The first 10 seconds and the last 20 seconds are the best!

and the football team is fun to watch, also.

Survivor Lovers

This season starts in 3 weeks.
It will have two people from Utah on it.
One of them is an English Professor at BYU,
who says she is not afraid to play the game.
(I think that means she is not afraid to lie to people.)
I don't have a problem with people telling lies in this game.
I don't see it as being much different than a board game
I have in my game closet in which you try to decieve
the other game players into thinking you are telling the truth.
Survivor is just an extended version of it.
I do, however, have a problem with people telling lies on
this show if it gets my favorites voted off.
GO, BYU LADY!!

Interestingly

Our high school football team is highly ranked this year.

Despite the fact that there are only like 2 Seniors on the team.

Where are the rest of the Seniors?

Well, they were not allowed to tryout for the team,

because they wouldn't put in the work!

Yeah, the big group of Juniors last year for some reason

decided that they were not going to go lift weights

with the football team from January on.

So, when it came time to try out for the team,

Coach Hossner wouldn't give them the papers for the parents to sign.

He had been telling them for months

that they needed to come train in order to try out.

They didn't, so Coach kept his word.

Even the coaches own nephew got canned.

Pretty interesting stuff.

And, good for you, coach.

Kamarie loves Bubble Guppies!

I KNOW IT'S TOO SOON 

for her 

to be having a birthday already!

 But,

the Guppies

insisted that August 18th

was HERE!!!

She LOVES

LOVES

LOVES

her "poke a dot" book.

 Ingenious idea.

Cuter name.

Poke the dots like popping bubble wrap,

then

turn the page and poke them back the other way 

while counting or singing the song.

Costco!

 Do you like

the outfit she is wearing

on behalf of

Bubble Guppies Birthday?

 Blowing out candles 

could have lasted 

ALL night!!!

 I know, I know!

I'm Sooooo

Lucky!!!

Again! Again!

She learned how to blow out a match today to practice for tonight.

and

don't you dare try to sing Happy Birthday  to her.

We had her in tears tonight, cause we wouldn't stop singing to her when she said to.

It was funny, but yet it was soo mean.

It's All About Kamarie! It's about time!

Playing in the pool all day while waiting at the swim meet. Loved it.

You can't tell in this picture, but Kamarie is trying to hog the limelight and she is pushing Kauri out of the picture.

 A nap, FINALLY!

 She doesn't take naps very easily anymore.

This is how I found her one late afternoon.

Family Reunion at Halls Ranch up by Bryce Canyon.This is the dock in the middle of the swimmin'/fishin' hole.

Here, she is just getting back from a ride.

Here, she has just realized that she is not going to get to go on the next ride.

Breakfast! Pancakes!

 Kashton and Kamarie playing in the sand together.

Her favorite part of the reunion. Sand.

 Koby taking her for another boat ride.

Sand castle contest.

 Breakfast! She hardly eats, so I was tickled to have her gobbling all this food every morning.

We only eat pancakes when we camp, and we've only camped this year once until this reunion.

I guess she like pancakes. Yay!

 At the top of the hill at the ranch.

Bryce Canyon in the background.

Kortie is cruisin'

Kams knew it was his turn to get in, and she tried over and over again to push him in.

Unfortunately, I only got one of them on my camera.

Kinzie's turn on my blog

Thanks to my kids, we have to get on with life...

My favorite game on my DSi XL is Solitaire. No shuffling of cards. No wind or 1-yr-olds to blow them away. Key word here is XL! So 40eyetis doesn't keep certain people from seeing the cards.

Kinzie, bless her heart, just came in and informed me excitedly that YOU CAN PLAY SOLITAIRE WITH THESE...(holding up a deck of cards).

hahahaha

Me: I need to go in and visit my computer. (Meaning that I need to blog about it.)

Koby: Why, cause you need to go see how to do it? (Meaning how to play solitaire with real card.)

OH MY, A TWO-FER!! woot woot

Funeral week

I went to the viewing for Mr. Slack on the morning just before the funeral. I was taken aback by the lack of well-wishers that showed up. This man was hugely popular at the college, but I didn't see any college professors there. He was a politician for several years, but I didn't notice any others there. He was a Bishop, but there were only a few people there from the wards he had attended. He had lived there for 30 years, yet there were only 30 or so people there for the funeral besides the family. None of my friend's friends were there. Just me. I was sorely disappointed in the lack of support I felt this man should have gotten.

His funeral was nice, though. He comes from a family of 10 kids, he being the oldest. His sister and brother each spoke and a grandson spoke. His funeral wasn't much sad, his death had been expected for awhile.

Dixie's funeral was today. Hubby and I went early to the viewing to avoid the crowd. Her kids didn't cry as we went through the line. Hubby did though. He asked Todd how he was doing and Todd said he was hanging in there, but barely. Just barely. There was a video slideshow at the entrance, and that was hard to look at. She just was taken way too soon. They had some really nice family pictures on display that been taken within the last year. She even had her own hair in the picture.

Her funeral was pretty darn sad. Even though she's been sick for so long, her passing was rather sudden and way too soon. She was such a prescence that missing her will be easy. She had a way about her that made you feel that you were not alone and that the mistakes you made didn't so much matter to her.

She had a neighbor and a nephew-in-law each sing. The neighbor sang beautifully and perfectly. Later, the nephew, Ranse, who is also a neighbor, sang Families Can Be Together Forever. He added a few original verses to it, and he struggled through it quite a bit. I could tell he was capable of singing beautifully, but given the song he had to sing, and given how close he was to Dixie, he choked up all the way through the song, which made it even more tender and meaningful.

