Well, we have been working hard this week.  Sarah says if she has to move one more piece of furniture she will DIE.  We still haven’t even quite recovered, but we are quite pleased with the results.  Even with all the work, it has been worth it.  After eleven years in our house and who knows how many years before we moved in, we have new carpet!

Isn’t it lovely?  We all think so.  We take off our shoes to squish our toes in its softness.  We lay on the floor.  I’ve seen the girls making snow angels!  The house is warmer, quieter, and LOOKS GREAT!  We are in love.

It was a lot of work, though.  (The carpet man said that some people replace their carpets every 2 or 3 years.  Do you think that is true???  Besides the monumental expense, just look at the work involved!  That’s not the path for me, I’m afraid, thank you very much!)  We had to move everything out of our front room and hallways for Thursday and then move everything out of our bedroom and closet (!!!!) for Friday, not to mention start moving things back into the front room, etc.  Benjamin’s room is still pretty full of stuff from our bedroom, but at least our bed is back and our dresser . . .

We will be getting the backroom done, too, but it will be in a different carpet.  That carpet has been ordered and we have to wait for it to come in.  I can’t wait!  (But I am glad for the recuperation time in between!  LOL!)

On Saturday, we left behind our in-process house and went up to Salt Lake City to watch Sarah in the Fun Shot contest at Energy Solutions Arena where the Jazz play!

It was very cool.  Sarah did well and competed with the other finalists.  She didn’t win but we took lots of pictures and they got free tickets to the Jazz game that night!  Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik came to watch and Grandpa Skinner.  We even got to see Uncle Todd!  That part was probably the most fun!

  There we all are in the $600 seats!  (Or something like that!)  The tickets for the game were in the upper balcony but for the Fun Shot we got to sit down where the rich people usually sit.  Fun, fun!

After the contest, we went over to the outdoor mall and got some food.  Savannah, the twins, Bethany, Benjamin, and I headed home after that while Kevin, Sarah, Mariah, Megan, and Sarah’s friend Allyson stayed at the mall and waited for the Jazz game that night.  It was a fun way to finish our busy week!

We started and ended this week with performances!  Tuesday after school was Mariah’s last week of Ukulele Club and they had a short performance for parents.  Mariah can sure play that ukulele!

She remembers those chords and we already know that she loves to sing.  It is so fun to watch her do something that she is having so much fun doing and doing so well!  I’m looking forward to hearing more and more from her and that ukulele.

On Tuesday, we had some nice weather that made us hope for spring!  It was good timing, too because Megan, Sarah, and Savannah went with the youth of the church to hike the Y!  They brought the camera but the batteries were dead.  No pictures for us!  But they had a great time!  Yay for the strength of youth!  (<—that was a funny joke, huh?) 

My mother-in-law watched the little ones for me on Thursday, and I didn’t really have any grocery shopping to do, so I contented myself with ripping out the carpet in the hallway.  I wanted to see what the wood floor underneath would look like!  It looks terrible.  Just so you know.  Still, it would look good with a good sanding and some polish – I think.  But, we had a family pow wow, and I was voted down.  So, new carpet it will be!  And thanks to my energies on Thusday, it will be pretty soon because the floor looks really terrible right now.  Heh, heh!  Nothing like a little motivation!  :)

So, on Saturday, we heard that Kevin’s brother Michael and family would be in Provo to watch his sister-in-law, Devyn Christensen play for the Utah State Aggies against the BYU women Cougars!  So, we rounded up the fans and went to watch, too.  It was great fun to see Michael and Aftyn and finally see Devyn play.  Let me tell you, she plays worthy of all the admiration from her family.  She was great to watch!

Grandpa was there at the game, too.  So we got to sit by him and then bring him home for some Bethany loving.  She is good at that, you know!

Grandpa also got to come see Savannah’s play!  Saturday was closing night, so Kevin and I and Grandpa came for the final curtain call.  Everybody did fabulous again!  It was such fun!  Savannah says that she had a great time doing the play but is kind of glad that it’s over.  It was a lot of work!  At least this week, she still had a bit of time to do this:

She’s actually reading a retelling of The Princess and the Pea while she sits in that thar tree.  Funny, huh?  I guess she hasn’t had too much of it to be tired of the story line!

What a star that Savannah girl is . . .

  

 

Way to go, Savannah!  We are so proud of you!  Bravo! (Bravisimo, Bravo! ♫ La, la, la, la, la . . .)

Can you believe that my mom came to visit me all last week and I don’t have even one picture of her??  I can’t believe it!  So, here is another picture of her at Thanksgiving time.  Isn’t she cute? She flew in to Salt Lake late Tuesday night and flew out early Saturday morning.  We got to have her with us for THREE FULL DAYS!  It was so fun.  The official reason for her visit and surely the greatest moment of the trip, was opening night for Savannah’s play!

Look at all that makeup!  Savannah hates that part!  But the rest of it she is having great fun with.  She did great and the whole cast did, too!  It was a funny play with some really fun songs.  My mom, Mariah, and I went on opening night.  Kevin, Sarah, the twins, and Mariah again went on Saturday.  Megan gets to see it at school.  We all loved it!  Way to go, Savannah!  You are our favorite star!  Look!  She can even dance in high heels!

