Lots of news

Well we have lots of news this weekend; some good, some bad. Which do you want first? Okay, sounds good. Nikki took Jaren to the doctor on Friday and they said he will have to have surgery to repair his broken coller bone. He is scheduled to go in Wednesday for the proceedure. It should take about an hour to install a plate and reallign the bones.

He traveled with cross country team today to their meet and called us and asked if he could run. Yeah right. It just kills him that he can't be running.

Darbi had her meet today at a different location. She was pretty nervous because she is on the varsity team. The race has a freshman race, a jv race and the varsity heat. She asked her coach if she could run the freshman race, he told her "no". Her heat had about 200 kids in it. She did really well and ran a fast enough time to letter. She was thrilled to do so well even though it was quite intimidating.

The race goes from 200 kids across the starting line down to a shoot about 6 people wide. There is a lot of pushing and shoving. The good news is that during the race a was able to polish off a pulled pork sandwich in record time. I was an inspiration to all the dads there. Unfortunetly my time was just off record pace so I didn't letter.

MTC

Well, Nick was officially delivered to the MTC. We have heard all the horror stories of sadness about the experience with oceans of tears, hours of goodbyes and mothers being drug by the ankles out the doors but ours was a peaceful, happy time. Sure....there were some tears shed, but we gave him a few quick hugs, teared up, and let him walk out the "Missionary Exit Only" doors. He turned around just before leaving and gave his mom the "I love you" sign with the pinky slightly bent. Nikki was thrilled.

He was so excited to start. We spent the day before at the SLC temple and grounds. He loved going to the temple but especially liked the LDS museum. We saw the watch that was shot when Willard Richards had it in Carthage jail. We saw the original death masks of Joseph and Hyrum and many more great things I didn't know were available to everyone to see.

But what a spirit there was in the MTC as 600 young people prepared to leave by hugging their parents and then leaving and being embraced by the love of the Savior. It was surreal as the last speaker said they would have a closing prayer and then would say our goodbyes. As the prayer was ending you could hear a few quite sobs as everyone realized this was it. I was okay until I heard the man in front of my start to cry as the prayer came to a close.

I looked over at Nick and his eyes were red. He hugged me, then Hilary and finally his mom. He was all smiles when he left, excited to begin this new adventure in his life. I'm sure he'd love to hear from each of you. He has read this blog and knows you all from your blogs.

His address is:

Elder Nick Novakovich
MTC Mailbox #98
CAN-HAL 1007
2005 N. 900E.
Provo, UTAH 84604-1793

Schools in Good Hands

Well with the new school year starting, I thought I would post a picture to let you all know our children's education is in good hands.

Zoe and the cousins swimming.

Family Pictures

Nick is less than a week away for departing to the MTC and so we had to do the obligatory famiy pictures before he left. Tell us what you think. I think they turned out pretty well.

Nick is excited to be on his last leg before heading out. He has put his room into storage. Zoe has been measuring space to plan her take over. We are now into the reminders like, "This is your last Sunday in the house." I think he is pretty excited to leave.

Darbi and Jaren have started cross country running practice and are doing well. It looks like Darbi will make the varsity team so she is excited about that. She has her first race and Saturday to determine placing for the upcoming season.

Mountain Biking

In celebration of Labor Day, Jaren and I went up to Silver Mountain in Kellogg Idaho and did our first foray into downhill mountain biking. Suffice it to say that if you would have placed a large lump of coal on my bike seat, I would have produced you a diamond by the end of the day. I can't believe how crazy it was. We road the gondola up to the top of the mountain and then went to the start of the 3 trails. The "beginner trail" was just the road back down the mountain. No way we were going to take that! We went over to the expert trail and it began with a 6 foot drop off. Okay, so that was out of the question. The intermediate trail was straight down but at least there was no drop off.

