Our Vacation to Bear Lake, UT June 2009

I know I'm long overdue for a post. I needed to relearn how to get pictures off the camera again. I know, I know. This time I wrote the steps down. I hope to better in the future.

To celebrate our 15th anniversary/family summer vacation, we decided to visit somewhere new. We went to Bear Lake, UT. Wow, is it beautiful there or what?!! The color of the lake reminded me of our Caribbean cruise. Yes, it was that clear and bright blue. However, it was as cold as the Columbia River, so we didn't swim there much. The kids were fascinated by the shells that were absolutely everywhere on the beach. In fact I would say that we were walking on shells, not sand.

Some other things we did were: swimming at the resort pool, eat chocolate covered raspberries (you must visit The Chocolate Bear if you visit, yummy store), eat raspberry shakes, climb 888 steps in the Minnetonka Cave, visit the Paris Ice Caves (saw several dead rats floating there), visit Wilford Woodruff's home, and visited the Paris Tabernacle.

We had a great time and will definitely go back sometime in the future. We have to, Kaley was missing from our group since she was off at Girl's Camp (yes, it was her first year and she had a great time).

WA State Chess Tournament 2009

Keenan participated in the Washington State Elementary Chess Championship in Spokane on Saturday, April 25, 2009. Keenan, Afton, Saoirse, and I went up Friday night and spent the night in a hotel with a cool water slide and 3 indoor pools. The next morning we got up really early and after breakfast we headed over to the Spokane Convention Center. Keenan won 2 of his 5 rounds. He was sad he didn't win a trophy, but he did have a great time. He came home with a commemorative t-shirt, button, and a new kind of chess board (it comes with Chess Head cards which are used while playing chess). You'll have to ask him about that. I was amazed at how many families and kids were there, wow! They had kindergarten through fifth graders playing and there were so many people there (we filled the convention center parking lot plus some). A good time was had by all I believe.

TEA Party in the Tri-Cities

TEA stands for Taxed Enough Already. Emma and I went to our local TEA party and had a wonderful time. Our next door neighbor was one of the main organizers and we enjoyed all the speeches and the demonstrations. We look forward to another TEA party and more rallies. Emma certainly asked a lot of questions and learned a lot about her country and government. I hope to bring more of the family next time (Keenan had a baseball game at the same time). I believe that our favorite events at the rally were dumping in tea bags as part of our protest and hanging out on the sidewalk with our posters. She was especially proud of her poster and she got a lot of compliments on it.

Easter 2009

We had a grand time coloring easter eggs on Easter morning before church. Kaley, Ken, and I sang in church with the choir. We then loaded everyone up and went out to grandma and grandpa Stoker's farm for our annual Easter lunch and egg hunt. This year was a little different since it was raining and going outside for an Easter egg hunt was not possible. We had our hunt inside and the kids still loved it. On our way home we saw the most beautiful double rainbow. It was a wonderful day.

The Beginning of Baseball Season

The Greater Richland Little League (GRLL) season started this week. Ken is coaching again this year and of course loving it. This will be his third year of coaching with GRLL. Subway is our sponsor this year.

Today we had the pleasure of Chris (Ken's brother), Amy, Camden, Amber, Steven (Ken's brother), and Marie joining us to watch Keenan's first baseball game. We were missing Kaley and Emma who were attending an all day softball clinic (they both got sunburned).

Keenan is happy to know several fellow team members and to increase his pitching skills this year. He had to miss the first game of the season, sadly, due to sickness. Today was his first game and even though the team lost, they did a great job as a team. It's just the beginning of the season and everyone is getting their feet wet as a team and I'm sure they will take off soon. It's a great team. It's also fun to see our past team members from other years and all the families we have met and made friends with. Good Luck to everyone this year!

Saoirse's Milestone

Yesterday Saoirse and I walked up to the elementary school and signed her up for kindergarten. She is so excited! I showed her where her room would be and we walked around the school. Since she is walking to school she will attend morning kindergarten.

On another note for Saoirse, last month she had her eyes examined. We were pretty sure she was going to need glasses, but the optometrist told us that she will eventually need them, however, he wasn't going to prescribe them just yet. She was very sad that she wasn't going to get glasses that day and she still talks weekly about how she is going to get glasses and she can't wait. I keep telling her that it is nothing to get excited about, but she won't believe me.

SPRING BREAK!!!

Oh how I love Spring Break! This year we will be going up to Coeur d'Alene, ID and hanging out our Worldmark resort. We plan on visiting our favorite indoor water park, Triple Play. We are super excited that our cousins Krysten and Tomas along with Doug (Ken's brother) and Melissa are going to meet up with us this year at Triple Play. It will be so much fun!

We spent several hours playing in the water. The kids loved the water slides. I only got to go down once since Afton had a ear infection (although we didn't know it at the time). Some of us played mini golf and laser tag and all of us played games in the arcade center. We had the best time.

The rest of spring break was spent enjoying watching tv, eating, swimming in a regular pool and sleeping. I believe we spent most of the time watching tv. I must say that the whole family misses satellite programming and we made the most of it soaking in all of the shows we miss the most (we had 4 tv's in our suite). I must also mention that we were able to reserve the penthouse suite at our resort and boy was it NICE!! I hope we get that opportunity again.