Downtown Tourists

For home evening, we took Grandpa Webber to see the sights in downtown Salt Lake City. We started by walking through temple square and the south visitor center. Jenna loves the large windows in the visitor center that look toward the south side of the temple. From there, we took a tour of the Beehive House and had desert at the Lion House Pantry. It is always nice to go downtown and see all the beautiful landscaping and buildings and spend some time together as a family.

Cousins in the House!

It always makes for a good day when the girls get to see their cousins. They are looking forward to spending some time with the Holt's this week.

1/2 Acre Under Control

We have been doing a lot of yard work this year and are happy with the results. For the first time, we feel like our home, yard, and pool are completely managable and under control. The new garden boxes are working well and the rest of the garden is still free of weeds. The massive flower beds on the east side of the back yard are pruned and clean and have new bark. We have even planted some additional plants in them. It is a contant work in process, but one we are starting to feel ahead of.

War on the Home Front - 1941

We are going to miss Aubrey's fifth grade teacher and her love of teaching US history through the American Girl series. She obviously is on top of what 11 year old girls like.

For the end of the year, the class prepared a play based on Molly, the American Girl who lived at the time of WWII. Aubrey played Elizabeth, Molly's best friend. She is a good actress and actually received the best actress award at the end of the year assembly. It is always fun to see her and her cute friends together. They are a good group of girls.

South Valley Track Club

Aubrey and Kayla are running track again this year. They enjoy running and having so many of their good friends on their team. It's like a small party each time all of our families get together for the 3 1/2 hour long track meets.

Their favorite race this year seems to be the 4 x 100 relay. Aubrey is usually the starter, and Kayla the anchor, with Megan, Kendra, Amber, or Lauren, running the 2 middle legs. They have also started running the 1600 m(1 mile) this season. Aubrey came in first place for her age division this past week, even though she thought she might die half way through the race. Kayla really likes the 200 m, which she usually runs neck and neck with one of her best friends Kendra. Luckily they are in different age categories, so they are not competing against each other, but are usually placed in the same heat.

It has been fun to see them work hard and improve.

1001 Arabian Nights

Kayla played a thief in the 3rd grade play 1001 Arabian Nights. She liked getting into her costume and being in a play with so many of her friends. It has been so fun to have a big stage at the girls school where they can do plays and performances like this. You were awesome Miss KJ

We Won!

Last week Kayla and Aubrey had their first South Valley track meet of the year. (I will make a separate posting of that soon) Anyway, I was telling the girls how I have never won a race in my life, atleast not that I can remember, but I have finished every race I've started. Well, that all changed on Saturday morning. We decided as a family to particpate in the South Jordan Country Fest (Mental note to self - I need to do a post about how much we love South Jordan) 5K and 1 mile Walk/Run. The girls were a little intimidated by the 5K, so we went with the 1 mile - and we won. First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh place. Pretty cool. Here are a few pitures of the event. The first has AJ, KJ and Mom nearing the 1/2 mile point. The second is after the finish line. The girl standing behind us is one of the girls track coaches. The last picture is oh so yummy. As we drove down to the river to run, we saw that a local bakery was serving all-you-can-eat french toast. There we are chowing down our french toast. For anyone coming through South Jordan, we highly recommend Kneaders Bakery. It was such a fun way to start off our Saturday.

Make-a-Wish wagon

Our school is raising funds to grant a 'wish' for a boy named Adam. The Make-a-Wish Foundation comes in and does an assembly about the program and the child we will be helping and then the kids bring in money to donate. This week I was in charge of taking the water jugs around in a wagon to collect for B and C tracks. As you can see, I had my 2 little helpers with me. They both loved pulling the wagon, and showing the kids where to put their money. By the end of the week the wagon was pretty heavy, but they still wanted to pull. It took us about an hour to make the rounds through the school, but it was fun to go into all the classrooms and see so many kids we know.
At the end of the week, Amy and I had to get all the money out of the water jugs (not always an easy task) and count the money. We poured all of the change into one of those counting machines at the bank. (We learned you need to check the change for small rocks or other foreign objects - Ooops) But here is Emi's favorite part; she got to keep all of the 'fake' money. So, she now has a good collection of pesos and other foreign currency as well as a few tokens to a local arcade. Hey, hey.

