The Big 40!

Steve turned the big 40 this week! The girls and I surprised him at work with balloons and 40 donuts. We wanted eveyone to celebrate his big day. Here's to the next 40! We love you!

Issue 146

Howdy readers! This is actually Whitney, my mom got called away on some unexpected business that couldn't be ignored tonight, so she asked me to post the blog. I hope you like what you see! :)

Freedom Bowl

Yesterday my team and I participated in the Freedom Bowl. It's an annual buzzer-question type competition that I've done four years in a row now. My team won silver, in the four years I've done it I've placed every time. I've gotten a gold, a bronze and now two silvers with the one I got yesterday. My team has been studying since September and we are some of the best. There is another team that we regularly go up against that is about our equal. They are the only ones that we really worry about at all. This year we were behind them by only 20 out of maybe three hundred points! Our moderator for that round was the guy who actually wrote all the questions in the first place. He said that when it was between our two teams it wasn't a contest of who knew the answer, it was a contest of who could guess what question it was that he was asking.

Stop Traffic

At my school we are very service oriented, every quarter we have a school-wide service day. Every core class devises and carries out their own service project for the community. There is always the fall-back of getting squares of fleece and tying them into blankets, but this time I was able to participate in something a lot bigger. My class, along with a couple others, participated in a flash mob. A flash mob is when you have dozens of people that all meet at a certain place at a certain time pretending to just be normal people minding their own business. Then at a signal everyone freezes in place for a certain amount of time.
I was in a flash mob for "Operation 61". Operation 61 is an organization the combats human trafficking. Most people think that slavery in America is a thing of the past, but there are actually more slaves in the U.S. now then there ever has been before. It's actually quit shocking when you learn the facts.
A group of about 130 of us (students) met at the gateway mall and froze in chained-up positions for five minutes. We did it at three different places downtown. It was awesome to be able to participate in something like that. You can find a short video about it at the Operation 61 twitter page.
Plus most of us got a nifty t-shirt that has a stop sign on it and says "Stop Traffic!". We were debating who to push into the street to see if they worked but the mentors decided that wasn't such a good idea. :)

Issue 145

Just Hanging Around

Cosmo Kitty's favorite hanging out place. He's ready to play with anyone that passes.

Blue Jay by Whitney

I got a nice set of water colors for the art classes I teach, and Whitney had fun experimenting with them. Very lovely.

Karate Tournament

Daniel competed in his first karate tournament this Saturday at the expo center. He didn't place in the top 3 as he had hoped, but he did a great job in his event.

Issue 144

Eagle Watch 2011

Monday we took our traditional President's Day pilgrimage out to Farmington bay to see the migrating Bald Eagles.

Steve's Sister's family joined us on our birding trip which added so much fun!

We also saw the nesting ground for the Great Blue Herons. Can't wait for next year already!

Mock Trial by Whitney

Our mock trial team went to the Matheson courthouse and participated in our first of two mock trial competitions. We have preparing since January and we did pretty well. We won the verdict (not guilty) but lost the competition by five points out of 360. I was a witness, the defendant. I was being tried for sending threatening emails to a class-mate over the chatroom but the judges decided that I was not guilty. I feel it was the best performance that we have had in a long while and hope that we can win our next competition (this Saturday.) In truth my life has been insanely busy and pressured and even though I enjoy mock trial I am eager to have it over with and get some writing time back in my life. :)

Issue 143

LTUE by Whitney

This weekend I got to go to a three day long writers conference at BYU. IT WAS AMAZING!!! It is called LTUE (Life the Universe and Everything) and is an annual sci-fi and fantasy writers conference. My Aunt Bree was speaking at some of the workshops and it was fun to be able to see her speak at diffrent author panels. All the classes are on different subjects from "Do I need an agent?" to "Writing fractured fairy tales," and they are all taught by published authors. I was able to attend all three days and was with my writer friends for all of it. It was an amazing experience that has been an epic learning opprotunity for me, and I cant wait to start applying it in my life. My writing friend Julie and I both made a mutual goal to be two of the published authors on the panels next year. No, I'm not crazy, we are both fully aware of the actual reasonable amount of time it will take for us to get published (several years) but it's going to be a nice, spurring, "shoot for the moon and you'll land among the stars" kind of goal. I'm excited to keep writing and I'm nearly finished with my first manuscript. I can't wait to start writing my second one and apply everything I've learned in my first one to my second.

Issue 142

A Visit to the State Legislature by Steve L.

We took a trip to the State Capitol to see the State Legislature in session. Even though we didn't get to see that much of it, (about 30 minutes) it was pretty cool. They were talking about horse and burro rights and something about purified water. Then we ate lunch. The food was good. After that we got to take a tour of the capitol. (It's huge!) It was interesting to see the place where all of our State's laws are made.