A Mom Can Brag, Right?

Scott and I are totally proud of our kids but we are especially proud of Brianna today. We got invited to an award assembly at her school today where she received an Outstanding Student award. She was not aware that she would be getting this award so it was fun to watch her reaction.  She was chosen from over 600 students in the 7th grade. About +/- 30 other students were also honored (each teacher got to choose one or two kids to honor, one was an Academic Award and the other was an Outstanding Student award.) She was chosen by her Social Studies teacher for the Outstanding Student Award because of both her academic achievement and her character. While I’m bragging I will go on to say she also achieved a 4.65 GPA this school year by maintaining all A’s this year (she got a GPA boost from her 3 honors classes.)

Way to go Brianna! Wear your medal with pride.

New York - Second Half

I'm finally getting around to posting the second half of our New York trip. This one will be a little more abbreviated.

Throughout the rest of the week we did the following, but not in this order: Ran a race through Central Park. We walked through Seaport Village, Chinatown, Little Italy, Soho, etc. We had a yummy dinnner and even better desserts in Little Italy. We rented remote control sailboats in Central Park. We wandered through the Museum of Natural History (it's cooler in the movie, but still pretty neat.) We got cupcakes at Crumbs and Magnolia Bakery, Cannoli's in Little Italy, Cheesecake at Juniors, and Pizza at Rays. We went to see Mary Poppins on Broadway - AWESOME! We played at some awesome parks. We had a nice afternoon at Central Park Zoo. The kids rode the ferris wheel inside Toys R Us. We bought some souvenirs. We went to the top of the Empire State Building. And so much more but those were some highlights. Here are a few more pictures, in no particular order.

I ran a 4 mile race through Central Park. Logan and Lyndsee ran the kids races.

Lyndsee Adopted Laini at the American Girl Store.

We found LOTS of statues in Central Park to climb on.

YUM!

Baxter Street

Awesome Playgrounds!

Museum of Natural History. Nothing came to life (like the movie), but it was interesting.

So many desserts, so little time!

Ferris Wheel at the Toys R Us in Times Square.

Central Park Zoo

We LOVED Mary Poppins

Seaport Village

Box Canyon

We love our annual trek up to Christopher Creek. This year was no different. Good friends (one night there were 54 people as part of our group), good food, fun activities and enjoying the cool weather. Last year Reddin Evans took a group of kids to Box Canyon on a hike/swim and the kids insisted on going again. This year several of us took our younger kids on the first part of the hike too and then let Scott and Stuart West go further with just the big kids. The second part of the hike is through the canyon, basically swimming from pool to pool in Christopher Creek. In the picture above you can see Logan at the second pool, he was about to go down to the third pool that you can see at the top of the picture. The creek then curves around so I couldn't see any more of the pools but I hear there are some areas where you can basically slide down the rocks to the next pool. They had a great time and are planning on going further next year.

Here is a picture of Lyndsee hanging out at the edge of the creek, isn't it gorgeous???

By the way, I think this is my third post today, so make sure to look at them all.

What's more important than family?

What's more important than family? Lyndsee asked me this the other day, probably when I was doing something that should have waited but I was making her wait instead. I'm trying to remember her question, but life has so many distractions! It's a goal of mine this summer to get rid of some of the distractions and focus on family more.

By the way, that's Lyndsee and her cousin Dallin. Scott's parents were visiting a few weeks ago and we spent a nice afternoon at Tempe Town Lake just being with family. It is always so nice to have them here, a welcome break from the craziness of life with three busy kids.

Let's Go Fly a Kite

Logan has an awesome ALP teacher, Mr. Mac. He gets to go out every day and do Math with him. A few weeks ago he came home with this awesome kite they made in class. It flew pretty well, but we needed a little more wind. I'm glad my kids have gotten to be in class with him, he gets them excited and makes learning an adventure. I hope he's still around when Lyndsee is in 4th grade. He has been an assett to thier education, and their lives for sure!