Hilarious Emi

I see a lot of myself in Emi, both physically and personality wise. Today I was pushing her on the swing telling her how she looks a lot like what I looked like when I was 5. She quickly asked. "Were you hilarious like me?" I responded, "I don't think I was as hilarious as you are." She takes the cake on that one.

I will share one more story about Emi and her strong and independent personality, but this is one of those 'Do not try this at home' or 'be a better Mom than this' incident. Yesterday Emi, Brenna, and I spent the afternoon helping with a party in Lindsay's class. About 20 minutes before school got out I decided to take Brenna home for her nap. I told Emi (who was sitting in the class circle doing an activity) that I was walking Brenna home and she could walk home with Lindsay and her other sisters after school. Then I told Lindsay the same thing. I had no worries about it. After putting Brenna down, I called Rachelle for some car talk (another funny story) and suddenly the door bell rings. There's Emi swinging on the porch swing. I was like "Em, what are you doing?? She had decided to come home. Now granted we only live 1 block from the school, but it's a big block with a signal. Just like her Mom, she had no worries. She pushed the crosswalk button, waited behind the painted line, and crossed when the green person lit up. She was glad to be home, got a snack, no problem. Strong and Independent.

Later the rest of the crew arrived. Not so calm and cool. "Mom, MOM we couldn't find Emi. We don't know where she is ..." Ooooh. Okay, so maybe it wasn't such a great idea to do that, but I thought it would be fine. The lessons we learn.

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P.S. Luck for the "camera challenged parents" we were at preschool graduation, they had a professional photographer take their graduation pictures. So here's to our Graduate!

Paradise Found

After 13 wonderful years of marriage, we thought it was time to go on a 2nd honeymoon. We booked our trip in January so we would have something to look forward to through the cold winter. Jenna had never been away from the girls for more than 2 nights, so she also needed some time to gear up for that.
June finally came, and we had a great time in Cancun. The weather was beautiful, between 75-85, the entire trip. We snorkeled, ran, kayaked, exercised, played tennis, miniature golfed, swam, boogie boarded, walked along the beach, and drank every type of non-alcoholic drink they had.
We enjoyed calling the girls each night and hearing about all of the activities they were doing with Emma. We came home to sea shell animals, sand art, decorated flip flops, and painted treasure boxes. Hopefully our payment to Emma covered the cost of all the craft materials.
It was so nice to get away and spend time with each other. We came back rejuvenated, reconnected, and so very grateful to be eternal companions.

Preschool Graduation

Tonight we all got together for Emily's preschool graduation. It was a nice program where the kids (there were about 30 in 5 different classes) sang a few songs and each shared what they want to be when they grow up. For those of you who know how much Emily LOVES preschool, it will come as no surprise that Emily was the only student who wanted to be a preschool teacher. Aside from the usual doctors and policeman and ballerinas, we liked the boy who enthusiastically stated he wanted to be a monster truck driver and the girl who said she wanted to be a rodeo queen when she grows up. Isn't 5 a great age! Unfortunately, Emily's parents were photographically challenged tonight and didn't realize until we got to the program (the moment it was starting) that the camera was dead, so we have no pictures.

We are so lucky to have Emily in our family. We love her confidence and her bubbly personality. Emily will be a great kindergartner come August.

This IS the place

Our friends the Bloxham's invited us up to the mountains for tin-foil dinners in honor of Amy's birthday this Wednesday. The girls definitely enjoyed the smores and marshmallows and we had a nice time relaxing in the beautiful scenery. We are lucky to live in such a beautiful place so close to the mountains. We probably do not take advantage of it often enough. Maybe this summer we will make our way up there more often.

Amy is trying to get us to participate in the Provo River Trail half marathon again this August. While we have enjoyed training for this and other races, we have also REALLY enjoyed not having mileage commitments these past few weeks and are not quite sure if we want to submit ourselves to that again. We will probably make a decision after Cancun.

We are happy to live by the Bloxham's and have such good friends and neighbors. They're the best!