My Roller Coaster Week

This has been an amazingly wonderful and incredibly awful week, and I'm glad it's over!

My week started on a really good note. Last Friday, Karen had her baby! He was 8 lb 10oz and has reddish brown hair. They named him Liam, and other than sleepless nights, they are all doing well. Liam is absolutely adorable and very sweet! Good job Karen and Rob!

Right after we saw him at the hospital, we headed to Boise for Ellie's baptism! It is so exciting to have another 8 year old in the family! 8 is great, right Ellie?! Unfortunately I don't have a single baptism picture, so here's a picture of Ellie and Emma at Emma's baptism. Cute girls! Congratulations, Ellie!

While we were getting ready for the baptism, I went looking for Maren and found a scene of intense drama! She had tried using Katherine's round brush to blowdry her hair and got it stuck---really stuck! She had tried to get it out herself and managed to work it in tight two inches from her scalp! I tried calming her down and removing the brush but both seemed impossible, so I called in the expert---Grandma!We slathered conditioner in her hair, but it was still stuck! Finally, I used scissors to cut all of the bristle nubs off. Still, it took AT LEAST a half of an hour to work her hair out! I guess I wasn't much help because I kept laughing (it was SO funny!) and I reminded her that she had said she wanted a haircut! Fortunately, only one little clump was lost (I got a little too close with the scissors when I was cutting the brush) and her beautiful red hair is still there! Hurray for Grandma!

The major drama of the week, though, was when we got home from Boise and couldn't find our cat, Max. We were worried, but we kept hoping and praying. The next day, Del called the animal shelter and they said they had a few cats that fit his description (huge, fluffy, no tail). Unfortunately, Max had been hit by a car a couple of blocks from home. We were devastated and had a very teary funeral that night with a eulogy written by Emma and a little grave marker she bought at the dollar store that says "Peace".

Here's Max with Millie, who mostly despised him, but occasionally tolerated him. He adored her and followed her everywhere. Millie is a normal-sized cat and he was huge compared to her, but she picked on him all the time. The kids called him their Cabbit because they were sure he was a cross between a cat and a rabbit.I don't think any cat has ever been so loved or fought over! Everybody loved to hold him because he was so snuggly and passive! He was a great cat and we will miss him a lot! Emma has already claimed the right to have him in heaven. She was like his little Mommy. He loved it when she held him like a baby and he'd purr and purr when she would kiss him. He was just sweet.

The week ended on a positive note. I had been begging, threatening, cajoling and bribing Devin to ask a girl to the Senior Prom, but it was going nowhere. I just wanted him to go and have fun. I loved dating in high school, and I think he would regret missing out on his Prom. Finally, I involved peer pressure, and his friend, Andrew Bringhurst, who is extremely social and outgoing, took over. He persuaded him to double with him and drove him to the store to get balloons. The next day a balloon bouquet was delivered to Justina Schmidt in 5th hour with messages inside inviting her to Prom. This is how she answered:

Her teacher let her leave class early the next day with a few other girls and they decorated his car. Devin thought it was fun and he enjoyed eating the honeycomb cereal off the window. Yuck! So now Devin is going to the

in a few weeks! Hurray! We ended on a very good note!

Chris is 16!

Happy 16th Birthday to a wonderful son that we love very much! Chris, you're a terrific kid and we're so glad you're in our family!

Chris can be quiet and hard to read, so here are some things I can tell you about him:

Chris has a quirky sense of humor that sometimes gets him into trouble and sometimes gets him out of trouble, mostly depending on my mood at the moment. There have been many times that his humor has diffused a sticky situation and gotten us all laughing. I won't mention the times his attempts to be funny fail and cause the sticky situations in the first place! :)

Chris has a kind heart and is a good brother. He loves to tease his sisters, but when they need help, he can be serious and sensitive (which never fails to surprise and please his mother).

Chris loves to read, play games and ride his bike. He just finished Driver's Training, and he's really excited to get his license. It takes six months of driving with a parent, so I have lots of fun times ahead for me!

Chris can also date, now and he's looking forward to it, although he's also nervous about it.

Chris celebrated his birthday in Boise with two of his friends who have moved away, Isaac and Jacob Miller, Devin, John and John's cousin. They went to see Avatar at their favorite theater which has lots of great snacks, and then to McDonalds for more junk food! There is never enough unhealthy junk food to fill a teenage boy's life! Normally, we try for some balance, but it was a birthday!

Chris has been a really great kid for 16 years! That's definitely something to celebrate!

Mr. Roboto Plays Soccer

We just spent an exciting weekend in Salt Lake City watching robots play soccer! How fun is that?! Devin's team competed at the First Robotics Regional Competition and did very well!

His team, Haywire Robotics, is made up of students from Century, Pocatello and Highland High Schools. They have to be recommended by a teacher, complete an application and resume' and then be selected from a group of applicants to represent Pocatello. It was pretty exciting that Devin was asked to be on the team as a computer specialist, and he loved every minute of it.

Devin got to work with a great group of kids and wonderful mentors, led by Mark Edwards, a retired teacher who coaches them each year. Teams from all over the world got together on January 5 to see a broadcast that showed what the robotics challenge would be this year. Since then, they have been working nonstop to design, program and build a robot that would competitive. Devin was at Haywire from 5-10 pm almost every night of the week, usually with just one night off. It was a serious project and hopes were high, since they were on a winning alliance last year and went to the national competition.
They really had a lot of fun working together, as you can see!


