Jane Goodall: The Famous Chimpanzee Scientist!

September 30, 2010

May I present to you, Mrs. Jane Goodall! She is an amazing scientist from London, England. She is an animal lover and her favorite book is Tarzan of the Apes In 1957, Jane traveled to Kenya to study chimpanzees, monkeys, and apes in the African jungles. While observing chimpanzees, she discovered they were a lot like humans. The chimpanzees like to hug, kiss, hold hands, tickle, and when they were mad they would kick, punch, and pinch. In 1962, Jane went to Cambridge University to study animal behavioral science. She married a wildlife photographer and had a son named Hugo. In 1965, Jane was on TV and was on the cover of National Geographic magazine. Today she loves to encourage young people to be kind to animals and keep our earth clean!



This past month's book report assignment was a lot of fun for my oldest daughter! For the month of September 2010, my daughter had to research and read a couple biographies on a world hero. In addition, she had to dress up like her hero and present her book report in front of the class! Last year she had to do an American hero, which as you may remember was Laura Ingalls Wilder. She was very excited to do a world hero this year because for a couple years she has admired Jane Goodall because of all the great research she has done on chimpanzees, monkeys, apes etc. We video taped her book report and would like to share it with those who were not there to see it! She was the first one to present her book report and did an outstanding job(full credit)! Way to go, girlie!

Beat Beethoven 5K Run

Since the last week of August 2010, John and I made a commitment with ourselves to lose weight and live a healthier life style. We are tracking our food and exercise everyday on a free calorie counter and exercise journal at www.myfitnesspal.com You can find us there (sunfreeflower and phatzzzs). Add us as your friends and we will help encourage you on your weight loss/exercise goals.

One of our first goals was to be able to complete a 5K race. We registered for a local race called Beat Beethoven 5k on September 11, 2010. All the money collected went to support the arts in our community. Our nephew Justin trained and ran the race with us! We have never entered a race before nor trained for one. We trained for about 2 1/2 weeks for the 5K(speed walking, jogging, and sprinting) near our house on the canal path. We were aware that was not enough time to train for a 5K but we did it for fun and didn't care about our times! I got me some new cute white, pink, gray, and black running shoes! Since I have a high arch, Nike Air Pegasus Running Shoes shoes gave me some extra cushion while jogging! :D




Here we are with pre-race jitters! We were warming up at the Pleasant Grove Recreation Center. The race started at the brand new fitness center and ended near the old recreation center near city hall.





On race day, I was doomed with a sinus head cold and cough! I did my best jogging most of it and walked a little at the end. I felt like crap at the end (like I was run over by a train)! John was able to walk/slow jog and still beat me! I guess it due to his long legs, lol! As for my nephew Justin, he was in better shape than us! To our surprise, he was fast enough to beat Beethoven with little training at all! Wow, way to go Justin! I have to add there was a man dressed like Beethoven. He was wearing a crazy long gray hair wig and wearing the traditional running outfit (tight shorts and t-shirt). He was also pushing kids in a jogging stroller. He was the man to set our pace too if we wanted to beat Beethoven. He looked hilarious! I wished we got a photo of him, lol! Anyway, the goal was to beat Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 piece, which is approximately 30.55 minutes long.







The results were as the following: John 40:41.6,59 place overall, and 6th place in Men 30-39 group nice job, John! Jen 40:51.5, 80 place overall, and 21 place in 30-39. Justin 26:53.4, 28th place overall, and 11 place Men's 20-29 group and he beat Beethoven. Justin got a groovy pin that says, "I beat Beethoven." All I can say is we crossed the finish line and look forward to improving our times and pace in another race in the future! Yay!

First Day Jitters!

August 25, 2010

I feel so old! My daughters are now in second and sixth grade. An interesting fact is they will no longer be in the same school after this year (sniff,cry)! When my oldest daughter turns sixteen, my youngest will be starting young womans (12 years old). ACK!



They were a little nervous on their first day back to school this year. My oldest got Mrs. Day, which is a combined 5th and 6th grade class... The school district had some major budget cuts obviously. By the way, my daughter was on honor roll last year so having her in the combined class had nothing to with her intelligence. She was hand picked by her 5th grade teacher who believed that she could handle staying on task and getting along with the other kids in her class. I feel bad for the teacher though because she has to prepare double material everyday! My daughter has rotations with the other sixth grade classes for science, social studies, etc. One of the biggest pros of her being combined with 5th graders is she has double amount of field trips this year! Woohoo! BONUS! She was so happy about that! As for little sister, she got Mrs. Litchford who is an amazing teacher. I like that Mrs. Litchford pushes her students to do well. I have already noticed a major improvement with her hand writing, spelling, and reading! Her husband is a professor at the University of Utah. He is so awesome because he comes in every Friday to teach the kids something special. The best part is he always brings treats! My youngest daughter adores him because he is so silly and fun!



Do you love that they HAD to buy the same black high top converse shoes? Too funny!

August's Summer Highlights

At the beginning of August, my girls spent a couple days at Granny and Grandpa's house. They loved helping grandpa in the garden, swinging, eating granny's home cooking, and riding the four wheelers! They always have a blast at Granny's house!









