other words, she was playing herself.  haha.

{The Good Son}

Gosh.  

You ask a girl to the Homecoming dance and the next thing you know you are... 

changing your Facebook relationship status to:  "In a relationship".  

Luckily, the good son was willing to take a night off from his significant other to... 

 take his darling sister to her daddy-daughter date since her own dad had to be out of town on business.

That's why he's the good son.     

Handcart Trek...

Six months ago, when our bishop brought up the idea of a youth handcart trek, I was hiding my head, hoping and praying he wouldn't ask me to be a part of it. He didn't. Even my kids didn't want any part of it. However, as plans were laid and they got ready to go, I was secretly wishing that they had asked us to be a part of it. And my kids finally agreed to go. I was a tad jealous.

I sent one of my spare camera's with the girl on her trek, hoping she'd come back with boatloads of photos. She had some good ones... unfortunately, she accidentally switched it to video mode so most of her pictures are 3-4 second videos. Oh well. She tried.

Here's what we did get out of her, though...

This was the child to be wary of this weekend. When the leaders announced that they expected the kids to maintain a reverant tone so as to experience the true spirit of a pioneer trek, the girl announced she wasn't going. Reverent and her are like oxymorons. After the trek, the bishop came up and told us how much he enjoyed her company, but had to constantly remind her to use her "indoor" voice and she kept telling him she didn't have an indoor voice. We concured. She doesn't have one. Seriously. I don't know where she gets it from.

The handcart trek was held in the foothills east of us, in an area called Moody Creek, on a dry farm owned by the family of a family in our ward. It was filled with rolling hills, sagebrush, weeds, and a bit of alfalfa. Perfect for all those kids with miserable allergies. The girl has decided she has some allergies, but luckily, her "ma" for the trek works at the local pharmacy and had an arsenal of drugs and kept her medicated for us so she wouldn't be so miserable.

The handcarts were borrowed from a local stake. I think we only had about six of them... five families, and one extra for the strays who wanted the whole pulling of the handcart experience.
There were about five kids in each family. Since a majority of the kids parents were in attendance, and also since a lot of them had siblings with them, they were all split up and placed into new families. Each family was given a different colored bandana so you wouldn't forget who your sister was... just in case you wanted to. The boy wore his like this most of the time... which is clearly evident based on the fact that his nose and that little strip of forehead is burnt to a crisp. He took sunscreen, but unlike the girl, his "ma" didn't make him wear it religiously.
The girl and her siblings...
One of her sisters with her "ma" ...
The boy chatting it up with a few of the neighbors...
The girl and her favorite sister...
He never realized once until we pointed it out (after he was home) that he was wearing his cowboy hat backwards. His cowboy grandpa would be so proud! Or not.
The boy and his family... he worked his guts out this weekend, trying to prove that he was better than anyone out there, and he did a mighty fine job of it. One of his "brothers" was pretty much useless, and one of his "sisters" got sick on the trail and could barely walk, let alone push or pull, so that left him and his two 14 year old siblings to pull the handcart (with their ma and pa, I guess). He and his 14 year old "sister" (who has a crush on him in real life so that may have aided her work ethic) worked their little guts out!
The girl spent most of her trek pushing the cart... laying her head down in the back of the handcart and resting while walking... taking pictures of her family from behind... and keeping them all in line with her singing and knowing her...dancing. She only bloodied one girls nose, poked a boy in the eye, and started one water fight. Surprise surprise!
The trek only lasted three days, which was probably a good thing. Some of them might have died on the trail had it been any longer. They ate lots of sandwiches and dutch oven pioneer food. Some (like the boy) slept under the stars, and others didn't sleep at all (like the girl) in their tents.

The second day on the trail, they had what they refer to as the "womens pull". All the men were called off to war... they had to climb the hill and sit by the side and watch all the women and girls rally together to get these six handcarts up the very steep hill... a hill they said was hard enough to walk up alone. The girls cried as they pushed and pulled, and the boys were weepy as they sat and watched them struggle. All along the trail they heard stories of the pioneers, visited makeshift gravesites, and sang pioneer songs. It was a very moving experience for all who went.

Saturday night, we families gathered at a local church and waited for the arrival of the trekkers. They stopped up the road, pulled out the handcarts and had them walk to us, which I'm sure they were just happy to be on a real road for a change!


The girl and her little family.
The boy and his family...
Each person "walked" for a pioneer. They were given a name and a story, but didn't find out until the end if they made it all the way. The boy lived to be 91 years old. The girl lived to be 94 years old. I always knew they were strong!
You don't want to see the ring they left around the tub!
Perhaps someday our ward will do this again and we can take the opportunity to participate as adults. The kids were hesitant at first to go, but in the end, the realized it was all worth it, it wasn't all work, and at times it was even a little fun - thanks in part to the girl and her feisty attitude. That's my girl....

