Yeah Luke!

Luke entered a contest in the local paper. It was an essay about "What you love about living in the Hurricane Valley" Luke worked for days on his essay, hey typed every letter! He even passed up a chance to go hang with his knight friends to work on it.--Yeah he must get that from his Dad! He didn't win but he did recieve an honorable mention.Way to go bud!

Here is his essay:

There are so many things to do in the Hurricane valley, I love them all!! First, we live by a beautiful place-Zion. There are so many things to do there. You can feed buffalo, moose, and goats.

Or, let’s go camping. Just find a good camp sight and enjoy the outdoors! Then there are the rock stores. There are so many rocks. My favorite rock store is in LaVerkin. It is my favorite because it was my first one I went to.

Ok, back to Hurricane. They have great stores! When you go to Ace you can play chess and get free buttered popcorn!! The best thing in Hurricane is the library. The library is full of books like fantasy and adventure. I love Magic Tree house books!!! And Boxcar Children. The library does really fun stuff like the preschool reading program and the summer reading program!! It fun because you learn a new thing every week!

It is summer and the pool is the great place to be. Splash! Splash! Then there is Snowcap. Now, that is a cool place! My favorite snow cone is Tiger’s Blood.

Now I did not forget the high school! Just a couple weeks ago they did a play called Music Man and I was in it!!! I loved being in it because it was my first play and I learned new songs and dances!

Grab a bike and ride it (you now how to ride right?) to the BMX park It has the perfect hills and roads. So get on your bike and ride it around the park!

You can also get in the car and take a long car ride to the mountain. Imagine being you’re in the mountains and it’s nice and quiet. The kids are playing in the rocks and trees. Now pretend you’re home and kids are crying about chores. What would you like more? Think about it. (A lot).

The best thing I love about living Hurricane valley is that my ancestors, like Charles Henry Oliphant (my great great great grandpa) and Lucinda Abigail Judd help settle the area in 1851. Now to me that is great.

At the park

Some nice pictures of the La Verkin City Park :-) We had dinner there with the inlaws tonight and we survived ok! --Don't sound so shocked! Of course we had to have some kind of fight, so that is why the boys brought their PLETHORA of boffers and had a full out battle...you can see why Cory always wins.

Not to be redundant....

but today in the paper the boys were shown in their library day. How fun!

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUD!! A whopping ELEVEN years old!







On a side note....here is a picture of a couple of blankets that I've had fun sewing this year. The pink one was for a friend who had a baby girl, it was SO much fun to make. I would just stare at it for the longest time, wishing that it would be for a girl for me! Sigh..perhaps someday. The denim blanket I made for my sister's birthday. I ended up binding it with pink flannel and put pink camouflage on the backing.. (her hubby is in the military) it turned out so cute! I even used bright pink thread to quilt it. :-D She is at a soccer game every day of the week it seems like and I thought it would be fun to sit on at all of the games.

Today in the Newspaper...

So today I'm flipping through the newspaper and come across an interesting picture that looks familar! The journal was taking pictures as it went down the road in the parade. Thats all the in-laws right there! We should use it for our christmas card picture--we're all in there right?

Library Day

This last week my brain has been FULL of science experiments, kid jokes, and stage fright! We did a library day at the local library yesterday and what a sigh of relief that it is over! We had a great time. The boys had fun making different experiments that would make large bubbles and seeing how far they could get their slime to stretch. In the end we talked about polymers and played with bubble solution and gak. We found many of our science ideas at Steve Spanglers Science. That web site is a gem last year. We'll probably find our ideas for next year therefor the best science days here at home. Its where we first learned about the mentos in the soda trick that we did also. The parents of the first group were NOT happy when we said that they could take the gak home..lol..like WE were going to be the bad guys and make them throw it away! We did give them baggies for them to take it home with..lol..the second group was much more relaxed and we had a lot of fun with th em. There were about 30 kids the first hour and 50 the second hour--so we were pretty busy!!

Whew! What a day!

Yesterday my sis-in-law took myself and my mother in law out. She was able to acquire tickets to see Les Miserables out at Touacon. Everyone knows that I am a Les Miserable NUT! The book and musical is so moving. When I read the complete book last year it was life altering! It really put me in my place with how judgmental I had been in my life. Fantine became who she was because of the circumstances forced upon her, and she did everything she could to provide for Cosette without bending her morals....but when it came down to it and there were no other choices, she chose to take care of her daughter. It was very eye opening to me. It made me think twice at all of those times when mothers work or what their professions are--I would have these horrible thought of...well if she wanted to be home with her kids she could find a way. To all of those mom's that I was so incredibly rude in thought to I am so sorry! There were so many powerful lessons like that in Les Mis...I think that is why the book struck me so much. I want to read it again now and write down all of those things that change me. Anyone want to join me?????


Today Luke graduated from cub scouts. His AWESOME Cub Master had a fun pack night tonight filled with lots of water for this 108* day. Brandi you're the best!!





Ok...for pure fun/horror...Cory, for one of his classes, did a debate about homeschooling--I bet you can guess what side..lol.. To my HORROR he put our prom picture up from 15 years ago! Displayed on a HUGE screen in his powerpoint presentation! So hun...since we're getting rid of all humility now...so its not the prom picture..that one is to horrible (my hair was as tall as he was!)--oh so sad..this one is homecoming just before his mission. This isn't the "real" picture from the dance..just the one that was taken at his house before we left. The "real" one is way better..lol..

Weigh in day

Well...today was weigh in day at Curves. Drum roll please. The last weigh in was 2 weeks ago when I weighed 224. Today I weighed at 220. :D I'm happy with the progress that I've made. I feel really good and the ladies at Curves are great. I started on February 20th-- so only 4 months ago. My starting weight was 238. So that's 18 pounds down! :) I have also lost a total of 17 inches which I am also very happy about too! Happy Day!