Monday was Cali and Chey's last basketball game for Springville Rec.  They had great fun and they won!  They've had good and bad games with that team but they learned a lot and loved having their dad be the coach. What lucky girls!

 



That night we were joined by a new member of our family (at least for a week)!  Kevin's brother, Matt and wife Lynsey, left for Hawaii and left us their baby!  What a great deal!  We have loved having 18-mos-old, Quincy, around.  She is sweet and friendly and a real delight.  My girls all love totting her around places and Benjamin is getting a crash course in toddlers.  He brought me some of his legos and told me with supreme disgust, "She put these in her mouth!" and then proceeded to wash them carefully off in the sink.  I am still amused by it.  It wasn't that long ago that he was putting everything in his mouth, . . . or was it?

What Ben built before Quincy broke it and put pieces in her mouth! Ha ha!

 

Mariah has been busy with the Varsity basketball team all week.  This was the last week of the state tournament.  As a member of the JV team, Mariah continued to practice with the team and sat on the bench for the games.  It was quite a ride, too, as they won on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and qualified for the championship game Saturday morning!  The Friday semi-final game was the most exciting as they started the game 0-15, but came back to win it!  They lost Saturday but that still puts them at 2^nd place in the state and as their bus drove back through town, the police and fire trucks escorted them down Main Street with sirens blaring.  So exciting, huh?  Sarah and Megan were even downtown having just got off work and got to see it and wave maniacally to Mariah through the bus window!  It was a fun week to be a SHS Red Devil.
 

 

 

Kevin went to all the games!

 

 

 

Sarah went to see the high school production of Much Ado About Nothing on Friday with Alyson.  She complained that it was in Shakespearan and she couldn’t understand a word of it!  Why don’t they just say what they mean?!  She promised Megan to go with her Saturday night, too, and had a good time just watching her friends again.  They both had fun!  It was a long day for them as they worked in the morning, had the cultural celebration practice for 2.5 hours in the afternoon, and then went to the play that night.  It was a good day, though!  They work so hard during the week.  Especially Megan with her hard classes.

Saturday was also Cali and Chey’s last day of their Bantam tournament.  They lost by just four points!  They had a great season, though and will keep playing during March League.  That night Cali came home and picked up her book again.  She had to do dishes that night, too, which is hard when you’re close to the end of Harry Potter Book 5!  She managed, though.

 

On Monday, we finally got a chance to take our whole family to see the Provo City Center Temple Open House (Savannah was there in spirit!).  We even went out to eat lunch beforehand at Chuck a Rama.  The kids loved it as we don't usually spend the money to take everyone to a restaurant.  We're not sure why, but at the temple, the ticket holder line snaked up and down and throughout the whole parking garage!  So, we waited in line for an hour and twenty minutes before we got to the video (which was really good!).  We entertained ourselves while in line and had a good time, anyway!  The temple is really beautiful with a pioneer theme.  I loved it!

Megan is getting squashed!

 

 

This is the entrance from the parking garage.  It's pretty!

 

Tuesday was Mariah's last basketball games!  She will continue to practice with the Varsity until they're all the way through the State tournament, but the Sophomore and JV games wrapped up on Tuesday.  I didn't get to see the JV game, but Kevin said when they put Mariah in, she turned the game around and they ended up winning!  Go Mariah!  Sarah had to work on Tuesday, but the rest of us all went to cheer Mariah on at the Sophomore game.  She is our favorite player!

 

Also on Tuesday, Cali and Chey had their science fair!  The science fair was optional this year so only six projects got completed in the whole 6th grade.  Still, Chey and Cali really wanted to do it and they did it mostly on their own, so it was fun for us all!  They made cookies and split the batch, putting baking powder in half and baking soda in the other half.  We got to eat all their cookies when they were done so it was even more fun!  Seriously, though, they did a great job!

Wednesday, Cali and Chey and Kevin had a basketball game at 7:30, and Sarah, Megan, Mariah, and I had practice for the temple's cultural celebration at 7:00.  So, Beth and Ben came to the church with us.  I did some homework with Bethany in the Relief Society room, but mostly they had a great time chasing each other around the gym.

Thursday Cali and Chey had basketball practice in the afternoon, as did Mariah.  Sarah and Megan worked.  Bethany looked particularly adorable while practicing piano before school.

Friday I went to the first day of the Build Your Blog Conference in Salt Lake City.  (The kids were like, "You're going to a conference AGAIN?!" Poor souls.)  I went on Saturday, too, and was home by 4:30 both days.  I learned a lot about the very confusing blogging world and even figured some things out!  My impression is, even successful bloggers aren't completely sure why things work, so they keep doing everything possible just in case. The social media world is crazy.

Sarah went to the USU Eastern campus in Price for an overnight "get to know us" event.  She reports having a terrific time, BUT she thinks a bigger campus would be more her thing.  She was accepted to BYU-Idaho, too, this week, which means she is considering Utah State, BYU-Idaho, or UVU.  It's a hard decision which she's thinking about very carefully.

Kevin worked on this old house on Saturday and fixed our leaky bath faucet and a leak in our toilet, too.  What a handy man!  The good news is that Ben was fascinated by the whole process, and now that he's been playing Mario, he thinks becoming a plumber would be awesome!

