Week 10

{March 7 - 13}

Jonah and Micah have been going to basketball clinic twice a week for the past 6 weeks, and they had their first scrimmage on Monday night. Josh, Kanyon, and I went to watch them play at the high school. They did pretty good with their defensive moves and shooting baskets. It was less-structured than we'd anticipated, so about half way through, Kanyon went to shoot hoops on the other half of the gym, and that made him super happy.

There are 15 boys in 5th and 6th grade who are doing the basketball clinic this year.
Daniela has been their coach, and has done a great job with them. 

Jonah dribbling

Micah passing the ball

 

Jonah and Micah going head-to-head in the 3-on-3 game.

 

Practicing their one-handed dribbling

Kanyon made several shots as he was practicing!

Josh and I also went shopping Monday night and filled 2 carts with lots of food storage items from the case lot sale. My mom gave us some money at Christmas from Grandma Rose's inheritance money and asked that we spend it on food storage. We've been waiting for this sale to come so we could purchase food in bulk! We spent about half of it on this one grocery shopping trip! We felt so grateful and so blessed to have this opportunity to re-stock our pantry.

On Tuesday, Josh and I both voted!! We were getting so tired of all the non-stop phone calls with pre-recorded messages from the different candidates, and were glad that they stopped after the primary election that day.  On Tuesday night, Josh went to a golf board meeting as I worked at home putting away all the canned foods we'd bought the previous night. Also worth mentioning--I drank the last Vanilla Pepsi that night that Josh gave me for Valentine's. This kind of Pepsi was just Limited Time Only, and they don't make or sell it anymore. I savored those miniature cans as long as possible, and I enjoyed every sip of this limited treasure! I really hope they bring it back; it's my favorite Pepsi ever!

On Wednesday, Josh fixed the tires on Kanyon's new bike that he'd purchased at D.I. last week. After Kanyon came home from scouts, and did his homework, he was SO excited to ride it around! He absolutely loves it!   

I took my friend Beverly out to dinner for her birthday on Wednesday night as Jonah and Micah went to basketball practice. I let her choose wherever she wanted to eat, and she picked Bertram's. I enjoyed her company immensely! It was a fun way for me to spend the evening!

On Thursday, Josh drove the bus for the high school honors band to Idaho Falls, and was gone all day and night. I made fish fillets for the kids for dinner (we almost always eat fish when Josh is gone out of town because he can't stand the smell of it cooking, but the rest of us love to eat it!). Then I took Kanyon to the PTO's "Dinner and a Book" night. Jonah and Micah didn't want to come with us, and Ammon left to go motorcycling and tent-camping with his friends overnight. For Kanyon's age group, they read a book called "Salt in His Shoes" about Michael Jordan when he was a kid. Then the kids made little launchers out of tongue depressors, tootsie rolls, and starbursts. He enjoyed it a ton! For dinner, they served BBQ pulled pork sandwiches during the silent auction. Kanyon and I sat by Craig Larson during the dinner, and the Hobbs' and Williams' as we waited for the results from the auction. I came away with two items, and Kanyon and I both had a great time!

On Friday, I spent most of the day working on putting away items from the many boxes that we brought home from Grandpa's house last week and have just been sitting in our living room all week. I also moved around some of the furniture that we brought home, to its new destinations in the house. I helped Jonah and Micah move the furniture around in their room to accommodate a much-needed new dresser. And I did the same thing in Kanyon's room with another dresser, too. It was nice weather outside, so when the boys were done with their room projects, they played outside for a bit, and then Jonah and Micah went with Kanyon on a ride around most of the loop (about a 3-mile trek), and they got home just in time for dinner. Ammon spent the morning and afternoon riding dirt bikes with some friends (Cahl, Dawson, Wylie, Joe). They'd had a good time camping overnight in a tent up near Williams Lake, and decided to go riding after breakfast up by the dump. There were 5 of them altogether, and they rode around, got lunch at ShopKo, ate at the cemetery, and then rode up to Lover's Lookout for a while before coming home in the late afternoon. Ammon broke the back fender of his new motorbike, but had such a grand time, that it didn't bother him. I haven't seen him that happy in a long time! I'm glad he had fun, that he was with good kids, and that he stayed safe, too!

