We loved spending an evening with our cousins at the Demolition Derby. Nothing better than cheering on destruction. It is kind of a sick thought, but we love it. Before the final rounds, everyone picked a car that we thought would win. Winner gets the bigger ice cream. Cami picked both of the winners (2 final rounds) and felt very privileged as she got her medium ice cream at Sub Zero.

Since my sister lives down the street from BYU, it worked out well for the kids to attend a football camp at BYU. Trenton stayed overnight in the dorms, where as Mac’s camp was a daycamp for a few hours in the mornings. The both had a great time learning from the coaches, making friends, and of course playing football. For Mac’s last day of camp, they let the kids play in the big stadium. He was so excited. He also was thrilled to have coach Bronco Mendenhall sign the back of his shirt along, with a couple of other BYU football players.

After picking up the kids from football camp, we decided to try out the “Hard Times Café” at the state prison. Here the prisoners with good behavior, get a chance to work and cook the meals. It was really just a portable building with a few tables and a small kitchen. It is open to the public, but is probably more intended for the officers on their breaks. I think they could make it more of an attraction if they wanted to. Dressing up the workers in stripes or orange jump suits, but my guess is that is not it’s purpose. Anyways, the food was really good and very reasonably priced and we can say we ate at the prison:)

ROADTRIP!

So for our family vacation this year we decided to take a trip to Utah and Nevada. In order to conserve vacation days, I decided to drive the kids to Utah and have Scott fly up to meet us. As torturous as 1500 miles across the desert with 4 kids and no DVD player may sound, overall, we really had a pleasant drive. We decided to take our time and spread the trip out over 4 days, so that we could play along the way.

Our first point of interest was the American Quarter Horse Museum in Amarillo TX.

Who knew that we created our own breed of horse here in America? And there is a whole museum about it.

Our next stop was in the tiny town of Tucumcari. You know in the movie Cars where the town on Route 66 once thrived, but became deserted when the new highway was built. Tucumcari was like that. a small town on historic Route 66 that seems like it was once a happening place, but now is mostly abandoned. More than half of the buildings were boarded up and empty. It was kind of sad in a way. But hidden in this little town is the Mesalands Dinosaur museum.

Now at the horse museum, things were a bit crazy, as my kids who had been trapped in the car all day ran from exhibit to exhibit. It made me a bit nuts. So we had a long talk about appropriate museum behavior before going to the dinosaur museum. I told them they were to act like we were on a school field trip. We were going to walk as a group to each display and read about them. The amazing thing was, they actually listened. It was a dream experience. Afterwards, the kids commented on how much fun they had because they actually learned about the stuff they saw.

This experience motivated me to stop at one more museum, even though by this time on the trip, all the kids cared about was swimming in the hotel pools. Albuquerque, NM is home to the Unser Racing Museum. Although, I am not a huge fan of car racing, it sounded quite interesting.

The kids whined and complained the whole 15 minutes off of the freeway to the museum.

And then whined and complained again because we had to leave to get back on the road, but thanked me for making them stop.

The main stop on our final day of travel was a Dr.’s office in Farmington, NM to get some antibiotics for Trenton who had an infected bug bite. I have no pictures for the visit, as it was not very exciting, but I did find this picture on Trenton’s camera.

The kids took a glove from the Dr.’s office and used it to turn Kadie’s baby into Ponyo.

Amazing what kids can come up with after four days of traveling:)

Swim team was a great experience for the kids this year. At the last swim meet I captured a few pics of some of the cute traditions their team has.

Before the meet, the team gathers around the outside edges of the pool and chants to the blaring music of “We will Rock You” and some of their own cute cheers while clapping and splashing. There are over 300 kids on the team and it is so awesome to see them  cheering together. It is one of my favorite parts of the whole meet.

Another swim team ritual is to adorn yourself with Sharpie Slogans.

My kids love this because it is the only time, they get to write on themselves.

Here are a few last pics of their meet.

It was a great season.

I spent the first couple nights a bit panicked.  I would jump anytime Scott’s leg brushed against mine, etc.  The boys set out “traps” or “lures.”  A nice cozy hot rock and an area under a heat lamp.  Trenton even put out a dead pinky mouse in hopes he would smell it and want to eat.  Since we would have to wiggle the mouse and trick Rusty into believing the mouse was alive in order to get him to eat, I didn’t think the mouse thing would work. It didn’t. As they were trying to catch the snake,  I left the door open to the garage from the house at night, just in case he truly did want freedom.  All in all, Rusty never showed up.  So I am still thinking, maybe he still did escape to the outside world some how.  Maybe those skins are old and they somehow just got brushed out from under something or maybe my leaving the garage door open worked.    Either way,  (it took a lot of self pep talk to get to this point), if Rusty is still in our house, we have peacefully coexisted for 9 – 10 months without ever seeing each other.  The chances of us casually bumping into each other are slim and I must be able to function in my home without worrying about a snake.  I am still telling my self that every day, but I do feel better than I did on Monday.

A year ago, we had a snake, Rusty. He was a nice little corn snake that stayed in his cage and put on a show every week as Trenton fed him some frozen pinky mice. One day I went to order some more mice and Trenton told me not to. After pressing him further, I found out that Rusty had escaped his tank several WEEKS before. The major freak out that occurred was the precise reason I was not told sooner. Anyways, after a massive snake hunt, we determined he must have gotten out through the garage and went to live in the wild…

Until this weekend we found this in the laundry room:

Seriously?

I am kind of freaked out right now.

The beach is about 2 hours away. Getting there seems like so much work. We debated up until about 12pm yesterday about going, but finally packed up the car and headed down there. I am so glad we did. The weather was perfect and the kids had a blast.

Back around Mother’s Day, we got a steel stamp set and pounded out some washers. We did a few with the kids names and things too.

Mac wanted to do more for his economics fair in school.

So we pounded out a bunch and added some gems like we saw here on Crap I’ve Made.

The girls then thought it would be fun to take Mac’s leftovers and sell them to help raise money for Ms. Yang. Since they thought swim team would be a good place to sell, we pounded out a bunch more that said “CROCS” (the name of their swim team) and added them to the lot. They then set to work making posters and set up at the pep rally to sell.

They sold out and are excited to send the money to Ms. Yang.

It is the last day if school and I  am just not ready for it. I am excited to have my kids home, but so sad to end a year with some really great teachers. I have really grown attached to them. I had fun making Noodlehead’s gathered clutches and Buttercupity’s key fobs to match as thank you gifts. The clutches were a bit tricky for me and I learned a lot about what I would do different next time if I decide to make more, but I LOVE the key fobs. They are so easy and quick to do. I also love this decorative stitch on my machine. It adds a nice touch.