April Happenings

Time for our April Happenings... the random things that aren't enough to fill their own posts!

First, we were excited to hear that author Brandon Mull would be at a book-signing in Layton.  His Fablehaven series is Tess's absolute favorite book series of all time.  He is coming out with a 5-book sequel to Fablehaven called Dragon Watch.  So here are the kids with their newly signed book.

We are still enjoying our season passes to Lagoon.  Here is a picture Bryan took of Tess, Miles, and me in line for Cannibal, while he and Bree were up at the top of the giant Ferris Wheel.  Unfortunately, not long after this picture, I rode Wicked and forgot to zip my jacket pocket closed, which had my cell phone in it.  I was already a little bit sick by that point, so I kept my eyes closed on the ride--which helps me not get more sick but possibly prevented me from seeing my phone fly out of my pocket!  (Not that I could have saved it anyway...)  They found the phone, but it was toast.  Dang.  I didn't realize how dependent I was on the information in my phone (contacts, scrolling through old texts, pictures, notes I had saved, etc.)

Miles had to do an oral report & slide presentation on a U.S. President for school.  He got Millard Fillmore.  He did great on his report and we both learned a lot of interesting facts about President Fillmore that I didn't know before!

Miles lost his first molar last weekend.  He was pretty excited.  I was out of town, so Bryan texted me this picture.

And finally, Tess got to go with the 6th grade on a fun field trip.  They went to Clark Planetarium, followed by lunch at Spaghetti Factory (Yum!) and then a tour--and samples!-- of Mrs. Cavanaugh's Chocolate.  I wish I could've gone with her, but they did not need parent volunteers this time.   It sounded like lots of fun though.

Now we start May, which is always a super crazy-busy month for everyone!  Here we go!

Bingo!

The Bingo tradition lives on!  Bryan's parents started playing Bingo with the Terry side years and years ago, I think even before they had kids (let alone grandkids).  They would play on New Year's Eve because Great-Grampa Terry's birthday is New Year's Day.  As the family grew and grew, the tradition still continued, with all the cousins and second-cousins.  After Great-Grampa and Great-Gramma died, the tradition passed on to the next generation.  So now we get together with just Bryan's parents and two sisters (and families.)  

It's a great time--we all bring a potluck to share for dinner, and after dinner we break out the Bingo cards.  Each family brings several "white elephant" style gifts that are collected as people get a Bingo.  It's fun to see what everyone ends up with.

I realize I need to take better pictures next year...I didn't get any of Bree or Tess, a few of the cousins, or our great Bingo announcer, Grampa Terry!

Soccer

Quick little post about Spring soccer... Tess chose not to play this year, but Miles is continuing on.  Here is his team, the Green Goblins.  They are a pretty good team this year; they've won much more often than they've lost.  

And Bree's team is called the Green Butterflies.  They also have a great team!  They do not keep score, but there is only little girl on the team who scores probably 10 goals every single game!  Bree is fun to watch...she does stay along with the group and pay attention to where the ball is--but she just doesn't really enjoy kicking the ball.  At all.  Ha!    I think the whole time last fall and this spring (so about 16 games) I've seen Bree kick the ball maybe twice?  She still has fun though, and enjoys winning. :)

Pinewood Derby 2017

Springtime is Pinewood Derby time.  I am in Cub Scouts now in my ward, so when the topic of the derby was brought up, I suggested that we have the Activity Days girls do a derby as well.  Everyone was all for it.  And it was lots of fun!  Tess will be out of Activity Days in a few months, so this was her only chance to do it, and I'm so glad she did.  Bryan had a great time working with Miles and Tess on their cars.

Here are all the girls' cars.  Tess's is the blue & black one on the right, in the 4th spot down. (It was fun to see the difference between the girls and the boys--they definitely did look "girly"--but were every bit as fast!)  The girls did their race at 4:30 and the boys did theirs at 6:00, so they didn't go head-to-head in any official races.  But afterwards, there were lots of brother-sister combos who raced for fun.