Also while Grandma was here, she got to enjoy lots of hugs from our other diva . . .

Watch out world!

Before Grandma came, on Monday night, Cheyenne and Calianne got to perform at the Art Museum with their music class.  They got to demonstrate rhythm with some percussion instruments and do some parts in the musical puppet show.  It was a fun opportunity for them!

Benjamin continues to enjoy doing whatever his dad is doing.  I’m glad he’s teaching him right!   Can’t you just hear him, “Let me help, Dad!  Let me help!”

Just when you think the Skinners are done with basketball . . .

. . . it’s time for the Stake Men’s Baskeball Tournament!  Go Hobblecreek First Ward!!  They had a title to defend, after all.  With such an athletic, good-looking man playing in the #11 jersey, how could they lose?  Sarah, Megan, and Mariah went to cheer him on and they won!  By a whole lot!  Way to go Kevin (and team)!

After their game, Kevin stayed after to practice with Sarah and Megan for the Hoop Shot competition – which just happened to be the next day – Saturday!

 

In the Hoop Shoot, each participant gets two minutes to make as many shots as they can from designated spots on the floor.  You get more points for harder shots and you get bonus points for trying each shot once and even more bonus points for trying each shot twice.  Sarah and Megan were both finalists from Springville and they both competed Saturday in the southern Utah finals.  I am told that they both did awesome!  Sarah even . . . won!  Wow!  She’ll get a jacket that says “Hoop Shoot” on it and she’ll go on to the Western United States finals at Energy Solutions Arena in Salt Lake City.  Holy Cow!  Go Sarah! and good job, Megan!

So, while Dad was off with our basketball stars, I went with Savannah to their first dress rehearsal for Once Upon a Mattress.  Everyone was trying on their costumes for the first time.  What a lot of lords and ladies!!  It was a feast for the eyes!  I was there to help with alterations and was given four heavy dresses on which to shorten the hems and return to the school before the play begins.  I got to see the opening scenes and they’re all doing a great job.  It is going to be a fun play!

We also had some fun visits this week.  Grandma Mary stopped by on her way back from St. George and had dinner with us and stayed the night.  We all enjoyed seeing her again!

Our other visit was actually a homecoming.  After TWO MONTHS in Arizona, Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik FINALLY came home to us.  Oh, the rejoicing in the Skinner home!  They came home sick, though, so we are sad but wishing them a very speedy recovery!  If two people can be loved well again, they should be up and around in no time.  I still have to give them all the “I miss you” cards that Cali and Cheyenne wrote while they were gone . . .

Bethany continues to watch way more TV than I should allow her to, but it sure is funny when she uses a Barbie doll as a guitar and starts to sing, “I Totally Rock!” from the Bubble Guppies, or when she tells us that she can’t find her backpack because Swiper took it and then says, “That sneaky fox!”

Benjamin continues to take shaky steps and has the bruises all over his forehead to prove it!  He woke up with an awful croupy cough on Monday, but we went to the doctor Monday afternoon, and he got over it really quickly.  What a blessing.

What a blessing all these kids are!  I feel so lucky to be able to spend my days with them.  Life is good.

Well, it was our last official week of city rec basketball! Sarah’s last game was on Tuesday and I couldn’t go (sad face!), but I hear she played well and even did a cool, spin-around lay-up thing that was AWESOME! I’m sure it was. She is pretty dang awesome, and so is her coach!

It was Megan’s last game this week, too, but I forgot to take a picture of her team because I’m so used to getting the free pictures that they give to coaches! Funny, huh? Well, not really very funny to Megan . . . She did great in her game – made some great steals, did great dribbling moves, and even scored. Go Megan!

So, just because our basketball games have ended doesn’t mean basketball enthusiasm has dimmed any around our house. On Saturday we made the promised trip to the BYU Women’s basketball game at the Marriot Center!

Savannah claims she is not interested in basketball, so she got to babysit Ben and Beth. It was super nice of her and made the game more fun for me, anyway! Sarah, Megan, and Mariah then each brought a friend. What a lot of people, huh? Good thing we had free tickets from those great city rec leagues! The game was great fun! We made it up on the board TWICE!

(That is a picture of Megan up on the board, if you can’t tell. Those darn digital cameras will NOT take fast pictures, I tell you!)

Our crazy kids also went out on the floor for a chance to do the chicken dance with the other youngsters in attendance:

Fun, huh? Oh! And the basketball game was really good, too! The Lady Cougars were down the entire game until the last quarter. Then, they kicked it in, and wow! -- we had some exciting basketball! I do believe that I can safely say that a good time was had by all.

Of important note, Benjamin took his first steps on Sunday!! Hold on to your hats, you know what comes next I suppose!

And while Ben is growing up, Bethany is growing down . . . I keep finding her in the crib! (Which Ben thinks is hysterical)

And occasionally she asks to get in the highchair so she can “be the baby!” The other day she did it really well . . .

If only she would do that in the crib!