Quincy's Triathlon at School

Every year at Three Mile Creek the kids have a Triathlon in May.  They team up with a partner.  One rides a bike route, the other runs and then they both complete an obstacle course together.  The route gets harder as you get older.  Quincy is in 3rd grade this year so it was a bit of a challenge.  Her partner was her friend Lexi Parker.  Quincy did the biking and Lexi did the running.  They finished 5th overall!!  That was really good.  There were tons of teams.  These two girls looked like they were pooped afterwards.  They weren't too excited about my photo shoot! 

Brinley's Kindergarten Program

Brinley has been practicing for months at school for her big end of year Kindergarten program. She has been so excited for us to come and watch.  She has been singing the the songs at home...which I love to hear.

 She is on the back row in a black long sleeve dress...yes, it is May and she was super hot.  She insisted that she wear that dress and would not go for any other.  They performed once during the day and again at night and she still wanted to wear it again that night.  Crazy girl!!  She did look cute though!

 It was pretty funny...the boy next to her was pretty wiggly!  I am pretty sure that is why he is next to her!  She stayed stone still even as he began messing with her hair!  She would not even look over at him. She was the perfect person to have to stand next to him.

Very serious and professional!!  She is sooo much fun.  We love you Brinley!  I am just sad that this will be my LAST Willard Elementary Kindergarted program.  We have seen all 5 of our kids do this program.  Most of it hasn't changed a bit!!

Yet Another Princess Party!!

These are some of Kylee's cute freinds.  They are funny girls.  They have spent a good part of their time together having Pricess parties!  They have a theme and usually invovle some type of food (perhaps a tea party), sometimes costumes, and usually a princess movie. 

Kylee and Jessica have become professional at building amazing princess castles out of cardboard.  I wish I had a picture because they are masterpieces when they are finished with them.

I am so grateful that Kylee has always had such great friends...I love that they like princesses and want to have princess parties...and so do Quincy and Brinley!!

Ouch!!

I don't think the pictures do it justice, but this is Brinley with road rash!!  She is soooo competitive...and I mean about almost everything.  This year she has caught the bus to go to Kindergarten with 4 other little kids in our nieghborhood.  She has to be the first in line...at all cost.  So today it cost her the skin on her nose and forehead!!  She took off running so fast to get in line first and accidentally slipped on the sidewalk and fell.  It was a HARD fall.  I was watching from the door and I saw her fall and then saw her get up with blood dripping from her face.  I ran out and carried her inside and we got her cleaned up.  She took the skin clean off the side of her nose and all down the side of her face.  OUCH!!  It looked painful.  Needless to say...she never did make it to school that day!  Silly girl.  And as a sidenote...she still runs to the bus stop everyday to make sure that she is first in line!!

Mothers Day Gift!

Kylee loves to look on pinterest, and she gets some cute ideas there.  This year for Mothers Day she gave me the cutest thing that I absolutely LOVE!  She had Chris take me on a date one Friday night so she could work with the other kids without me being there.  She made these big letters that spelled out the word LOVE.  She had them hold the letters while she took pictures of them and then put them in order in a 4 opening frame.  It is priceless.  It hangs in our entryway.  

I just had to laugh as she recounted how much work it was to get the kids to cooperate and actually get good pictures.  I laughed when I saw the camera later.  There were a MILLION pictures to try to get 4 good shots!  

The looks on Kade and Quincy's faces here are classic.  I've seen them before during family pictures!!  What a great daughter to go through so much effort for her mom!  I do have great kids!! 

Emilee's Band Performance

 Emilee has really enjoyed being involved in the Band in school this year.  Her teacher has been really fun and she has really liked her.  She planned to have a big end of year performance with a dance group from our area.  They worked really hard getting ready for it and it was a great performance.

 Emilee plays the alto saxophone and I think she is sounding really great.

 This was such a funny picture.  As you can see, they had to paint their faces.  This type of a thing is really a stretch for Em and she was giving her Dad a look of death while he was snapping one picture after another of her.  She was not happy with him to say the least!!

They did a great job and it was fun to watch...even if it wasn't Emilee's most favorite thing in the world to perform in!!

Little Miss Brinley & her Bubbles!!

 First bubbles of the season!!  As soon as it was warm enough Brinley blew bubbles!  She had to be a little creative each day to find things to keep her busy while her brother and sisters were at school.  She had afternoon Kindergarten so she had a few hours every morning to herself.

Love this face...that is so her!!

So fun to be 6 and enjoy the simple things in life!!



Kylee's Big Decision!!

I can't believe we are to this stage in our lives already, but is seems to be time for our oldest child to decide where she is going to attend College next year.  This has been a big decision for her.  I told her it was because she has done so well in school that she has lots of options...and that is a good thing!  Kylee has decided, at least for now, that she wants to be a Dental Hygenist when she grows up.  There are only 3 schools in Utah who offer that program so those were the three she was most interested in and applied for.  One of them is Weber State...way to close to home in her opinion.  While they have a great Dental Hygeine program and she was offered the Presidential Scholarship (full tuitiuon and fees for 4 years), she really feels like it would be a good thing for her to have an away from home College experience...and her parents agree!  Sooo...that left Dixie in St. George and UVU in Orem.  Last December Chris and I took her on some campus tours to both schools.  She met with advisors in the Dental Hygeine program and we looked at some housing options.  I can tell you that Kylee fell completely in love with the campus at Dixie and the housing options.  But she knew she would need to wait and see what scholarships she was awarded at each.

