June update

So, apparently I'm not going to be a prolific blogger. Oh well. Some is better than none, right?

We are getting Evan all ready for Scout camp next week. He was not excited to get the three immunizations that he required. Not that it is all behind him though I think he is getting excited. Tom is going to stay one night there at the beginning of the week. Evan will be taking Archery, woodcarving, leatherworking, archaeology and something else that I can't remember. Sounds like lots of fun!

Tom had his third sprint triathlon last week. He has done really well. I think he enjoyed the open water swim more than he expected to. He took 13th in his age division this time. I think he said there were over 700 people in this triathlon.
Next week is the 24 hour relay race from Logan to Park City. I don't know how many people are on his team but he is expecting to run three legs of the race with the distances varying between 3 and 9 miles. Here are photos from the last tri.



I have just been reminded that hi IS doing one more tri this weekend. That's a lot of racing!

I have ordered some glass so that I can replace the sidelights by our front door with stained glass panels. Some of the glass is a type called dichroic. It was actually invented for NASA. If you look at it with light behind you, you'll see a reflection and color - this one will have a pinkish to greenish reflection (it's way prettier than it sounds!) and if you look at it with the light coming through the glass it is green unless you view it at an angle - then it is purple. So, during the day we will see the green/purple inside with the reflection on the outside and at night it will be reversed. I am really excited to make the panels. The people at the stained glass studio are going to help me when I get to the insulation of the window. I'll post progress reports this summer.

Our rattie girls - Trilli and Wiggles are getting big. They are soooo close to being able to stay in the big cage all the time. If they try super hard they can still fit their heads through the bars though and whatever they can fit their heads through they can squeeze the rest of themselves through. I would sure hate for one of our cats to eat one of our rats so we are closely monitoring the situation.

I'll have to make a yard update on the next post. We did some minor re-landscaping and it looks really nice. We are glad to be done with it though.

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.