Her sisters each spoke and then her step-mom, who had done most of the caregiving in the last two months. Then her husband got up and spoke. Wow. I've known him a long time, at least 16 years, and he impressed me today with his tenderness and strength. They have been our neighbors for 14ish years, and they got sealed in the temple 11ish years ago.

It's a good thing Hubby wore long sleeves. His tissue didin't last more than 5 minutes, and short sleeves wouldn't have given him enough fabric to wipe on for the whole 90 minutes.

My friend Dixie Clark passed away.

Last night, Monday, Aug 8.

I have a lot of fond memories of being associated with her.

Today, I made what I call Dixie Caramel Popcorn in her honor.

She brought me some for a Christmas gift years and years ago.
It was so good that I never shared it.
She gave me the recipe, and if I make it, I can't quit eating it.
Everytime I make it, I think of her.

She was Koby's Bear Den Leader.

We were pregnant together with our 13 year old boys.

We took their family to the lake one time, and while on the two-man tube,
we laughed and laughed and smacked our heads into each other.

Kash played baseball on her husbands team more than once and my Hubby helped him coach.

Her daughter cheered on the high school team with my son.

She taught primary while I was a counselor in the presidency.

She stopped by my house and gave me a big hug when my unborn baby died at 19 weeks.
That's what meant the most.

I miss you, Dixie.

Mr. Slack passed away.

On Saturday. He was breathing raspily on Friday.
Funeral will be on Thursday at 11 am.
http://www.metcalfmortuary.com/fh/obituaries/obituary.cfm?o_id=1232220&fh_id=11516

Sad news is everywhere, it seems

For those of you who remember my "ex-best friend" who dumped me after he left on his mission, well, we met in US History Class at Dixie College. His dad was the teacher, but I didn't know it at first.
Oh, how I hated history! Nothing was more boring and such a waste of time!

The man at the front of the room was, well, a funny-looking sort of guy. He was skinny and tall and wore glasses and had slicked-back hair. He had a voice like I had never heard before, and had barely a hint of a lisp.
I wasn't sure what to make of this fellow. He seemed to say a lot of things and sort of laugh at what he was saying. As I grew to know him more, I learned that his sense of humor really got to me. I mean, it was the type of quick-wit humor that I realized that I loved because of being in his class.

He'd be talking about people in history, then all of a sudden drift off the subject to make a remark that not everyone got. I learned early on that if  you wanted to laugh with him, then you needed to pay attention to every word. I listened intently on every word. The man was hilarious, and I couldn't get enough of his humor. I eventually took 4-5 different history classes from him. What can I say, I loved the man.

Some things that I really enjoyed were watching him write on the chalkboard. You had to be listening to him as he was writing or you wouldn't know WHAT he was writing. His handwriting was sometimes what you'd expect of someone who was writing without looking. Which is what he did -not look-cause he was looking at his notes.
He dotted every time there was an i or a j, and he crossed every time there was a t. Only he would do it after he finished writing the word, so the n's and g's were dotted and never the i's or the j's. That was one of my favorite things about him. Him dotting every n cause he would do it without looking.

He had been nominated for teacher of the year every year he taught at Dixie. I think he finally won it a few years after I graduated. He was competing with such masters as Maxx Rose (who is a humorous genius) and Docc Heppler. (who is another humorous genius)  (misspellings intentional as to avoid random googlings of potentially scary people).

Oh, how I grew to love that man. He was Mayor of Washington Citty at the time, so he was very much into politics, which I knew nothing about.

One of my favorite memories of him was when he laughed along with me as I played an April Fool's joke on his son. His son had already dumped me, but was now home from his mission and hung out with me a few times. He could never stop talking about his mission to Rome, and how he wanted to go back worse than anything. One April Fool's, my friend had sent me a letter saying he was tracting and had taught the Pope. Okay, I was a lot on the naive side back then, and I had no idea that pranks could be this big, so maybe I believed it for a few sentences...Oh, how I wanted to get him back after that one.

I played like I had sent my mission papers in a few weeks before, then on Sun Apr 1st, I called my friend and told him that I had gotten my call and I needed to show it to him. (Prior to my friends mission, he had given me a copy of his mission call. All of it.) I took his call and retyped it with my name in it and forged the President of the Church's name. Thus, I gave myself a mission call to the SAME MISSION that he had gone to. Hahaha. Like he would believe it for a minute....

BUT HE DID!!!!

As I was showing my "call" to my friend, I handed a copy of it to his dad, only his dad's copy had a big APRIL FOOLS written across it. So, then his dad knew it was a joke and HE LOVED IT! I could tell when he stood up, walked over to me, and asked me if "this was for real." Meaning the April Fool's that was written on his paper. Then he just smiled big and sat back down.

Sadly, Mr. Slackk is dying. He is in the last stages of his life, and he has not eaten nor drunken anything for 5 days.

I am sad about all of this.

The world will lose a great one.

I am just sad.

I hate cancer.

I have a friend 4 doors down that has had it for about 10 years.

When she first got it, her youngest child was just about 3,

and you had to feel for a momma's boy that loses his mom at such a young age.

Now, she is dying, and I just want to say that I am sad.

She is in the last stages, can't eat,

lots of stuff going on inside her body tumor-wise.

When I see lots and lots of cars in front of her house at a time, 

I literally have to choke back my urge

to throw up cause it makes me so worried.

We aren't in her same ward anymore,

so I have to get info second hand,

and I don't know if the cars are there cause she has passed
or will soon.
.
.
.

I hear it will be soon.

I am just sad....