After school craziness!

Preston is a big boy now!

April 5th. Preston decided it was time that he ride a two wheeler.

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Ouch!

Ok ok! I know that it has been a really long time! I am soooo sorry to keep ya'll waiting to hear what is going on with my life! (as if anyone was holding thier breath!)

Anyways what better way to catch up than to tell a really gross story! It all started on a beautiful Sunny day Saturday Sept 5th.....

We went to Lakes of Katy to do a little skiing for my Birthday. (Yeah! Happy Birthday to me!)The kids were getting antsy to swim and wanted to go play on the shore line. I was against it because the lake is so little and there were a lot of boats. Ok, like 3, but that is a lot for a small lake. So anyways, the kids had already jumped off the boat and were almost to the shore, so Carrie said that she would jump out and watch them. Charlie was skiing, we did a loop and came back to where the kids were and they were all standing on the shore waving at us. Then I started to do another loop, but Charlie fell. So I circled him to go again, and the kids were yelling Hunter is hurt! I had noticed that Carrie was holding someone and assumed that it was Preston, but when I looked again I realized it was Hunter! So instead of waiting for Charlie to get back into the boat, I just drove to the shore. I got out and got to Carrie as soon as I could wade though the water. Hunter was covered in blood! Gross! I took Hunter from Carrie and walked over to the Dock to set him down so that I could see. On his knee was a 2 inch long gash that was about half inch wide! Ahhh! It was pretty deep and you could see white tissue. I tried to push it together, but that just made more blood come out. About that time, Charlie had swam ashore and made his way over to the dock. Carrie and Michael (a co-worker of Charlie's) went up to the cars in search of first aid. I got it covered with a towel and then began to be very nauseous! Michael came back and looked at me and said, "Carianne, I think you need to sit." I agreed. So I sat on the dock next to Hunter. That wasn't enough though I started sweating and feeling really bad, so I laid down. Then we had to decide what to do. I offered to take him to the ER, but Carrie and Charlie didn't think that I was well enough, I guess. So they packed up Hunter and headed off to and ER. I was left with the boys to boat some more. The mood was broken a little bit. We taught a friend of Carrie's to wake board. Trevor kneeboarded a little. Then Charlie called to say that they were just going to go to Sugar Land because the in Katy was really busy. I then realized that I was going to have to pull the boat home! Great. (I keep making this story about me don't I?) I don't know why I think that is so scary. Maybe it is because the last time I pulled a boat was when Charlie ruptured his bicep and I had to drive 3 hours with a barley conscious husband, 2 babies crying in the back seat, pulling a boat in the dark! Hummmm, maybe that is is! Ok, back to the present. We loaded the boat. I asked (begged) my children to just please be quiet until we got home. That boat is a monster! The left tail light doesn't work, and I didn't have my driver's license. I was sure this would all equal disaster. I took the feeder roads and the Grand Parkway instead of the freeway. We made it home the same time Charlie, Carrie and Hunter got home. Hunter is healing well. He ended up with 11 stitches in all. The one tough thing is that he is not supposed to run for a week. This week was the start of fall baseball. So he was really disappointed to miss that! (not!)

Gross!

While I am at it, I may as well tell you another fun story!

Makaylie (our drama queen) came home from school last Friday and got all riled up about the boys being mean, so she stomped upstairs and slammed her bedroom door shut. I was sitting in the office trying to get Hunter to practice the violin and I look up and see Makaylie standing at the front door with all her purses. She waits just long enough to make sure that I am watching, and then walks out the door. I realize that she is leaving because she is mad. So I walk to the door, and there is a note. It reads "Sorry I had to move but you gise whre being mean." With a heart on the end! So I decide to watch what she is going to do. She walks down the side walk and across the circle and then takes a seat on the curb in front of the neighbor's house. I feel bad for her because she has nowhere to go and it is like 1,000 degrees outside! So I open the door and start to walk toward her. She immediately stands up and starts walking away from me. So I chase her down, and I say "Makaylie, please don't leave me alone in that house with all those boys! I can't be the only girl!" (that is her big thing, she feels way outnumbered. And she is!) She thought it over and agreed to help me out, and came home with me. Yea! I stopped a runaway!

YeHaa!

