Boy Cousins

Labor Day weekend we had Michael's brother John and his three boys come visit from Idaho. We had a great weekend with them, watching football, playing with toys, eating pizza, and hiking Battle Creek Falls.

Emma and James.

Battle Creek Falls was a fun hike and the kids did great! 

They also loved catching caterpillars to bring home.

Uncle John is a super fun Uncle. (Our kids are so lucky to have an abundance of super fun Uncles.)

I love the height of Joseph in this picture.

You can see where John's boys get their super ninja skills from.

Thanks again for coming to visit us, Idaho Smarts. 

We love having you!

We have lots of fun girl cousins too, but boy cousins are seen less frequently so they are a special treat. Up until now the Idaho Smarts have been our only boy cousins, but . . .

. . . later that day the kids were able to meet their newest boy cousin, Ethan Miller.

Ethan was born at the end of August.  We think he is impressive and look forward to passing on more boy-cousin Ninja skills.

And THEN . . . guess who arrived just today? Baby Boy Bowen! Another boy cousin! We can't wait to meet him too. And we anxiously await Baby Boy Sorenson in the next month!  Hooray for fun cousins.

Recap: May 2010

I am still attempting to catch-up on pictures from the summer. (I am mainly doing this for adoring Grandparents who live far away and want to see our every move, but we don't dismiss the interest of the rest of our huge family blog audience. :)

Mother's Day breakfast, robed in my own Snuggie

Visiting the Salt Lake Cemetery with Grandma Udall

More pictures of our May adventures can be seen at 

this Web Album (click here)

A couple of clips from the kid's Dance Festival at school.  The Kindergarten did the chicken dance. Spencer is the kid in the yellow shirt who struts into the center of the screen.

The 5th Grade. Catherine is in the center in the navy blue shirt.

The 3rd grade did The Evolution of Dance. Here is the finale.     

Independence Day

Life has been crazy around here for the past few weeks as Michael worked feverishly behind the scenes on BYU's quest for independence in football.  Everything finally came together last Wednesday as Michael pulled-off a stellar press conference announcing the big news. (He even got a nice shout-out from the WCC Commissioner during the live broadcast.)

Here is our friend Steve Sandberg getting interviewed by Dick Harmon of the Deseret News. Harmon writes a column about BYU football and during all the speculation reports he wrote about BYU's efforts to get out of it's crappy Comcast contract (one of the main reasons BYU wanted out of the MWC) and that BYU sent "one of these smart lawyer types" to find a way out. That would be Steve. All this came together mainly because of Steve's hard work.

I was excited that I got to see the press conference in person. One of the best parts was seeing the ESPN VP raving about how much ESPN loves BYU.  It was also pretty cool to see LaVell. Dave Rose is the head basketball coach and Greg Wrubel is the local radio announcer that calls all of BYU's football and b-ball games - aka "the voice of the Cougars." But most of all, it was great for me to see Michael in action.

Michael and Steve - these guys both look good considering the spectacular sleep deprivation they were up against.

Here’s where you can watch the press conference. You just need to register quickly (free). You can fast forward past the first two minutes of the guys in the studio. The first 19 minutes are the best stuff.

http://www.byutv.org/watch/1385-313

Smart Family July 2010

As I go back through our pictures from July, I am struck by the number of mountain and lake shots. I guess we visited a lot of mountains and lakes!

Emma celebrated her 9th Birthday and wanted a Purple Party.

And we celebrated Pioneer Day in style.

More pictures and captions at this Web Album. (CLICK HERE)

Summer Trip to Maryland

I am incredibly behind behind on family blogging. So I'm going to start doing web albums to catch up a bit.

We just got home from our family trip to visit Michael's parents and brothers in Maryland! We loved it!

There are many more pictures at this web album (click HERE).

My Soccer Season- Catherine

Here for your viewing are the pictures of some of my soccer games.

I am the one with the ball by my feet

I had a great team and a great season.

Spring Soccer for Spencer

Spencer had a great spring soccer season. His team, the Blue Tornadoes, didn't get creamed quite so often, in part thanks to Spencer's increased aggressive play. He had a few games where he scored multiple times.

This one was a particularly good game on a particularly nice day. I think he scored 6 (Spencer thinks it's 9) goals that game. I finally had to tell him to stop. :)

Emma keeping herself entertained.

This was his final game of the season. It was the beginning of May and we were all freezing! Spencer had a rough first half, but the second half he came back invigorated and scored at will. Here are a couple of his shots.

Spence was so excited to get his very own medal! (His only lament was that he wanted it to be gold.)

Yay Blue Tornadoes!

And here is a shot of the crowd.

Recent short outings

A couple weeks ago the kids and I had planned to go explore the trails in the foothills above our home. You know that park that is high up with the views of the valley? There are trails that mysteriously weave up and around some small passes.

We've been having crazy non-summer weather, so when the Friday night arrived, it was cold with imminent rain. The other kids were fine, but Spencer was really disappointed and cried and cried. So I took him. Luckily the rain held off.

He wanted to take one of me:
The trip became awesome when we wandered into a gully and found these bones. That weekend our cousin Madeleine identified them as a femur (or humerus - they're pretty much the same on four-legged animals) and some vertebrae. We found them by a bunch of feathers. So we figure that whatever it was (baby deer carcass?) either got eaten by a vulture, or whatever ate this also ate a bird, too. Spencer carried the femur around for the next two days.
The next day was a little nicer, so while mom was out we went to explore the American Fork River that runs behind the high school about a mile away. This outing reminded me of many my mom would take us on during summers to rivers such as the Gunpowder and whatever the one is that feeds the Greenbrier and Cunningham Falls lakes.
Every outing would be about half as long if it weren't for snacks. Of course we spent a lot of time throwing rocks.
Next post I will show the photos from our epic Memorial Day weekend.

Summer, Summer, Summer!

Here I Come!