Hyundai, corn, and wine

The Hooning Family get togethers are always a lot of fun....and some fun conversations take place...I don't remember them all, but at one point Robin said, "I wish I was recording this" since I guess we all say ODD things. We were talking about Hyundai cars. I pronounce it "Hi-un-DIE", Dad says "Hun-DIE" and William, over and over again, said that it is "Hun-Day, like Sunday". Hunday, like Sunday...Hunday like Sunday. Robin, snickering the whole time, says, stop everyone, William is correct, well, almost...and she says it the correct way...it had some kind of different sound, but very similar to what William was saying. Quite the conversation....hard to describe, I guess you had to be there. (Also, they were talking about Audi's (OW-D) and the correct way to say it and Scott piped in with "It's pronounced "ODD-Y") WRONG!

The next funny thing was that Robin was in the kitchen preparing all the food. My dad was doing things like setting the table and getting everything out and ready for the meal. He told me that I was the assistant cook. So I went into the kitchen. Robin had everything on schedule, going great. So I was handed the corn. That was my job....I had to prepare THE CORN. I was such a help!

And possibly the funniest conversation took place during dinner. Have you ever heard of KJ wine? Seriously, I want comments on this one....Is KJ wine a special treat?

Well, my dad, who drinks wine tells David, my brother, to enjoy the wine because it is Kendall Jackson and they ONLY make top quality, high end, the ultimate in wine. David says, "Yeah, it's good". "smells sweet" "not bitter" I cant remember exactly all the funny things he was saying, but just imagine him pretending to be a top win connoisseur, doing a wine taste testing. BUT...then he makes the FATAL mistake of telling my dad that KJ makes a mass produced cheaper bottle of wine. That REALLY upset my dad, you could see the steam coming out of his ears.....and the discussion went on....David saying, yeah, they have another label, dad saying NO THEY DONT. And ending with my dad stating that it doesn't matter anyway, anymore, because David was never getting anymore KJ. haha.

(I think it was another conversation that you had to be there....but believe me that it was funny.)

Thanksgiving 09

William graduated to the GROWN UPS TABLE in 2009. It was a monumental occasion.

Someday Bradley and Andrew will get there (maybe).

Hey, they got to eat dessert at the grown-ups table (on SUPER fancy, plastic, disposable, recyclable, reusable plates).

Here's how Robin looked most of the night.

Philip, Andrew, and Bradley reading flash cards.

The cousins....haha...look closely at William and then Philip.

The group shot.

Day 3

Here are some pictures of William today...day 3 after his surgery....he's doing fine....just a little swelling on the bottom right side.....he should have iced it the first day.....the main reason these pictures are so funny is (not the Guymon family picture in the background) that it HURTS him to SMILE....hahahaha

Miss this Girl

Melanee finally sent me ONE picture from Tamara's dad's camera...here it is.

I was thinking about Melanee today when I looked at my eyebrows and saw that they needed plucking (big time)......I thought about asking William to pluck the stray ones, but quickly realized that I didn't want a bloody face.....but if Mel were here, I could have asked her, she would have helped me. (I also keep finding gray hairs....if she were here, she would have pulled them out WITHOUT ME EVEN HAVING TO ASK!)

feeling better

William left to go to his friend's house...so he must be feeling fine.....he said that it just hurts to SMILE....he's at a GIRL'S house....hope he's not smiling TOO MUCH!

David after the Dentist

watch this if you have never seen it before!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txqiwrbYGrs

no more WISDOM

*teeth, that is!

(Ann, NO COMMENTS about the crooked picture...I have little boys who play basketball and football in the house.)

This morning William had all 4 of his wisdom teeth surgically removed. The nurse (I never got to talk to the surgeon, I never even SAW him) said that only one of the teeth was difficult to extract. William asked for the teeth, I could tell which one was the stubborn one because it was broken into 4 pieces.....while the others were whole. William was pretty funny coming out of the anesthesia....not quite as funny as "David after the Dentist"....but he did ask if he had stitches and he did say "I feel funny". HAHA.

We rented some videos to watch, but William is sleeping soundly now.