We chose to go intermediate and let me tell you......diamonds in the making. I put my brakes on, (both front and back locked up) and was picking up speed as I went down! I would have been able to concentrate better but I noticed a high pitched squeeling noise coming from somewhere that was very distracting. After 5 minutes I realized it was me screaming and crying.

It took us two hours to reach the bottom of the mountain from our first run. (Mind you, this was at the speed of light) I can't say it was fun but it was thrilling. We headed back up for round two but decided to have lunch, and let my tears dry. Our waitress asked how the first run went and I broke down sobbing.

Run two was more exciting for Jaren because he went over his handle bars twice. We were the only ones on the mountain that weren't in full body armor. We did go to the back shop after to check the prices on the stuff. The salesman told us right off that it less expensive than a trip to the emergency room.

So if anyone wants to come to Spokane and experience downhill mountain biking, Nikki would be more than happy to tag along.

Marathon Training

I thought I better give you an update on my marathon training. Today was especially hard as I had to go up the stairs TWICE when I realized I hadn't brought enough mini donuts down with me the first time. My work on the treadmill is much better after I discovered a little trick. I noticed that to make the workout harder, you can set this thing at an incline and simulate hills. So I thought, "Hey, I'm going to be going downhill sometimes, I need to train for that too!" I therefore came up with a "decline" system by placing a few dictionaries under the back of the treadmill. This has been a fantastic discovery. I have been working out for a week now on a "3 dictionary" decline and am now up to going 6 minutes at well over 2.5 miles an hour. (By the way, going any slower than 2.5 causes one to fall forward and strike their head on the front of the machine)

And now on to other exciting events. Nikki's mom has been somewhat reluctant, unwilling, stubborn or just plain lazy to get started on redoing our back deck; which has been very frustrating to me because I have no place to put my new lawn lounge chair. I was able to use it the other morning in the backyard to shout instructions to her as she cleaned out the gutters. It made it easier to check up on her atop our two story house being in the reclined position as I was. In reward for doing such a great job we took her up to Silver Mountain today.

We rode the "World's Longest Gondola" ride to the top of the mountain. We had a great time and really enjoyed the views. Not only did we ride in the gondola but took two other chair lifts and then hiked a ways to make it all the way to the tippy top. And here she thought she was coming to just relax and enjoy the grandkids. It was her first time on a chair lift, on a gondola, on the top of a mountain, and hiking at 7000 feet. We all had a great time.

Loads of Fun

I was going to wait and post when I had some pictures to show but I haven't had the time to download any so you have to suffer with just words.

We started off our fun by going to visit my sister and family in Utah. We spent a week with them and had a great time. Jaren spent the week at EFY in Provo. Darbi and McKenzie did girls camp together and had fun. The rest of us shopped and played golf. (I'll let you guess who did what. Suffice it to say that I found a lovely handbag that matched an outfit of mine that is to die for and this is Mike writing in case you were wondering.)

The only disappointmet came when I wasn't invited to participate in the new CD coming out. People just don't appreciate good humming like they used to. I even offered to whistle, but no takers. Instead we were treated to an AWESOME dinner at the Roof in Salt Lake overlooking the temple. If you haven't done this, you have to.

After a week in Utah we came home and I took the priests on their high adventure on Lake Coeur d' Alene. We had a great time on the water all week and no priests were killed or seriously injured.

The week after that, Nikki and I went up to girls camp and did the canoe trip. I lucked out and drove a chase boat while Nikki had to paddle a canoe with 14 young women. It was hot and a lot of wind to deal with. There were a lot of sunburns, tired hands, aching backs and sore bodies but they all survived. They didn't even care about me though when at one point I discovered I was out of sunflower seeds and was ready to cancel the rest of the trip. Fortunetly I found another bag and we were able to continue.

This week, Nikki's mom is in town and we are planning on showing her a good time. I did let here know that a good time at our house was replacing the back deck and repairing the fence on the side of the house. She is pretty good with a hammer for a senior citizen and I'm sure she'll do just fine.