Here is Tess with her friend Lauren Ashby, who had the cutest Crayon Car.

And here is Tess with her Award--3rd Place!  Woohoo!

Here are the boys' cars.  Miles's is the yellow one on the left, 3rd from the top.

And here is Miles, collecting his award--also 3rd place!  Woohoo!  It was neat that they both ended up with the same prize!  (And of course, Miles has to be goofy for the crowd.  He really is the class clown.  He loves to make people laugh.)

Here is what Bree thought about the whole experience:

Haha!!

Easter 2017

Happy Easter!  We started our day with the search for eggs, candy, and Easter baskets, and then got ready for church in our fancy new Easter clothes.

There is never enough time to snap pics before our 9:00 am church, so we tried to do it after.  Unfortunately, right at noon, it is so dang bright!  I purposely cut my head out of this picture because I had a weird squinty grimace on my face.  But it shows off the kids' new cute clothes so well, I didn't want to throw out the photo completely.

(Poor Bree has got my extremely-sun-sensitive-eyes so she wasn't too happy.)

We eventually just gave up and went inside where it wasn't so bright.   (You can't see the pretty spring flowers though, darn it!)

We had to get one with our sweet little Parker dog, whom I had to coax a bit to look toward the camera. :)

GFR 2017

Our neighbors, the Ashbys, invited us to spend Spring Break at "GFR" this year.  When we asked what that was, they said it is a fun place to camp and ride motorcycles/ATVs near Green River.  Kyle (our neighbor) has been going there since he was a little boy and his whole family loves it--over the years it has grown into a really big group who goes.  I think there were probably 40 people there:  9 families, 4 from our neighborhood, plus Kyle's 2 brothers, a cousin, high school friends, etc.  (If you're curious about the initials, they stand for "Green Frickin' River!"  Ha ha!)

We caravaned down together with the Ashbys, and unfortunately they got a flat tire outside of Price.  While they waited for some repairs we collected all the kiddos in the motorhome and headed down to meet the rest of the clan who were already there.  I tried to take a panorama of the 8 kids (plus Bryan and Parker dog).  (As a side note, for a panorama it's best to hold still--but Miles loves to ham it up for the camera so he always moves in crazy ways so that his face will look wacko.  It sure worked for this picture--he's next to Bree on the couch--kind of creeps me out.)

We got in late that night but when we woke up we realized how beautiful it is there!  There were so many trails...actually not really trails because it was mostly sand dunes so it was really just one gigantic trail!

The kids loved playing with friends, climbing rocks, catching lizards, etc.

Bryan loved trying out the Jeep and his motorcycle in sand.  The Jeep did pretty well...it couldn't match the speed of the side-by-sides on the sand, but it was fast enough for me!

One fun thing that the Jeep could do that the others couldn't (well, they could do it, but it wouldn't be pleasant) is drive through huge puddles!  

The sand is the fine red sand like at Lake Powell.  So the kids liked to bury themselves in the sand, and when we got home it felt like we had half the mountain with us....sand falling out of clothes, shoes, sleeping bags, etc.!

The guys riding at GFR were hard-core.  A couple of them race motorcycles (and win!) so they are a bit more adventurous (craaaazy) on their bikes than Bryan wanted to be, which is fine with me!  I need him in one piece! (Did I mention that when Bryan broke his hand on his motorcycle a few years ago, it was with Kyle??)   By the end of this trip, there were bruised ribs, a broken-in-2-places wrist, and a trip to the ER (for kidney stones...so not ride-related, but still a bummer).  Thankfully, our bamatamb fam made it out unscathed.   (Kyle really likes to make "memes" out of his pictures, and we thought this one was pretty good.  Poor Walker though--he's the teenager--13ish?--who broke his wrist.)

All in all, it was a super fun trip!  (And we did all the meals together, so that was awesome--Bryan & I just had to prepare/clean up one meal and after that we could just get fed by everyone else!  Yay!)

We are already thinking this could be a new Spring Break tradition!