Hey Ya'll

We had a great time at the Houston Rodeo. I have always wanted to see if I could ride a mechanical bull. It just looks like fun, but of course I am not brave enough to do it myself. So, what do I do? I send my child out to ride for me! I think I had just as much fun watching him! Someday......

Enjoy!

P.S. If you can't tell, Trevor is riding the bull.

Hey Mom, I have a good Idea!

Hunter, My sweet little boy always has the best ideas! At school, they met their goal amount in the Pennies for Patients Fundraiser, so the kids got to duct tape their teacher to the wall.

So we are all sitting around Saturday night and I asked what we should do, and Hunter says "Hey Mom, I have a good idea! You can duct tape me to the wall!"

Usually I dismiss such ideas, but I thought this one might be fun!

Houston Marathon

I completed my 5th Marathon yesterday. I can't say that it was the most pleasant experience, but I did finish. Hallelujah! You would think that it would get easier. The race is always hard, no matter how many times you have done it. The recovery gets easier though. Today I can walk and everything!

Here is some video of that great day! Charlie, Bill, and the kids came to cheer me on. They met me around the 8, 12, 16 and 21 mile markers! It was so great to be able so see them along the course. It helps keep you motivated.

This is me around Mile 16. Mile 15 goes over a tall bridge. I think that is a rather rude thing to do to runners who are just trying their hardest to keep going. So as you can see I am really starting to hurt here.

Here I am at Mile 21. I was ready to quit! I already knew that my time was going to be slower than I wanted it to be and I still had 5 miles to go. It just seemed like torture! So I asked Charlie to run with me the rest of the way. He HATES to run, but did it anyway! What a WONDERFUL MAN! I probably would have finished, but it would have taken twice as long without him there cheering me on! Thanks, babe!

http://www.finishcam.com/Events/2009-Chevron-Houston-Marathon/WatchFinish.asp?FinisherId=96124&Camera=1

You can click on this link to see me cross the finish line. I am so dorky!

Last year I was able to complete the Marathon in 4 hrs and 14 mins. This year it was 4 hrs and 45 mins. There were a couple of things working against me this year. First I only trained for 6 weeks rather than the normal 16 week training schedule. Second, it was warmer this year, I think I drank too much water, trying to cool off, which just made my stomach tie in knots. Third, they explained at the beginning of the race that if it did get too hot, they would stop the race. So the seed was placed in my head that I might not have to run the whole 26.2. That is not good mentally to get any negative thoughts in your head when you run. It is too easy to dwell on them. You know you have a lot of thinking time when you are running 26 miles! As long as your mind is in the game then you can make your body keep going!

Oh well, I did finish and that is something! Hope I can do better next time! Yes.... I am CRAZY!

The Best Christmas Present Ever!

Here she is..... After 100 consecuative days of keeping our room clean. Santa brought us a Minature Schnauzer for Christmas! She is very cute and well loved by all, (except mom when she forgets to go outside, and Preston who is adjusting to not being the baby anymore.) She weighed just 2.5 lbs when we got her, but is growing fast!

Oh yeah, We named her Pepper Mint Moore.

Mom, what does a stocking do?

As I was pulling out my Christmas decoations this year, Preston pulled out the stockings. He wasn't quite sure what they were at first, so he asked. Mommy, what are these? I replyed, they are stockings. As I was busy pulling out other things, Preston asked, "Mom, what does a stocking do?" I told him they were like socks. Next thing I see is Preston with his new socks on! I guess I should have finished explaining. :)

A litte entertainment

Who says Mormons aren't fun!
I have no idea who these people are or, where they are, but enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f86qKQJg3Z8

Halloween

Preston as Darth Vader. Aren't you just shaking in your boots?

Makaylie as the Wicked Witch. The only one to not go with a STAR WARS Theme.
(Hunter didn't know that was allowed!)

Hunter as Obi Wan Kenobi. Our only good guy :)

Trevor as Darth Maul. SCARY!

Guess Whooooo!

Ok, this is actually a picture of me, my sisters and brother. I am the one with the white face, holding my little brother. I was suprised to see how much Makaylie looks like Heidi (my younger sister) I always had her pegged as a MOORE.

