Monday, June 29, 2009

Goodbye to Lais

Lais, our Brazilian foreign exchange student who has been living with us for the past year, is now going home. She stayed at a friends house in Provo this past week while we were in Utah, and on Saturday, we stopped by to say our final goodbyes. She is flying back today, and we will miss her.

Maya & Sage's hennas


During our week in Utah, Maya and Sage had a blast at Uncle Derek's House with Avery and Broilen. Aunt Becky gave the girls these Henna tattoos. Above is Sage's henna, and below is Maya's henna.

Temple open House

Maya and Sage in front of the Temple
We all went to the Temple open house.

BYU Swim camp

This is Star, starting her race
The twins at their swim meet

SOAR




Mari and Ali at brown camp


Mari went to a BYU multicultural camp this week called SOAR...Brown camp

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Happy Birthday Mari !!




Mari turned 17 today at exactly 10:13 am.  She is a nice brown girl and we love her.  She got some very interesting gifts today--a toilet seat from Ty and Lea was too funny when she gave her a check. (check out who she made it to!)  Kirk surprised both me and her when he came home with the new i-phone for her!  Way to go Dad!

My bounty

These are my tomatoes that I grew in my miniature garden.  They were so heavy for the plant that they broke off!  I placed a lotion bottle next to it so you can see that they were actually good sized tomatoes at that.  Hopefully, I can get them to ripen in the house!

Our one SUNNY day

We've had quite a bit of rain these past few weeks.  We are truly quite green..but these girls needed to get out and bike ride and enjoy the sunny day.

Oh, What do you do in the Summertime?


You find another way to use the vacuum instead of the intended use!

Friday, June 12, 2009

Time to move on...





It's been a week full of endings for our family.  Last night, Star, Sky and Maya had 8th grade graduation and will move to the high school next year.  Today, Sage graduated out of elementary school and will head to the middle school next year.  And Lea, well....her school career is now over.  It's been an emotional day for Lea realizing that she won't be riding the bus anymore, much less going to school.  She starts her new life as an adult just working everyday.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

"Saturday is a SPECIAL day..."






Every Saturday we write jobs on the white board that need to be done.  Everyone just starts taking a job and doing it and when they complete it, they wipe it off.  When the jobs are done, everyone is free to do whatever.  This is the routine we do when school is in session.  Kara was off to work early this morning and Mari was taking the SAT at school.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Deer Me !!



We've got some new "guys" hanging around our pond these days.  All male, young and with velvet on their antlers.  There are three of them in the photo sitting around 20-30 feet apart.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Daffodils!!!!



The past two weeks our daffodils have been at their peak.  We have them literally all over the place.  Maya and Sage decided to make bouquets of them and they used every vase I owned and placed them everywhere all over the house.  Sage even decided to hang them from the ceiling in her room!

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Lais at prom

Lais and her date, Irving.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Prom



Mari and Lais were off to the Prom this past weekend.  Mari had been at Regionals for track in Cody, Wyoming and got home about 45 minutes before her date picked her up!  Kara helped out by doing her hair and makeup.  The theme for prom was "Las Vegas".  Here's some pics of Mari--Lais still hasn't given me her pics yet...soon to come.

Monday, May 18, 2009

GRATITUDE


I am trying to have more gratitude in my life these days.  I remember Elder Bednar's talk in the fall conference when he talked about prayer and how it becomes more meaningful as we express heartfelt gratitude.  It's been 2 weeks since Kirk was diagnosed with prostate cancer.  Cancer happens to others, not to my family...ha ha ha.  It's been surreal at times, but I AM grateful.  It's only through our trials that we get out of our comfort zone and get stretched by the Lord.  I am grateful for a "young" husband who is in good physical shape.  The prognosis looks good with these two factors on our side.  I am grateful for modern technology and good people who have found their callings helping others (doctors, nurses, etc...)  I am thankful for the information age that we live in and how helpful the internet has become through our discovery of this particular cancer.  And I am grateful for good friends and family.  We  have felt your love and prayers in behalf of our family.  Most of all I am thankful for the gospel which gives me the resources to deal with adversity...prayer, fasting and the blessings of peace that can come through temple worship.  We got good news last Friday.  Loma Linda University Medical Center called and said that Kirk was admitted to the program using proton therapy.  We were thrilled, but not as thrilled as the next thing the gal said on the phone and that was that my insurance is covering the procedure 100%!  What a blessing!   Loma Linda called this morning and said that they would call probably in about 4-6 weeks to schedule the appointment to meet with Kirk.  Kirk is trying to get them to do it sooner, but we have to wait till there is an opening in the program.  Kirk will have to stay in Loma Linda the duration of the treatment since it is like 5 days a week at the same time slot.  Right now, since we don't know the dates, we are in limbo for the summer as to where we might be.  On another note, Kirk decided since he was dealing with cancer, he might as well get himself "fixed up", so he had surgery on his shoulder on Thursday afternoon.  He was having pain for about 3 years and was just tired of dealing with it, so he got an MRI and found a doc to fix him up.  So, here's a picture of my guy the day after surgery.  I think we'll be saving all the gear and spray painting it silver so he can be the terminator for Halloween next year!

Friday, May 1, 2009

Spring Sports



Track is the preferred sport for the girls in Spring.  Only, here in Wyoming it's kind of pointless, because most of the meets are cancelled due to snow!  On this day, it wasn't but they had to run in the snow and rain mix anyway.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Birthdays and Bags






Sunday was Kirk's 55th birthday!!  We finally were able to celebrate with dinner at 4:45 pm.  The reason I say that is because I had a ward conference to attend (thank goodness it was in Jackson!) and Kirk had to leave at 5 pm to attend a meeting in Driggs, Idaho!  Felt so bad, but we were able to make the salmon tacos he wanted for his birthday dinner.  For his birthday gift, he asked each of his children to pay for a mirror in his office.  Lea wrote this check all by herself.  It is priceless!

This past week in conjunction with Earth Day, a group in town gave out all these canvas bags with the saying Bag to Differ on them.  As a town, we are working on being green and using reusable bags at the market and wherever.  The girls had a creative weekend decorating them and they turned out awesome.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Saturdays

Most Saturdays we are busy with chores.  The snow is melting ever so slowly!  When it does, we rake the area so everything is ready to grow again.  Ty and Kara came home last week.  Ty on Monday and Kara on Thursday.  It is great to have them home again.  Ty will be leaving to go back to Provo on Monday to attend Spring term.  This is our "garden".  I know it doesn't look like much, but this is how it goes here in the "north" country.  I've got a couple of tomato plants (check out the tomatoes I've already got!), an artichoke, and I planted radishes, turnips,cucumbers and zucchini.  It's still too early here to leave them outside, so they travel back and forth from the garage daily.