Since my brother Nate works for Coke, he got us some amazing discount Lagoon tickets. On August 14th (my 13th wedding anniversary), we got up early and drove up to Farmington. Since we have the motion sickness curse, we bought some chewable anti-motion sickness pills. The girls are not huge fans of roller coasters due to last year we forced them on the old white roller coaster, Spider, and Jet Star. My oldest daughter cried and screamed when she rode them. My youngest daughter had a love/hate experience. She claimed she liked the roller coasters but was laughing and crying at the same time while riding them! She begged us to take her on the wicked this year but she was not tall enough (darn). I absolutely love the wicked! It is one of my favorite rides at Lagoon. Maybe next year ha ha ha!!! So we took it easy this year riding the samurai, water rides, and dizzy rides. We were exhausted by the end of the day and enjoyed a 7 Eleven slurpee on the way home!







Sometime in the middle of August, John surprised the girls with a cool orange slip n slide! We have the perfect yard to place it on a hill. They played with it all day long! To our surprise, the darn thing only lasted 12 hours. The plastic slide ripped a huge hole in it! What a waste money but the kids sure had a lot of fun while it lasted.

A Solution to Being Bored is Chores or Crafting!

During the summer, I had to keep the girls busy. I cannot stand it when they say, "I'm bored!" When they do say that dreadful "B" word, I give them a list of chores to do around the house such as sorting laundry, doing dishes (by hand), vacuuming, and cleaning bathrooms. Eventually they learn not to say "bored" anymore.



Since I don't like the TV on all day long, I had to come up with some creative ideas to occupy the girls this summer. We went to a couple craft stores such as Robert's Craft, Hobby Lobby, and Michaels to buy some fun projects. We got some boxes (stars and squares), paints, brushes, ribbons, letters, magnets, and tons of supplies to make flower hair clips. When the girls had friends over, they enjoyed painting crafts in addition to hanging out, playing Barbies, and listening to music.

Here are some of the crafts that big sister made over the summer...







Here are little sister's summer crafts.







Here are my crafts that I did over the summer.











My oldest daughter was invited to a birthday party. We decided it would be fun to customize a couple things. We added some flower embellishments on a journal and her name. Next, we painted a small jewelry box, added a flower embellishment on top, and peace ribbon on the base. Then I made her a beautiful purple and black flower hair clip! Her friend Amy loved it very much!



We had a lot of fun painting letters, boxes, and making hair clips! Not shown, I also hot glued some magnets on some cute embellishments and wood pieces for my youngest daughter's magnet board decoration in her room.

Good Times= Cabin, Creek, & Card Games

July 23-25 2010

Over the 24 of July weekend, we went up to the Uintas Mountains. We stayed in the Critchfield's cabin (my brother Nate's foster parents). They own around 20 acres of land surrounding the cabin. The cabin was still unfinished and ran on a generator at night. The plumbing was 3rd world country where you use a bucket to flush it down, lol luckily we had a toilet! We had to bring up our own water and "rough it" without a shower. We had an incredible view of the valley below the cabin.



We shared the cabin with my brother Nate, sister Karen, brother in-law Adam, their two boys, and dog Harley the Hog (Basset Hound).











There is an interesting story about the hog, which we were happy he came up to the cabin with us over the weekend... While we were gone to Deer Creek, Nate was doing some handyman stuff around the cabin. There was a giant gray wolf that was lurking around the cabin. The basset hound was on the deck. He started growling at the wolf and scared her away. The funny thing is the wolf was easily three times the size of Harley. We believed the wolf was a mother and had some puppies near by. She seemed harmless and we never saw her again thank goodness.



There were several coolers that held our food and drinks! We ate lots of BBQ meats, pasta salad, homemade bagels with cream cheese, made smores, and ate huge hoggie sandwiches.





We stayed up late playing card games like Uno and Phase 10. My brother Nate brought his flat screen TV and Xbox. The kids played with their Game boy DS, watched movies, played Uno, or played video games. They also caught some lizards too.









On Saturday morning, we went to Deer Creek. It was about 30 minutes away from the cabin. We had a BBQ lunch with the Smith family (my sister's in-laws). The kids enjoyed swimming and playing with water toys. In addition, we went boating in my sister's father in-law's boat. The best part of the weekend was when we were all pulled on a large three person tube. My girls absolutely loved tubbing. They laughed and smiled the whole time out while in the tube. When it was the adults turn, we were in for a ride! Karen's father in-law loves to flip the tube around and go very fast! Karen, Adam, and I were the first adults to accept the challenge of not being tossed out! Karen was the first to fly out, then me, and Adam. Next round, I did a back flip into the water! My youngest daughter screamed and cried for me in the boat. She was so afraid when I fell in the water. John had to calm her down and tell her the importance of wearing a life jacket. It was a lot of fun but I could tell I was sooooo out of shape trying to swim in that cold deep water! Next was John and Adam's turn to endure scary tube ride. Some how Adam was able to hold on and not get thrown out. Poor Johnny got whipped out of the tube twice! He was done tubbing after that! The kids went again and then we went back to the shore! We drove to Heber to get the kids ice cream cones and headed back to the cabin for dinner.



















Here is a video of Adam, Karen, and I falling off the tube.....



When we got back to the cabin, Karen did my hair as well as my girls. When we were kids, she learned how to French braid and still this day I cannot style hair very well. Our hair style was perfect after a couple days of no showering!





On Sunday, we woke up early and found the boys in the loft with a deflated mattress and sleeping uncomfortably on the floor. Later the boys went four wheeling and motor cycling. We cleaned up the cabin, packed, and then we went swimming in a very cold stream down the hill from the cabin. We got home later in the afternoon. We were extremely tired from all the excitement and lack of sleep! We sure enjoyed spending time with my brother and sister's family! We look forward to making more fun memories in the future!