Nov. Stake Dance

I think William has been missing the last few stake dances, cuz it's been a long time since I took his picture before he walks out the door.

Well, here he was tonight! (I got him.)

Scott Works Hard

Scott doesn't mind being on the blog (like MOST husbands)....he actually thinks of this as "our family's journal"...so I better include him on it every so often. Here he is working on a deck.

Beautiful Backyard

Andrew and I went with Scott to one of his side jobs today and Andrew really liked the backyard. He kept asking me if I wish I had a backyard like that. Then he went and sat on all the benches that Scott built a couple years ago.

Then he started climbing the trees. He had fun. (And, yes, I wish I had that backyard.)

Chico State Women's Basketball

Bradley, Andrew, Kolby, and I went to watch the Chico State women's basketball team play last night. It was "Hooker Oak School" night at the game, so at half time the students in attendance went to center court and sang the school song. It is to the tune of "Beverley Hills, that's where I want to be"...but the words say something like "Hooker Oak, that's where I want to be". It's actually much longer than that, and one line was even changed to say something about being at Chico State....so I guess it was pretty good, but from my seat, and with my hearing loss, I couldn't hear a word they sang.

Chico State won the game by over 20 points. (I was rooting for the other team. They reminded me of last year's Kings....lot's of turn overs, open shots missed, and lots of fouls.)

Today Andrew's class did a Thanksgiving performance. Andrew had about 3 or 4 lines to recite. He did them very well, except he calls "E"ngland "Ang"land. It's ok, we worked on it A LOT and he was getting really frustrated, so I let him say it the way he thought was right.

After the Performance, the class then sang two Thanksgiving songs. Andrew was very happy and sang the whole time.

Here is a video of him doing his part.

Cross Country (dessert) Banquet

Last night was the end of the season awards banquet for William's cross country team. It started at 7 and ended AFTER 9....the coach SERIOUSLY talked about EACH and EVERY runner, and there were like 60 kids on the team. I couldn't hear a word she said, though, she didn't use a microphone and the place was big, noisy, and she talks very softly.

Here is a picture of the Varsity boys team.

The varsity boys team won an award for their grade point average.

Andrew was VERY bored the whole time.


Scott and Bradley were pretty bored, too.

The little guys liked the buffet of desserts, though!!!

Thanksgiving cub scout style

For scouts yesterday we made Indian costumes and mashed potatoes....played some Indian games and ate some celery with cheese/celery with peanut butter. The boys LOVED it all- peeling, cutting, spreading in the kitchen, decorating, taping, gluing, beads, feathers, face paint....Fun Times!

Newspaper

There was an article in our local newspaper the Chico Enterprise Record today about Melanee earning All-American. I tried to put a link here for you, but either Blogger is not letting me or I don't know how. So you will need to go to www.chicoer.com then if you click on the sports section you will see a link titled "Guymon garners USCAA honors"...just click on that and read all about it.

Wait, I figured out how to do it...try this---

http://www.chicoer.com/sports/ci_13804678

1,006

Gina, one of my message board/blogger friends wrote on her blog that she was about to get to 300 blog posts...made me curious as to what I am at and it said 1,006...HOW CAN THAT BE??? Do I over-blog, do I blog TOO much??? 1,006 that's A LOT.

But, don't worry ALL the seasons are over- soccer, football, cross country...just about every day is free and boring now....so I haven't been blogging as much.

Chain Saw Injury

William was doing some laundry. Our washer and dryer are out on the back porch. The last person who unloaded Scott's truck put the chain saw on the floor out there. William didn't see it when he walked out there, so his toe got cut. Scott got a pot of hot water for William to soak his toe in...When William stuck his foot in he screamed (loudly) then said, "This is burning my SOUL!"

