Spring!

Can I tell you how excited I am that Spring is here.  I live in a family full of winter-haters, so even though I LOVE winter and the snow, we don't spend a lot of time playing outside, just the yearly expedition to the neighbor's snow hill...and someday we'll actually check out the skating rink they build in their backyard every year.  It's been a long time since I pulled out my skates.

Another fantastic thing about Spring is that, although it makes our schedule hectic, it is full of all the end of school year events, like dance competitions, summer internships/volunteer activities, etc.  Here's a little bit of an update on the kids, since it's been a while, as usual, since my last post.

Recently, Jessica competed in her second year of solo competition and first year at the intermediate level with a solo that she and I began choreographing over Christmas Break. (I'll post her dance later...)  It's tough to get really involved in something like that when you have limited time to work on, but it turned out pretty great.  Apparently, the judges agreed because she won first attendant (2nd place), beating out some of her friends who had competed at this level before.  Next year, she will be on drill team, so I'm glad she did as well as she did with her solo.  It may be the last time she competes in a solo event.

Also, Kailey and I have decided to volunteer at Utah's Hogle Zoo this year as Docents.  Apparently, they have a fantastic Teen Docent Program and you can become a volunteer at the age of 14 and stay with it as long as you like.  I hadn't really looked into it before, so when I was looking for future internship opportunities for Kailey, who wants to be a vet (or a forensic anthropologist, thank you Bones), I found out about this program.  Kailey had her first "job" interview and nailed it, so was one of the lucky ones to get into the program this year.  It's a lot easier to get in as an Adult Docent, so I had no problems either, and we are just about finished with training before we start really helping out.  We don't get to work with any of the animals, yet, but after the first year, we can get handler certified and work with some of the small animals.  Kailey is stoked.

Now we just need to find something fun to do with Austin, too.  He's a tough one, given that I am totally not into video games and he is definitely a typical dude in that respect.  He has been working on learning to cook with us and has been doing a great job.

It was also a pretty cool school term for the girls last term.  Both Jessica and Kailey had their first ever 4.0's and Austin maintained his usual good grades, as well.  Kailey is usually pretty close and is self-motivated in that respect, but Jessica had to endure quite a bit of text-pestering from me.  In the end, she rocked it and got really excited about it and pushed herself pretty hard to get that last A- up to an A.  Now if only I was able to keep her that motivated about her grades...

As always, there's always a lot on the horizon that we are looking forward to, especially the girls driving, which happens this September.  Yay!  Less trips back and forth to Payson.  Plus, you never know what will happen in the meantime...