We later learned that she received the Presidential Scholarship to Dixie.  Yay!!!  She has full tuition and fees for 4 years.  We also learned however that she was in the running for the Presidential Scholarhsip at UVU and only 25 were presented.  It included full tuition and fees for 4 years as well as a $700.00 stipend each semester for 4 semesters...and if you got the presidential scholarhip you also automatically qualified to live in Honors housing for 1/3 the cost of housing!  How could you pass that up!!  So then began the inner debate.  How cool it would be to get that great scholarship from UVU...but wait, I really want to go to Dixie!!!  And the worst part was that she had to wait until Feb. 29th to find out about the UVU scholarship.  As it got closer Chris and I kept asking her what she was hoping for.  She would just groan and say, "I don't even know".  The day came and it was so funny to see her breathe a big sigh of relief when she found out that she was NOT one of the 25 to receive the scholarship from UVU.  It now made the most sense for her to go to what I believe she has known to be the RIGHT place for her all along.  We kept asking her if she was praying alot about this, and she was.  It has been fun to see it come together now and feel so good to her and to us.

She is going to go to Dixie and live 1/2 block off campus with Allie as her roomate and meet 4 other girls whom she will have in her apartment.  It has all fallen together beautifully.  She also qualifies for the Regents scholarship which will give her more than enough to pay for her housing and books for at least the first 2 years.  I am really proud of her and so grateful that all of her hard work in school is paying off!

I JUST CAN'T BELIEVE SHE WILL BE 6 HOURS AWAY FROM US...but we are so excited for her.  She will have a great time.  And she has Uncle Dan, Aunt Jan, Lily and Kara right there close by!! 

Quincy's 9th Birthday!

Quincy's Birthday was on a Saturday...and it just so happened that it was the same Saturday that the USU Piano Festival in Logan was scheduled.  She didn't think she wanted to participate but after a little prodding from her parents and her piano teacher she agreed to go.  She had to get up early that morning and dress in her Sunday clothes.  She had asked for a new dress for her Birthday.  We thought it would be fun for her to open her presents that morning so that she could wear her new clothes to the Piano Festival.  She got a beautiful new purple dress and some fancy silver sandals.  She loved them.  She hurried and changed the dress she had already put on and it helped her be a little more excited to go.  (Good thing she did, because we found out later that of all the kids in her age group she got an honorable mention.  It was a competition with cash awards and this was the only level with no cash...bummer!  But her piano teacher said she is her only student to ever actually win a cerfiticate.  Good job Quincy!!

 On the next day we had her family Birthday Party.  We had dinner, which was Chicken Taquitos because they are her favorite with Cheesecake for dessert.  She got some sidewalk chalk, a princess activity book and another cute new dress from Grandpa Tom and Grandma Barb as well as some money.  She also got some nice cards in the mail with money in them from her Grandpa and Grandma Southwick and Grandma Wyatt.  What really mattered was that Ethan was at her party...her and Ethan are like twins!!!

We love you Quincy.  You are turning into a beautiful young girl with such a fun personality.  Quincy is our jokester.  She is always teaching Brinley some good 3rd grade humor. She is really doing well at piano and gymnastics.  She just learned to do a backhandspring all by herself if her teacher is there to spot.  We are sooo grateful that you are part of our family and we really do love you so much.

Some of the things Quincy likes to do at the age of 9 are...

* Watch TV - she still loves to relax in front of a good show or movie

* Do round-off''s in the backyard

* Play with her frinds Kaitlyn and Annika

*Swim - she got to take 2 friends swimming at the Nat for her Birthday and she was in heaven!

* Do anything with her cousin Ethan!

*Go to the Dollar Store - she is always asking to go.

* Play on the monkey bars during break at school.

*Eat corndogs for hot lunch at school.

Happy Birthday Quincy!!!

Hike & Roasting Hot Dogs in Mantua

This night has gotten funnier as time has passed...but it didn't seem that funny then.  We decided the last night of Spring Break...Monday...for Family Home Evening that it would be fun to go as a family to Mantua and hike around the reservoir and then go into the campground and roast hot dogs and marshmallows.  Kylee turned down a shopping trip in Salt Lake City at the new big mall with a friend to be with us, and Chris turned down a Jazz game with his brother Bill.  We had great expectations for our evening together.  Well.....the first part of the night went anything but smooth.  The "walk" (not hike really) around the lake is almost 5 miles.  I thought if we brought the little girls bikes that we would be perfect.  Kade thought otherwise so pouted most of the evening.  Brinley was just having a bad night. She sat down on the ground and threw a fit every few feet, would not keep up with everyone and when she did ride she kept crashing!  Quincy was hot and tired and slipped in the rocks and crashed a couple times as well.  The bugs were absolutely horrible.  In some places you felt like you were being attacked!! We were not making good time on our 5 miles!!  Chris and I just kept looking at each other wondering where we went so wrong with our great idea!!  Finally about 1.5 miles into it and almost 2 HOURS later we turned around and headed back to our car.  There was no way we were going to make it 5 miles.  We decided next time we would make it our date and come alone!!

 Luckily we did find a place to stop and skip rocks and have races up the side of the mountain.  This brought a few sparce smiles.  Thank goodness!!   It was a tough crowd to please this night.

 But....luckily our night was not all a waste.  We had a great time once we got to the campground and built a fire to roast our hot dogs and marshmallows.  Everyone was sooo much happier and it was much nicer.  We had a whole big group site to ourselves.  We decided next time (except the time Chris and I come alone on our date) we will skip the walk around the lake and just get to the camping experience.  I must say it kind of put a damper on our hopes to do some hiking with our family this summer.  We just might not be ready for that quite yet!!

One thing for sure...it was a memory!  I'm not sure which kind, good or bad, but it is always good to spend time together.