Scrapbook Preview

I finished the scrapbook I made for Melanee last night, and I thought I would share it here, so I went outside and took pictures of each page. I really like it. One of the things I like best about it is that I didn't buy ANYTHING to make it, I used scrapbook supplies I had at my house. I also like that I got it done in 2 days (that way the scrapbook stuff wasn't spread throughout my front room for a long time). I may add some stickers later (I didn't have many in my stash, since I used them all up on previous scrapbooks). Some of the pages aren't very fancy, so if I find some cool soccer stickers between now and Christmas, I may add them. I also want to point out that my scrapbooks are more photo albums than scrapbooks....meaning that I put a lot of pictures on each page, unlike the Scrapbook magazine ideas, which seem to be more FLUFF and less photos. I got all the soccer articles (game summaries) off of the SVU website. Most of the pictures are from Nationals, the Hollins game (Cameron's mom was there with her camera), or stolen off of Melanee (and her friends Facebook pages).

I once promised to never do one of the little cut out silhouettes (they are hard) but doesn't this one fit perfectly right there?

This one is WAY too plain....needs more pictures I think....any ideas???

This "action sequence" is in the WRONG order....don't know how I messed it up...(I think I'll blame it on Scott...or the Mentalist (was watching that while scrapbooking, it's HIS fault.)

This is really pretty paper...I couldn't find my circle cutter, so I cut this circle by hand...and that big picture is my favorite (action) picture of Melanee in the book.

>>>this one has a 'triple border" I once said I would NEVER do one of those EVER again, but I accidentally had the green border, when it was just a double border, on the outside and you couldn't see it against the green paper, so I added another one.

This is probably my favorite page, I like the red and black, and especially like that got so many pictures on it...also, look at the headline of the article (Melanee's name).

This page DID NOT work out how I was trying to get it to....the article was too long, spread out, and had little black and white photos, so I cut it all up and this is how the page turned out...I kind of like it now, but it was driving me crazy while I was making it.

I always just grab some glue and use all the left over pictures to make these last few pages....they turn out great, are easy to do, and always enjoyed by ALL.

Cross Country Sectional Meet

No pictures!

But yesterday was the the section meet for cross country. William ran in the "open" race. The top 15 racers won metals.....guess which place William took? Yep, 16th! He got passed on the final straight away by one of his own teammates, a kid who has NEVER beaten him, ever, in track or cross country. You know that episode of Hannah Montana where the nerdy kid asks her to the prom and she says "yes" and he says something like "I can't wait to tell my best friend" or "my best friend is NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS!" Then he gets out his cell phone and makes a call and says, "Mom, you are not going to believe this....." Well, the kid who beat William proceeds to make a call as soon as the race is over and William is still standing near him. He calls his mom and the first words out of his mouth, before even telling her how well he placed, or that he earned a medal, were- "MOM! I BEAT WIL!!!". hahahaha....pretty funny (but not to William.)

Now that cross county is over I was thinking it will be nice to have William home after school, either that or it will be pure misery because I know how much he torments his little brothers when he is here. Anyone know of a job for a hard working 16 year old in the after school hours???

Action Shots

Cooper and Prefontaine

We went to Petco for Family Home Evening this week. Sam needed a new name tag.

We came home with 2 new pets. The boys named them, one is Cooper...

the other (the one with the 'stache) is Prefontaine.

Cub Scouts

We've been trying to put the "outing" back into "scouting" so we went on another field trip today. Last time we went to UPPER Bidwell Park, this week we went to LOWER Bidwell Park.

Of course, Andrew had to JUMP off.

Tamara' Pictures

I got these pictures from Tamara's camera (what I REALLY want are the one's from her DAD'S camera), but these are fun. SVU Soccer All Americans!!!
The team before the banquet.

In the van.

Before the game.

TWIRPS

William's school has a formal/semi formal type dance every fall known as TWIRPS...it's stands for (The Woman is Responsible to Pay) (I think). William's friends were all getting asked to the dance about a month ago and he did want to go, but no one asked him. That was OK, he had the SAT's to take that day. Then about 3 weeks ago a girl asked him to the dance. (I think I blogged about it.) But then a week or 2 later, she said that "something suddenly came up" (Maybe she didn't say that exactly, I think that's a quote from the Brady Bunch) but she did cancel on him with no real explanation. It was kind of sad because, all along all the girls thought he had a date, so they got other dates, so now he wasn't going. It was ok, though, he had the SAT's to take that day.....haha.....anyway, I left for my trip on Thursday at 3 in the morning. While I was on my trip, that day, I got a text from William saying he was asked to Twirps. I think he was excited, and I was excited for him....but I couldn't help him get ready or get pictures for my blog or see him leave.....oh well, he promised to get me some pictures. And here they are---

He called me 15 minutes before he was about to leave and asked me where his belt was....haha...I wasn't much help 3,000 miles away.

