Happy Thoughts from the Past Week

• exhausted, but determined bikers (their 2nd 15 mile bike ride for their cycling merit badge)


• lunch with a good friend


• the close of soccer -- bitter sweet


• the beginning of baseball season!!!


• the close of a fun year of pre-school for Rebecca and a picnic with her friends


• a wanna-be South Carolinian (Micah's State Travel Fair project -- it went great, other than serving frozen shrimp, which Daddy promised would be thawed by the time he did his presentation for the judges!)


• lots and lots of magical boxes (the foster parent food order came in)


• a morning of training at CWC in Riverton (how to start support groups for foster/adoptive parents)


• busy readers (book fair at the school)


• funny, funny, HILARIOUS ladies in our ward (Becky and I are making a VT movie like the one on the Internet, which will be shown at Enrichment Night on June 3rd)


• our crazy soccer team -- fun ice cream party Friday night! All but 2 of the players came!


• drip drop rain


• pouring rain


• clapping thunder and bright lightning


• pounding hail


• tornadoes that didn't come close enough to Lander to make us nervous (although we sure worried about our friends in Laramie!!!)


• my new mp3 player that James got me for mother's day and put the scriptures on it, so I can do my scripture "reading" while I run


• Rebecca singing loud enough for me to hear her over my mp3 player


• the HUGE grin on the tiny head poking up over the back of her slowly-moving walker -- SOOOO proud of herself!


• homemade chocolate chip cookies (James made them, of course)


• hopping bunnies (I'd much prefer that to finding a dead bunny in my living room)


• flying birds in the garage (that's also much better than the dead bird we found in the living room earlier in the week)


• mischievous cats


• having a possible diagnosis for James' mom -- they think it is Still's Disease, which unfortunately is genetic, but I am hopeful that it skipped over James. There is possible treatments for it so now it is a matter of deciding the course of action. But we are hopeful that this will be the end of a very long and painful road for James' mom.


• the water fight between the hot tub and the swimming pool


• a pounding percussionist (mass bands concert -- all 3 elementary schools' 6th grade bands combined)


• finishing our Personal Fitness Merit Badge


• a swift runner -- Micah's goal in doing the Personal Fitness Merit badge was to break his school's record for the mile, which was 6 something minutes. They ran it this week. He didn't break the record, but he did tie for 1st place -- he tied with a girl -- don't bring it up...sensitive subject... I told him that I would come run the mile with his class also, and I would wear my purple head band, pink leg warmers, yellow sweat suit with orange shorts over the top, curlers in my hair, huge ear phones, and would be singing "Eye of the Tiger" as we ran. He declined, saying he could run it fine without me.


• National Treasure 2 came out on dvd -- we very rarely go to movies in the theater because it costs more than twice as much as just buying the dvd. So we didn't see National Treasure 2 when it came out in theaters, even though I LOVE National Treasure 1 (I love movies like that -- Davinci Code, Tomb Raider, Oceans 11, etc., movies where they solve puzzles or follow clues, or figure out things in a clever way, etc.) and usually when there's a movie we want for our family, I'll buy it and wrap it up for Christmas (or encourage one of the kids to pick it for their birthday movie), but this one just couldn't wait. I bought it the day it came out and opened it when we got home and the kids watched it right away -- I waited a few nights because my nights were just so busy, and then I stayed up until 1 a.m. watching it, and then watched it again the next night until 1 a.m. with James. It wasn't quite as good as National Treasure 1, but still a very happy thought!


• school is almost out for the summer!!!!!


• scouts, scouts, and more scouts


• Chris & Brittany are sending me and Cameron to Washington DC to visit Curtis & Lindsay this summer!!!!!!!!!!!


• HAVING MY INTERNET SERVICE BACK!!!!!!!!!

Class Quotes from the Past Week:

• One day I asked Micah how my hair looked. He said, "it looks fine but I'd never date a girl with that hair style." I'm not sure if he was teasing me or serious...


• Rebecca sings the entire time I run, which is generally about an hour long. One day we were driving around in the car with James and she was singing "Charlie Brown and Snoopy" over and over again. James asked if she could possibly keep singing and never stop and I said, "you've obviously never run 4 miles with her in the jogger." The next day (Saturday) she insisted on coming with me on my run even though there were people home to watch her. Lizzie came too. I stopped to re situate Lizzie because she had squirmed out of her seat belt. I came back around the back of the jogger and said, "are you ready for me to start running again?" Rebecca said, "yes, as soon as you start running again then I will start singing again," and sure enough, she did. :)


• We had Pack Meeting this week. I was late getting there because I had to meet all the soccer referees at Parks & Rec to turn in their shirts, equipment, and time sheets. The awards were handed out at Pack Meeting before I arrived. Ethan, Ian, and Jamey had each earned their Religious Knot by doing all of the required items in their "Faith in God" books. When they were given the award, they were asked what they had to do to earn their religious knots. Because no mention was made of "Faith in God," they were confused, and Ethan said, "we tied a lot of knots." Ian agreed. Jamey just stood there. Hmmm... they sure learned a lot from earning that one!!!