Happy Birthday Nelson and Caroline!

Caroline saw a cake like this at the grocery store and loved it so we made it for her birthday. It turned out so cute!

Nelson's birthday was Saturday and Caroline's was on Sunday. 44 and 14, here they are. We went skiing on Saturday and I wish one of us had brought a camera. It was such a gorgeous day. Bright blue sky and it was warm! We found the Congers on the slopes and skied with them for the rest of the day. It was a great ski day. Then Caroline and I had costume check-off for the school play coming up, Annie. Next we went to David's basketball game. They have had a great season. Michael took pictures at the game so I will post them later. We went out to dinner with our friends Rich, Becca, Mike and Nikki and then went to the BYU vs. Utah basketball game. It was a good game! Sunday was Stake conference and we love that because Nelson gets to sit with us at church and then he gets to come home and be with us for the day. We had Caroline's chosen birthday lunch, hamburgers, onion rings, and milkshakes, YUM! Then we made the cake and went to Chuck and Oranee's for dinner. We celebrated birthdays for Kib, Nelson, Caroline, and Ali and also honored Jordan as she is about to leave for the MTC and Paris! We played crazy party games and sat around and talked a lot. Cindi reminded us that when Jordan was young, she called Nelson "Nelsie" and she called me "Nelsies". I had totally forgotten that! We will miss her for the next 18 months. Depending on when Michael gets his mission call, he may not see her for almost 3 1/2 years because he may leave just before she comes home. If Stephanie goes on a mission she and Michael will leave around the same time and then she won't see Stephanie for that long, also. How sad! This week we are looking forward to State Swim on Friday and Saturday and hopefully a birthday party for Caroline's friends.

A lot of chlorine

Chlorine has become a big part of our lives. The kids swim in it all day it seems. The odor of pool comes and goes from wet towels and occasionally dry bodies. My sinuses get a good cleansing every time we help out and time for a meet. The next part of our interaction with chlorine came in the personal appearance category. It has been tradition with the swim team for the boys to shave their heads (well, their whole bodies) the night before region swim. After Michael Phelps won 8 gold medals with a full head of hair I think that tradition became less popular and we have altered the course of history and the boys are now all going blonde, platinum to be more accurate. This is a before picture of Michael as he left to partake of the yearly pre-region ritual.

Cody Applying blue (BLUE!!) color to Michael's head. I guess it is a fascinating process. The color changes as it progresses. Cody's mom does hair so I am comforted to know that it was in fact Clairol, not Clorox, and Cody is the youngest of other swimmers and has been bleaching guys hair for years before he got hold of Michael. Is this something we should really be sharing? Maybe not.

Lovely Walmart bag on the head while the color does its magic, and....

Voila! I am used to it now but for a couple of days I kept doing double-takes.

The girls don't bleach their hair (whew) but they, too, have a tradition. They don't shave their legs for... well, a very long time. Then, the night before region they shave legs and arms for immediate results of less drag in the water. Katie took 8 seconds off of her race so maybe it really works!

Here she is waiting at the blocks for her race, the first one of the second day. Katie did Awesome! She placed 12th in the 200 Free and 9th in the 100 Fly. She scored 12 points for the girls team and earned herself an athletic letter for swim from OHS.

The boys team and the girls team each took 2nd at Region. The boys scores were so close! If they were to combine girls and boys scores for an overall score, Orem would have won 1st, but they don't so, oh well, you guys are first in my book!!

At the start of the final heat for each event they announce each swimmer by name, leaving the swimmer with the best seed time for the last. Here's Michael at the start of the 100 back when they announced his name. He was justified in the confident number 1 he held up, he took 1st and the next swimmer to the wall was over 4 seconds behind him. Way to go!

Michael getting his 1st place medal. He placed 2nd in the individual medlay and his IM relay and 200 free relay teams places 2nd as well. They did an awesome job!

Cheering on the final race of the day.

Katie and her swim buddy Natalie!

Michael and his Senior comrades.

It has been so fun having these two on the same school team this year. They have had a great time together. On to State...

Warning: real life ahead

After Christmas, we needed some excitement in our lives so we went bowling with our good friends, the Hoyals. We played pool while we waited for our lanes to become open.

Hmmmm, who's winning?

McKay (the Hoyal's 6 year old hiding behind David) beat my score, well, maybe everyone beat my score. I didn't have the best day but way to go McKay!

January is one of those months where you aren't sure what's next because you are coming off of the biggest event of the year. It has been really cold and not too snowy. I can handle the temperature better if it's pretty outside.

We have been doing a lot of just normal life stuff. Today I got my tires rotated and the oil changed. I can't tell you what a momentous occasion that was. It has needed to be done for too long. This is what my January is, catching up on the management of life. I am more relieved than my kids are that the semester is over and we have started fresh again. Teenagers are wearing me out. I have a house full (David will count as a 1/2 because he is not yet 13) and I am more and more glad each day that generally blondes don't go grey because I would so be there! I think this is a lot harder than diapers. You don't have to pray about how to change diapers or when to have nap time. Life nowadays requires a lot more brain power. Well, on to the next event...

Last week was the last regular swim meet of the year. It was the famous Battle for the Paddle. It is the Orem vs. MountainView meet. These two teams swim together twice a day all year long because they swim in the same club but for different school teams. They know each other well and this makes for quite a rivalry. Michael and Katie made a poster to take and decorate at the pool.

Here are the Orem High Swim Team Captains, Joe, Michael, Amy and Rachel, holding the coveted paddle. Orem beat MountainView pretty badly this year. This is the 11th consecutive year that the tigers have won!

Go Orem!

