Constitution

My dad had his class on the constitution tonight out at my sister Monet's house. I think he has studied it for so many years now, that he knows everything there is to know about it, but I don't know what he is going to do with that knowledge. I guess that is why he is having a class to teach us all about his wisdom.

Max and Markus were playing across the street at the park with Cole and Casey, when Cole threw some rocks at Max and he came in crying. My mom got all upset and left in the car for the rest of the class with Cole. I am not sure why, since Max is the one that got hurt, I think she may have been mad that my dad was trying to discipline Cole.

Defensive

Max played an awesome game today and his team won 4-3. He played defense the entire game and stopped this one kid (Sallenback was his name) from the other team from scoring 4 goals. He said afterwards that he doesn't usually like defense that much but this time he really did. All of his coaches rubbed his sweaty head in the locker room and were telling him that he played a great game and awesome defense. He had a great day, that cute little guy!

Practice

Max had hockey practice tonight and he scored a goal. He was so excited. His first game is tomorrow since he missed last week.

We also went skating this afternoon, I only had one student that was in town this weekend. I am teaching a class tomorrow morning, actually it is a practice for the group that I am teaching for the Halloween show at the rink next weekend.

Book Club

Tonight was book club at my friend Tyra's house and everyone loved the book. Usually everyone gets together and we don't even mention the book that we read. But this month was different - everyone there tonight couldn't wait to talk about it. I still need to finish the last few chapters though, but I still could grasp what they were saying and agreed with most on the dialogue between Sara and Jack as amazing.

My Words

I am listening to this book right now on audio tape. It is the book selection this month for book club and I have found it fascinating so far. I decided to listen to it since I am in the car driving more than 1 1/2 hours everyday, back and forth to the boys school. (I really need to consider if it is really worth it to drive that far these days, I am thinking that the school right across the street sounds better all the time.) Anyways, I like the story line of a young woman in the 1880's during the settlement of Arizona, who is widowed at the age of 20 and the romance that than ensues with handsome Captain Jack Elliot. It is written with so much detail and almost makes me feel like I am watching the whole story unfold. I can't wait to finish it.

Wicked

My friend Kelli sent me a link to register for a chance to purchase tickets to Wicked when it comes here next year. So I did, hopefully I will get to buy some! I have heard a lot about it from Nicole mostly who loved it in New York and says that her kids listen to the soundtrack all the time. I have seen other musicals, but not ever that one in particular.

Staying Busy

My day today:

• Up at 7 a.m.
• Made breakfast for Morgen - off to school
• breakfast for Max & Markus, bathed, dressed, teeth brushed, etc.
• 8:15 first trip to school
• made phone calls, scheduled appointments
• ran to the park center, workout
• 11:40 second trip to school
• lunch with Tanya for her birthday
• back home - took shower, did laundry
• read some I Spy books with Markus
• 2:45 third trip to school - to pick-up Morgen
• Spent Morgen's college tuition filling up the gas tank
• pick-up Max
• helped Max & Markus with homework
• Went to the rink to teach 2 lessons and a class
• Came home, made spaghetti for dinner
• did the dishes
• picked up toys and clothes and backpacks
• read a book
• read a book with Markus, tucked him into bed
• put Max to bed
• told Morgen good-night (he always stays up later than me!)
• bed (after blogging of course)

Merry Christmas!!!

When Markus woke me up this morning, I looked out the window to find a WINTER WONDERLAND!!! What in the world, I thought it was fall?! So much for the Halloween decorations, I guess we will just skip right to Christmas...

Rise and Shout

Max was invited to a birthday party today for his friend Adam. They went down to the BYU game and spent the entire day. I took him out to his friends house at 1:00 and they brought him home afterwards around 9:00. He was so excited to go and told me afterwards that he loved it! The only bad part was that he had to miss his first hockey game that was this evening. His team still won 8-5 though, so I guess it is alright if he misses 1 game out of 20. He had a hard time choosing, but I think that he was glad with his choice in going to the BYU game.

Kindergarten

This week I have spent a lot of time in Markus' kindergarten class. I walked down to the fire station with him on his field trip day. I watched him hold hands with a little girl from his class that he loves to chase at recess named Mya and listened to him tell his friend Hudson that he is his best friend. They were just walking along talking to each other all the way.

