Photo Tag!

I was tagged by both Mom and Michelle, so here it goes!

A current project you are working on...

In case you can't tell, this is a tie rack that I am making for Steve and the sandpaper that was waiting to smooth it out so that we can hang his ties on it :)

The oldest thing you own...


I don't have a lot of truly old stuff, although I'm not exactly sure why that is.... Anyway, these two are probably the oldest items I have. The tea cup was a gift from Steve's grandma several years ago and the plates were a gift to me from my grandma (paternal) before I met Steve.

Your worst pair of shoes...

I bought these just a few months after Madison was born and they are fairly trashed now. Notice the splits at the sides, the dirt stains; in short, Steve would be happiest if I just threw them away. I continue to wear them for bummin' around the house kind of stuff, though.

Something from your childhood... Most of my family will recognize these dolls immediately :) These two dolls were made for Mariah and I a long time ago. I want to say that I was 9 yrs old, but Mom would know for sure... I can hardly believe that when we were living in California (Kellen was still an only child then) I was contemplating getting rid of them, because I didn't have a little girl to play with them. I had even called Mom to ask if she wanted dibs on them because they were of such high sentimental value. Now Madison plays with them every day, and says they are HER baby dolls!

Your 3 favorite movies...

Okay, I don't know that these are my absolute favorites, because that changes depending on my mood. Also, some of my TRUE favorites aren't movies that we actually own... Benny and Joon is just a really cute, whimsical movie that is always good for sweetly happy pick-me-up. Pirates of the Caribbean (did I even spell that right?) is just plain fun to watch! And the Bourne Identity is a really good action movie. It even led me to read the book and, while they're definitely different, I enjoyed both immensely :)

Your key chain...

What can I say? I have the keys to the cars (one Honda Accord, one Chevy Malibu), my jump drive, the house key, the mailbox key, a couple of store cards, and my Eeyore.

Your favorite edible treat in the house right now...

I am a really big fan of dark chocolate, and these have become my recent favorite, although I'll try almost anything that's dark chocolate :)

Something in your home you are proud of...

I'm pretty sure an explanation isn't really necessary on this one!

Your favorite wall hanging...

Steve's dad made this for Steve for Valentine's Day before we had even met and it has followed us everywhere we've lived. It's very simplistic, but I really love seeing that reminder of love in our home.

Something in your yard that makes you smile...

I don't actually know what this flower is, but it's blooming in my backyard! I, of course, can't limit my smiles to just these blooms, but they represent all of the beautiful things in my yard that bring so much color to my scenery :)

I have no idea who is left to tag, so if you feel like participating, we'd love to see your stuff!

Where's my breakfast?

This is outside our front window, obviously. We had a great laugh watching this bird yesterday morning, and I was so glad that he sat long enough for me to catch some video of him :)

Cub Scout Olympics

Okay, I'm back with the pictures and details from Saturday's Olympics! The weather was kind of finicky that day, since it was trying to be warm but the skies were overcast, ending up with high humidity that occasionally tried to sprinkle on us. But there was enough sun that I'm sure we weren't the only ones who went home with slight sunburns :) I neglected to get pictures of ALL the events, but I'm only missing 1 or 2. One of them that I'm missing is the long jump, which our pack was in charge of hosting. At several of the events Madison wanted to be able to do it, too, so she got to try all the events after the boys were done.

SOFTBALL THROW

FRISBEE TOSS
OBSTACLE COURSE - hurdles and things out of range of my picture...
50 YD DASH
SOCCER KICK

JAVELIN THROW

Now, of course, we couldn't just go from one event to the next; we had to wait for the group ahead of us to finish first. This left quite a lot of down-time between events that required entertainment of our boys. Our leaders did a great job of coming up with stuff to keep the boys occupied while we waited our turn at things :) This is a game of tag but the rule is that when you've been tagged, you have to place a hand over the spot where you've been tagged and keep it there for the remainder of the game. This might mean that you are running around with a hand on your shoulder and a hand on your backside while trying to tag someone with an elbow... Lots of fun!

And you just can't fault a good ole game of Red Light, Green Light! It's a little hard to see, but not only is Madison standing in the middle of the game, but she has abandoned her shoes out there in the field (look on the left side of the picture to the immediate right of the little boy in the red shirt...)
Michelle brought her wagon so Madison and Travis spent a LOT of time amusing themselves with that!
Then the other kids played with the wagon, too, after lunch was over while we were waiting for the events to start up again.

No, this is not calisthenics. This is a game of Simon Says! After I took this picture I put down the camera so that Michelle and I could play, too. The whole day was one big opportunity to leave adulthood behind for a while!
Here is our pack at the end of the day after participating in all the events, Kellen being on the far right back row of this picture.

Whooosh!! There went the weekend...