New Year's Day. This was a kind of heritage meal, I suppose. My mom's birthday is Jan. 1, I cooked my great-grandma Kate's ableskever's in my grandma Eleanor's pans. The taste takes me a long way back. It was just as good as I remember.

Out with the old, in with the new. We have had this desk and file cabinet in our family room almost as long as we have lived here, which will be 12 years this April. I have already mentioned the excessive number of teenagers in the house, and they need the computer all at the same time it seems. So, we sold the old desk, bought two new ones and have added another computer to avoid gridlock. It was sad to see it go, it had SO much storage space and the best part...you could just shut the top and it looked clean (such a farce). I am almost done getting the new desks situated with organizer boxes, etc. but I am really struggling not having everything in one big pile. I can't find anything anymore. I'll learn.

Here is Michael and his Preference date, Katelyn Albach. They went sledding and had cocoa for their day date.

All dressed up for the dance. Michael and I went to Saver's and found a pink shirt for $5 that matched perfectly! Sweet! They look awesome, don't they?

While Michael was at Preference, Nelson, David and I went night skiing at Sundance. This was David's first experience night skiing and he had a thousand questions on the way up. How bright was it? Where were the lights? etc, etc. We had a great time and we spent some time helping David improve his slalom. On one of his turns near the end of the night he kind of skied over the end of his pole, oops. He was proud of the damage, here it is...

Whoa.

We have decided that next year for Christmas we are not getting our kids anything except giant cardboard boxes. Maybe they are still like little kids after all. These are the boxes our new desks came in and they had two days of cardboard heaven. They cut, duct taped, decorated, napped in, and thoroughly enjoyed the 100 cubic feet of boxes left over from the desks.

Can you read what Caroline wrote on the outside of her box? After all of the stress and worry teenagers can be, I love them more than ever. "I love my life", it says it all.

Catching up!

Before I start I need to apologize for the excessive number of pictures in this post. A lot has happened in the past 3 weeks since I last blogged! I am guessing that everyone else's life has been much like mine, though:alarm goes off too early, jump up, run from place to place all day and night, not completing as much as you want, then your head hits the pillow again and it starts all over again the next day. Happy Holidays? I was not nearly as prepared as I would've liked this year but we did have fun...

These are pictures of the girls with Santa at the mall. We were there exchanging something and they just had to sit on Santa's lap!

Oops, this picture didn't get fixed before I uploaded it. sorry.

We thought we didn't have enough going on so we decided to replace our windows. We have done one here, one there over the years but this time we finished the job and replaced all of the ones left. Here is a picture of the old, single paned, aluminum framed windows. It is hard to believe we had these as long as we did. They are so cold!

A view from the front of the house...

and now the new windows!! It is amazing. They are not cold anymore and it looks like I got a whole new room in each room with new windows.

Isn't this a great picture of the kids making gingerbread cookies...let's try again

not any better, oh well.

We decided to set up the trains around the trees this year. It has been a few year since we have done this and it was fun to have them out again. We had the Alaska Railroad around the big tree...

and the James train around the little tree.

Here's David and Max watching them go around and around.

Michael got asked to Preference with a big snowman so we baked a snowman in response.

Happy 12th birthday David!!! This is a collage I made of some of my favorite and funniest pictures of David. He is an awesome kid! We love you David!!

David got a k'nex roller coaster from Grandpa John for his birthday. Here it is all put together.

David's favorite cake is butterscotch bundt so that's what he got. I usually try to have his party really early in December so it's not so close to Christmas but this year time got away from us and we had to have it pretty close to Christmas. Because of that it was a much smaller party than last year. Last year I think David invited 25 or 30 kids, this year, just a couple.

We went bowling and David got his all time high score! He was so excited.

Here's David at the Cascade Christmas sing for parents. Can you believe it? This is my last ever. Ok, this year I have had a lot of these moments. David is the youngest and therefore every event at the school is the last one I will get to go to. Kind of sad...

The 6th grade 12 Days of Christmas

On the 23rd, we went to the Saxey's and had Christmas with my side of the family. Katie played the piano and we sang Christmas songs.

Nelson, Chris, Rob, David and LaDena waiting to open presents.

Christmas Eve at the Abbott's. Here are all of the guys with the big guy himself, stopped in for a visit.

He brought a gift for all of us as a preview for what was to come.

The girls got scarves, hats and mittens...

and in keeping with the boys gingerbread house theme, they got guns.

Michael as a donkey, holding baby Jesus. Way to be a good sport!

Michael as a donkey giving Mary (Brittney) a ride, followed by Joseph (David).

Angels Lindsey and Caroline singing for us.

Katie was the pianist this year and couldn't be left out so she wore a costume, too.

The Nativity

Waiting to come down the stairs Christmas morning.

The big hits of the day were some additions to the game room in the basement. Air hockey, gaming seats, a tv and stand for the game systems.

We hit the slopes the day after Christmas. It was cold but sunny so it was really nice.

David was ordained a Deacon by Nelson and Michael and the grandpa's participated. We are so pleased with what a good young man you are David. Congratulations. Grandpa Lorin and Nana Kathy stayed the night so they could be in sacrament meeting for the first time David got to pass the sacrament. It is such a wonderful blessing to have both sons participating in the sacrament ordinance.

David with Dad and Mom

All of us!

David got rockets for Christmas and we went to shoot them off on the 28th in the field behind the Junior High.

Getting it all set up...

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 blast off!!

After rocket craziness!

We have loved having our basement finally finished for the kids and their friends to hang out in. Here are some of the neighborhood crowd that came over to play!! On to the New Year.....!!!!