Temple

Our family at the temple.

Gynmastic Olympic Day

The gym where the kids do gymnastics has a Saturday at the end of the school year where they perform for the parents and we are allowed to come in and watch all that they do and take pictures.  Since Ellie and Nate are both in gymnastics this year, they both got to do it, unfortunately it was on different days.  Ellie's was first.  She has changed classes a couple of times this year.  She started in an advanced class that was for kids that were in 2nd-5th grades.  She was supposed to be in a different class, but by the time we got signed up they had no spots.  Eventually they did have spots, so she moved into a class for girls that are 5-7 years old that is purely conditioning and strength training.  They spend half an hour to an hour every week stretching doing splits and hand stands.  Sometimes it is a little painful to watch them pulling on her arms or legs to make them stretch more than she can do with her own muscles.  After she had been in this class for a couple of months, they asked her to move to a similar class that met twice a week, but it didn't work with our schedule, so she stayed where she was.  Starting in a couple of weeks, she gets to move up to another class for the girls age about 6-8 that does a lot of conditioning, but also starts to work on skills such as bar work, and handsprings.  She will be at the gym 6 hours a week!  She loves it though, and anytime I ask her if she wants to do another class she really does, and always loves to go to gymnastics.  She is also in dance, but she does not like going to dance.

 Ellie is especially good at the bars.  In this latest class she has been in, she doesn't get a lot of time on the bars, they are too busy doing conditioning, but when she does, she always does really well.  It is fun to watch her. 

 The other nice thing about this class is that her teacher is very picky about details.  He will make the girls redo things a ton of times if they don't hold their arms just right or place their feet correctly.  When you are watching her do anything, you can see a difference in the details now.

 Ellie with Coach Becky.  She had Coach Allec for most of the year, but started with Miss Becky, and will have both of them this summer.

 Nate also took gymnastics this year.  I hadn't wanted to sign him up until the boys were out (there is only so much money a person wants to pay to gymnastics in a month), but when the school year started Joe said I could put Nate in.  It was really good for him- not so much because he learned how to do any great skills, but because he learned to go into class at a strange place without me there.  At the beginning of the year I would pass him off crying and clinging to me to the coach (who happened to also be Adam and Michael's coach so he knew me well)-who would take him in until he would stay.  By the end of the year he would go in willingly, especially if we were there a few minutes early so he wasn't walking in late.

 I can tell from his skills that gymnastics won't be in his future, but he did start to learn the cartwheel and some cool tricks on the trampoline.

Nate gets to do gymnastics over the summer, after that, we probably will try a different sport with him.

Kayaks

We decided that the kids were old enough to successfully manage kayaks, so we bought them a couple and took them up to our lake house.  The kids jumped on and took off and had a great time.  They found that they could fit two people on a kayak if one sat at the front or near the back.

 

 Ellie found a dog that was hanging out near us that day, and so she decided to give it a ride on her kayak.  Even though they were very cute together, I am still not interested in getting a dog.

 They even had friends come up one day to enjoy the lake with them, but with so many people, some had to ride in the jon boat.

Since we have had such a cold spring, it was relatively cold those two days that we went to the lake.  It is now warmer, I expect that we will be able to enjoy the lake more in the heat.

A little help

In February, our Relief Society activity was a service auction.  One of the women auctioned off family pictures, and since Joe has lost so much weight, I wanted to document and so I jumped on that.  The pictures turned out great, but I had some fun today trying some different editing tricks on them.  I want to blow one up to 20 X 30 for the living room.  Which one would you choose?  Some of these I would never choose, but they were fun to try.

 

Also, tell me if you notice anything funny about the pictures, I did a couple of tricky things in one of them.

 

 Here's a hint:  look at the background in this one and compare it to the others:

 Nate's face is crazy in this one, but yet, that is his personality right now.

 Putting the next one in black and white makes it so the stickers on the door aren't noticeable.

In case you think I suddenly became a photoshop savant, I didn't, I just downloaded the actions from pioneer woman's blog here.  My photoshop is version 7 that Joe bought 10 years ago when he was in Russia.  There were some parts of the actions that didn't work, but overall it was great.

Michael's Bear

Michael has been hard at work at cub scouts and has recently completed his bear rank. 

 

Good job Michael!  He actually likes wearing his uniform to scouts, and really likes earning awards!