School Dance Festival

It's the end of the school year and time for the Dance Festival! The school didn't do one last year, so this was our first time going to one. Every grade did a great job, including the teachers!

Sierra was so excited to perform. She wanted to download her song, "Fishin' in the Dark" so that she could practice at home!

Jaxson is in a bright blue shirt with dark pants. There were so many kindergarteners, it was hard to get a good shot of him. He starts in the back, then moved up to the front. He loves music and loves to dance. I asked him the other day to show me his dance and he wouldn't tell me anything about it. He said it was a surprise!

We're happy and sad that the school year is winding down, but definitely excited for summer!

Sierra's Gymnastics Exhibition

Sierra's Gymnastics Exhibition was held on Tuesday night. It was set up with everything the same as when the boys did theirs. The girls only have four events: the floor, vault, uneven bars, and high beam.

Sierra did great at all her events and really enjoys gymnastics. The uneven bars is her favorite event. She was just accepted into All-Stars, which is an advanced group to help them prepare for the Legacy Center Team Gymnastics. Once she's old enough to try out for that, she'll actually be competing before judges. We are very proud of her and her accomplishments this year!

Jaxson's Gymnastics

On Friday night, we went to watch Jaxson perform all his routines that he has learned this year in gymnastics. It was a bit comforting to know that most little boys performed at the same level that Jaxson did, which was basically just running around and needing a lot of help from the coaches!

They had the gym all decked out super cute with a western theme and they came galloping in with cowboy hats on their heads. They had big pictures of Woody and Bullseye on the walls with balloons all over the place. Then they split the boys up into their classes so they could rotate among all the events.

He was first up on the Rings, then moved to Pommel Horse, Floor, High Bar, Parallel Bars, and finished with Vault. After they finished, they announced their names one at a time so they could climb the podium to receive their medal and treat. They gave them a small bottle of Gatorade wrapped with a giant licorice rope and a few silly bands. It was tied up with a red bandana complete with a balloon. Jaxson was so excited to get his medal! Sierra took the videos of him while I took the pictures, so I'm apologizing in advance for the shakiness of the video! The pictures turned out really dark, so I'll have to get them edited before I add them on. Enjoy...

During his second vault, he apparently decided that he had messed up and ran down to do it a third time while everyone in the audience laughed. Ooops! At least he had fun this year learning some new tricks! Great job, Jaxson!

Let's Go Racing...

On Thursday, March 3rd, we got a phone call from my brother-in-law. He had a patient who had tickets to the Nascar Race and wanted to give them to him. Since he was going out of town that weekend, he called us to see if we wanted to use them. We had mentioned before that we'd love to go to a race, and to let us know if they ever got a good deal on tickets. Since these tickets were free, we decided to make a spur of the moment trip and head to Vegas! We packed up and left on Friday after Jay got home from work. We made it to St. George and stopped to stay the night with my sister. We went on a picnic the next day to the park and picked up Jay's sister on the way. It was so nice to hang out in 70 degree weather! We headed to Vegas later in the afternoon. The kids spent the night in my sister's hot tub and went straight to bed! They were so excited to get in the hot tub and had talked about the whole way down.

Sunday morning my incredibly brave sister took our three kids, as well as her four kids, to church and Jay and I left for the race. Traffic was horrible and it took us over an hour to get there, even though my sister lives about 10 minutes from the track!

We made it time to find our seats and watch the jets from Nellis practicing their flying. They flew over the track just before the race, too!

It was so fun to hear the cars start up and the first time they came around the track was just amazing. There was a constant buzz in our ears!

It was a pretty uneventful race, but we were glad to experience it for the first time.

If we would have had more time, we definitely would have paid to go infield to the Neon Garage. The track was huge and there was so much to see and do. We had a great time and enjoyed our quick trip. The only regret was not spending enough time with our family while we were there. But, we will be back soon!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

The kids woke up on Thursday morning to a bunch of green! They had new shirts to wear to school, a bunch of green treats and other fun things. The girls had also painted our nails green on Wednesday night so we wouldn't get pinched in the morning!
I also planned a full day's menu of green!

Breakfast was green muffins, kiwi, apple juice and green eggs. Brooke wouldn't even try the eggs, even though she usually loves them!

For lunch we had green macaroni & cheese, green apples with caramel dip, and green Sunchips with kiwi strawberry Shasta.

Each of the kids came in and made their own Shamrock pretzels for dinner, complete with a sprinkling of cinnamon and green sugar. They were so yummy!

We also had green salad, pasta with pesto sauce, and a green lime drink that Jay lovingly called Leprechaun blood. The kids were a little distressed over how I obtained the blood!

The day was filled with talk of green, leprechauns, luck, and pots of gold. On Thursday morning, we woke up to exclamations of surprise coming from the girl's bedroom. Apparently Sierra had written a note to a leprechaun and set it on the floor with a piece of bread to tempt the leprechaun into coming into her room. All of this was a surprise to her parents! Fortunately, the bread was gone, but the sneaky leprechaun didn't leave any special notes or treats for her. I think our big, black leprechaun found his way into their room and ended up with a snack! Silly kids! I guess we better be on the lookout for more secret notes!

President's Day Fun!

What to do when the kids are out of school...
We had the same idea as everyone else! We wanted to use our passes to go miniature golfing at Trafalga. It was snowing when we left Lehi and since that one is outdoors, we went to the Orem location. When we got there, the line was out the door, just to get to the desk to pay! We decided to stick around anyway. After we showed our passes, we decided to go on one of the outside courses anyway, since it was sunny and slightly warm. After waiting in line again for people to finish up and return their clubs, we were off!
The kids did great this time! They actually tried to golf on every hole and patiently waited for those in front of us to finish up. (Even Brooke!) We had a lot of fun and I think we'll get tons of use out of our passes this summer!

After golfing, we drove up to Midway to see the Ice Castles! I wanted to get up there when it got dark, because they light them up at night and it looks awesome, but we got there a bit early. They were still pretty cool to see. They were as tall as any house and had tunnels through them where you could walk.

The kids loved it, even though it was quite chilly!

Looking up through one of the tunnels.

Peeking through the ice!

Being silly!

Peek-a-boo!

Bright eyes! They matched the ice.

Surrounded by icicles!

I loved the tops of this castle!

I don't think they'll be open much longer, but you can check them out on their website:

brentsicecastle.blogspot.com

Our Valentine's Date

Many years ago, we learned that it is crazy to try and go to dinner around Valentine's Day. We waited for over 2 hours once in a very crowded waiting room and vowed to never do that again! So, we decided to celebrate and take an overnight staycation at the Alaskan Inn in Ogden on Thursday, the 17th.
We finally got away after picking up the kids from school and leaving them in the capable hands of their grandparents. We decided to stop for dinner in Salt Lake and went to a restaurant that I've always wanted to try:

Dinner took us about two hours since they cook everything right at your table. I had checked the menu before we left to make sure that Jay would like it, since he tends to be a little picky. We both thought the food was great and had fun enjoying eachother's company. It was on the expensive side, but we thought the experience was fun.

After dinner, we headed up to Ogden to the Alaskan Inn. We've been there once before and thought it was awesome.

This time we stayed in the Kenai cabin which was decorated with a moose theme.

The little cabins are so cozy! We had so much fun relaxing and enjoying the peace and quiet that comes from not having any kids around!

This was our life-size companion for the night! After a huge breakfast in the morning, we headed out to Park City to do some shopping. We always have to visit Harry & David's to get some chocolate covered blueberries (YUM!) and most of the shopping was done for the kids! But it was still nice to have a little getaway and have some fun!