The Luge...Olympic Park

Clint's work party was at the olympic park because they are sponsors of the USA Luge team. We went to the world cup for luge and then had the opportunity to try it out for ourselves. Whoopie! Yee-Haw! Everything was great except for the not so good catered food. OK. It was terrible and we have been paying for it ever since. A few days anyway. But the Luge experience was awesome.

New family pics

I love getting pictures. I will someday be my own photographer and have a super nice camera and take a class to make sure I learn some good techniques. So that I can be the best scrapbooker and videographer....oh wait, that was all just a dream.... but a girl has to have a dream. Doesn't she?

Family "nic" names

Nicalee has come up with her own names for everyone:
mom = mama
dad= daddy
carver= dardar
maddie= mammie

mammie is my favorite and so now we are calling maddie mammie. And I think she loves it. If I say" where is mammie"? Nicalee puts her hands up and walks around looking... then she runs and gives "mammie" a hug and kiss. They are cute sisters. And Carver is the cutest big brother to Nicalee. Now if I could just get Carver and Maddie to stop teasing eachother...

the october whirlwind adventure

Preschool is Awesome!

Madalyn's new school clothes for the first day.

Bobbing for Apples-- in Clint's haunted house adventure

Carver-- school parade. Ninja costume

Kids at Lifetime's Spooktacular

Me rock climbing at the spooktacular

Clint Rock Climbling at the spooktacular

Clint's Halloween costume (I think :) )

Nicalee's cow costume.

Nicalee's bumble costume.

Carver's spider-batman costume.

Madalyn as Jack Sparrow-- she also tried the clown costume which

I loved!!

Air Hockey mini-pro

Nascar here we come.

Swim Olympian in the making

Goggles make all the difference

Nicalee and her best friends.

Let's swim, like 10 times a day.

Isn't he f'n hot..... pardon me.

Talk about like father like son....

And Nicalee doesn't quite think her goofball family is as funny

as they think they are.

Madalyn's new front porch. A fun domain.

Yes, October was a whirlwind. First, we moved into a new home. Second, we had our Park City vacation (which was as much fun as last year, thanks mom and dad). Third, Madalyn started preschool again. And the rest of the month involved Halloween festivities at work, school, church and with friends. My kids each had about 2-3 costumes. It was pretty fun. But where did the month go??

Nica's news

Nicalee my little skinny minnie loves to feed herself and she loves chocolate. Don't we all? This is her pudding. Madalyn just had to take a picture of her. They are the cutest sisters ever!

Madalyn's Dance Recital

I can't believe I forgot to post this, but the problem is the missing videocamera. GRRRRR. Yes, I am still mad about the loss of that thing. It will take me a while to get over that. Anyway, they danced to "The Lion sleeps tonight" from Lion King... and from like 30 years ago, but I can't remember the original title or artist. How great is that. I guess that's been my month.

Carver's fieldtrip

The Zoo was our destination and it was such a great experience to ride the bus up there with 3 classes of first graders. Yowsers! I didn't realize that a bus could be soooo noisy! Carver's class has 22 kids and there were 13 volunteers so it was about 2 kids per mom, but one of the mom's couldn't come for a little bit, so I had 4 and Carver, Brysen, Collin and Brandon couldn't have been happier. What a fun little crew they are!

All I want for Christmas is my 2 front teeth

Carver has had 2 loose teeth for what seems like a few months now. Well finally his Uncle Paul said to him, "If you pull those teeth out yourself I'll give you a dollar". Within the hour Carver had those teeth out and in a baggie ready for his prize. He was so proud of those teeth he carefully placed them under his pillow for more money from the tooth fairy. And of course we had to have a huge discussion about the possibility and impossibility of there really being fairies. We saw the movie Tooth Fairy a few months ago and that was a real hoot, especially considering all the questions that my kids have come up with about any kind of magical, holiday and fairytale beings. They really have BIG imaginations. And WAY too many questions. Christmas should be interesting.

Birfday at Snowbird

Our birthday offered a much needed breather from packing and moving.......hi ho hi ho - twas off to snowbird we go'ed. Happened to be Oktoberfest so there were lots of people to watch. We went on the alpine slide, rode the tram, and took some great pictures.....unfortunately, the pictures were taken on a video camera that got stolen out of our car that night. So we were left with memories and one pic that some nice people on the tram took of us with their camera.

The greatest memory of our birthday was summed up in one word T R A I N I N G T A B L E. Okay it might be more that one word, but to Melinda it was like Jeff Foxworthy's explanation "could you supersize it for the nice lady?.........it's our anniversary!" HA HA. Sometimes September 11th revolves around Clint and sometimes it revolves around the older Melinda. :)

Anyways - back to moving and packing and moving.......without our camera! ha ha.

Maximus

Carver and I had a funny conversation the other night. He couldn't sleep so I went in his room to lay down with him and I tried to do some relaxation things with him (something I learned from track coaches a long time ago). Anyway, he was laying down with his eyes closed and I was talking him through all the muscles and having him flex that muscle for a minute and then relax. Then I made a mistake. The gluteus maximus. Just the word sent Carver into the biggest giggle fit I have ever witnessed. And of course I joined in. Then, he said, "You have the squishiest maximus... ha, ha, ha... and dad has the stinkiest maximus, ha, ha, ha ... and is gluteus maximus a real word?" To which I replied after thoroughly laughing until I cried, "yes, it is a real word." Then he answered with, "well, I think they should call it Maximus Tootiest!" Followed by another round of laughing. He fell asleep about 5 minutes later after laughing so hard all his energy went by the wayside. And I heard him laughing a couple of times during the night. I guess my relaxation techniques are not exactly hitting the mark. I suppose I should have remembered that one of his favorite books is Captain Underpants.

The last of the swim lessons

Our end of July and beginning of August just slipped by me so I will give a brief synopsis of what we have done. Carver and Madalyn (and Nicalee sort of) took some swim lessons at the shinsel pool which they loved. I think they learned a lot of useful swim techniques and really started to show some talent in the water. Maddie is the model here.

We also had a lovely campout in the backyard with movies, popcorn, lanturns and a portable dvd player to make it complete.

And Carver had his first day of school as a first grader. His class is mostly the same as last year and I just loved his class last year. I think there are only 20-21 kids in his class which is also great and Mrs. Marshall is a fabulous teacher. Madalyn is so excited for when she gets to start up again (in a few weeks).

Nicalee is such a fun personality right now. She loves to try to feed herself. She runs like crazy and she can even climb the ladders on the swingset--- that scared me to pieces last week when I saw her do it all by herself. Yikes. I love my kids!!