Preston

Ever since this school year started, Preston and I have been spending some quality time together. I have never had just one three year old before. It has been quite an adjustment I think for both of us. I don't think that Preston thinks that I am as entertaining as Makaylie,Trevor or Hunter. And I am not used to having a child be so quiet. I worry sometimes that I might forget that he is there and leave him. So far, that hasn't happened. :)

I think that I am finally fluent in "Preston." (his own form of English) I had no idea how much I relied on the other kids to translate for me! He tends to substitute the "D" sound for any other beginning sound of random words. i.e. kitty cat sounds like "ditty dat" and little sounds like dittle. It can be confusing at times.

Anyways, I wanted to share some of the cute things he said that I did understand.

We were at Target in the Halloween aisle and Preston spots a costume of Lightning McQueen, a race car from the movie CARS, and he exclaims.....

"Oh what a heck!"

My mom was with us, and we just laughed! I didn't think I used that phrase, but apparently I have used it enough.

The next one was when he was trying to open a candy wrapper of whoppers. He was having a rough time of it and my Dad says to him, "If you can get that opened then you can have them." Preston then replies very matter of fact "I do have them." Again, we all laughed.

Ike

Ok, I know that Ike is a little bit old news, but I still wanted to share this with my Non-Texans.

I took this video while driving down Austin Pkwy towards Hwy 6 Sept 23. (ten days after). It is amazing I didn't wreck, now that would have been an interesting video to watch! Every time I drove around town it always surprised me to see how many branches/trees were piled up!

Dear Tooth Fairy......

AHHH, the joys of growing up.



Hunter lost 2 teeth in two days, and I can't help but share how CUTE he looks!




Hunter lost the bottom tooth just minutes before Trevor's birthday party. After all the party excitement, we forgot completely about his tooth until the next day when we realized that the Tooth Fairy had not come. By this time, the tooth was no where to be found. Hunter was distraught, to say the least, that the Tooth Fairy would not be making a visit. So I cleverly convinced him that she might come back if we wrote her a note explaining that the tooth was lost somewhere down stairs. I told him that she would certainly be able to find that lost tooth. I mean, come on, if she can find it under his pillow in his mess of a room, how could she not find it downstairs? It just so happened that Hunter's top tooth was loose too, so we pulled it out to make sure the Tooth Fairy would come back to visit. And what do you know, she came! Happy day!

Swim Team All-Stars

Today was the All-Star meet. At this meet, the best swimmers from the 30 teams in the Southwest Houston Recreational Swim League compete. There are two heats for each event in each age group. Meaning only 16 swimmers qualify for each event. It really blows my mind that Trevor could be ranked so high among the 4,500 + swimmers that make up this league! Crazy.
We were to arrive at the Don Cook Nat. at 6:45am. EARLY, again. Good thing it is in Sugar Land right across from the Mall. It is where the high school kids compete.
When we arrived they hadn’t opened up the doors, yet. (Good thing we got there on time.) So we waited outside along with everyone else. Then they called for the swimmers to enter the building. Trevor went in. After about 5 more minutes of standing outside, I realized that I still had Trevor’s goggles. I knew that they would be starting the warm up soon, and I started to get really nervous about how I was going to find him and get him his goggles in time. Finally after about 5 more minutes of me standing outside stressing, they opened the doors and let us in. It was like a slow motion cattle stampede.
It is a really nice facility. It has a 50 meter pool that they can put a deck across the middle to make it 25 meters. There are bleachers to sit on. Good thing I didn’t heft in the chairs. They have the professional starting blocks that most of the kids have never used before. They have a score board that shows the names of the kids competing, their times, and what place they come in. The only thing I could do was follow the masses of people entering the building and find a seat, and hopefully spot Trevor at the same time. Makaylie was with me and Charlie stayed home with the rest of the boys. I thought once I found a seat then I could hopefully leave Makaylie there to save the seat and go look for Trevor. Thankfully as soon as I sat down I saw Trevor talking to his coach and then they both looked over to the bleachers. I waved as big as I could to get their attention and it worked! Yay! One stress taken care of. I thought that I had picked out a good seat to sit at. I was on the front row, just left to the starting blocks, so I could see all the way down the pool. I soon learned that it was not a great place to be. I was right next to a gap that lots of people were standing in, who blocked my view and then there was the constant migration of people walking to and from their seats. Really frustrating. People can be so inconsiderate!
The races were really exciting to watch, from what I could see between people. By the time Trevor was up, I was a nervous wreck. You’d think that I was the one in the race! Trevor competed in the first Heat of 7-8 boys Breaststroke. He came in 2nd Place! 24.19 seconds. Yahoo! I thought that my heart was going to fly out of my chest I was so excited. Then came the second heat and I saw one of our teams, fastest swimmers in that heat. I couldn’t figure out why he was in that heat until they went. They were blazing fast. I saw the times up on the board and knew Trevor was beat. Over all he placed 10th out of 16 swimmers. I am so proud of the boy. What a great end to a great swim season!

