School Conferences

Both Ruth and Jared had good conferences this week. Ruth is a great reader and Jared loves math. Kaitlin and I also met with a counselor to plan out her high school. High School!!!! Yes, Kaitlin enters 9th grade next year, but here, 9th grade is still at the middle school. She won't actually go the high school until her sophomore year.


Chuck's new Bike

Chuck bought a motorcycle on Monday. He's been researching and looking at the want-ads for several months now. We look forward to weekly short get-aways - him on his bullet bike, me on my little scooter. What a pair we'll make! And yes, Mom, we both have helmets and will always wear them.


Guitar Lessons

A couple of weeks ago I sang and played guitar at my church at a dinner, and afterward I had three different women come up and ask if I taught lessons. I told them that I was self taught and wouldn't feel comfortable teaching others when I feel like there is already so much I don't know. But as I thought about it, I thought what a great opportunity I had living in this area with so many children (literally 50+ children per block). So I did some research and I was able to arrange lessons with a woman who has put out a couple of folk albums and had done several songs on EFY albums named Nancy Hanson. I start lessons next week. My goal is to start teaching beginning students in the fall.


I Bought a URL

Those few of you that have followed this blog know that I write fanfiction as a hobby. In the past year I've published around 100,000 words. About a year ago I wrote a fanfiction story about a character found in the Book of Mormon. My site accepted Bible fanfiction so I thought it wouldn't be a problem. But when I went to submit it, I was rejected. After several emails back and forth they gave me their final word that they would not allow publications relating to the Book of Mormon. I thought it was crazy that a site that has thousands of stories about all sorts of atrocities and perversions would have a problem with a story that happened to be set in a book from my religion. (I wondered if they would accept stories written about Buddah, the Maccabees, or Mohamed or if it was just Mormons that they don't like.) Ever since then I've thought about how people of my faith have no place to post and read stories that have Mormon themes or elements in them.

After a lot of research I finally discovered an archiving database program that allows you to run fanfiction on your website. So I bought my own URL and I've been working all weekend on getting a Mormon fiction site up and running. It's still under construction but you can find the site at www.ldsfiction.net .

If any of you great people are good at PHP or designing web banners I sure could use your help! So far it's been as much sink as swim as I've never had to deal with raw programing before. But I'm learning a lot and hope to have it up and running in a few weeks.

Nothing Says "I Love You" like a Boy Scouts of America District Awards Banquet

Chuck and I had a nice free Valentines dinner courtesy of the Boy Scouts of America. (Only a man would plan an awards banquet on Valentines weekend. Doh!) Chuck didn't get an award this year but he has been Varsity coach for 3 years now. The banquet was catered by Kneaders, so the good food and the company of good friends made it worth it.


Nothing Says "I Love You" like Kitty Litter and Hot Glue

I should have taken a picture, but I didn't so you'll just have to imagine with me Ruth's original valentines box. She wanted it to look like the beach so she glued waves of sand (kitty litter) across the top along with shells. When did Valentines turn into a candy holiday like Halloween? Ruth and Jared came home with a bag of candy each.


Nothing Says "I Love You" like Kid's Eat Free at Ikea

I know some of you out there just love Ikea, but personally, it just isn't my thing. I think I'm the only person that can spend an hour walking Ikea and not find anything to buy. I took Ruth and Jared because it was kids eat free day on President's day (and I wanted to try out their beds because I'm in the market for a new bed). The place was a mob scene. We took our place in the long lunch line along with all the young moms and their 3-6 children. In front of us was this old grumpy woman. What's the name of that old cigarette smoking woman in the comics? Well, this woman reminded me of her. Whenever Ruth or Jared would get to close she would glare at them. Anyway, we snaked out way through the line and Ruth and Jared got to choose three free items which they were excited about ( I had some meat balls which I had heard wonderful things about but they were just okay for me). When we went to check out we waited behind the old woman who was explaining to the cashier that her kid's meal was free . "But Ma'am," the cashier asked, "where is your child?" . "Oh, over there," the old woman said, waving vaguely at the throng of people.

Ruth is headed to State!

This week was our regional Reflections ceremony and Ruth was one from our region that is going on to the Utah State Reflections competition. I'll posted a clip of her original puppet show. This is the second time that Ruth has gone to state in Reflections. Kaitlin and Chaz have also won regions in the past (Chaz in Theater, Kaitlin in visual arts), and Kaitlin was a state winner a few years ago, also in Theater.

