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.

Issue 141

An issue, in which I can't think of anything to blog about. Not that nothing happened. Steve was out of town, my very pregnant sister was in an accident on I-15 (after a night in the hospital, everything turned out ok) and my other sister moved so we got to play with lots of cousins, trying to help out. Hoping for a less eventful week with more pictures!

Issue 140

Playing the Taxes Card

Just snuggling into bed when I remembered with a start, "The Blog!" I'll have to blame my almost-oversight on the mind numbing process of preparing our taxes. Steve got the bug tonight (easy to get when your getting money back!) and we are just about done.

Other things of note that happened this week:

I got to teach an art lesson in Ellie's Kindergarten class. What fun!

I got to paint with my own art students this week. Messy paint makes me happy!

We had the awesome opportunity to hear Steve's dad give an impressive speech, to important people, in a large venue, that was also on radio and TV! Our Idaho relatives came down for the event and we all went out to lunch after to celebrate the occasion and Grandpa's Birthday. We are so proud of the amazing job he did.

Issue 139