Prelims, Finals and Banquet

Wow, what an exciting week we have had.
Thursday was swim team prelims. It was a swim meet where all the swim teams of our division meet at the same time. It is not the regular format. During the season, it will be two teams facing one another, and coaches assign who will be swimming which stroke. In Prelims, basically every kid swims every stroke. The eight fastest times advance to finals.
The swim meet started at 8am, which means that we had to arrive there at 6:45! EARLY. The meet was hosted by First Colony Gold. Right away my kids were all wigged out because First Colony’s pool does not have lines on the bottom, meaning that it is hard to know if you are swimming in a straight line or not. Hunter didn’t even want to do his warm up because he had run into the ropes a couple times on the first lap, and he was not liking that.
The great thing was that since there were 4 teams competing, they split up the age groups so that just the 6 and under, 7-8 and 9-10 age groups were swimming for qualification.
Free style was first. I was thinking that Makaylie would qualify for sure, but because there were no lines and maybe the fact that it was early and she hadn’t eaten yet, she swam a full second slower than her regular time. She did end up making first alternate for finals. This means, she had the 9th fastest time. If you think about it, she is two years younger than other people in her age group and is beating most of them! Wow go girl!
Trevor came in 6th place for breast stroke so he made it into finals. Yea!
The hard part was the end of the meet, when it was moment of truth for Hunter. He just knew that he was going to make finals and qualify for All-stars. He had been talking it up the whole meet, and I kept trying tell him that I am proud of him for doing his best and it doesn’t matter to me at all if he makes it or not. So as we were packing up our chairs, towels, and various other belongings, Hunter was asking me over and over if he made it. I didn’t want to tell him the truth full out, because I was feeling really bad for him. I said “I don’t know Hunter, I don’t think you did.” Well he didn’t believe me at all. So we went to go check the board before we left. We ran into one of our swim coaches and Hunter asked him if he had made it, and the coach didn’t know either. So we went to the board to check……. Hunter did not make it! He was crushed and couldn’t stop the tears. I was so sad for him. That is the hard part for a mom, to be happy for one kid and sad for the other kid.
We all decided that we should let Hunter decide where we should go to eat breakfast. Shipley’s, of course!
Finals were Saturday morning at 8am. We had to be there at 6:45am AGAIN! Each team gets to enter a relay team in the finals. Makaylie was in the Freestyle relay and Trevor was in the medley relay and Freestyle relay. So I planned ahead better and woke up Trevor and Makaylie up earlier so that they could eat some oatmeal and get their energy up.
Finals move more quickly than a regular meet because there is only one heat of each event, rather than 5-6 heats per event. The Medley relay was first. The first place team moves on to All-stars. Trevor’s team came in 4th place of 4 teams, OUCH! Next up was the 6 and under relay. Makaylie swam the anchor. She dove in the pool and swam her little heart out. Her team was in 4th (last) place when she dove in. She put her head down and swam to the other side of the pool without taking a single breath! She swam that lap in 22.14 seconds! (Beating her best time of 24 seconds!) She passed one of the other teams winning our team 3rd place! Trevor swam individual breast stroke. It was a really close race and he came in 3rd advancing him to Allstars! He was so excited! I was really amazed! During the meet they would announce the results of the events, and they would announce the swimmers moving on to all-stars. Trevor and I were so excited to hear his name called over the loud speaker. We just looked at each other and giggled. Trevor’s last event was the freestyle relay; again his team came in 4th out of 4. Too bad.
The swim team banquet was Sunday. This is held at Sugar Creek Country Club. Everyone (most everyone) really dresses up for the occasion. There is really good food, a slide show of pictures taken though out the season, and awards given out. Makaylie was recognized for being the female swimmer of the 4th meet. She received a gift card to Target. Then she was recognized for being the most valuable swimmer in the 6 and under age group! The coach told everyone that she and made first alternate to finals and then she pointed out that this girl is only 4 and has two more years in this age group. Makaylie got a good sized trophy for being the MVP along with the regular sized trophy that everyone else receives. Charlie and I were so excited for her and so proud to be her parents. Trevor was recognized as being one of the two 7-8 boys that made All-stars.
Again, the ride home was a little tough for Hunter; it is just too much to think that his younger sister got more trophies than him.

