What a weekend!

We had an great Thursday through Saturday that we can't wait to share. It all began Thursday evening with Michael's first basketball game of the year. He's waited anxiously for this year, you know, the big 8th grade Middle School sports year, and couldn't wait to get on the court. His team did well as we had all hoped and Michael had a great game. Of course, we think that Michael is a fabulous player, no prejudice there, but he did score several points and had lots of assits. They won by a lot (I can't remember the score, but it was big). It looks to be a great year for RMMS.

Melissa is on the student council and got to sell concessions at Michael's game. She actually enjoyed the job and will be doing it again this season. Unfortunately, as the mom ,you feel like you need to buy junk when your child is the one selling it. Everything your children do seems to cost you money!!!

Then John took off for Cross Country state in Sheridan and Melissa and I drove down to Lander for Emily's regional volleyball tournament. I'm still so excited about our volleyball team that I'm shaking just typing this. They got third place and qualified for state. The last time Rocky Mountain qualified for state was 2003, and that downer info can really stick in your head. The girls really worked hard, and with 6 seniors on the team, it all payed off. My voice is a little worse for the wear today (lots of yelling encouragement) but boy is our house one happy place to be.

Here is our awesome child going up for a kill. Yes, I was yelling "That's my girl" over and over during these games.Here is the whole team looking very excited. Emily is a team captain along with Kelsey (who is holding the trophy placard with her). This is a great moment!!And these are the 6 seniors - the girls who stuck it out all four years to get here when it really mattered most to them. To make a great weekend even better....Emily got to meet Josie for the first time. Johnathan and Becky came to watch Emily play and we got to enjoy the baby. She is growing so fast and is just adorable. My highlight was walking around to show all the people from Rocky my beautiful and precious neice. She is a keeper.

Essential History

For quite awhile John has created a blog with a collection of cool history facts. He finally told me about it. Here it is for all of you to see:

http://essentialhistory.blogspot.com/

College Fun!

I am still havin' a great time at Utah State! On my last night as a teenager, some friends and I went to the Homecoming Paint Dance on the hyper field. People were dumping paint on our heads left and right while we were dancin' around, but it was dang fun. It definitely made for some great photo opportunities, and getting it out of my hair wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. I miss my family and Cowley Wyoming tons!

Michael's mission training

Michael has never had to learn how to tie a tie. I've either gotten him zipper ties (when he was little) or he has had his sister Emily tie them once and he's never taken the knot out. Well, today he had to break down and learn the process since Emily was too busy to help and he had to get to church. I loved this teaching moment between father and son. It reaffirms to me how lucky I am to have married such a great guy and father. He loved showing Michael the ropes and made him do it a couple of times for "insurance" that he had it. They have developed such a great relationship these last couple of years that it confirms to me the cousel from our leaders that children need 2 parents, 2 parents that take active roles in their lives. I could never do this without John, because I couldn't care less about sport scores, college rankings, running in the "wild", and all those other boy things that are not interesting to me. Luckily for both of them though I do care what color of pants Michael passes the sacrament in and how long his hair gets. See...it really does take 2 parents.

Emily's Senior Pictures

A right of passage of the senior year was completed this week. Emily had her senior pictures taken. It was really fun once the stress of what to wear, what jewlery to use, and how to do her hair was decided. We decided that she needed a jacket for her fall outdoor pictures, so we went to Billings and hit Kohl's for the first time. It was great, lots of cute choices and we were early enough that we had the whole store to ourselves. The earrings took the longest to find - but that is a fun search. We then came home, laid out all her "outfits" with accessories and shoes and planned the order of the sitting. Hitting the outdoors with Kendy Richards, our photographer, we planned our backdrops and got to it.

It's always so interesting to me how nervous my girls are to have them done, how important they feel those pictures are, and how much fun they actually have doing it. Kendy makes them feel beautiful, which I agree, they are. Here are some pictures I took while Emily was working with Kendy.

This is the last picture of the day - she was a little sick of "give me a smile"!! But don't you agree - it was a beautiful day and a beautiful girl.

We Can't Forget About Marie!

My appologies for not mentioning our cat Marie. We've had her for about a year. We found her as a stray kitten near our home. She's a 50 / 50 indoor outdoor cat. She's a picky eater. She is named after Emily's middle name and the Disney cat.

Emily Rocks

Emily had a great game this Saturday when we played against Riverside. As usual the first game was not so hot for our team. We seem to need the first one to warm up, but after that Emily got a little mad and she was good. We still lost, but when Emily hit the net she got many kills and blocks that were incredible. I found myself jumping off my seat cheering each time she did something I felt was incredible. At one point, my friend next to me, said "You need to yell, 'No.13 is my daughter' real loud". Of course I didn't, but I was real excited to see her play so well. Fortunately Emily is smart enough to be happy about her successes and not dwell on the loss for hours afterwards.