She bought him a tie.....It's really cool, so cool, that he ALREADY has that exact same tie...and 2 other people at the dance were wearing that tie. HAHA!

They went to Olive Garden for dinner. They went too early and had 2 hours to kill before the dance, so they went and walked around Wal Mart.

William said at the dance he did "the Jerk" and the "Stanky Leg". I HAVE to get videos of him doing those dances for me, he's pretty funny.

I didn't think of it until I saw other people's TWIRPS pictures on Facebook, but I forgot to tell him, and I don't think he knew, to buy her a corsage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OOPS.

Friendly's is not "friendly"

For dinner on the first night in Burlington (we were actually in Williston) the team voted to eat at Friendly's. It is a restaurant that specializes in things like sandwiches, burgers, chicken, you know american type food. We went to the close by Friendly's. There were about 30 of us in our group. There were about 20 tables in the restaurant, 19 of them were full. The wait would be LONG and the tables were booths, so there was no way for the team to sit together. The coach decided to go to the OTHER Friendly's. It was in the next town. There were 2 vans and 3 cars in our caravan. I was the last car, I got stopped trying to get out of the parking lot. I didn't know how to get to the other Friendlys....right about the time I was thinking of turning around and go back to the motel, I saw the vans and other cars drive by...so I followed them and found it. I sat with Melanee and about half of her team, the others were all close by.

The waitress messed up on so many orders. She forgot Melanee's sandwich, she made some wrong sundaes, she brought un ordered drinks, and she was SLOW. The girls were starving. The whole adventure at Friendlys took about 3 hours. We were ready to go, but the other table hadn't received their sundaes yet, so the coach told Melanee, Kendra, and Tamara that they could go with me. I had told the waitress clearly twice that I needed my own tab, that I was not with the team. When I went to pay, she hadn't taken it off their tab, and DIDN'T know how to....so, I waited while she got another waitress, who after trying for about 5 minutes also didn't know what to do, so they got the boss...who after 5 more minutes of trying also couldn't do it...I ordered a BOWL of soup, but got a CUP of soup, so my $2.49, was such a hassle. I should have just given Matt, the coach, $3.00 and avoided this whole wait.

We get in the car to go back...and we GOT LOST....not a little lost .... but A LOT LOST. We were MILES away from where we needed to be and the 3 girls I had in the car needed to be to a team meeting at 9:30. I stopped and asked for directions at a gas station. We made our way to the highway, or free way, or whatever they are called on the East Coast. We were looking for exit 11, I thought, but it was really exit 12, we saw our Hotel AFTER we passed the exit....it was 9:30, we would have made it for the meeting on time, but in Vermont, freeway (or highway, whatever they are called) exits are about 10-15 miles apart..... I thought about making an illegal u turn, but I'm glad I didn't there was a cop sitting in the place I was going to try to do it in.......The girls LOVED every second of our adventure, but I was getting sick to my stomach worrying about the girls being late for their devotional and meeting. I finally found an exit, but it didn't have an easy way to get back on the freeway going the other way, the girls, like I said, were having a blast, laughing at me and SINGING to the TUNES on our rental car's fancy radio. We did make it back by about 9:40 and Melanee said that the meeting hadn't even started. So it all worked out. I do not like driving in Vermont, though......the street signs are non existent....the roads aren't lit.....and the highways/freeways are NOT like those in California. I even got lost when I first got there. I drove ALL around my hotel at least 3 times without finding it. It was too new for the GPS to help me and the map the rental company gave me was missing streets.

This was our hotel.

