Swimmers, Take your mark. Go!

I don't have pictures or video to include here yet, but that will come soon.  Last night we had our first Swim Meet.  I can't say how much I wanted to step up to the blocks and race myself.  It's a good thing, this Great White might have scared everyone out of the water. :)  Swimming was as big a part of growing up as just about anything else.  I took lessons and competed starting at age 3 until I was 17 and too old for the city league anymore.  Good times!

Anyway, the point of this post is not about me, it's about Katelyn, Bryson, and Bradley.  Last night was the Freestyle meet at Stapley Pool (vs. Carson and Poston, nostalgically both the pools I swam at growing up).  Everyone swam hard and did a really good job.  Katelyn came in 2nd place in both her individual race and her relay.  I got everyone on video as much as I could (trying to help Cassi with Adam and Megan too).  I clocked Katelyn at 35.8s for her individual and 37.1s for her relay leg (she was the 3rd leg).

Bryson came in 2nd in his individual race, but I missed his time.  His relay got 7th, and he swam his (I think 2nd) leg in 29.5s.  Bradley's individual zoomed by in 18.1s and he got first place!  He helped his relay with a 20.4s 3rd leg, and they came in 5th.

TTFN!

Schools out! Hooray!

School is officially done for the summer. Here's what we plan to do to stay cool.....

Sorry, we'll work on convincing the video to turn. Until then, tilt your head and enjoy! :)

A "Cinemagical" dance recital

This year's dance recital was themed Cinemagic. Wow, was it magic! I think I saw Amy (sister-in-law and director of the Company) magically divide into 10 people and do way more than her one body could do to pull of this amazing show. Kaley (other sister-in-law and dance teacher) also was amazing making the show run smoothly. All in all, the show came off great. The road to get to the end was a little bit (ahhh, a lot bit) messy. I know all of that sounds cryptic for those who were not there, but I don't know if I have words yet to say how long of a day it was for my family. Because of situations beyond anyone's control, the dress rehearsal ran wayyy too long, so the girls and I had 30 minutes to eat a late lunch, change into costumes, do stage makeup, and dance hair to be ready for the first show. Somewhere in the first show I finally sat down and watched a little bit, until I knew I needed to help backstage. Then we pretty much ran from there and into the second show. The girls both did a GREAT job on their dances. I'm so proud of them. It was fun for me to see the change and improvement in their skills from the beginning of the year, and especially Katelyn from first starting dance just 2 years ago. We of course brought our video camera with us, but Chris was needed to help the stage crew, so we don't have much video of the night. We opted for the outrageously priced professional videographer's DVD which doesn't come to us for another few weeks. We'll post their dances once we get them. Until then...here's the only evidence that the day even existed....

A HUGE thank you to my mom and grandma for coming into town and helping out with making the day a little less crazy (hope you still want to come back again!) and for being the official audience crew, thank you to Grandma-ma Long for coming to the show, a thank you to Chris for getting only 2 hours of sleep to finish up the great intro "movie previews" before the opening number, a thank you to Cheryl and Kaley for helping with stage makeup and back stage costume changes, and thank you to Scott who provided the perfect shoulder for Adam to sleep on because his mommy was MIA.

Life ...

... is good.

Easter time

We had a great Easter this year at home and enjoying General Conference. Chris took the girls to the Easter Pageant on the Mesa Temple grounds Friday night. They all enjoyed it, although the report was that everyone was cold and that they wished they could see better (gotta fix that for next year!). I decided it was too late of a night for Adam, so he went to bed while I prepared for the weekend. Saturday morning we introduced the girls to the General Conference "quiet zone." We declared the family room the quiet zone where they could do quiet activities and listen to

Conference. Otherwise they were invited to leave to go to the play room; however, they were required to be in the quiet zone for President Monson. Overall, I think we enjoyed Conference.

Saturday, after the second session of Conference, we went to Chris' grandparent's house for an Easter egg hunt.