Josh got home around dinner time, and he had a strong desire to trim the apple trees in the yard. So after dinner, we all went outside and helped. We couldn't find the ladder, so he just climbed up in the trees and used the chainsaw and the hand trimmers while standing on branches to get the job done. The big tree hasn't been pruned in 3 years; there were a lot of tall shoots that needed to be cut as well as some of the main branches that needed reshaping, and I don't think we've ever done the smaller apple tree. I helped him decide which branches to cut, and the boys hauled all of the cut branches to the burn pile. We got done just as it was getting too dark to see.

They look SO good! Much more now like fruit trees should!

Our dishwasher broke this week. It won't drain anymore, and you have to manually turn the knob to the drying cycle, or it stays in the rinse cycle endlessly. On Saturday morning, Josh and I thought about driving out of town to get a new one, but we ultimately decided to wait. Josh went to work, and I worked on going through the rest of the boxes in our house from our trip to Grandpa's. Jonah and Micah finished putting away all their clothes into the dressers in their room, and put all their too-small clothes into grow boxes. When I was done with all the boxes in the house, I knew I needed to move the grow boxes into my shed that was already full and needed to be re-organized and cleaned out. So after the rain stopped, I spent a couple hours cleaning out the shed. I found a giant pile of cherry pits on the floor from when the mice were in the shed last summer and cleaned it all up. I swept the floor, moved boxes around, got rid of some things, and it felt good! When Josh came home from work, I was almost done, and it apparently inspired him to go through his shed as well, which was in even worse shape than mine. We worked together, and within about an hour or so, his whole shed was cleaned out, organized, and there was a huge pile of crap ready to be taken to the dump. I was impressed! I don't remember the last time I saw this much empty floor space in his shed. I wish I'd taken a before pic--the floor was piled high with boxes and everything was just thrown in. I couldn't believe what a huge transformation had taken place within such a short time!

This is the most organized Josh's shed has EVER been!
It's hard to imagine what it used to look like!

When I took some things from my shed to throw in our dumpster, I found the first
blossoming flowers of the season! I was so happy to see these blooming crocuses!

Something cross-pollinated with this purple crocus, because it's got a different
color variation than all the others. I love it!

On Saturday afternoon, as Josh and I were cleaning out his shed, Ammon and Micah rode the dirt bikes around the neighborhood. Micah has been hesitant about riding motorcycles because he's nervous about shifting and using the clutch, and this was the first time that he really rode the motorcycle alone. Starting and stopping were the hardest parts, but after doing it multiple times, he started getting the hang of it and actually started liking riding the dirt bike! I was so glad! He was pretty proud of himself, and I was too!

Micah in back coming up the driveway on the XR 100,
and Ammon in front on his CRF 450. 

We got a lot done this weekend: cleaning out the sheds, pruning the apple trees, rearranging furniture in the house, emptying boxes from Grandpa's house, Josh opened up the golf course for the season, I took a college test (a pre-assessment) and passed, and we decided we deserved a nice, relaxing date to reward ourselves. Josh took me to get a shake at Savage Grill, and then we went with Zack and Kerry to the hot springs. We had the pool all to ourselves; I always love when that happens!

On Saturday night, Ammon went to MORP with Nykell. She'd gotten him a neon shirt to wear to it, and he wore neon clothes to match. She didn't take him to dinner, though, so he didn't leave until after 8 because the dance started at 8:30. He said the dance was alright, but by 10:30, he was done. He went to Eli's house afterwards to spend the night.

After church today, we went to Ed & Kathy's for dinner. It's been a couple weeks since we did that, so we caught up on all that's been happening. This afternoon, I helped Kanyon make his homemade instrument that's due tomorrow. Josh and I tried making homemade boomwackers out of PVC pipe first, because that's what Kanyon wanted, but it didn't work out like he thought it would, so we went to plan B and Kanyon helped me make a rainstick instead. We all watched Amazing Race together, and were fascinated by the activities they did in the French Alps! It's our favorite family TV show, and it's kind of a bummer that it won't be on for the next 3 weeks due to March Madness. Today was "Spring Forward" in Daylight Savings Time, and I hate that we lost an hour today! This week seemed to pass by super slow, but the weekend has gone by extraordinarily fast!