8-0 win

Melanee's team got knocked out of the Nationals tournament in the first round by the 8th seed (melanee's team was ranked #1) so they went to the consolation game and played against the 4th seed. You'd think playing the 4th seed would make it a MUCH tougher game, right? Well, I think the seeding in this tournament was RIGGED because the 4th seed team STUNK. Melanee's team went right down the field and scored the first goal of the game, on a corner kick taken by Melanee, within 2 minutes of the start of the game...they scored the second goal, off a corner kick taken by Melanee, a minute or 2 later, scored a 3 goal before 5 minutes had gone by. Melanee had 4 assists (or semi assists) that I counted...besides her two corner kicks she set up a play down the sideline and took a direct kick that they scored on. This team was WAY worse than the 8th seed, how in the world did they come in ranked 4th? Seems like the USCAA wanted SVU to have a tough opponent, so that they didn't have to deal with changing the championship game schedule to avoid playing on the Sabbath day.....But I hope SVU doesn't worry about the seeding too much, if a team takes 45 shots and misses them ALL, maybe they need to go back to practice and learn to FINISH. They were a great passing team, but their shooting and just plain old finishing was OFF that day. I watched the video of the game last night and saw so many chances blown. Shots sailing over the top and to the side, break aways not capitalized on, scrambles in front of the goal not put away, shots not followed, and tons of shots taken from WAY too far out. And I have to also give credit to the other team's goalie, the shots that were hard, she stopped.


Game number 2 was not very exciting to watch because Melanee's team was SO superior. The coach was able to give everyone some playing time. Forwards got to play defense. It was an easy game, but to a soccer enthusiast, it was a real waste of time, no real excitement. No competition at all.


After the game we went to the best place to feed 24 girls.....the food court at the mall. Here are Mel and Kendra (she was awesome! loved her!!!) with their official USCAA National Championship T shirts.At one point, we were walking around the mall and Tamara's dad sees us and says, "You think you are in California?" Look at the way she was dressed, sandals, shorts, t shirt...haha.....Every other person in that mall had on jackets, scarves, hats, gloves, long pants.......when we got out side it was time to say "good bye". It was the quickest goodbye in the universe because Mel was so cold, I wanted to let her run and get into their van.

Team Picture

One of the dad's convinced the team to let all of us with camera's take a team picture after the last game....I'm so glad he did and that the girls agreed. These turned out pretty cute!

Game #2

I have a pretty good camera. It had taken almost all these pictures for this blog and almost all the pictrues for the scrapbooking I've done, but maybe it was too cold this weekend, maybe it's getting old, maybe Melanee is just WAY too fast, maybe it was operator error, but I could NOT get a good action shot of Melanee. Tamara's dad was there with a nice camera and he said he got some good pictures of Melanee, so I went back to video taping. Here are the few shots I got that weren't completely blurry.

I really was there

I wanted to prove to everyone that I really was in Vermont with Melanee and the SVU women's soccer team. I kept making sure I wasn't in ANY pictures, then on the last day, right before it was time for me to leave, I saw all the other parents handing their cameras to others and jumping in to get pictures taken with their daughters. So I did it too, even though I KNOW I look silly.

Nationals Day #2

Melanee and Tamara during warm ups.

I took this when we first arrived at the field.

It was cold.

The team does the same warm up drills before every game. It takes them about an hour to go through all the drills.

travel thoughts

(This was the plane I took from Chicago to Burlington)

My hotel room is TOO COLD...there is a heater here, but it just blows out luke warm air.....I did find a spare blanket in a drawer....and there was a BOOK OF MORMON in that drawer, too....(I'm staying at a Marriot). The blow dryer here is blowing our luke warm air, too. The bath water is only luke warm, the shower pressure is awful and the toilet and bed are low....I'm trying to remember if Marriotts is one of the hotel chains that dad from Little People visited and complained to about catering to tall people, because everything here is LOW to the ground.

