Surprise family visit!

For those of you who aren't up on my life story, here's the short version...I grew up in Alaska, age 6-17, came to BYU, got married and here I have stayed. All of my relatives, short 2 cousins, still live in the great white north. It is about a 3000 mile drive to get here so needless to say, I don't get many visitors. When my mom was still alive, she came down often, and we got to fly up there a lot also. My grandmother has stopped in to see me 2 times when she came to visit her sister who lives in SLC but she is the only relative beyond my mom, sister and step-dad in 26 years who have ever come to visit...until now.

The phone rang and an unfamiliar 907 area code number showed on the caller ID. Who could be calling me from Alaska? It was my Aunt Jani and she said they were in Salt Lake and could they come visit? Are you kidding me? YES! I wanted to jump in the car and drive up and spend the week with them, my family can get by just fine without me, right?

My Uncle Bill is my mom's younger brother and he has been retired for a few years. Jani retired last Spring and so they are both free to travel now. They drove (yes that's right) their truck, trailer and two dogs down the Al-can. It took them 9 days to get here. They visited all of the old haunts from Sant family history in Salt Lake and then came down to have dinner and visit with us. It was almost surreal to have them in my house. I haven't ever visited with them outside of Alaska. It was so wonderful to have family here. I really miss my family and wish I could visit them more often. There's nothing like your family, is there?

That evening after they left the kids carved their pumpkins.

Don't you think they pose so nicely?

This is Katie's pumpkin. A step or two away from the traditional triangle-eyed face. Maybe this is what AP art does for a person, helps them think beyond ...beyond where? Just a bit gruesome, thanks for not applying ketchup or red frosting or anything. Maybe this is saying something about her date to Sadie's recently. They went as Barbie and Ken(keep scrolling to see that post), hmmmmm, watch out Chris.

Love the teeth, David!

Caroline carved this dragon into the surface of her pumpkin so the light shows through the thickness of the pumpkin differently. Pretty cool, she also got extra credit in ceramics for this!

OHS festival of colors

About 20 minutes south of here in Spanish Fork is a Hari Krishna temple and they have a festival of colors every year where they throw colored chalk at each other, in the air, and all around. It has become a very popular outing here in the valley. Check out my posts with pics of the festival in SF

http://abbottshabits.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html

and I can't find the other one, sorry.

Caroline, Katie and Tanner Mieure before the festival of colors....

...and after. Love that they used blue and yellow chalk!

Katie and Ben Wells. Go Tigers!

Sadie Hawkins

Kids at dances nowadays have their own photo shoots by moms or dads or big sisters or neighbors, not the professional backdrop ones of yesteryear. It's great because you get a whole bunch of digital pics to share all around and then print for cheap at Costco. The downside is that because the kids are in charge sometimes it takes a while to get said pictures. This is the case with Sadie's so I thought rather than hold up the blog train I would just post what I have. Maybe later I can update with some group pictures or something.

Sadie's was an 80's theme this year. Katie borrowed her cousin's Halloween costume for this year (thanks Brittney). She was...can you guess? Yes, it's ....workout barbie! Love the leg warmers (cut off sweater sleeves) and all the other Madonna-esque trappings. I had SO much fun doing big hair, especially the bangs, and Katie dug up some pink eye shadow and blue eyeliner, perfect, and even a pair of jellies.

No wonder parents freak out at current fashion. It's ok now that it's retro. Seeing it now I guess I can understand why adults thought it was a bit much. It sure was fun dressing her all up!! She looks great!

Still waiting for the pictures...this is the only picture I have of Katie and her date, Chris. Notice the polo shirt and sweater tied around the shoulders. He dressed up as the Ken doll. Ah, the 80's.

Blue and Gold meet

Here are the girls of the OHS blue team. Each year to kick off the season, the swim team has a blue vs. gold meet. They divide the team and have some good fun competition. Caroline is holding the sign on the right. The blue girls and boys won the meet and were then served dinner by the gold team afterwards. Ok, it was pretty much buffet style and not a lot of seating this year so they got their own meal but that's supposed to be the idea. Caroline took 6 seconds off of her best 100 back time so it was a great day! They had a lot of fun and it's so great to be part of a team! Go Caroline!!

Random cellphone pictures

Since Michael's phone is pink he thought he needed to wear my sunglasses too.  His phone was silver originally.  His phone battery was not holding a charge but since it was getting so close to his mission he didn't want to buy a new phone.  Oranee used to have the same phone, only in pink, so he asked if he could have her old battery.  For a while, his silver phone had a pink battery.  Then his screen went bad so he just gave in and started using the whole pink phone.   I guess it shows frugality and confidence together when an 18 year old boy can use a pink phone! 

Love the stare!  When the kids get new glasses, we go to different stores to shop for glasses.  Since they can never remember what the other ones look like we take pictures of them in the frames that are options so they can compare at the next store.  These are the ones she chose.

Michael did not choose this frame, whew!

Caroline painted her face for spirit week...on the way to school.

So I'm a little bit weird about numbers.  I am always making comments about what numbers are on the speedometer, this was a particularly awesome day!

Soccer and Shakespeare

Soccer has begun and is almost over for Fall. I had to get some pictures of David with his new team. He moved up to a AAA club team this year and it's going well. He has made a few goals and is doing well. They are going to play indoor soccer next. This is definitely David's favorite sport!

They have black and white jerseys even though they are the Yellowjackets. We all wonder why there's no yellow. I think later on they may get warm-ups that are yellow. Funny, huh?

Katie's love is drama. Here she is all dressed up for the Renaissance Faire the evening before they left for the High School Shakespeare competition in Cedar City. She was Hermia in a scene from "A Midsummer's Night Dream". She did awesome! She projected well ( a big deal in the not-so-great acoustics of the school's foyer) and was SO funny! Shakespeare is sometimes hard to understand but there was no question of what her character's plight was. Great job!

She was in the group ensemble scene and also the Shakespeare dance. Here she is twirling in her fun dress. They did Romeo and Juliet, country style, it was cute.

On another note, sometimes we go sweets crazy here at our house. This was one of those times. In the past week we have made too many treats. This one at least has an apple in the middle of it!

New look

I hope everyone likes the new background I gave to the blog I think it's a bit more modern...My mom's a bit of a centenarian when it comes to decorating (still trying to persuade her that shudders and flower boxes are out of style) but this sheds a new light to the blog that says "hello! I don't live in the 1800 century!" needless to say my opinion of previous designs has been to say the least, odious. Until next time ,savior of the blog, Caroline.