Update!

Today I am officially the mother of a teenager! Yes, Evan is 13 today. He promises to not ever hate me. Check in next year for a progress report...


Last week Tom broke his finger. Again. Yes, the same one but in a different location. He was shutting the tailgate on the truck when it bounced back and hit his hand. All of the normal fingers bent and weren't hurt but the finger that was smashed last year doesn't actually bend very well. It got pushed down so hard that the tendon attached to the bone actually pulled a chunk of bone off. Ouch! No surgery for this, the Dr. said the crack would eventually fill in. Does this stop Tom from getting ready to participate in another sprint triathlon? No. Does it stop him from training for a 24 hour relay race? Nope.


We just got back from Arizona. While we were there we had lots and lots of fun. Here are some of the highlights...
We stayed on a little farm and got to feed random veggie crap to some goats every day. They were garbage disposals! Kaelin also got to try milking one. It didn't work out too well but as an added bonus the lady who was milking the goat shot Kaelin in the arm with some milk. Nice shot!

We went through a Cactus Forest. Pretty cool actually. Lots and lots of cactus as far as the eye could see. Glad I wasn't an Arizona pioneer!
Here is a shot of me and Kaelin waiting for the event that we were actually there to see....
The fantastic and wonderful graduation of Jason! He was awarded his PhD in Spanish and is all set to start a fantastic job this fall that seemed to have been created just for him. Major woo hoos for Jason! And a huge sigh of relief for the whole family who can now settle into a more normal life. Well, as normal a life as anyone like Jason could have... ;) (please don't mock the farmer tan!)

The Recital

The kids did really well at their recital on Saturday. They didn't seem too nervous and did a great job playing their pieces.

More pictures

Here is a picture of the stained glass window I made at Holdman Studios where I am volunteering. Holdman Studios makes a lot of windows for various temples and right now I have been able to help with windows for the Hawaii Temple. There is a glass blowing studio there too and they are working on a Chihuly-type chandelier that will use 1500 pounds of glass. The inner frame is made of welded re-bar.
Sorry - gratuitous cat in photo.


I had to throw in a picture of the cats because you can never have enough pictures of cats, right? I like how Delilah is looking right at me but Buster refuses to acknowledge my existance.
Then we've got pictures of flowers with snow. These were taken yesterday when we got tons of rain that suddenly changed to snow.

Spring Bilizzard

We woke up to find many inches of snow today. It apparently was blowing sideways because it coated the south side of everything. There were drifts that were up to my knee and most other places had 4 to 6 inches. I went out to take some cool pictures in the snow, and here they are!
The first is a cluster of flowers on the Yoshina cherry tree, the second is the same tree looking up through the branches.


This is my crabapple tree.

Look at the snow only stuck on the south side of the branches of the peach tree.

Weekend fun...

Here are Tom's and my accomplishments this weekend.

I got all 12 of these boxes of cereal for 74 cents each at Albies! Each box was $2.07. If you bought 5 boxes you'd get $5 off. I had six $1 off coupons. So the math looks like this: $24.84 minus 10 = $14.84 minus $6 = $8.84 divided by 12 = 74 cents a box. Woo hooo!


Possibly even more impressive than that was Tom's first Sprint Triathlon on Saturday. He swam 350 meters, biked 12 miles and ran for 6.1 miles. He did it in about an hour and 15 minutes. He hasn't gotten his official time yet, but it is pretty dang close to 1:15. The first picture is of Tom and his buddy Pat re-living the details of the race. The second shot is just a couple of minutes after Tom finished. Pat had finished a few minutes before Tom.
I had gone over to the rec center to try to see Tom during the race. About two minutes after I got there I heard the announcement that #1611 had finished and I knew that was Tom's #. I ran over there but had missed the finish line photo. I was pretty glad to have gotten there in time though! Double - nay, triple woo hoo! for Tom!

Tons of giveaways to enter...

This is a link to a blog page that lists lots and lots of giveaway drawings.
http://islandlife808.com/islandreview/hotlinks/hot-links-of-the-week-17/

They do it every Wednesday if that is the sort of thing you are interested in.

Coupon...

If you are a DISH Network customer you can print this coupon twice to get rebates for two pay per view movies.
http://www.dishnetwork.com/freemovie/