And the time change is sure throwing me off. When it is dark HERE, Bradley and Andrew are still in school, how weird is THAT? And tonight, Melanee was laying on my bed, trying hard to stay awake, VERY tired....then she said that she was just going to go to bed, I asked if she wanted to go out and do something fun and she did, but we couldn't think of anything, so she went to bed back in her room I was SO excited that she was going to get in bed early!.......then I realized that on the computer (that I was using for my clock) the time is WEST COAST time, it said it was only 8:30, but to Melanee's body it was 11:30.... HERE IT IS 11:30....

now I better get to bed

ALL AMERICAN

If you don't like people who have blogs that are completely Momma Brag blogs, you probably don't like my blog.....and you definitely wont like this post...but I'm going to write it anyway, because I am SO PROUD of Melanee....she was awarded All American tonight at the soccer banquet they just went to. I am so happy and thrilled. To what started out as a SAD DAY....it had turned into a spectacular one! Good Job Mel!!

The Game

I guess now is as good of time as ever to blog about the game today.....the pictures are down below, I posted them a little while ago, but I'm sure you want a story to go with them.

Melanee's team was ranked #1 in the seedings for the USCAA National Championship for womens soccer. They weren't ranked #1 on the final week of the season's standings though...and I don't know how accurate the ranking system is because many of the other teams had better records than SVU.

I'll start this off by telling about the weather and the fields. The weather was in the low 40's, which is cold, but NOT as cold as last year and there was no wind. The opening round games were played at a soccer complex like 20th street park or Cherry Hill (or Island, I never remember). The fields were real grass, not turf. The fields were surrounded by evergreen trees. Kind of cool.

Melanee's team played a school called Saint Marys of the Woods from Indiana. They are a women's catholic college and this is their first year with a soccer program.

It was a great game. Very exciting from start to finish. Melanee's team played hard, they passed well, and looked to me like they fought hard. They took a lot of shots from far out that went over the top of the goal or to the side. They also had 3 clear break aways that were stopped by the goalie.

Melanee started the game as the sweeper. She did wonderfully back there and there was no way any one could have gotten past her and Tamara. They are just that good! Seriously!!! But at half time, it was clear that Melanee needed to go up, and she did every now and then, but never got a great shot off, she worked the ball well, and found some openings but her shots went to the goalie or over. Not in the back of the net where they needed to be. So the game ended in a 0-0 tie. They played the first 10 minutes and then almost all of the second 10 minutes at 0-0, but the other team go the ball way out far to their left wing, she took the ball up the sideline, past the full back and got a cross/shot off, the goalie tried to get it and Tamara tried to get it, but the ball rolled off of the goalies hands right next to the post, INTO the goal. Golden Goal. Game OVER. SVU out of the National Championship, just like that.

SVU took 45 shots, Saint Marys of the Woods only 9.... but it only takes 1 to win, so SVU stood stunned, St Marys celebrated, and just like that all the SVU dreams of defending their title are GONE.

They play the loser's bracket game tomorrow then head back to Virginia. Kind of a dissapointing ending to a pretty dissapointing season. All the talent was there, it just didn't happen this year.

My flight to Chicago

I guess I will blog about my flight to Vermont. Here are some pictures from the first part of the flight from Sacramento to Chicago. I didn't get a window seat from Chicago to Burlington, so there are no pictures from that flight. But two funny thing happened on that flight to blog about. One was there were these 3 buisness men, dressed up, financial whiz nicely dressed Richard Jones type of guys sitting in front of me. Actually, one of their wives was sitting next to me across the aisle, her husband in front of her, his co worker in front of him, and the other co worker across from that guy. The flight begins and the one in front of his wife pulls out a Game Boy, his was black, but then he pulls out a pink one from his bag, gives it to one of his friends. The other guy gets out his own white one....and they start playing some kind of racing game....looked like the one guy was some sort of gorilla on a motorcycle, couldn't tell what the others were, but it was definitely a childs game. They played THE WHOLE ENTIRE flight, right up until the flight crew said to put away all toys. They laughed (loudly) they cheered, they were REALLY into it. It was pretty funny. The wife was pretty embarrassed. HAHA. The other thing that happened on the flight, wasn't really funny, but I sat next to a soccer fan, so we talked for a LONG time about soccer. His neice is playing on a full ride scholarship to Denver University...first of all- I've never heard of that school, Gina, does it really exist? And can schools really offer full ride scholarships to women soccer players? If she was as good as he was telling me, wouldn't she go to North Carolina or UCLA? He said that every year since she was 14 she won the 3 v 3 tournament in Orlando....OK....and he said that he is taking her to Manchester United Soccer School this spring in England. Yeah, he must be so rich, that's why he was flying coach. I don't know if there is even such thing as a 3 v 3 tournament in Orlando???? how can you play soccer with 3 people....and is there really a Manchester United soccer SCHOOL??? Yeah, I don't know...haha. I think he was just trying to top my stories of how good Melanee is. Probably!!!!

