FAMILY MATTERS

Here are a few of my nursery kids--I took this picture on Sunday. I have about 3 or 4 other kids in my class, but they weren't there. I know at least 2 families were at Disneyland, so that's why they were gone. Anyway, starting on the left: Max, Laila, Kate, Sam, Trevin (Kiera's little brother), Naomi, and Kennedy (her dad is the high school football coach here, and her mother works with me in the Nursery). Max brought the treats on Sunday--we had pretzels and rice krispie treats. Yummy!! If you notice the wagon in the background, that is our wagon. It was such a nice day on Sunday, that I decided to take the kids for a wagon ride around the church. They loved it!

Aren't they cute?? I made these little finger puppets yesterday for the nursery--I had to make up my own pattern and everything. And it took ALOT longer to make them than you would think. haha! Anyway, I made them to go along with the little song called "Two Little Black Birds", which really isn't a song. I don't know what you would call it. But I learned it when I was a kid, and it goes like this:
Two little black birds
Sitting in a tree
One named Peter
And one named Paul
Fly away, Peter
Fly away, Paul
Come back, Peter
And come back, Paul!

No, it's not Jenalee and Kailee. It's Jenalee and Marla--Jenalee's old roommate. :o) She spent the summer in California and is now back in Provo and has brown hair now instead of blonde. :o) Jenalee was just called to be the new Relief Society President in her single's ward, so she will have her hands full since she is working full time now. She actually got her certificate as a Dental Assistant, but after working at an emergency dental office several times, she decided that wasn't the career for her since she passed out almost everytime she went to work. :o) For those of you who haven't seen Jenalee for awhile, she got her hair cut off and is really enjoying spending less time washing and drying her hair. By the way, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JENALEE--we love you!!

The other day I looked outside, and these little kids were playing in my backyard. I just thought they were so cute since they were all wearing their helmets, but they weren't riding their bikes or anything. :o) Anyway, the one on the left is Annabelle, and the one on the right it Cason--he is Kiera's little brother. They were both in my nursery class last year. Then the one in the middle is Camryn--she lives in the house right behind us. Her dad is the Bishop of our ward. I just thought it was funny that they were wearing their helmets because it was SO hot that day. :o)

Kailee and I met Shiloh, Christiaan, and Laura up at the Fitness Center a couple of weeks ago to watch Christiaan during one of his swimming lessons. Anyway, I got this cute picture of Kailee and Laura while we were waiting for Christiaan to get into the Olympic-size pool about 2 stories down below us. I did take a few pictures of Christiaan as he was jumping into the water, etc, but unfortunately none of them turned out good enough to tell who was who. Actually, this pool is about the size of two Olympic pools!!

Jared/Shiloh asked Kailee and I if we wanted to go with them to the Utah State Fair this past Saturday, so we took advantage of the opportunity. Since Gene is gone to South Africa until the end of the month, I figured we better go now because the fair will probably be over before he gets back into town. Instead of doing my job (taking some cute pictures) I ended up playing with the kids and having fun instead. So there are NOT very many pictures--I'm going to have to do better. :o) But I will post what I have. Anyway, the above picture was taken on the way to the fair--Jared took it for me. But we had to slow way down because of a bad wreck that was up ahead of us, and that is why Jared noticed this guy's license plate. We thought it was a little bit odd--it said "HIV NEG" on his license plate. I guess he was proud of that fact. Hmmm.
We had to park about 1/2 mile away from the fair and hike in, and of course the 4-H building would be at the farthest end of the place. :o) But we finally got there and found Kailee's dress--she got another blue ribbon, so she was pretty excited. They had organized all of the things so nicely--they tried to color coordinate all of the entries--on one table, they had all kinds of green stuff, on another table was some brown/pink stuff, etc. Kailee's brown/turquoise dress with the jacket is hanging to the right side of Kailee's head.
Kiera's dress also made it to state, and she got a blue ribbon as well. So we decided to go ahead and take a picture of it while we were there. Her dress is the dark blue one in the middle.
Okay, folks, last picture. haha! This is a picture of Kailee and Christiaan riding the ponies--it was $4.00 each to ride them, and it was a SHORT ride!! The tickets were $1.00 each, and most of the rides were 3 tickets, which means $3.00--kind of ridiculous!! Anyway, they went down this huge slide--I should have had my camera out because Christiaan went down all by himself. And he was doing really well until he got about halfway down, and he started turning sideways--they have them slide down on these burlap sacks so that they will go faster. Anyway, you should have seen the expression on his face--it turned from a calm look to one of terror pretty quickly. But he was at the bottom before you could blink an eye, and he was fine by then. He was pretty proud of himself for doing it all by himself. And Kailee had to do this "Go Fishing" thing--she caught one of the fish and won a little stuffed dog, so she was a happy camper. The last thing we did (because Jared insisted) was to go buy a funnel cake--I hadn't had one of those since we went to the East Texas fair a long time ago. But they were SO good--we enjoyed pigging out on those. :o)

