A Visit From Squirt

My kids are always so excited to have a class pet.  This year Megan's teacher has a Russian Tortoise.  When I stopped in at the beginning of school to talk to the teacher, she asked if I would be willing to sign up to take Squirt home for a weekend, so here we are.  Everyone was excited.  Samantha has wanted a Russian Tortoise for at least a couple of years.  Even Jonas (who is notoriously subdued in his reaction to anything,) was very interested in "interacting" with him.

It was so fun to watch him eat, and somehow my kids even managed to play and "cuddle" with him.

Admittedly, as far as pets go, this one was very easy to manage and didn't even smell bad.  And most important of all, didn't resemble a rodent in any way!  We would love to have Squirt come visit again.

Olympus Aquatics Kick Off

Wow.  This has been a long time coming.  Ever since they tore down the Olympus High School swimming pool and we had to shutter the age group swim team, this has been on the horizon.  With the new pool scheduled to be finished in February (hopefully), it was time to start over and launch a new swim team.  This has been Shawn's baby.  It has been hours and hours and hours of work.  He has lived and breathed it.  And with no promise that we would even have kids.  He has definitely been banking on the "Build it and they will come" philosophy.  During the summer, we only had about 10 kids and 4 of them were ours.  We just needed enough kids to secure the rental space at the pool, but had no idea if anyone would actually come on day one.  He hired a fantastic coach, and with the promise of a beautiful new facility in just a few months, it worked. There were probably about 50 (?) kids there!

By being married to Shawn, I've gotten sucked into this swim team thing, too.

Cool new logo for Olympus Aquatics.

And lots of swimmers ready to go.

Still hoping to see the program grow so we can actually pay the coaches, but we're not off to a bad start.  If we can make it through  these first few months, it will be exciting to see where this team goes.

Of course, Marsh and Stringham kids make up a good portion of the swimmers, but that's OK.

Ainsley

Amelia

Duffy

Ellie and Amelia

Joey and his friend.

Samantha

Yay for Olympus Aquatics!  (And congratulations Shawn, on the birth of your new baby.)

Peter's Turn

After what seemed like forever, Peter finally got to go to school like the big kids.  The first day I got to go with him so he could meet the teachers and check out the classroom.

He found lots of things that he liked.  The reading area,

the sand table,

and of course, the computer games.

He found his name hand print on the door.

He is excited and ready to go.  I, however, am not there yet.  Four days a week without my little side kick is going to be tough.  I may have shed a tear or two.

Peter didn't need any adjustment time.  He was perfectly happy to tell me goodbye and hop in the carpool with his neighborhood friends, Mylie and Daphne.

I better go and find something to fill my time with.  

Anyone want to go to breakfast?

Anniversary #19

It's hard enough to realize I have a 15 year old, let alone that I have been married for 19 years!  Since our anniversary fell on a Sunday this year, we celebrated a couple days earlier.  Shawn and I decided to do something a little different than our usual anniversary trip to Snowbird, and instead we went to...  Ogden!  (Woohoo! Exciting, right?) But we had so much fun.  We started out with some indoor sky diving.

So much fun, but way too short.

After we were done flying, we went to flowrider to try out the indoor surfing and boogie boarding.

Once again, so much fun, but unfortunately, most rides end up going this direction.  (Actually one of the most entertaining parts of the whole thing was watching people fall and get whooshed up to the top of the hill.  Didn't always feel great, but definitely entertaining.)

See, Shawn fell, too.  Everyone did.  That was how you knew your turn was over.

We enjoyed a lovely dinner out  - where the tortilla chips were the size of small tortillas...

And in the morning, we went rock climbing.

And then we headed home to celebrate Jonas' birthday.

It's been a great 19 years, can't wait to see how the next 19 go!
(I should add that this anniversary was brought to you by Groupon. ;)