The competition was held in the Huntsman Center in SLC. The playing field had a scoring side for each team and a center section for a robot to retrieve balls to shoot to the teammates. Each of the 33 teams was randomly partnered with different alliances during the seeding rounds. Later, the 8 teams whose alliances had scored the most points overall were allowed to choose final alliances according to which robots had skills they felt were compatible with theirs. Our team, 1569, ended up being in an alliance with the team from Idaho Falls, the Ammoknights (they're in the city of Ammon) and one from Woods Cross, Utah.Here's our robot, named Conestoga, about to kick a ball to try to score. We did pretty well with our shooting and steering and scored quite a few points during the competition. The alliance we were on made it to the semifinals, but got knocked out in the final round by a team from California, the Holy Cows. They were ranked number one, but they started having a few problems with their robot. We wished they had had problems before knocking us out of the finals! The winning alliance had a Boise team on it, so we were really excited to have an Idaho winner again this year. There were 7 states represented at our regional competition. Our robot won an award for using innovative controls. There was only one other robot in the competition that had a similar type of control mechanism.The best thing about our team is that they had a great time and made sure everyone else did, too. They were on the floor for the entire time both days, starting dances, waves and anything else to get people involved. The other teams would join in and help Haywire cheer whatever teams happened to be playing.

Devin even got involved and did the Macarena, the YMCA and some line dancing. He had a great time. One of the judges told our team that they had made the competition so fun for everyone there. Because of this, our team won the Team Spirit Award, too! They were so excited! There were also 2 students out of hundreds who won a leadership award, and one was from our team! The Haywire cheering was deafening!

This was such a fabulous experience! There is a $12 million scholarship fund for competitors each year, so there are lots of good reasons why it's a great competition. Devin had an incredible time and we had lots of fun watching him!

Forever Young!

What a sport Del is! He wore this hideous mullet wig just for me and my 80's birthday party (for the pictures, anyway. After that he ripped it off his head and threw it in the corner like a dead rat!) Just for the record, Del never had a mullet---just hair parted down the middle and feathered back. :) Also for the record, I always had better taste than this sweet outfit, too. Sure, I occasionally wore Swatch watches on my ankles and loved stirrup pants even though they were always too short (and only made it to my calves), but I'm sure I would never have worn this beauty!
Although I did wear this one. Lovely, huh. What can I say? It was shortly after this that I began to develop some taste. We had a great time watching cheesy 80's music videos, reliving great memories, and making fun of our fashions. For instance:
I had forgotten that we used to wear two pairs of socks and alternate them. Weren't we cute?!
Steve works with me in the congressional offices. Doesn't he look professional in his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt? Sherry and Jeremy demonstrated "the sway" to Tears for Fears. Swaying was crucial for every awkward teenage boy who didn't know how to dance to fast songs.
Michelle really wanted to "Get Physical" but we were able to restrain her. We couldn't restrain everyone else from doing the Flashdance running thing, though. Great outfit!
Thanks everybody! It was so fun dressing up in tacky 80's clothes again and feeling young! We'll have to do the 90's next. What would that be? Grunge? At least we were colorful in the 80's!

I'm 40!

I found this great card for my mom's birthday last year and wrote her a message on a post-it note so she could reuse the card. It was way too funny to only send once! Well, now it's my turn to get the card, and on my 40th birthday, too! Ouch!

Shouldn't I feel a little different? My joints aren't creaking, my chest didn't just sag past my belly button, and I'm not calling teenagers whippersnappers. I thought I was supposed to feel old at 40, but this isn't too bad!

Freude, Shoner Gotterfunken...zzzzzzz

Well, the concert is over, but I keep singing the fugue all night in my dreams! I wake up with Ode to Joy running through my brain! I love Beethoven! He was truly a genius!

This was definitely one of the greatest accomplishments in my life! My friend Farhana, who is also in the choir, said that for her it ranks right up there with giving birth, but I'm not willing to go quite that far! It was an incredible feeling, though, to be a part of something so wonderful, and it was a lot less painful than having a baby!

The performance was a huge success! It was a completely sold out show, and since the Stephen's Performing Arts Center holds about 1300 people that's pretty impressive! We performed the next night in Idaho Falls and that was pretty full, too, so the attendance was great!

I am on the far right, in front of the timpani, next to my friend Gwen Lloyd.

When we went to practice yesterday, Dr. Anderson told us that Kristine Ciesinski, the professional soprano who was originally scheduled to sing with us, was sitting in the audience that night. She told him after the show that she has performed as a soloist in Ode to Joy all over Europe and the United States and ours is the best choir she has ever heard perform it! I've had SO many people tell me how much they loved it! It's been fun hearing the reviews.

My own family's reviews were a little less glowing, but they all said they loved the part with the choir singing. The kids weren't as thrilled with the 2 hours of symphony music before our 20 minutes of singing! Here are Maren, Megan, Ellie, and Emma right before it started. Devin and Chris found the third movement very relaxing and confessed to sleeping a little during the music, but they say they woke up during the choral ending. I believe them because nobody could sleep through 150 voices singing fortissimo, not to mention the booming timpani! My friend, Gwen, had her cell phone with her on the stage and her daughter texted her immediately after we finished and said that the entire floor was shaking! It was awesome! I'm so glad I had the opportunity to do this, and I'm even more proud that I stuck with it even when it was scary (the tryout) and hard to learn (the entire piece)! Yeah me!

Genius!

I have now heard (and been a part of) Beethoven's 9th Symphony 4 times (2 full rehearsals and 2 performances) and every time I'm more impressed by Beethoven's genius! It is so amazing to me that someone can create music like that, so complex, with themes and parts weaving in and out. It's just incredible! The most amazing thing is that he was deaf when he wrote and helped conduct it. At the end of his performance, the audience was cheering wildly but he had lost his place in the music and was still conducting an orchestra that had stopped playing. One of the soloists had to turn him around so he could see the crowd, who waved handkerchiefs and hats so he could see their appreciation. He wrote that piece through his memory of the sounds, and once it was finished, he never really heard it. How sad but how amazing!