In the Spotlight

Yippee! My story is up and live at yareview.net. I can't believe I'm actually going to have readers outside my critique group. Check it out and leave a comment at the end of the story if you have time. It's called In the Spotlight and you should find a link to it on the site's home page. For those of you who knew me way back in High School--keep in mind it is a work of fiction. I used a play I had actually been cast in because I knew all the scenes and songs, but my experience was entirely different than my character's. Although, I was like her many ways, too.

Tri Kids Try Triathalon

Last Saturday Elyse participated in the 2nd annual Tri Kids Try Triathalon at Dow High School in Midland. About 300 kids from all over the state showed up to swim one lap of the pool, bike two miles, and run 1/2 mile. Elyse took 6th in her age/sex bracket and 90 overall out of ages ranging from 6-15. She's determined to finish in the top three next year and get a trophy, but I think she doesn't understand that she'll have to probably do some training to do that. I'm so pround of how well she did. I don't think I would have had the guts to do that at her age. For being only the second year this has been going on, I was extremely impressed with how well organized everything ran. They had kids set up in waves and when it started it didn't take long to get all 300 out there on the course. Me, Paul, and Luke had fun sitting in the stadium and cheering on all the kids crossing the finish line. Next year, we'll see if we can talk Paul into trying it out as well.

More pics from Nauvoo

Smith Homestead

Nauvoo House

Joseph Smith Mansion

Here's a couple pics I took while in Nauvoo of some of the buildings and played around with in photo shop. We're doing an ancestor/history/out doorsy theme in the basement. I might put a couple of these on the wall by our board game table. I have yet to play around with the temple picture I took.

Road Trip and Mount Rushmore

After school let out, we hit the road to the west. We took the ferry across Lake Michigan and made our way to Mount Rushmore. There isn't much to do there, but after hiking around we found a fun slide down a hillside and played mini golf. Kids are easy to please, though. They were just as happy spending an hour in every hotel pool along the way. Everyone traveled great in the car. The first day Jarom cried a couple hours, but that was my fault for packing his blankets in the back. After that we kept a blanket tucked in his seat and he was very quiet all the way there and back. We bought a DS player for the kids and between that, the video player and Matt's I-phone the other three were quiet as well and we had fewer arguments in the car than we do at home. Hmm...we should hit the road again next summer.

Yellowstone

We spent three days in Yellowstone visiting different geyser basins, Mammoth, and Yellowstone Lake. We also watched Beauty and the Beast at the playmill theater in West Yellowstone. We saw three grizzly bears, bison walking down the road, elk, a coyote, and an eagle. I love that place.

Pics from Utah

Luke and cousin Anna Dinasaur museum at Thanksgiving Point

Jarom and Luke

We stayed with my parents for a week in a half during our trip. We played in the pool almost every day, visited cousins, ate out at our favorite restaurants, and visited old friends.

Nauvoo

We ended our trip West with a trip to Nauvoo to see the pageant. It was awesome. They had twenty activities for kids before the pageant started: hand cart pulls, log sawing, puppet shows, square dances, scottish dances, stick ball, potato sack races, tug of war, etc. We saw a couple of plays and took a 45 minute carriage in the country, past the historic houses, where our guide told us what property used to belong to who and what happened to them. All in all, a spiritual and way fun trip.