Austin's Accomplishments

Here is Austin's 6th grade school picture. He sure is growing up! Don't you agree? Well 6th grade has been the best thing so far for Austin. He likes having different teachers for math, science, computer lab, PE & core. We are so proud of Austin! He gets up each morning pretty much on his own which is a real change from last year. He works real hard at school & comes home exhausted from straining his brain, ha ha! What a handsome young man! So be prepared because the next picture is going to come as a shock. Make sure you are sitting down before you look.

What an accomplishment! He's getting straight A's. Right after this report card was received we got an email from his teacher letting us know that he now has an A+ in that class thus I crossed out the C and wrote an A+. I've been bragging to everyone about his straight A's. We are so proud of him! He deserves this after all his hard work. I told him I was going to continue to brag by posting this to the blog. Then when I hadn't done it he nicely reminded me, because he's proud of himself too. Way to go Austin! Keep up the hard work!

TRADITION - MATCHMAKER - IF I WERE A RICH MAN

As you can see the WHS Musical this year was Fiddler on the Roof. It was great! Whitney was a villager (a MaMa to be exact). She was in all the scenes that everyone else was in except for those main ones which included only Tevye, his wife & the daughters. So Whit had a lot of stage time. She loved the songs, loved learning about the Jewish traditions & having fun with the rest of her cast/friends. As you can see below this is the cast picture along with the individual in the upper right hand corner. In the group picture she is right in the middle, second row in the back.For several months Whitney practiced at least three times a week, then every day for two weeks & then in November performed this musical 8 times. It was great! She had fun! The only exception to this was that she became allergic to the make-up they were using. It took us several performances to figure this out. We thought at first it was just her contacts that had maybe scratched her eye but then it became very apparent it was a reaction to the make-up. Finally by the last two performances we were able to figure it out & switch make-up and everything was okay for those two performances. If you look real close at this picture below you can see that her eyes are real red. She was crying during this performance that the Herricks, Papa & family went too because her eyes were hurting so much. She even missed some school because of it. Even after the play her eyes got bad again which we couldn't figure out? Preston started asking questions & found out she had put her contaminated contacts in. So we threw those away & even had to go see the Dr. She had eye infection in both eyes, because of the allergic reaction. She had to put hot towel compresses on her eyes, walk around the house with no lights, wear sunglasses & anything else over her eyes to protect them from the light. We drove to the Dr with sunglasses on, towel over her eyes & blanket over her head. Poor girl. It finally cleared up after about 5 days of no make-up & the previously mentioned routine. She learned a lot from that bad experience!

The last picture is of one of her practices. She has her head turned & is laughing, imagine that. Is her outfit crazy or what. She's wearing a t-shirt, my spandex workout pants & short short lime green shorts over the top. She is one wild & crazy, fun lovin' teenager. She loved the practices. They had such a good time! Wonder what next years musical will be? This was Mr. Jacksons last year, unless he can't afford to retire either? We'll see. Whitney sure loves him as a choir teacher & producer of this musical.

There were 12 LDS youth in this musical. It reminds me of years ago before I was in high school when the musicals had lots of LDS kids in them. They are so talented because of all their experiences in primary and YM/YW. It's always fun to know so many of the actors.

"TEVYE EXPLAINS THE ROLE OF GOD'S LAW IN PROVIDING BALANCE IN THE VILLAGERS' LIVES. HE INSISTS THAT WITHOUT THEIR TRADITIONS, HE & THE OTHER VILLAGERS WOULD FIND THEIR LIVES "AS SHAKY AS A FIDDLER ON THE ROOF."

Mom's 60th Birthday - Nov 2, 2008

This is Mom's best picture for her bday. Because we surprised her she didn't have time to plan ahead & get her hair cut before we came. So she had it done the day after we left. Doesn't she look beautiful? She looks great for 60! Happy Bday Mom!

So my Mom turned 60 & we kids surprised her by showing up at her home on Halloween.

I want to be sure & post these to my blog so when I print all this for our family journal I will have a record of this. Mom's candles are in a pan of Apple Crisp. Yummy! Mom has never liked birthday cakes. Always something other than cake to celebrate her bday.

On her actual bday, our last day together that weekend, we took individual pictures with our bday Mom. It's been a long time since I've had a picture taken with my beautiful mother.

