Back to Back

The high school swimming season officially started this week, and the team certainly "dove' right in with three meets back to back.


We had a meet Thursday:

Friday:

and Saturday:

Friday and Saturday was actually one big invitational divided between the two days. Krissia always does well, but in this meet she was EXCEPTIONAL. She earned three personal records, and led her team to an amazing victory.

Mathison accompanied us all three days; by the third day, he'd had enough! We had to resort to ice cream to keep him happy:

I was able to capture this sweet picture on Saturday of DEl and Mathison cheering on Krissia's relay team:

It was a very exciting, very promising start to the swim season! Krissia was mentioned in the local paper twice this week; if you'd like to read one of the articles, click HERE.

I'll be posting about Halloween next, but I had this cute photo ready and just couldn't resist showing it now :)

CERTainly a Surprise

I sent Jefferson off to a community training last night, and this is how he looked when he returned home:


I might have been upset or scared by his appearance if I hadn't known that this "injury" was a result of playing an earthquake victim in a CERT (community emergency response team) training. Don't they do a great job making it look realistic!

Jefferson had played a victim once before during our neighborhood training and LOVED it; he did such a good job that the CERT team requested him by name for this last exercise (the coordinator lives in our ward). I'm sure that Jefferson's natural flair for the dramatic helps him to be a convincing victim :)

We Survived!

The weather forecast for the week is in the 50 to 60 degree range, so I believe it's safe to say that the days of seeing 100+ heat are behind us for another six months. After living away from the heat for so long, we were concerned about how our family would "weather" our first Dixie summer......but I think we pulled through with flying colors!

How did we do it? By spending as much time as possible in the water! Swimming pools, lakes, and rivers became some of our favorite spots to visit from June to August.

Here are some pictures I found while going through my files which chronicles some of our water adventures; I have to confess that we had so much fun together, I'm actually looking FORWARD to the return of the hot weather so we can do it all again :)

Back Seat Driver

Someone in the family has been telling me how to drive lately:



Yes, my two year old has become a back seat driver.

As I was driving past our church yesterday, Mathison piped up, "You'd better slow down Mom, there's a stop sign up ahead!"

A few minutes later, we approached a stop light and my toddler gave me this additional advice, "The light is red now - we need to wait for it to turn green before we can go."

Good grief.

Next thing I know, he'll be telling me how fast/slow I should drive!

Livin' Las Vegas

As part of the recent UEA break, we decided to take the family for an overnight trip to Vegas. It was a lot of fun!

First, we visited my sister Leesha and her family on Sunday evening. We took a tour of their new house and played at a nearby park. We had a very nice time, but I didn't have my camera and didn't take any pictures of this part :(

Afterwards, we visited the Las Vegas strip.

The first stop was the Bellagio. We went inside and viewed the fall gardens:

We saw the world's largest chocolate fountain (which our hungry teenager looked at with longing):

Of course, we also took in a couple of water shows:

Mathison was captivated by the fountains!

The next morning we swam at our condo, then loaded up for some lunch and a bit of shopping. Afterwards, we went to the Adventuredome at Circus Circus. It was perfect; there were no crowds and plenty of rides for the big and little kids alike.

DEl and I taking a small break while the kids check out the attractions:

Mathison hamming it up for the camera:

Waiting in line for the bumper cars:

Krissia can make driving a bumper car look glamorous:

Jefferson finally gets his turn behind the wheel:

Traffic jam:

There were plenty of rides for Mathison to choose from; he loved them all!

The family favorite was the roller coaster:

The girls are ready:

DEl and Jefferson looking excited for their turn:

It was a perfect little getaway - we really enjoyed ourselves. I took several photos of our activities because sadly, times like this will become fewer as our childrn continue to grow older and busier. Already, Bronson often opts to stay home due to work and school; it makes me sad that our times of going places as an entire family are drawing to a close :(

Love at First Sight

This is our 12-year-old, Jefferson:

Isn't he cute? He attends Sunrise Ridge Intermediate School. While attending a Thunderbolt class at his school three weeks ago, Jefferson fell in love.

Madly. Deeply.

The first time they touched, Jefferson knew it was a match made in heaven. He's been unable to keep his hands to himself ever since:

Yes, Jefferson is in LOVE with the classical guitar.

Although he's been playing only a short time, Jefferson has already learned 7-8 chords. He is also using his fingers to strum the strings, rather than using a pick. His teacher is quite impressed with how quickly Jefferson is picking up the technique and has already begun to send music home for him to learn.

As soon as Jefferson gets home from school, he settles down in the living room to spend some quality time with his new-found love:

I hope this "love" is here to stay :)