School

Angela and Ben arrived safely back home today and it is GREAT to have them back!  We also got Zach’s school picture today.  They all had tie-dye shirts for their pictures (his school class).  Since he came in late, they only had one left and it was a tad snug on him.  🙂  He hated his smile, but that’s OK.  🙂

Tonight, Castle View High School had a combined band, chorus, orchestra end of year concert where all the groups showed-off their talents.  Brittany performed well in the orchestra.  The music program here at Castle View is not quite what it was at Metea and in District 204, but the girls will continue to work hard and be the best they can be.  🙂

Great job Brittany!

Today, Brittany had the ACT.  We got up early and drove up to the high school they were taking the test at and dropped her off.  We then came home and did some housework and unpacking.  Hopefully things went well with the test.  She feels she did OK, but we’ll see what happens!  🙂

We picked her up as a family and decided to go driving up into the mountains.  It was a gorgeous day and we wanted some fresh mountain air.  We didn’t drive far, but we saw some great views.  We visited Buffalo Bill’s grave (in the mountains just outside of Denver).  We took a whole bunch of pictures.

You never get views or fresh air like that in Illinois!  Being out in nature today really helped the kids appreciate where we now live!

Angela had a virtual lunch with her Naperville/Aurora IL girls group.  They had lunch out there and then called Angela and Skyped with her and she did a tour of the house.  Was quite sad when finished because she misses them.  Today the first week of school finished up for the girls out here.  Brittany has made some friends but is still sad and misses her IL friends.  Seminary went very well and Brittany’s teacher is wonderful!  He is watching out for her and making sure he does what he can to keep her happy!  Kirstyn is enjoying school out here too.  Things are so much more laid-back here than in District 204, however.  Here you have open campus, and there seems to be more free time to do homework and such.  The way the schedule runs is way different too.  The girls complained some, but we had to keep telling them that different is not bad.  Different is just different, and that they will get used to things.  🙂

Today was absolutely crazy busy!  Kirstyn played in one of her last basketball games (and did very well I might add).  She has really enjoyed the opportunity to play recreation ball to keep up her skills for hopefully making the Still Middle School Team again this year.  Kirstyn then went up to Metea and participated in the district Science Fair.

Her project dealt with how different kinds of sugar affected dough’s ability to rise.  It was MUCH better than her project on how liquids affected metals (i.e.  penny in rotting orange juice that smelled horrific!).  🙂  She did a GREAT job and she ended up being selected to go to the regional science fair next month!  What a great accomplishment for our little scientist!  She was very excited!

The whole time this was going on, Zach had a play date with his friend Diego and they had a blast!

Brittany got 4 tickets for the Bulls vs. Nuggets tonight and arranged a double date with 3 of her friends (Arielle, Logan, and DT).  We wouldn’t let them drive down, so I arranged with a friend of mine to get 4 tickets as well!  I got a double date with Angela and Arielle’s mom and dad!  The 8 of us piled into the van and went out to dinner together and then to the game!  They were happy that our tickets were not by theirs and we tried to stay away from their group and conversation (even at dinner).  It was pretty funny.

The game was great and our tickets were even better than  Brittany’s this time.  We were pretty close to the floor and could see everything well!

What a great time we had!  The kids weren’t too bad when it came to hanging out with parents.  They only pretended they didn’t know us when we tried to take their pictures at the game.

Tonight  BYU played San Diego State in the Poinsettia Bowl!  It was televised on ESPN, and Sarah was there!  The game was AWESOME and BYU beat San Diego State 23 to 6!  Go Cougars!  There was a sign there that we thought was absolutely hilarious…  it said “The Mayan world may end tomorrow, but the Aztec world ends tonight!”  🙂  We recorded the game in hopes that we would see Sarah and right toward the end, we did!!!  We were so excited!  We were taking pictures of the TV screen for posterity sake!

She had such a blast down there!  At first she was kind of bummed that she couldn’t come home, but after being down there one day, she forgot about that!  She said that they had so much fun that it was almost sad to leave the band and come back home!  🙂  Go Cougars Football, and go BYU Marching Band!  🙂