 

Ben was sick this week.  He woke up with a little cough Sunday morning and came into our room early Monday morning unable to breathe!  Which inevitably led to the wrapping-up-in-blankets and sitting-in-the-cold-on-the-porch trick.  Kevin got the humidifier set up and we made Ben a tent.  He could breathe fine with it, but he did need to sleep in it for the next three nights.  He ran a fever for 2 1/2 days, too.  Needless to say, he missed school.  In fact, he didn't go at all last week!  He even missed his Valentine party!  He is finally feeling better and (after much coaxing) he even came to church today.

Bethany had her school Valentine party on Wednesday.  They went on a field trip in the morning to see the play Peter Pan!  So it was all-day fun!  She is a good little student and does homework with me every night.  On Tuesday night, her school celebrated Chinese New Year and she and her dad went together!

Calianne and Cheyenne made elaborate Valentine boxes for their Valentine party.  They were so excited about it.  Then Calianne got sick Wednesday afternoon and missed school Thursday and Friday and missed the school party!  So sad!  Before she got sick, though, Cali and Chey played in basketball games on Monday and Wednesday and their dad coached!

Mariah had no game on Tuesday this week but played in games on Friday.  She played great.  Kevin and I went to watch her 7:00 game as part of our Friday night date (as we've been doing a lot lately)!  It was fun!  Next week is her last game!  She loves it so much and doesn't want it to end.

Megan worked Monday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday!  She also got to participate in a big FCCLA shindig at BYU during school hours on Thursday.  She had to recycle or repurpose items into a new item.  She took old jeans and old curtains (some of you may recognize these!) and made a skirt.  It turned out super cute and she even got a ribbon!

 

Sarah worked Monday, Friday, and Saturday.  She and the other Sterling Scholars from SHS got driven out to Westlake on Tuesday for their interviews.  Sarah had a great time.  Even though she didn't progress to the next round, she's had a great experience and it's been a fun ride!  We had a fun time helping her practice, too!  She also started her internship for this semester which is helping in a junior high math class.  She misses her kindergarteners!  But she gets to see Mariah every now and then and even graded one of her tests.  That's pretty cool.

I attended Life the Universe and Everything (LTUE) Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in Provo.  It's a writing conference for Science Fiction and Fantasy writers.  We happen to have a pretty awesome sampling of authors in these genres in Utah.  Among the more prestigious of the panelists to whom I listened this week were:  Brandon Sanderson, Kevin Anderson, Shannon Hale, and Dan Wells.  It was so cool to get to know the people behind some of my favorite books!  They were all super-personable and fun.  But seriously, the amount of work that goes into being an author is mind-blowing and disheartening.  After three full days of classes I wonder, "Why was it I wanted to be an author in the first place?"  Which makes me laugh.  I don't think conferences are supposed to have that kind of effect on you!  Anyway, I did have a great time.

Shannon Hale doing the keynote.

Sarah found out this week that she is a semi-finalist for our region's Sterling Scholar winner!  That means she gets to go to the interviews!  Ok.  She's not really that excited to have to go get interviewed, but it is an honor.  Maybe mom and dad are more excited than she is!  She also got the news that she was accepted at Utah State.  There are a lot of great things happening in her life!

Sarah's Sterling Scholar Picture

Megan hates school and hates her life and wants to go live in a hole.  So, this week was much the same as others.  She made a super-cute, animated video in her Digital Media class about an evil mug of cocoa.  It was terrifically funny!  She also continues to knock herself out studying and getting straight A's and practicing for the upcoming track season.  We love her to bits and are so glad she doesn't live in a hole.

Mariah had an epic day this week!  She got to start in the Sophomore game, the JV game, AND the Varsity game all on the same day!  That probably won't ever happen again in her whole life.  She doesn't usually even play in the Varsity game, but the coach asked everyone to shoot on their own last Saturday.  When she asked who had actually done the practice, only five raised their hands.  To teach a lesson, she let those five start the Varsity game and sat all her usual starters!  She only played two minutes of the Varsity game but we were all there to cheer her on!  That was Tuesday, she had games again Friday.  In Friday's last game, they won in the last twenty seconds of the game when the ball was stolen and passed to Mariah for the winning lay-up!  Such good times!

Cheyenne and Calianne have been loving their basketball this week, too.  They only had two games and one practice this week but they loved all of it.  Cheyenne had to have four baby teeth pulled this week that were getting in the way of her orthodontist's grand plan.  None of the roots had dissolved, so they left gaping holes in their wake.  Ouch!  She stayed home from school but then joined her activity days group (including Calianne) to tour the temple and then rush over for an afternoon basketball game!  What a trooper!

Bethany had dance and piano and school and played with her sisters and Ben and her friends.  She also loves to talk to her teenage-sister's friends whenever any come to the house.  She is quite the social butterfly.  She went with Cali and Chey sledding on Saturday when we had a sunny day after all the snow fell this week!  She had fun with her sisters.

Benjamin had a cavity that got filled this week.  They said he did well!  yay!  He got a balloon so he was happy.  I babysat twice this week and he loved having extra friends around for that.  He put his train track all back together with some help from a friend.  I was impressed!  He also had his 100th day of school and made this cute hat!

Kevin left on Thursday for Arizona where he is being trained to teach the workshops he attended last year.  We won't see him until tonight and we can't wait to have him back!  He will probably be doing this four times a year from now on.  It's a great opportunity and we will continue to be happy each time he returns to us!

I worked seventeen paid hours this week!  All from home!  I'm so impressed I managed to fit so much in.  I won't usually work that many hours, but the first week of the month is always time-consuming in accounting.  I'm glad I could do it.