I also helped with centers in his class yesterday and listened to all of his little friends talk excitedly about Halloween and what they were going to be. It is my favorite place to be right now, I can forget about myself and just watch, learn and listen to these little people, grow and live. I love it. It also made me start thinking about the following short story:

ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN
(a guide for Global Leadership)

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I
learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school
mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.These are the things I learned:

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back
where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that
aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands
before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing
and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick
together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup:
the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but
we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the
little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
And then remember
the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all
- LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule
and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane
living.
Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated
adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your
world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would
be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the
afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments
had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to
clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are,
when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Source: "ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN" by Robert Fulghum

Adam

(Adam & I - Christmas '07)

Today is my brother Adam's birthday and I tried to call him but to no avail. He is still mad at me for something that happened last year and I am not entirely sure exactly what it is that I did. Oh, well, at least I tried to wish him a happy day! :)

Failure to Communicate

It's amazing how hard it is in this day and age to communicate effectively. You would think with all the technology available that it would be easy, but I think it is challenging at best.

Wake up

An "awakening" is a moment of clarity in which a new insight or understanding is
gained. With this new awareness the experience of life is seen differently, and
new possibilities are opened. Changes in patterns of thought, emotions, and
behavior occur. An awakening allows the possibility of growth to new levels of
psychological and spiritual maturity.

It is going to be a crazy couple of months ahead.

NHL game

Game Time

Max and I went to the NHL game tonight and it was so much fun. The L.A. Kings were playing the Sharks in an exhibition game. Here are some photos...

Photo Op

Markus had his nursery rhyme program at Kindergarten yesterday. He said "Humpty Dumpty" for his rhyme.

Confessions of a blogaholic

I don't really know what to say tonight. I guess I have blog block. It has been a long day. I was up at 4 in the morning.

Life is so strange

Where are we going anyway? I was reading on my friends blog the other day and she was talking about that exact same thing.

How do you know your destination in life?

Sunrise

I just checked my email and noticed this photo from the gallery mailing list that I am on. I thought it was breathtaking.

Feelings

I am not feeling very well today. I think I may be coming down with something.

I just returned from helping my sister Marilee move again. She moved all of her things into the garage of a house that she was renting on Saturday. Then this morning she received a call telling her that they had decided not to rent it to her. So, tonight I went back down there and moved everything into the trucks (2 of them) again for her to move into another house about five miles away. She has so much stuff it is unbelievable. What a crazy nightmare. I went out to help her clean her old house yesterday and it took 2 hours just to vacuum her 5,000 sq. ft. house. That is why she had so much stuff I guess, she had a lot of space to put it all.

Anyways, I had to leave to bring my kids home to bed and they were still going to the new house to unload the trucks. Poor Marilee, she was crying and all upset over everything. One of her pieces of furniture had a scratch and she had a complete melt down. She is so stressed and I feel bad for her. So I will probably go back down there tomorrow. Hopefully she is having a better day then. Later. :)

Gooey, ooey, chocolate chip cookies

These cookies are so full of chocolate chips, you can't help but get messy eating them!

3/4 c. sugar
3/4 c. brown sugar
1 c. butter, softened
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla
1 t. baking soda
1 t. salt
2 3/4 c. flour
chocolate chips (milk-chocolate are the best)

Preheat over to 375 * . Blend the sugars and butter together until just barely blended. (Do not over mix!) Add eggs and vanilla just until mixed. Add flour, soda and salt and mix until dough is soft and sticking together. Add as many chocolate chips as you can fit in the bowl. Drop by rounded tablespoon unto ungreased cookie sheet, preferably lined with parchment paper. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and let stand 2 minutes on cookie sheet before removing to cooling rack. Let baking sheet cool in between batches of cookies. Makes about 3 - 4 dozen cookies, depending on how much dough that you eat before hand!

Morgen had a lacrosse game today and Max had a hockey practice. In between those two I helped my sister Marilee move.

Then tonight I finally watched the movie '21'. I heard about it awhile ago, I just hadn't rented it yet. I thought it was fascinating that someones mind could really do that, as it was based on a true story. I wonder how much of it was true though and what part was fictional. I would like to see the documentary on it sometime.

