Matilda Jane -- Watch Out!

Gotta love it when 4-year-olds dress themselves! Here's the latest in the Paisley Sage winter collection!

Thanks for bringing your lovely model over, Janae!

Keep Swimming...Just Keep Swimming

Yesterday, I went on a fun-filled field trip with the 3rd graders to the Living Planet Aqaurium. I was assigned to be in charge of a group of boys that consisted of Alex and his best friend Evan. It was a piece of cake to be in charge of those two, and let me tell you, I've had some horrendous field trip experiences in all my years of field trip attendance. There was this one time when I went on a field trip with Nate when we lived in Arizona. I was in charge of a rather unruly bunch....not Nate, but some of the other boys. Wowie. Wow. Wow. About an hour into the field trip, I started getting a migraine that lasted throughout the rest of the day. On the way home on the bus, I was certain I was going to lose my lunch because my head hurt so much. But anyway....

Yesterday's field trip was not nearly that stressful. I came away headache-free and even got to shoot Nemo. I know, I know, fish are friends, not food....I only shot him with my camera. Really, though, is there anything tastier than grilled fish...?

Okay, now I'm hungry.

Got the Pointe?

Saturday was a big day for Mallory and her cousin Corinne, who have been taking ballet together since they were preschoolers. They were to be fitted for pointe shoes! Jan and I showed up with our girls at the dancewear store, giddy with anticipation. Well, maybe not giddy, but excited, nonetheless. Well, at least some of us were. Corinne was thrilled. Jan and I were pleasant. Mallory....well, not so much. She's had a love/hate relationship (mostly hate) with ballet lately, but being the mean mom that I am, I won't let her quit. I keep hoping she will get past this attitude because it hasn't always been that way. I was all excited to take fabulous pictures to remember this momentous occasion of putting on the pointe shoes for the first time.

Luckily, all you can see are Mallory's feet because she was one unhappy girl and had a big scowl on her face the entire time. GRRRR. There really wasn't a lot of room in this little dancewear store to take pictures, either. Neverthless, I dutifully recorded the images for posterity. By the way, the first three pictures are Mallory...the last one is Corinne.

Mallory seemed excited when she first found out she and the others in her dance class were going to be able to get pointe shoes. Saturday morning, however, that excitement was lost somewhere on the way to Pat's Dancewear. And to top things off, they didn't have the correct sizes for Mallory and Corinne so they had to order them. Bummer.

Oh, and by the way, Jan and I again threatened our girls with the prospect that WE are going to sign up for adult ballet. We were eying the leotards while we were at the store. When Jan pointed out one she liked, Corinne said, "Don't even joke about that, Mom."

Makes us long for the days when our kids thought we were cool!

The View From The Back

So, what do I do to amuse myself while I'm at a track meet waiting for Parker's turn to run? I take pictures of the back of people's shirts, of course. You can find all kinds of great humor and inspiration doing that.

And other benefit....when I take pictures of people's backs, they don't know I'm doing it, so they don't give me that "Get that camera outta my face, lady," look. :)

Just a Piece of Clay

Every year, the 3rd grade puts on a production using marionettes they make themselves. Alex's teacher invited parents to come today to help the kids make their marionettes. Of course, I brought my camera. Alex loved forming the clay for the head, hands and body of his marionette. His marionette is going to be Wilbur Wright of Wright Brothers fame. I love the boots that Alex made...check out those laces.



Next week, the parents return to help paint! So stay tuned for the next step in the marionette-building process.

Discovery

We had a day off school yesterday, so I took Mallory and Alex to the Discovery Gateway -- the children's museum. We had a great time. It was a really fun way to spend our free day!

Running in Cougartown

Parker and I hopped in the car early Saturday morning to head to Provo so he could compete in the BYU High School Invitational Indoor Track Meet. This was his first race in a few months. He suffered a stress fracture in his foot at the end of cross country season in the fall. He didn't run at all in December, but has been training the past few weeks.

He competed in the mile on Saturday and finished with a time of 5:10. He went into the race hoping he would get closer to 5:00, but was still pretty pleased with his time.

Here are a few shots. Lighting at an indoor track is not the best for photography. But I captured the moment, right? :)

Warming up with his teammate.

Lacing up his racing flats. Cool shoes, huh?

Attaching his official racing number.

During the race.

Taking a look at his split times after the race. His initial reaction shows he wasn't really too pleased with what he saw. But later, he decided he got a pretty good time considering he hadn't raced in a while. I think he did great. I always tell him he can run almost twice as fast as me. I don't really think that's any consolation to him, however. ;)

Rocket Science

Last night was our Cub Scout Space Derby. Alex and two of the other boys in my Wolf den tied for first place, scoring the most points in the three heats we had. Alex and Derek had a lot of fun last weekend making the rocket together. For those of you not familiar with a Cub Scout Space Derby, you wind up the propeller, which is attached to rubber bands, and then the rockets zoom across a big fishing-line-type-thingy. (How's that for a technical explanation?) Four rockets can go at a time. It was pretty fun to watch. Alex also earned his Wolf badge last night, so it was a big night for us.