Weekly Update

And here is the news from Spokane. Kids are bored. Updates will be provided as each child succombs to their boredom and falls by the wayside. Symptoms include sad, elongated faces with longing puppy dog eyes; high pitched whines; and constant slumping indicating brief loses of muscle control. Do not try and ignore said child as this will increase the above sysmptoms. Your best option is to grab your chest on your heart side and fake a mild cardio infarcarction. Fall to your knees and mumble something about seeing the light. Lie on the floor until your child has left the room in disgust and then slowly leave the room as to not to arouse suspisions from your child that you have pulled through.

Other than that, life is pretty normal around Spokane. Darbi went to the doctor and found out that the bone is in place and she won't have to have surgery. Nick is becoming an Elder on Sunday. Jaren has begun his professional life as a painter and is loving every minute of it. Well actually, mostly loving the thought of a paycheck.

We are anxious to get the summer going around here and enjoying the outdoors. We plan on camping, hiking and water fun. We just finished a fire pit in the back yard and the boys are planning on having a party this weekend with smores and hotdogs.

Spokane River Flooding

We had a huge snow pack this year and so the melt off has produced some flooding on the Spokane River. It is 8 feet high which makes the falls in downtown quite impressive. We went down there today with the girls and took some pictures and ohhhh'd and awww'd with everyone else. The boys didn't go because they are golfing. I think they have caught the bug. They have golfed everyday this week. Nick discovered one of this friends from school works at a local course and lets them on for free.

Breaking records...and other things

Darbi had her final meet of the season. She qualified in 3 events for the regional championships; the 1600 meter, the 800 meter and the 4X400 relay. Her first event was the 1600. She finished in 5:48, a personal record. She ran a great race and was in a few seconds of setting the school record. As it was, she has the 3rd fastest time on the school record books. Her next event was the 800. The fist lap was lightening fast and she was well on pace to break the school record. Instead, 50 meters from the line on the first lap, a girl stepped out of her lane and tripped Darbi. She went hard to the ground and layed there for a minute before she jumped up and finished the last 500 meters. By the end she was holding her arm pretty good but made a great effort to finish running the whole race. We took her to the emergency room where they X-rayed the arm and found that she had snapped her radius and cracked her ulna. They put her under and set the bone and put her in a splint. She will be in that for a week to let the swelling go down and then put her in a full arm cast for 6 - 8 weeks. She has already found the frustration of showering and such but I think has loved all the phone calls, flowers and text messages from her "peeps" all worried about her.

Tubing

One of our favorite activities is to tube behind the boat. Here is Zoe, Marley, Cali, Meg and guest enjoying some "girl" time behind the boat. They had a blast and really took to the water. We have two 3 man tubes and 3 single man tubes. The boys like it when we pull 3 tubes behind the boat at the same time and they can do battle.

Eagle Court of Honor

Last week Nick received his Eagle award in scouting. It was pretty neat to see him get his award knowing how hard he (and his mother) had worked at it. The ceremony was very impressive and was a fitting tribute to what the Eagle award stands for. He was given a flag that had flown over the capital and also a container of ashes from past campfires in Apache history.

Spend a summer day with us

And just so everyone knows, if you want to come spend a summer day with us, we'll take you out on the boat. We have numerous lakes and fun things to do on the boat. That is a picture of our boat but unfortunetely, not a picture of my body. Hilary and Tim spent a day with us on the lake and I think they had a fun time. Other than almost running out of gas.

Anything you can do....

Here is our attempt to be as cool as Heather and Tiffanie. We love to read the blogs and thought we should also participate. We have so many things going on we would like to share with everyone that this should be the easiest way to do it. Hopefully I can figure out how to link our blogs to yours and then have a sight where everyone can see what everyone else is doing in the family.
For just a quick review of what we have been doing, we offer the following. Jaren is done with track and was thrilled to accomplish his goals. He had to run a sub 11 minute time to letter in the 3200 and accomplished that his last race. He was thrilled to be a 3 letter freshman. Not bad to be on 3 different varsity teams your freshman year.
Nick just received his Eagle scout award. We have pictures and will post them here as soon as I can figure that little gem out. He is excited to graduate and will submit his mission papers next week and will know where his going within a month. I can't believe it.
Darbi is running track and is hoping to qualify for regionals today. We are having a poring rain storm so that should be interesting. She is already running times that would qualify her for state on the high school level. She is so driven.
Nikki continues to work out and I have started back after being winded opening up a twinkie wrapper.
So we are off to the blogs like everyone else. Hopefully this works.