Chuck met an Olympian

While on a bus tram from the airport Chuck saw a young family. The dad was carrying a baby, and the mom was carrying all the luggage like a pack mule. Chuck thought it was strange and was glad when the bus driver struck up a conversation with couple. It turned out that the woman was a Olympic Skeleton Athlete named Noelle Pace, and the couple was just returning from filming a diaper commercial in New York.

Give a Day

Get a Disney day! Yes, our family is signed up for the free day at Disney program. We are making blankets for project Linus and have four complete so far. I've put all the materials by the TV in the living room, and then when any of us sit down to watch we pull the blankets out and work on them. I'm not sure when we are going to Disney Land, but whenever it is - we sure are excited!

The last time I checked, they were still accepting applications for this program if you are interested.

Inspirational Story

My college roommate Becky, who was always a good friend and a bridesmaid at my wedding, shares a very personal and inspirational story on her blog.

In the past 9 months she has lost over 160 lbs! No trainers. No tricks. Just hard work and eating right.

She gave me permission to post a link to her blog so you can read her story: http://myreasontosmile.blogspot.com/

Kaitlin Reflections

This week was Kaitlin's School Reflections Awards Ceremony. Kaitlin's black and white photo was one of five winners from her school in the photography category.

Kaitlin spends hours each day drawing and has a real talent for it. More importantly though, she has a drive and passion, that if continued, will take her far. She posts lots of her artwork on Facebook, but for the benefit of those of you not on Facebook, I've put her two most recent additions here.






These are both characters from the book series Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which Kaitlin just finished reading and really enjoyed. It is the series that the new movie "The Lightning Thief" is based on.





A Trip to San Jose

Chuck spent the week in San Jose. When I asked him what he was doing he said that he was "documenting [a company's] billing process." Chuck had never been to San Francisco and got to see the bay and eat sushi at an authentic Japanese restaurant. Several nights we were able to chat with him via video on Skype. He was even able to attend our Family Home Evening (every Monday we spend the evening together as a family. We have a short religious lesson, we play games and eat snacks) via video. He even played the song lyrics game with us, and advanced his team with his own rendition of "Dad is great; he give us chocolate cake."


Cafe PrimaRio

On Saturday my presidency and I put on a Thank You dinner for all of our Sunday School Primary teachers called Cafe PrimaRio. It was so named after a popular Mexican restaurant we have here called Cafe Rio. We served a chicken and sweat pork enchiladas and salads. The food was fabulous thanks to one of my counselors who is a fabulous cook. We had mariachi music and games and decorations. Everyone that came had a great evening. It is very satisfying to walk away from a big even and feel like it was a success.

It was a slow week at our house so to fill the blog I asked everyone: What happened this week?

Kaitlin: (woefully) "I got switched to "A" lunch."

Ruth: "I lost a tooth!"

Jared: "I got a Zu Zu Pet"

Chaz: "I started ballroom dance [in school]"

Chuck: "We went on a date and watched Avatar. It was full of violence. (pause) It was Smurfs all grown up."

Science Fair

Ruth once again has been one of five kids in her grade to advance to district science fair. She did a project on adding things to water before it freezes to make it hold more weight, and therefor safer for recreation.





Bunny-Houdini

Have you seen that movie Phenomeon with John Travolta? Even when he was a genius he couldn't figure out how a rabbit kept getting into his garden. We've had similar experiences trying to keep our bunny, Summer, confined to one area of the house. We had our suspicions but we didn't know for sure how she kept getting into the basement, until Ruth and Jared caught her doing this:




You may have noticed in the tape Ruth saying "jump jump!" Yes, the kids thought it was wonderful that Summer could jump a 2 1/2 foot barricade, and they encouraged her over and over until she got quite good at it.

So how do you keep the bunny out of the basement, you might ask. Well, so far, she won't jump the barricade if the basement light is off. We'll see how long that lasts.


I Don't have the Flu, Silly! It's just a Cold.

A cold that goes on forever! Okay, yeah, maybe I have the flu. I don't remember the last time I've been knocked on my back for over a week by a sickness. I think part of it is that I've allowed myself to lay in bed and let the kids run the house. When you are a young mother you just don't have that luxury. Who knew that being sick in bed was a perk of having older kids?

Last week, Chuck got that 24 hour stomach sickness that has been going around. At first we thought he had food poisoning. Any of you that have had food poisoning know how bad that can be. But then I heard of a bunch of people in the neighborhood having the same sickness.

At first I was glad that Chuck got the stomach thing, and I just got a cold. But now on my 8th day in bed, I think perhaps the stomach thing wouldn't have been so bad.