Day of hiking on the AZ Strip

Today was the last day of our school district's "UEA" break. Yea, whatever. Let's call it the Deer Hunt, shall we?

To celebrate all the teachers hard at work at their resepctive conferences (cha, right), we went out looking for petroglyphs, only to find lizards, horny toads and really cool mountains to climb. Alex took the opportunity to make his mom nervous by climbing a rather high definately steep mountain (We've named it Alex Mountain, figuring that the BLM wouldn't mind). The dog did ok, too. Although, after finding a stinky moss smelling pond, he had to ride in the back of the truck. This dog is like a 3 year old. Full of energy--for a few minutes, then wants to sleep or pee in the house. Alex, Jacob and Abby all liked to ride in the back of the truck by themselves when they were 3. (just kidding gma).

a better way

I have so much to share with everyone that I have decided it is too hard to talk to each of you and fill you in. So I am going to turn it over to you and post once and you can fill yourselves in :) The events of the past few weeks have been kind of cool. First Alex; he has discovered his love of choir and choral music. Well he discovered that a while ago but, last week, he did a solo in the Fall Concert. WHAT? Yes, that is right. A solo! He was so good it made me tear up. Oh, but did I mention that he didn't tell us? We found out when we got to the concert. I guess he didn't want us to be nervous for him. I totally would have been too!! He then went to Salt Lake City to sing in the Allstate choir. Also very good! He has a very good voice and I am excited to hear it more!

Now Jake, he is trying to be a good student and be well liked in school. He has a few great teachers that are making him see the benefits of doing well in school. Thank goodness for that. Parents lectures only go so far. Jake is also in a hip hop class that he loves. The teacher is a guy who has worked with some famous people and been in the dance crews of Backstreet Boys. He is very nice and Jake has some interesting moves. By interesting I mean cool. He is on the competition team and really is quite good. He also likes to play teh drums and piano but the violin has taken a little bit of a beating.

Abby is a great dancer, student, friend, daughter, etc. She is so much fun!!!!! She loves to dance! I mean any kind of dance. She has the blood for hip hop, she takes ballet and creative dance. She wishes she could go to a school of dancing. She was invited to dance in a Gala Performance on the 26th in front of 6000+ people. Southwest dance has the only dance team participating. I had to make her a pioneer costume though. I tried to not make it look polygamist though! We will post as soon as we get the video.