Hunter is totally thrilled to be taking these pictures. Still mad that Makaylie got more trophies than him. Charlie and I laughed because of his expression, but a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

My summer so far....

My Summer so far.... this is going to be long!

Trevor tried out for a select baseball team and he made it. What they do is practice, practice, and practice. They don’t really have a regular season of games; they enter tournaments that are usually over the weekend. So since the end of May he has had baseball practice Tuesday and Thursday nights from 6:30-9:00 pm! Then on Saturdays they either find another team to scrimmage with or hold another 2 ½ hr practice in the frying morning heat! They have had two tournaments that they have participated in so far. The first one we were out of town so that was great. I don’t think they played very well. It is a brand new team that they just started up so all the boys need to get accustomed to playing together. The second tournament was over the Fourth of July weekend. It was in La Port, which is like an hour away. So Charlie and Trevor went. They had to leave at 7:30 am Saturday to make it to their first game that started at 9:30. Then they had another game at 12:30. They lost both. They got home exhausted from the heat! It is like 95 degrees with 100% humidity! Augh! Then they had one more game to play on Sunday morning at 9:30. (I am not a fan of this Sunday stuff) If they lost that game then they would be done and come home in time to go to 1pm church. I was banking that they would lose. Charlie is the Sunday school teacher of the 16-17 yr olds. So Charlie calls me up at 11:30 to let me know that they won their game and had another game at 12:30! So I was a little frustrated because now I had to go to church with 3 kids and teach his Sunday school lesson. I had no internet at the time so l couldn’t even prepare because he doesn’t have a manual! So Sacrament meeting was frustrating and then I went to teach the lesson and most of the kids were gone on summer vacation, so we just sat and visited. I know, not good, but I got to know some of them better and I feel like sometimes having a relationship with the kids will help them to respect and listen to you better when you do teach something. So we had some good conversations and I was happy with it.

So that is Baseball. We have another tournament coming up the first of august so I will let you know how that goes. It is here in Sugar Land so it will be easier for me to go a watch.

Violin lessons are still going on during the summer. The boys are coming up on their 500th day of practicing in a row and Makaylie is at 200 days in a row! Boy I am a slave driver! The thing with violin is that you need to practice every day to progress. If you miss a day it is really like missing 3. The problem with me, is that I am only practicing once, maybe twice a week, so my progress is in the negative? Each violin lesson is an hour long, so every Thursday we have lessons from 3:30 until 7:30pm. I get to sit through the kids lessons so that I know what to practice with them. So it is a long time to sit. I think it is worth it though. It really teaches discipline. And the idea that you really have to work for something that you want to have accomplished is a valuable lesson to learn at a young age. Now whenever we have to try something new, and this is not just in violin, we know that it might not be easy the first time but if you practice, soon we will be able to do it. This is a great lesson for me too, not just the kids!

Do you see how I am just naming off the activities one at a time? SWIM TEAM!!!!!

Ok, swim team practices for Trevor, Hunter, and Makaylie started May 12th. Until school was out, we had practice right after school every day except Fridays. When summer started practices moved to mornings on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays 9:50-11am. Tuesdays, we have off! Hallelujah! Mondays are swim meets. So Monday morning we go to practice. Then we come home and since Mondays are laundry days, I am trying to get as many loads washed as I can. Then at 3:45 we go to whichever pool the swim meet is at. First, the Kids go to the coaches and get their swim numbers written on their hand. This is for the timers to keep track of who swam what stoke, heat, and time etc. It is a pretty impressive system. Then the coaches also will write on their arm what strokes and what heats the child is swimming. That is so great for me because with 3 swimming it is sometimes hard to remember who is swimming what and when. Then they do a couple of warm up laps. While they are doing that, I am setting up camp. (Chairs to sit on, cooler of snacks, water, spray bottles to cool ourselves with.) No one except swimmers is allowed in the pool. And at the home meets the place where we sit is a parking lot, so HOT concrete! The Meet doesn’t even start until 5pm. So already we have been outside for an hour plus, sweating because we have been running here and there, not to mention all the prep work and packing of the truck that had to be done before we even made it to the meet! Did I mention that it is HOT outside?

