A couple more...

I realized I left out a few of my favorites of Colton. He also is quite determined and competitive, but gets rather anxious about winning. He's practicing with the varsity high school boys on Tuesday & Thursday mornings (currenty it's water polo) and then does seminary MWF, for which he has to make up the homework if he wants to attend BYU--but it's good for him anyways. To do well in swimming, he's swimming with FLEET everyday for over 2 hours after school. A busy boy, but my opinion is he does better being busy (no time for xbox :-)

And now I will not force pictures of my half-naked swimming kids upon you for awhile--till next year.

Jakey-Baby

I hadn't planned to have a special group for Jake, but apparently the team photographer took too many good pictures of him and thus the special spot is given. As you scroll through, you may notice the determination and competitiveness of our blonde one. He's just turned nine, so it's impressive, but also a little scary, though just for me--he loves it!

Backstroke

Butterfly

Breast

So we just let him start at FLEET swimming club in their year-round program on a trial basis--if mom can't handle the practices 4x a week then it'll go. That's why it's scary to me, because of the taxi service I provide. But it does get his energy out and makes for a happy little Jakey-Baby.

My Swimmers

I've had these pictures for over a month and got them scanned in to share. This is how I've used my no-church Sunday while Caleb is napping time. I'm amazed at how talented these little whipper-snappers are getting and how they've grown.

Here's Eli looking like a too cool Harry Potter impersonator--

And now here's Colton trying his best, looking like he's attacking the water and maybe going to bite some of it off!

Here's our little Livvy Lou! She's improved on diving in--one of the best parts of a meet is watching how the youngest ones try to dive in.

Below is the picture that people say she looks like me, poor thing with a screwy facial expression!

Now she's ready, though her swim performance was usually directed correlated with the temperature--the warmer it was the better she swam.

Us and the Hurricane

Our biggest disaster and my camera goes caput. It's only 6 months old, should be under warranty, but it's an HP and it wasn't (please reply with any new camera recommendations). Chris got a few pics on his cell phone, but I have no idea how to get them. Anyhoo, we are fine and well and only lost power for about 16 hours. Only one day of playing many games of Uno, of worrying about my fridge and freezer and of having unconditioned air. By 7 Saturday night we were up and running and woke up the next morning a little chilly from too nicely conditioned air. We presumed most everyone was doing as well. Now a week later, it's Sunday, another Sunday without church. Today we were supposed to have the Primary Program at church, but alas, no power at the church, and the ox is in the mire, so alot of the men are at Chappelow's removing a tree from their guest house (sorry no picture).

Another blessing was having my niece give birth to a beautiful little girl (sorry no picture) about 24 hours before the storm and their little family was able to ride out the storm in the hospital. I was glad to know they were going to be well there and then come home to an air-conditioned home.

So my kids have been home, content with xbox and video games, though our satellite dish got turned, so we had a week without tv (boohoo). All this downtime gave me the opportunity to bribe Colton into getting his paperwork done for his Eagle project. I would not take him shopping till it was done and so a little time and motivation goes a long way when he wants to go before his PacSun coupon expires.

Yes, we were very lucky, but this whole area was blessed with below average temperatures and low humidity for over a week--it's been the most beautiful weather we've experienced for September, or pretty much ever! But a generator has moved up on our wish list as we'll probably need it sometime, but hopefully Houston's turn for hurricanes has been satisfied for a few decades.

It's about...time

Yes, it's been awhile...so to get up-to-date, after Chris quit HP he took a week long fishing trip in the gulf with a group of guys including his brother and a good friend from Monterey. Chris' brother, Jon, came with his family so while the men were fishing, it was me and my sister-in-law and nine children, including the twin girls, Hayley and Hannah--it was wonderful to get to meet them, arriving from Kazakhstan only last February and see how they fit right in perfectly with their new family.

The kids kept busy with lots of swimming, board games, wii, movies, and some roller skating with a fun little trip to the Blue Bell Ice Cream Factory. I think it was agreed that it rivals the best ice cream in the world, though we still haven't been able to purchase the blackberry cobbler ice cream we sampled--though the candy bar ice cream is fabulous.

And then, after the company returned home and Chris started work, he had to go to California for a week so the kids and I made a quick trip to the Austin area to visit our good friends, the Masters family. We toured the state capitol building, which is beautiful, and hung around till dusk to see hundreds of thousands of bats come pouring out of the big bridge there--it was freaky, but cool and it sure does stink around there. Hundreds of people gather every night to watch the phenomenom.

Soon summer ended, school started and my camera stopped working so I have no pictures of the last 3 weeks, but the kids are all doing great. Colton loves high school and learning German and swimming and water polo with the varsity kids. Eli's dragging his Euphonium back and forth to school everyday, but is still the happiest kid and Jake and Olivia have great teachers and are already driving me crazy with the homework I have to sign-off on and remind them to do. It's hard to find a quiet place for each kid to do their homework with seven people here constantly. Though Caleb and I enjoy a little quiet and together time now and Chris pops in occasionally from his office, which is almost finished, it is great to be back on a schedule, seminary and all!