Hockey season

Hockey Season has officially begun. Markus started on Monday in the learn to play hockey program and loved it and Max had his first official team practice tonight. He is on the Bulldogs team and has some really good little skaters on his team.
All 3 coaches were really working them hard and all the boys were covered in sweat when they came off the ice.
Max is always trying his hardest and listening to what the coaches are saying. He wasn't feeling very well tonight even but he still did really great. He had an abscessed tooth extracted just a few hours before his practice. He had a small cavity last time he went to the dentist, but they didn't fill it, because it was a loose tooth and the dentist just thought it would fall out before anything would happen. Well, it didn't and it was totally infected. I took him in last week and they put him on antibiotics for a week to take the swelling down before they could remove it. Poor little guy, he was very brave when they kept giving him more Novocaine to deaden it. The dentist said that it was a really bad infection and he could see it all come out after he pulled the tooth. So gross! He had to have two teeth pulled before at the same dentist, when he was 5. He fell and hit a rock when we were hiking around Silver Lake. He hit his two front teeth and they were jammed up inside his gums. So they had to remove them and I have never heard anyone scream so loudly as when they gave him the shot in the roof of his mouth. He didn't get his permanent teeth in for two 1/2 years. He was excited that he was the first one in kindergarten to have his name on the "lost a tooth" poster!

He made this shot and "took it upstairs".
Morgen made "Quiche Loraine" for dinner tonight. He gets extra credit in his french class for making things out of the french cookbook. Last year he made crepes. The quiche turned out pretty good, a little too many onions maybe but still pretty tasty. : }

Crazy Day

Morgen had Lacrosse practice today...

Markus at the carnival at school...

Zac, Sina, Max at the carnival...
Markus won a goldfish at the dart booth and we were surprised to see Sierra at the booth as well. Her cheer leading squad was helping with the games as a fund raiser.

Markus on one of the slides

Morgen at his SEP conferences

Today was officially won of the craziest busy days that I have had in a long time. I was seriously in the car for 2 1/2 hours driving back and forth to school and the rink, lacrosse practice, the carnival and SEP conferences. Whew, I need a drink of water after just thinking about it! :)

Fun at the Farm

When I picked Markus up from Kindergarten today I decided it was too nice of a day to eat lunch at home. So I packed up his ham sandwich and we headed to the farm.

He loved climbing in the big box elder tree...

I took a ton of cute photos of him and then when I came home and put them on my computer they were all messed up. I am really going to have to figure this camera out.

Markus is always talking about getting a tree house. The only problem is that you need a tree big enough to put one in. But someday I will build that cute little guy his tree house. :) Besides feeding the ducks, Markus is fascinated by spiderwebs. He kept pointing them out to me everywhere we went. On the bridge, by the river, on the tree, in the treehouse, under the bridge, in the barn...you get the idea. He is so intrigued by them.

Piano Lessons

Max's piano teacher Kate is so cute with him. He was actually looking forward to his lesson today.

Happy Fall

Autumn is officially here, and I am loving it!!!

I love presidential election season. It's a time where anything goes and both the elephants and the donkeys pull out all the stops. One thing that has made this year's election even more interesting than usual is the appearance of Sarah Palin in the big time political picture. Just when I thought that nothing would top the styro-foam columns in Colorado, a bear hunting hockey mom appears on the scene. (One of Max's hockey coaches wife had on a t-shirt yesterday at hockey that said "This average hockey mom is NOT a Sarah Palin supporter"!) Honestly, I thought McCain's best move would be to name Mitt Romney as his VP. I remember listening to the radio when they announced that McCain chose Sarah Palin. Then I heard about her background. I was most intrigued by the fact that she sold the government jet. When I heard her speech from the other night, I was quite impressed. For one of the first times in my life, I heard a real person speaking and not a politician. I love the fact that she is from a small town, and that she went to the University of Idaho and not some Ivy League school. I am also impressed by the fact that she is not afraid to take on tough tasks and that she actually gets things accomplished. And in particular, I love to hear about Palin and some of her real life problems and how she is dealing with them. So what do you think? The floor is yours . . .

Scrapbook Expo

B, Nicole & Laurie at the Scrapbook expo

I love hanging out with the girls, especially for scrapbooking ideas. Laurie and Nicole are both amazingly talented in so many ways. But especially at scrapbooking. They have all of these ideas in their heads. I had a great time just listening to them talk about all of their ideas and watching how excited they were to find stickers for $0.25. I bought a ton of scrapbooking paper but only did one page while I was there. I am so glad that Nicole invited me to meet her at the expo.

Aria's Baptism

My niece Aria was baptized today. She is such a sweet and spunky little eight year old girl.

Monet, Aria, Kailey & Dave

I am not sure what is going on with my camera, or maybe it is the operator. Either way something funky is happening to a few of my photos and I don't know why.

Oktoberfest

It was fun to see Darlin at the competition in Park City today. She had 11 students competing in three different events.

Amanda did pretty well for only her second competition. She only forgot one part of her routine!
I am not sure what happened to the bottom part of this picture. Hmm...so weird.
Amanda getting her third place medal. Darlin's student competed in her group as well and placed second.