These following pictures go with my first flight. ---OK, I was so thrilled at what we flew over on the way out of California!!! This is LAKE TAHOE. I can tell by Emerald Bay. Also, see that snow covered mountain....that's the one William went up during cross country camp at Fallen Leaf lake....one of the little 2 lakes is Fallen Leaf Lake, which one dad???

Here is a bigger picture of Lake Tahoe. It was so cool to see from the air. It's our family's FAVORITE vacation spot EVER. This summer we even drove around the whole lake.

Coolest clouds ever!

Over Illinois somewhere...but I loved to see the farmland, all the squares and circles...really neat.

I love looking out the window. This is the Chicago airport.

Chicago in the distance.

The shore along one of the great lakes. So spectacular from the air.

I'll only post a few of these, but I loved seeing the plane's shadow......(and notice the soccer fields below)

The shadow again.

O'Hare International Airport is HUGE. I had to take a shuttle bus from one terminal to another.

This is not my trip blog...

I am not going to blog all about my trip now, but I wanted to add some of today's pictures on here for Scott and my dad to see some of the action. I took a video of the game, so these are all the pictures I got....(I know- PITIFUL!!!)

Soccer Banquet

The team had a banquet to go to tonight at the Shereton. All 16 teams who are playing in the National Championship tournament will be there. Here are a few pictures I snapped before they left.

more pictures from the computer

Melanee planting bulb flowers.

These are from a few weeks ago when SVU had their temple day at the Washington D.C. temple. I really like the lighting in this one.

PICTURES...FINALLY!!!

I am in Vermont right now, with Melanee and her team.....I am having a BLAST. It's so nice to get to spend time with Melanee and hang out with her and her teammates.

They all went to a Banquet right now, so I am alone here at the motel (hotel?, it's nicer than a motel). I am on Melanee's computer...and REMEMBER how I've been BEGGING her all season long to SEND ME PICTURES??? Well, there are some on her computer that I think are good, she didn't send them because she didn't think they were "good". So, here they are....they are from a variety of games, sometimes they are the white team, sometimes the black....Melanee is #17, sometimes with blond hair, sometimes black.

Cub Scouts Hike

I have a lot more pictures, but I thought I'd share a group one now and blog about the rest later.

We hiked to Monkey Face in Upper Bidwell Park.

Trunk or Treat and Trick Or Treat

To start off our Halloween evening of fun and adventure we went over to the church for the annual Trunk or Treat. If you don't know what that it, I will try to describe it to you....simply, people park in the parking lot, open their trunks or the backs of their vans, and pass out candy to the children who walk from car to car trick or treating. It's really fun for many reasons, but especially for the parents who can socialize with their friends, and they can have peace of mind that the candy and treats are safe. The kids like it because they can get lots of candy, FAST.

These big smiles show how much they enjoyed their evening.

Bradley was a soccer player, just like in the school parade, but a little different, this time he had on red shorts and blue socks. (Don't you love this picture with the fall colors, he ivy and the lighting effects???)This is a picture of Andrew with all his candy. He was a basketball player, just like in the parade, but with different shorts this time and a long sleeved black shirt underneath.

I know a formal, in the mail, thank you note is what you deserve, I am going to thank you Michelle right here because I know you read this (sometimes). Thanks for letting us tag along with you on your awesome route this year. I know it wasn't part of the plan, but you were SO nice to include us. All of the kids with me had fun. Bradley and Kolby, I'm sure, had fun too, but I'm also sure, will probably be begging to go alone next year. I hope Jace's back feels better. I'm sorry he missed out on your holiday tradition. You are always so nice to me and my family. Thanks for the party afterwards, too. It was a blast!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!