Dancing with Daffodils

My kids are all very capable and talented and they work hard and I am so grateful. Curtis has really accomplished some great things lately though. He came home sometime during the last week of school with a folder full of awards that he had received at the 8th grade awards ceremony, including a very special one called the Chad Malone Award of Merit. This is what the principal read:  Good Morning.  Today we recognize one of your peers by honoring him with the Chad Malone Award of Merit.  Chad was a 7 th grade student at Spring Ridge Middle School when he died, at the age of 12, in a plane crash on December 2, 1996.  He was an honor student who had a great love of life, made friends easily, had a contagious smile, excelled at sports and lived every day to his full potential.  When Chad passed, his parents wanted to do something to keep his memory alive. With the approval of the school and Board of Education the Chad Malone Award of Merit was established. This a...

May and June are about finishing things up. Tuesday, May 21 was Emma's chorus concert, Curtis's last regular season baseball game, Brandon had a game and Lily had dance. It was a crazy night but we worked out some carpooling with the Kinneys and made it to everything but Brandon's game. Emma's concert was all Disney and cute and then we went to Curtis's game. He was playing the only other senior league team in our county (Max's team) and won 13-3. It was a low-energy game and Josh accidentally went to the wrong field and so after chatting with the Kinneys for awhile, I went to book club. It was a good book (The Persian Pickle Club) and we had a good discussion about the importance of women supporting each other. I love book club and it has almost always been a safe place to be myself; I really appreciate the women who come and how we talk and support each other.    Josh and I went with Matt and Michelle to the temple and it was lovely. We did initiatories and se...

May is usually pretty crazy but having Josh around this year, unlike last year when he was gone for three weeks, has made it feel quite manageable. There is still a lot going on but between all of the rain and his help, it has been fine. In fact sometimes my mornings have been totally open and I've tried to help people and spend time with friends and it hasn't worked out at all so I have had a lot of quiet down time in the mornings; which is good and bad. I enjoy it but it can also make me feel useless.  Josh took Emma and Brandon to the Primary Temple Day one Saturday and they had a great time. The only downside was the terrible traffic on the way up and back. We love the temple though and I'm glad they all got to go.    Two weeks ago though I had brunch with my high school friend, Michelle. We've been close since 8th grade and instead of passing notes we had a notebook that we would write in and pass back and forth. We usually signed the letters BFITWWWAAF which stood...

   April was a busy month. We got back later on April 3 and then the kids were right back into school and dance and baseball Thursday and Friday and then Saturday was opening day for baseball and General Conference, which was wonderful. For Josh's birthday dinner we got Nicolletti's and ate pizza in between sessions while watching the final four. Sunday we did all the Easter stuff in the morning (dyed eggs and looked for baskets and eggs) and then watched conference and then we had Emma's birthday dinner. Then Monday was Josh's actual birthday and we didn't do much but we had his cake and he opened presents that night. Costa Rica was really his gift but on that day I felt badly he wouldn't have anything to open so I spent that afternoon running around and was able to print some pictures of the trip for him and I put them in nice frames and he was happy. Tuesday was Emma's birthday but it was such a busy day that I hardly saw her until that evening when we ha...

 On Saturday morning we got picked up at our hotel and driven to Tamarindo, which was about four hours away. This drive was very beautiful at the start as we were winding around Lake Arenal and the volcano but once we got out of the mountains and headed west, it got flat and pretty dry. As soon as we got there, Emma and Brandon and I changed into our suits and headed on the shuttle to the beach. Our hotel was up on a hill so it had an amazing view of the ocean but we had to take a shuttle to get down to it. We had access to this nice beach club that had chairs and a restaurant and towels and a pool so that was awesome. We went and played at the beach while Josh, Lily and Curtis went and took a surfing lesson. The waves were pretty lame but they still had a good time and then they walked down the beach and found us and we all had dinner watching the sunset on the beach. It was really beautiful.        Sunday was Easter and we had wanted to go to our church but th...