This is a picture of Christiaan and his "Lightning McQueen" car that Jared made for him. I think it turned out so cute. You have to be 8 years old to be in Cub Scouts, so Christiaan just raced his car for fun. But he didn't really care.
Christiaan's car is on the right side of the race track, and Kailee took one of Gene's old pinewood derby cars so that she would have one to race. Hers is right next to Christiaan's car--it is the A-1 Sauce bottle. haha! Everyone loved it though and wanted to know how Gene made it.
Here is a close-up picture of Christiaan's car--they couldn't find any decals, so they had to paint everything on by hand.
Here is another close-up picture of Christiaan's car, along with some of the other scout's cars.
This is a picture of Kailee holding Laura at the Pinewood Derby--they had fun keeping each other entertained while all of the scouts raced their cars.

Well, the picture didn't turn out too well on this, so I will probably need to explain what this is. Chad took the GMAT test here recently--GMAT stands for Graduate Management Admission Test. It is a test that Chad had to take in order to get into the graduate program for Construction Management at BYU. Anyway, these are the results from his test--he scored 740 out of a possible 800 points. And that's really good, especially considering that the average person at BYU who takes this test only gets 653. And it's also really good, considering that the average person at Harvard who takes this test only gets 705. So, we were very proud of Chad for doing so well on this test!! And he is glad that he doesn't have to take it again, considering that it costs $300 every time he has to take it!! This is my good news that I mentioned in my email this morning, in case you are wondering.

This is my little fishing game that I made up for the nursery. Do you like the magnet that I tied on to the end of the fishing pole with some white twine? Very classy I think. But the kids loved playing with it--I put paper clips on each fish so that the kids could 'catch' a fish. Then I put names of songs on the back of each fish, and when they 'caught' a fish, we would sing the song on the back of their fish. Do you like my model that I used?? I think she is very cute. :o) She really didn't want to pose for this picture--just seconds before I took this picture, she was kind of glaring at me. haha!

I just thought I would share a funny story that Gene told me the other day. He and Dean were driving back from Canada this past week, and somewhere in Idaho they saw a man standing on the side of the road. He was a hitchhiker, and he was holding a sign like a lot of hitchhikers do. However, this sign was a little unusual--it said, "I Won't Kill You". I'm just wondering if that guy ever caught a ride to wherever he was wanting to go. :o) This just reminded me of a story that happened back in June 1978. Gene and I were on our honeymoon, and we were on our way to California when Gene saw this hitchhiker and decided to give him a ride. You have to remember this was a LONG time ago. haha! But we were in my 1974 Ford Maverick--it was only a 2-door car, and so it was not that big. So this old man with a cowboy hat on sat right behind me, and he did NOT smell very good. He was all hot and sweaty and did I mention that he smelled?? Anyway, we had to stop to get gasoline, and this old guy had to go inside to use the restroom, so as Gene and I were sitting there waiting on him, we decided to leave the old guy behind. But unfortunately, he had left his cowboy hat sitting on the back seat of my car. So, as Gene was peeling out (like the guy would be able to catch us on foot), I grabbed his hat, rolled my window down, and threw the hat like a frisbee as far as I could. I hope he found the hat. :o) That was the last time we have ever picked up a hitchhiker. :o)