On Friday I had an advising appointment at the university at 9am so the kids and I packed a lunch so that we could walk across the street to a park afterwards and play until lunch. The advising appointment went well. It turns out that I was indeed given credit for the classes I had taken, but I was coming from a school that does quarters to a school that does trimester terms. The difference ends up being that the quarter school affords more credit for it because of the longer term, so I was given as much as this university could and then the extra credits were given to me as electives. I'm not sure if that makes sense to anyone, but it's about the best I can do explaining it. I am probably going to have to re-take the education classes because for one of them they don't have anything comparable and for the other I took a 200-level class while the one of the same type here is a 400-level class, so it's not likely that they'll let me have the education credits for that one. Oh, well. So, the good news is that I am officially enrolled and registered for this fall's classes, which will begin on Sept 29th. They will only allow a maximum of 18 credits (BSU allowed 21, I think) so I have registered for classes totalling up to 16 credits. The bad news is that their programs are slightly different (that was to be expected) and I am 3 years out from my degree no matter how you slice it; further if they don't let me take some of the Spanish literature classes I need while I'm in my 300-level Spanish conversation classes. It's recommended that you don't take the lit classes until you've completed the conversation classes, but not required. A lot depends on how hard I've worked on my 200-level classes because the lit classes are given in Spanish; if I don't know my Spanish well enough I won't be able to keep up in the class. But enough about the school stuff. It's exciting to me, but the details probably aren't interesting for anyone else :)

On Saturday we had our Cub Scout Olympics, which was from 9am until 330pm; what a day! The kids had so much fun, and I did get lots of pictures, but I'm going to put those all in their own post because that day just had so much in it!

Sunday was fairly normal for the first half of the day. We went to church, we found new books to check out at the church library, and came home to have left-over pizza for lunch. When Maddi got up from her nap she helped Steve and I do a quick wash job on both cars while Kellen played video games. Sometimes I could happily get rid of that thing... And then the kids and I went out to play in the back yard. Kellen had charged his rc truck and was playing with it while I threw frisbees from one side of the yard to the other, walking across to get them and re-throw since no one was playing with me. Steve heard Kellen playing with his truck, so he dug his rc Jeep out of the garage and came out to play with us.

After some down time in the house, we started getting dinner ready. We were planning on having bbq chicken and homemade baked beans, but that kind of went out the window when the chicken caught fire un-noticed and turned into charcoal out in the back yard. Steve had been cooking them slowly in the center of the grill with only the two outer burners on, but that was going a little TOO slowly. The beans were about done and the chicken wasn't, so he turned on the center burner really low to help a bit. It was more than the chicken could take apparently. So we piled into the car and went to a local Mexican restaurant for dinner instead. At least I'm not the only one who burns bbq chicken, and he burned it MUCH better than I did!

A Day with Friends!

So many pictures, so little time! We were invited to go into town today with some friends (thank you Michelle!) and the kids had a great time! The city was putting this on, so there were several city vehicles out with various staff members to explain what the vehicle was used for and how. They also had vendors explaining various programs available in the area as well as a free lunch of hot dogs, chips and soda for anyone who came, with only a requested donation of canned goods in exchange. Well, we were more than happy to contribute some canned food in order to participate in all the things we did today!

I know it's probably a little hard to tell, but there is a small robot in front of the kids with a camera on the front. They can put it inside pipes throughout the city and use it to be able to see what's inside the pipes. You wouldn't believe some of the things that they said they've seen inside those pipes!

This table has various nozzles that go on the end of the hose on a sewage truck. Each of the nozzles sprays the water (at 2000 lbs of pressure) in different ways to accomplish different things. Considering they go on a sewage truck, we were really glad that they were cleaned before they were brought out for us to look at!
Face painting was available for all the kids so we stood in line for a little body art :) Kellen got a basketball on his cheek while Madison got a smiling heart on her arm.



This is a monstrous replica of a fish, with Kellen and Mickey sitting next to it. I thought it was just a really big thing to look at but when we got closer we were told that the kids could go inside! Well, we weren't about to pass that up!
I bet this doesn't look like the inside of any fish you've ever seen, but the kids thought it was great!
They had a small back-hoe (I think) that the kids could sit and get their picture taken in. The really fun thing is that they had a basketball suspended from the end of the bucket just like a wrecking ball and some of the adults were competing to see how quickly they could knock over a set of numbered bowling pins in numerical order! We stood and watched while one guy accomplished it in 38 seconds! Wow.

After some lunch we were going to head over to a nearby park but we were waylaid by some water works! You can see the fire hydrant in the background of this photo with the hose attached to it. That hose went out to a large metal pipe that was spraying the water across a large grassy area. Then it was running down onto the path where the kids had a blast playing in it!

This is (in order, left to right) Mickey, Kellen, and Sam sitting on the warm pavement after getting all wet.

This picture shows Kellen (blue t-shirt), Michelle, and Mickey running through the 'sprinkler'. I'm afraid I wasn't quite so brave and preferred to remain dry :)

Madison had so much fun, she didn't really want to leave the water at all. Once we got her heading towards the play equipment, though, she took off! I know this picture doesn't look like it, but Madison is actually leading the pack down the grass :)

Riding a bike, sort of...

Earlier in the week we took a walk to the park a few blocks from our house. Kellen was riding his bike and Madison wanted to ride the trike. Okay. We did that. But I'm not likely to ever do it again until she's a proficient rider! I think she spent more time next to the trike than she did on it because she can't quite steer it yet. And there was also a certain amount of time spent by me pulling the trike for her because she didn't want to ride it or pull it. Ugh! She had so much fun, though, and I know we'll get it down eventually :)