So then the Meet starts. The first part of the meet is a little crazy. Both Trevor and Hunter are in the same 7-8 age group and they swim first. The first swim they do is a medley relay, meaning there are four kids on a team and the first kid will do backstroke to the other side, and then the next kid jumps in and does breast stroke, the third kid does butterfly and the last kid does freestyle. So sometimes Trevor and Hunter were on the same team, and sometimes they weren’t. Sometimes they were swimming the same stroke, and then sometimes they were swimming different strokes. I wanting to know how the kids are doing, usually use my watch to time their laps. That would get tricky when they were both swimming at the same time, but didn’t start together.

Makaylie is in the 6 and under age group. They usually only do two events. The first one they do is a free style relay. It works the same as the medley relay, four on a team except they all do freestyle. The next event they do is individual freestyle. Makaylie is awesome. The girl just turned 5 last week, and she smokes everyone! Yesterday she came home with 2 first place ribbons. Two weeks ago she was named female swimmer of the meet! She has incredible lungs; she can swim the whole length of the pool without taking a breath! This last meet she swam her lap in 24 seconds! The pool is 25 meters/yards (some are meters and some are yards) long! That time is faster than what Trevor or Hunter swam last year! Some of the 6 and under kids will swim in the 7-8 age groups for backstroke. Monday July 14th, Makaylie was entered in the 7-8 age group for Butterfly! Forget the easy strokes; let’s just go for the hardest! She was in the second heat against 3 other girls, who are at least 2-4 yrs older than her. She held her own. She came in 4th, but one of the other girls was disqualified for her stroke, so Makaylie got the 3rd place ribbon! Her coaches are teenagers themselves, and they were so proud of her. There are two boy coaches that are brothers that are named Matt and Mike! Ha! (my brothers are Matt and Mike) So Mike scoops Makaylie out of the water afterwards and runs her to the other girl coach who congratulated her. Then he just stands there holding her hand, just as proud of her as he could be. It was really cute. Then he took her over to get her ribbon. Later on, someone told her that she was going to swim in the Olympics! After the meet when we were driving home, Makaylie asked me if she had to swim in the Olympics. I laughed and told her that she isn’t swimming in these Olympics. She was relieved. We have been watching the swim trials in awe at how awesome those swimmers are!

Trevor is awesome too. He is one giant muscle from head to toe! What can I say, my kids are athletes! (Thanks, Charlie!) His strokes this year have been backstroke and Breast stroke. I wish you could see his breaststroke! I have never seen anyone move so fast! I am not sure you can move that fast on land. He has consistently smoked everyone for the last 3-4 meets in Breaststroke. Two weeks ago, we were standing next to a parent of a kid from another team watching the breaststroke. You could tell they were fully expecting their boy to win. They were blown away when Trevor beat everyone by at least 2 body lengths! It was crazy!

Hunter is really good too. I think that he gets frustrated to have to compete with Trevor. It will be fun next year when he is at the top of his age group. He has lungs! He can swim the length of the pool in one breath! One funny time was at the beginning of the season. Both Trevor and Hunter were swimming the individual freestyle and in the same Heat. Hunter was not aware that Trevor was on the other side swimming against him. At the end of the race, Hunter got his ribbon and came to me all disappointed with a second place. He was sure that he had won. He said “Who beat me? I came in first!” Then Trevor comes up with the first place ribbon. I looked and Hunter and he looked at Trevor and I said “Sorry Hunty, he beat you by one second!” “Oh man!” Was Hunter's reply. After that Hunter has been doing different strokes than Trevor so it has kept the competition to a minimum. Hunter competes in the Individual Freestyle and the Butterfly stroke. He is usually in the 1st-3rd range.

I can’t believe what great swimmers everyone is. I guess that I got the bug, because I joined a master swim class. It is for 18 and older. I have been swimming for 3 weeks now, and it is killing me! I swim tues, wed, and thurs mornings. I have a coach that just puts me though the ringer for an hour and then I have to come home and start the day. I have a new found respect for my awesome swimming kids!

