End of the Season

I just took that last load of towels and swim suits out of the dryer! Swimming is over! We meet the end of the swim season with mixed emotions. We are so proud of Savanna for all of her hard work and effort. She swam in her last meet on Saturday at the Regional Level. She has worked so hard this season and was able to drop 3.5 seconds from her time. Her dedication has been inspiring to all of us. We are a little relieved to put it behind us. Swimming is a very time intensive sport!. Savanna has not been home from school and practice before 6:00 for the last couple of months. We look forward to having her around a little more often (and not having to make so many runs into town to pick her up from practice) and I know she looks forward to having a little bit of free time!

First Place @ the Regional Level

I got a call from the PTA Reflections coordinator. Parker's robot won first place in his age category at the Regional Level. It is now being sent on to be judged at the State level. We are so excited for him!

First Place!

Parker won 1st Place in the Reflections Contest. The theme this year was WOW! His idea was a robot that could do homework and chores (we got the robot idea from Family Fun and from my cousin Debbie's blog - thanks Debbie). He came up with the idea to make one that had a switch so it could switch to either homework or chores. He had a fun time finding things to create it with. Everything was either from the recycle bin or from his dad's tool chest.

Thursday night was the award ceremony for Logan City School District. Parker was awarded a certificate for 1st place in the 3-Dimensional Art category at the Elementary School level. His entry is being sent on to be judged at the Regional level. He was so excited to win and we couldn't be more thrilled for him!

"Murder at Mardi Gras"

Last week we hosted a Murder Mystery Dinner Party. We had such a great time! My good friend Britney gave me the game as a gift last year (thanks Britney!) so, we gathered the gang and played. It was such a fun thing to do. The murder took place at a Masquerade Ball during Mardi Gras. We sent out the invitations with the character descriptions and everyone came dressed up and in character. I was Connika Gothika the gothic novelist and next door neighbor. Brett was J. Stephen Dupree, the family lawyer and the MURDER!

The Christmas season has come and gone, and although I still have a box of Christmas lights that need to be put away, everything else is done. We had kind of a rough December, but we survived! Brett had surgery on the 19th of December and that made things kind of crazy. We had tons of snow while he was down, but thanks to wonderful friends and neighbors, I only had to clear the drive way once! Although we didn't have any family with us for Christmas Day, we were blessed with friends and family throughout the month. Todd and Jillian came and stayed on their way to Virginia. We dog sat Rosco for them. That was an adventure. Parker loved it and Rosco loved Parker (and his bed!)


We were lucky to have my brother Craig and his family here in Utah over the Holidays. They came out to surprise Adri's mom and dad. We spent Christmas Eve with them at Adri's sister's house. We had a great time and it was fun to be with family. They were able to come and spend a couple of days with us at our place. The kids had a great time playing in all the snow that we had.



As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome in a new one, we are grateful for friends and family and the many blessings in our life. We are excited for the New Year and I am determined that this will be our best year ever! We'll keep you posted!

Temple Square

Last weekend we went down to Brett's family Christmas party. After the party, we followed tradition, and went to Temple Square to see the Christmas lights. We rode the Trax system in (Parker thought this was really cool) and walked to temple square. It was beautiful and surprisingly warm. This was one of the first years that we were able to wander around at a leisurely pace and enjoy. Although the night had it's ups and downs (as anything involving our children does), we hope that it's the kind of holiday activity that our children will remember!

Santa Sacks

This year I was in charge of a project through Heart Expressions called Santa Sacks. Heart Expressions is a non-profit organization that puts together sacks of gifts and goodies for children that otherwise might not have a Christmas. Last year I helped with this project on a much smaller scale. I gathered the names of the children in need from our school, submitted them to Heart Expressions and helped assemble the bags. This summer, the lady who was in charge of the project for Logan City School District moved. She called and asked me to take it over. I of course said, "no, thank you for thinking of me, but I can't do it." I'm not sure exactly what happened (I do know that guilt was involved), but I ended up doing it. Now that we are almost through this Holiday season, I can say that I'm really happy that I did it! We have been working on this project for a couple of months now, sorting through supplies, raising money and purchasing items for the sacks. Each sack is filled with a fleece blanket, an outfit, a pair of p.j.'s, socks & underwear, a book, a toy and a goodie bag. I had a really great group of university students that helped me this year. They needed to do a service project for a class they were taking. We met two weeks ago and assembled almost 100 sacks. It was a great project, although it really wiped me out. I was sick through the last couple of weeks of the project and when I finally went to the doctor he diagnosed me with pneumonia. I've been trying to recover ever since!