It has been brought to my attention (rather rudely, I thought :-)) that I have not been posting with my usual regularity. What can I say? There just hasn't been time to write between all the bon-bon eating I have been doing and my daily retinue of soap opera watching and spa treatments.

This was a momnetous week for Emma and Laura. They both had their end-of-the-year programs at school. I was so proud of them. Emma did an impressive square dance and even sang a short solo. Laura was able to recite her brief speaking part for the first time without tears or trauma. At the end of their shows our principal announced that both girls had won a Young Author prize. Laura placed third with a sweet story about a lost dog that had all sorts of funny adventures finding its way home, and Emma won the silver medal. She was excited about her story because (in her words) "It had a moral." Hooray!


Our program fell on the same day as Laura's birthday this year. For some reason the pictures I took of her program did not turn out very well, but I did manage to snap off a few others while she was enjoying her birthday spotlight.

Enough bragging about my kids! There were plenty of times I would like to forget interspersed with the grandiose this month. Like the time Tyler was sent to the principal's office or the various bouts with "swine flu" that we have endured.

Last weekend while Rance was visiting, we drove up to the Boise National forest with the Fletcher family. I have been to the hot springs around Cascade before, but never that far into the forest. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and we were able to enjoy nature and go for some exciting hover craft rides. The kids also had a wonderfully messy time sculpting with the mud in the river. Who needs sand when you can make mud castles!


My brother Tim, and his new wife Amanda, were married a couple of weeks ago in the Mount Timpanogas Temple. It was a beautiful wedding and so much fun to see some of my extended family again. Uncle Brandon made sure that we ate at Cafe Rio an appropriate number of times, and we also got to take the kids to see all the baby animals at the Thanksgiving Point petting zoo. I think some of the pictures are featured on Rance's Flickr feed above. You can't miss them. They are the ones in which we look cold, wet, and are surrounded by equally uncomfortable, bucolic animals! The highlight of the trip was when Rance and I got to have a little "mini honeymoon" at the Hines Mansion. The low point was when we were leaving the next morning and found out that our van had been borken into, Laura had been throwing up all night at grandpa's house, and our car needed exspensive repairs if it was going to make it back to Idaho. All in all it, the trip was kind of like a micrcosm of life. A lot of good, a lot of bad, and totally worth it if you can keep the proper persepective.

The last highlight of the previous weeks was when a blackhawk helicopter landed on the school playground. You cannot believe the amount of wind produced by the propellers. It was awesome! All 20 of my four-year-olds were literally screaming with glee. The father of one of our students is a member of the flight crew and so we got to climb in and learn some of the interesting facets of the crew's mission and the helicopter. For days after, when any helicopter flew overhead, my students wanted to know if it was going to land at the school.


It seems like the last few weeks of school are awash with extra activities and when I try to pinpoint things to blog about they all swim around blurrily in my head like the last few miles of a marathon. If we can just keep sprinting through the next few weeks, summer will be here and we can take a much needed and well deserved break. This has been one of the harder years of my life and I look forward to summer with hope and optimism!