Is that a golf ball in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

My son was golfing yesterday in his last qualifying round before the district high school golf tournament to be held on Monday. He was having a great round up until now. One of the holes has a wierd layout where the green is right next to another fairway. He hit his ball - a not so good shot - and he could see it was going into the other fairway where some other teammates were walking along. He yelled "FORE" and he could see his teammates duck and run for cover.

He walked up to the kids, apologized for his bad shot, and asked them if they'd seen his ball. Well, the one kid said "yeah, it hit me in the leg, but I don't know where it went!" They couldn't find it anywhere and figured it bounced into the river. So my kid took a drop and ended up with a triple bogey. Not his best hole.

When they got back to the clubhouse, they were standing around tallying up the scores when the kid he hit came up to my son and asked him what kind of golf ball he'd been using. A titleist pro v1. Why? When the other kid got back to the clubhouse, he was cleaning out the big pockets of his carpenter pants and found - a titleist pro v1 golfball! It had landed IN HIS POCKET!

Needless to say - the coach took a point off for the drop and he ended up with his best score ever. Not good enough to qualify for districts though, as it turns out five other boys also had one of their best rounds ever and they only take the top five. Oh well! He's only a freshman. He has a lot of high school golf yet to play.

Little boys, tantrums, and other things...

Bet you didn't know I could go this long between blog posts, did ya?

A few weeks ago, I could look outside my front door and virtually nothing for atleast a mile. I've loved every ounce of this view for the past ten years. I didn't even argue when the owner of the property across the street poured a concrete slab and plunked a camp trailer down in the middle of his 20 acres because he was very adamant, he was doing nothing else with that 20 acres, not even building anything on that concrete slab. Sure, I'd rather NOT have an old camp trailer in my view, but I figured it was way better than the alternative.
Then one day a few weeks ago, cars started showing up and hanging out at all hours of the day and night. I got curious (rather, my mother in law got curious), so I checked the classifieds in the paper only to discover that this 20 acres, which happens to be one of the last vacant fields in my whole neighborhood, was FOR SALE! Oh how we wished we had the money to buy it, but we didn't. Too bad the owner lived in Colorado, I'd egg his house for this one!!!

A few days later, some rather interesting fellers showed up on my inlaws new house's doorstep, asking for a drink of water for their dog. Turns out, they'd just bought the property. They said "I hope you don't mind old junky cars, because we have an auto body business and this is where we're setting up shop." Double whammy!

Two days ago... this showed up... and I threw a mini temper tantrum over it...

And this morning, it looks like this... I wanted to cry...
My view... is gone. It's being replaced with buildings and junky cars and who knows what else. I'd still like to know how they can just set up and auto body repair business on a "residential" zoned piece of property, or have it zoned commercial without notifying the neighbors. It boggles the mind. All I can hope for is that if they have any kids, they better not be little stink pots! *sigh*

In happier news... my kids are officially done with school for the summer. They were home for approximately 27 seconds yesterday when the bickering, weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth began. I was able to shut them up for a few hours with cartoons and "Enchanted" the movie (which reminds me of a huge rant about Directv, but I'll spare you for now), and informed them that their summer would not consist of 24/7 television. They informed me that in their "off" time, they'd just play video games instead. Is sleeping in as late as I want for the next 12 weeks really worth the payoff?

Our week was busy busy with the end of the school year. Ishee had her field trip which I attended... because I love riding school busses and hanging out with three different elementary schools kids at our itty bitty zoo. The pictures were good, though, weren't they? Thanks for pointing that out...

The boy had an assembly I was invited to, which turned out to be an hour of my life I'll never get back. It basically consisted of them announcing the names of students who had acheived honors, high honors, and who were in the renessaince club (which means you had honors/high honors/no truencies or tardys). They read two very long lists which would have been shorter had they announced the names of the kids not on the honor roll, and played silly games only a 14 year old would enjoy (except mine) and sent us on our way. Not a single photographic moment worthy of capturing.

My husband took a couple of days off work to do some "honey do's" around here, and ended up helping his dad do concrete in between rain storms. He did mow the lawn and wack the weeds, so it hasn't been a totally worthless vacation. He also took me to lunch one last time....

The boy also got to experience what life would be like if he'd had brothers instead of sisters... and he enjoyed it so well, he begged me to trade the girls in. My niece was up visiting from Arizona with her parents and brought her wild and crazy but oh so cute little boys. They attended a temple session and left the little boys at my house for a couple of hours. The boy finally had someone who met his match in the odd noises department. Must be a boy thing...He had someone he could wrestle with, play matchbox cars and airplanes and dart guns, and then there was the little one who preferred to be fed like a dog, which the boy very much enjoyed doing. Sorry Tanner ... we did a whole lot of giggling at your expense... Ishee happily declared the little boys were way messier than she could ever dream of being... which is a flat out lie... she could totally take them any day of the week! When the little boys left, my big boy cleaned up their mess without being asked, partly because it all belonged in his room, but mostly because he had big plans to park himself in front of the computer for the rest of the day out of sheer exhaustion and he knew I'd be so impressed with him I wouldn't argue too loudly.

I didn't.

Have a good weekend!