We went to this wonderful restaurant called Salty's at Redondo beach in Des Moines, WA. I surfed the internet & talked to Wenatchee people looking for recommendations. This was a keeper for sure. Would love to go there again. We wanted a seafood restaurant for Mom as she loves it. She can eat anything seafood (clams, oysters, shrimp, lobster). You name it she likes it. She said she really liked Saltys. We all had the same style three course meal. Some of us had steak and the others Salmon. We all ate way too much food but it was delicious. The Coconut Tiger Prawns the others had for appetizers looked really interesting. They said they were good.

When we first got to Saltys we went outside to take this picture. It was raining as we drove there. The clouds were black behind us & we thought this might be our only chance for an outside picture. It worked out perfectly. The rain stopped while we took the picture. I love this picture. If you could see the original the sky is amazing. But what's really amazing is how wonderful my family is. I'm so happy we could get together again & celebrate Mom's bday. Don't I have the most beautiful family?

This was the gift we presented to Mom while we were out to dinner. A book about our Mom. We each contributed photos of us individually with our Mom. We also wrote about memories of her. We each have our own page in the book. She loved it. It made her cry. Mom never cries so we thought it would be ok to give it to her at the restaurant. Turns out Ryan was right. He told us not to do it then, but us girls vetoed his decision and we did it anyway. In the end it all worked out fine. Mom had to wait until she got back home before she could really read it. We kids had a great time putting together our photos and memories. It was a great experience. Now this book will become part of her legacy. She was gracious enough to buy us kids copies of the book so we could have one too. The grandkids loved reading about their Ma-Kay & their parents memories of growing up with her. It will mean even more the older they get.

You can see that we have our desserts in front of us on the table. Dessert was fantastic. Some of us had this cake/mousse/thing with raspberry sauce & a couple of us had creme brulee. The later was incredible, the best I've ever had. A great finish to a fantastic meal.

Mom's dessert. Not a great picture of Mom. Doesn't do her justice. During dessert she had lots of pictures being taken including one from the restaurant. They were real great.

One of the many things we did during the quick weekend together was play Uno. I haven't played a game with my siblings since we were little. So it'd been about 20+ yrs. The funny thing about this picture is Ryan having to consult the game rules. Everyone but me plays card games a lot with their families & they all play a little differently based on the ages of their children. So since we are adults we really had to play by the "real" rules of the game. It was hilarious. You had to be there. Fun times. Ryan also tried to teach us how to play "Hearts". I still don't get it. I even went online recently to play online & see if I could get a better handle on it. Still don't get it! I'm the oldest sibling & the slowest when it comes to card games. Oh well.

We showed up on Mom's doorstep, rang the doorbell & said "trick or treat" in really weird voices. We said it over and over and over again. We knew if we said anything else she'd know it was us. I was laughing so hard under my sheet I didn't say anything. Ryan was saying enough for all of us. I thought the "Ghost of 1973" sign would give it away. But Mom was so surprised to even have trick or treaters that she claims she didn't see the sign. It's hard to explain her reaction. She left us all standing outside while she went to get some candy. Then we pushed Alysa inside & followed her in. That kind of freaked her out. The reason we did that is because JJ told us that's what kids do in Panguitch. If you leave your door open they just come in and sit down. Isn't that funny. We're not real sure Mom was surprised? She said she was??? Mother's intuition & Staci having not called Mom for her daily dose of motherly advice we think gave it away. We'll never know for sure. That's ok. We wanted to surprise her, we think we did & we'll leave it that way.

After we took the sheets off & exchanged hugs we put our sheets back on to pose for pictures. Mom with her five silly ghosts.

Alysa & JJ in the car next to Ryan, the ghost. We had a great car ride from SeaTac to Lacey. Fun times!

Staci was filming how silly we were in the car. I was driving. Ryan was the only one in his costume, at this point. We were laughing & Ryan was making silly jestures to cars passing us. It was Halloween after all so not that strange to have a ghost in our car. Staci how did the film turn out? We knew there were recording problems, but...?

We probably had more fun driving from the store there in Lacey to Mom & Dad's front door than we should have. I should have been pulled over for my driving. I went through the gate at Mom & Dad's at about 50 mph. I was afraid the gate was gonna close. Too funny for those of us in the car. These are great memories! We are so blessed to get a long so well & have so much fun when we are together.