In addition to swim team, the first week of summer the boys went to basketball camp from 1-4:30pm. They learned a lot and had a great time. The second week of summer Hunter went to Art camp from 1-4 which he totally loved! Trevor went to scout day camp. It went from 2-8:30pm! It was so long that I pulled him out after only two days!


We also had a Home USA boating trip June 20-25th. We rented the sweetest house! It was up at Lake Travis in Austin again. This house was a four bedroom 4.5 bath. 3 of the bedrooms were master suites! It had a exercise room, home theater room, awesome kitchen, Flat screen plasma TVs in every room, office, Speaker system throughout the house, and outside, kitchette with icemaker and TV outside, a pool with spa and beach entry, a putting green, golf cart to take you to the double covered boat house! It was way on the north side of the Lake way deep in a finger so there was no boat traffic and the water was flat as glass to double dimples for the first 3 days! It was so fun. Charlie invited all of his office people in shifts. The first three couples came from Friday until Sunday, then the next 3 couples came from Sunday to Monday, and 3 more couples for the last 3 days. It was kind of nice to have the people cycle through, it was like a new vacation with each new group of people. We assigned each couple a meal. Charlie was in heaven with all the good home-cooked food. I guess that I have been too busy to feed him lately.

Lake Travis With Jason Moore's Family

Over Memorial weekend we took our new boat out for its first trip. We went to Lake Travis in Austin. We rented a little cottage and invited Jason, DeAnn and family to go with us. We had a great time. The water was really choppy so we didn’t get to test out skiing, but really enjoyed the smooth ride. I did manage to break a metal piece off the sunbrella, so we had no shade. Thanks to Papa Mecham, Trevor was constantly asking us if he could drive the boat. So finally I made a pact with him, if he wouldn’t ask to drive while the boat was full of people, then when we were waiting to load the boat onto the trailer, he could drive it around. He was happy with that deal and after that he was very enjoyable to be with. One of the funny stories that go with this trip is the actual driving to Austin. After we get everything packed up and are finally on the road, I ask Charlie if he knows where he is going. He said he did, and I believed him (big mistake!) because we had been to that part of the Lake before. Well we are getting closer to Austin and Charlie sees a sign for an interstate, and says to himself am “I supposed to take 183?” Now you know, interstates in TX go every which way, not just north and south like they do in Utah. So we turn off and start going down this road and we are not noticing anything familiar. So there we are towing this monster boat and Jason following behind and we have no idea where we are supposed to go. So we are calling anyone who might be close to a computer to look up were we think we are and tell us how we get to where we need to be. Finally after a few awkward turnarounds, and back tracks we made it to our destination in 5 hrs instead of 3 ½!

Kids in Swim Team. Go Sugar Creek Gators!

I am just going though the archives now. This is a clip of Makaylie in swim team last summer. I think it was the last Monday in June of 2007. That would make her a week shy of her 4th birthday! What kind a mother am I to push such a little one into competitive swimming? I will say it sure made me feel safer to have 3 kids be able to swim with a pool at home.

This next clip is of Trevor. It was taken at the same swim meet in Sienna Plantation. IT IS NOT IN FAST FORWARD! This is real time. He and the kid next to him were 1st and 2nd place the whole race. Too bad he ran out of steam at the very end, he could have won!

I feel like we need fair representation. I, the dummy mother, didn't start recording till the end of Hunter's lap, but at least you can see him in the water!

Charlie's cliff jumping experience

This little clip is from the same Lake Powell trip, August 3rd 2004. Charlie is getting ready to jump off a cliff. I am sure that standing on top of that cliff, the water looked miles away, heck, I am such a wimp I stayed in the boat to film!

Standing next to him is my sister Heidi and Brother-in-Law KC.

Trevor can waterski!

This was August 4, 2004.

Trevor had just had his 5th birthday. We were at Lake Powell with my family. My dad's birthday present to Trevor was waterskis, so of course we had to try them out! My brother Matt is comentating. We were all so proud of him. Doesn't he look tiny?

Happy 7th Birthday Hunter!

Makaylie & Preston

Makaylie is always finding my camera and taking pictures of herself. Here is one of the cute ones that I saved.