There were sections in the backyard for different age groups, so that the big kids didn't take all the eggs from the little kids. Brock and Adam loved finding the eggs (over and over again...we would take some out of their baskets and re-hide them to keep the game going while the big kids finished).

(Note the cute bunny on Adam's back...thanks Amy for sharing!)

After the hunt, the kids had to unscramble word strips found inside their eggs to receive the final hunt prize. The kids loved it! And the best part....no worries about possibly missing an egg in the yard full of candy that had to be found!

Sunday morning, the Easter bunny felt that the kids had already had an Easter egg hunt, so the Easter bunny put all the presents and candy into each child's basket. The Easter bunny thought it was a good idea...the kids thought they needed another Easter egg hunt. Oh well, you don't win them all! Although the sadness over the Easter bunny being lazy was lost when presents were opened. All was well again.

I think Adam's favorite part about Easter this year is that he thinks Easter eggs are balls, which are his favorite thing. In fact, he would see one and call it a ball. Gotta love boys!

Sunday's General Conference was great. The quiet zone was a little hard to enforce after 8 hours on Conference....As you will see, Megan is under the table with her legs in the air, and as I'm sure we all know our cute little Megan, there was probably no sense of quiet about that!Adam was his usual cuteness.

After Conference was finished, we went to Chris' grandparent's again for a wonderful Easter feast! All in all, a great weekend filled with fun and thoughts on our Savior.

Cool Summer

Last summer, we knew our A/C unit was running on its last leg. It would run so loud next to the family room window that we would have to turn up the TV if we were watching something. This year we had our usual spring maintenance on the unit and found out that it was time to replace it. So after a second opinion, much deciding, frustration that the tax refund money was not going to buy me a new TV, gratitude that the tax refund money nearly paid all of the service....we have a new amazing A/C and heating unit. I've learned a lot, but mostly I'm glad to know I have 10 year parts and labor warranty and that my unit won't burn out on me in the middle of the summer!

Old and busted

New hotness

I hate scorpions

Scorpions are just ugly. Sorry if anyone out there has a soft spot for them, but I hate them. They are dormant here from October to April, so that's when I forget about them. Ignore that they exist. However, we have warmed up so I knew the little things would come out and show themselves. A few weeks ago on a Sunday, I was thinking it was time to have Chris start "hunting." He goes outside with his black light and kills the ones we can get. They glow a green/yellow color under black light so they can be easy to see at night. Well, we had too close of an encounter that next day. Katelyn went to put her shoes on for school and we hear her and Megan scream and run yelling "scorpion!" That makes your heart start racing! I killed it with my flip flop and felt that sinking feeling that the season has begun. It doesn't end there. Just 2 hours later I was playing in the playroom with Megan and Adam. We had been in there for 10 minutes already when all the sudden Megan screams, "it hurts, it hurts" and then I see the scorpion as she is backing up into me. I jump and pick Adam up and get Megan out of the room. She had been stung on her leg below her knee! I wanted to scream! I had enough mind about me to know that I needed to call poison control. I got the number from Amy (I knew she had called it about something else recently so she knew the number) and I called. They gave me instructions and it was so nice to have someone I could talk to and they could help me. We washed her stung spot and gave her pain medication. Then we waited and watched for signs of problems. I went back after about 5 minutes to the playroom to kill the offender. I was probably hilarious to watch. I had our heaviest hammer covered in duct tape so he couldn't escape. Then I slowly approached the room. The scorpion ended up being in about the same spot we left it. I felt no remorse smashing it flat for what it did to my little girl. I couldn't be in my house that day. I went visiting some friends, ate lunch out, I was home long enough for Adam to take a small nap and for Katelyn get home from school, then my wonderful mother-in-law realized I needed "retail therapy" so we went shopping. I think going shopping is the only thing that kept me from packing boxes and moving far far away. In the end, Megan ended up being just fine. It hurt her for about 6-8 hours, then she didn't complain about it anymore. It's debatable whether I'm OK, but each day we don't see any in the house it gets easier. I hope that was the only encounter we have this summer!