Holiday Happenings

After our 6-hour ride home from Las Vegas, we had to get spiffed up and head up to Temple Square for Morgan's choir performance. She is an alto in The Riverton Children's Choir. They had their first performance in Assembly Hall, which is a beautiful little church that sits on the grounds of the LDS Temple in Salt Lake City. The lights in the Square made a nice backdrop for our smiling girl.

We had a good time listening to Christmas music, eating cookies, and decorating our tree. It is always fun to look at all the ornaments that the kids have made and received over the years. They like to make fun of each other's preschool "works of art" and how "funny" they look in their "Baby's 1st Christmas" ornaments.

Sandy bought kits to make root beer and birch beer. Marcus and Mallory really enjoyed this process. Morgan really enjoyed drinking the finished product. They all thought that is was kind of gross that the "little yeast animals" were a necessary part of the product.


Morgan and I went to the Gateway Children's Museum on her first off-track day. Tori's (Morgan's friend pictured with her below) mom(Liz) organized the trip for moms and their off-track kids. It was really cool! The girls especially enjoyed making their own news broadcast, sending message flags back and forth on cables across the building , and playing in the water tables.


Finally, last night we attended the middle school's Winter Concert. Mallory plays the clarinet in the beginning band. The jazz band, percussion ensemble, concert band, and symphonic band also played. Everyone enjoyed the festive performance.

Las Vegas Thanksgiving 2008

We traveled to Las Vegas over Thanksgiving. Our family stayed with Terri Leitch, her husband Mark, and daughter Sarah. We cooked a delicious Thanksgiving meal. I really enjoyed visiting with my friend. We have been buddies since second grade. She is a surgical nurse for the Air Force. Last Thanksgiving she was on-call and was called in several times. This year she was was not scheduled for work and was able to go to some of the soccer games and activities with us. She was also quite helpful in locating the hidden wine stores. ;-) I am grateful to have such a wonderful life-long friend like Terri. Sarah had not seen the movie Twilight. So even though Mallory and her teammate Breanna had already seen it, they wanted to see it with Sarah. Because, as Mallory says, "It's the best movie I have ever seen in my life!" I was glad to hear that the movie lived up to the book, since she loved that too. Mark was a good sport (or maybe he just really wanted to see the movie himself ;-) ) and took Marcus and Morgan to see Madagascar 2. Everyone seemed to enjoy this one as much as the original. To the right are pics of the girls and me with Terri at our favorite breakfast place in Vegas, Blueberry Hill. Besides visiting our friends, we were in Vegas because Mallory's soccer team was playing in the Las Vegas Turkey Shoot. We had a lot of fun watching some competitive soccer and hanging out with the soccer team families. They are a great bunch and we always have a lot of laughs. Mallory's team, the Utah Soccer Alliance All-Stars, won three of their four games, and just to clarify, they only lost to the NUMBER TWO TEAM IN THE NATION, as did everyone else...those games were just plain ugly. The All-Stars played some of their best games to date. Mallory scored five goals in three games. The last two pics are of Mallory in the game and the team with Coach Karen.

Recipe Exchange

On Saturday, I hosted a recipe exchange. About 15 ladies were present. Each brought copies of three recipes and brought one of the three prepared to share. Wow, did we have an abundance of fabulous food! I made Thai Chicken Pizza. My favorite dishes were the steak sandwiches with this heavenly gorgonzola cheese sauce and the pumpkin cheesecake...yummy!
Earlier in the day, Mallory's soccer team played a scrimmage to help prepare for the upcoming tournament over Thanksgiving weekend in Las Vegas. Here are a couple of shots of Mal in action. Ruunn Mallory, ruuunnn!
Um, yeah, that's a goal. :-)
Morgan, Mallory, and Carmel...who's the cutest?
Here is a common sight at our house. This is what Algebra homework looks like...You could put Mallory in place of Marcus, but Sandy will always look the same. Doesn't it look like fun?!

Utah Football Game

Marcus and I attended our first University of Utah football game this Thursday night. Carl went along with us. We parked downtown at Energy Solutions Arena and rode the Trax train to the stadium. The train was crowded but it worked out well. The game was great. Utah beat TCU with a touchdown in the last 42 seconds, 13-10. The place was going nuts. I think Marcus really enjoyed it. Utah is now ranked 9th in the BCS. WVU just got back into the top 25 last week and they still have a chance to win the Big East and get a BCS bowl game. It would be neat if WVU played Utah. I might have to go to that one.

The mountains got slammed this week. Snowbird got 48" and opened yesterday! Brighton (my personal favorite) is opening next Wednesday. Another storm is supposed to hit the mountains Sunday and Monday. Sweet! I still need to get some equipment for the kids. Marcus needs new boots and bindings for his snowboard. Mallory has boots but needs skis and bindings. Morgan is all set with Mallory's old skis and boots. We were going to go to the Park City Ski Swap last night, but I got a call from a co-worker who said the line was one hour out in the cold just to get in, and they were charging $8 per person even for the kids. Forget that. There will be other sales.

My scooter repair is going slowly. I am a software engineer, not a mechanic. I broke a part just trying to get to the piece I need to replace. Now I start the quest to find a crankshaft oil seal for a Chinese scooter. Good thing Spring is a long time away.

The Boy

Since Marcus was at a party on Halloween, there were no pictures of him to include in the Halloween post. I thought that I would share a few pictures of his last outdoor tennis class for the season. I took these pics of him on Saturday.
He really enjoys this class. He has a great instructor, named Jason. Marcus and some other boys from South Jordan played in a couple of tournaments up in Salt Lake City at Liberty Park this past summer. He will have to go back up there for play under the bubble this winter. Saturday was beautiful, but I think we have seen our last 70 degree or tennis friendly day for...many months. :-(


Okay, this last picture has nothing to do with tennis and Marcus and Mallory will probably not like that I posted it, but it cracks me up! They were trying to see who had the longest neck...maybe I am just easily amused. ;-)

Halloween 2008

The weather on Halloween was beautiful. It did rain lightly after dark, but a little rain wasn't going to stop the trick-or-treaters! We started our evening with pumpkin carving. The girls were very serious about their designs. You can see Morgan practicing her future surgical skills...very focused. She finally looked up to flash a smile.

Mallory's friends and soccer teammates, Breanna and Melissa spent Halloween with us. You can see that they also took their pumpkin carving very seriously. I wonder if any pumpkin plants will spring up in our window wells next year? :-)

Here is a picture of the whole crew once they returned from trick-or-treating. They took a time out from candy eating to have a little chicken and potato "stoup".

Life with Morgan

Last weekend was Morgan's last Fall soccer game. Her team's name this year is the Pink Comets. She has played with this same group of girls since we moved to Utah. They are a fun group with a lot of personality! Morgan, much to my and Sandy's chagrin, LOVES to play keeper. We just don't want that sweet freckled face to catch an errant cleat...yikes! She does have quite a boot though.















Another fun part of life with Morgan is Girl Scouts. We have a combined Brownie/Junior group that is comprised of about 20 girls. When they all get together it is rather loud! Last week, the meeting was at our house. We did some Halloween crafts and activities to prepare for our big Halloween bash this week. Morgan is difficult to spot in these pics. She was so intent on her Halloween word search that she has her head down. She is at the top of the picture, on the left, with the yellow pen. You will also spot Mallory(look for the peace sign) in the background acting goofy. She was helping out by teaching the girls a few Halloween songs and assisting the younger girls with their word searches.