Dallin's Talent Show Performance

The "Ode to Joy" Blues.  They had a problem with the extension cord at the beginning so he had to wait on stage while they sorted out the technical difficulty and got his amplifier working.  He was a real trooper though, and then gave a pretty darn good performance!

Eden's Talent Show Performance

Watch out Taylor Swift...cause these girls are "Mean"!

Triathlon

The PE program at ISR is really something.  During the second quarter of the school year, the kids all trained for a triathlon during PE every day.  They practised biking, running, and swimming.  Then, on December 2nd they all participated in the actual triathlon.  The distances were different for each age bracket.     It was really exciting and super fun watching them push themselves and hearing everyone cheer for one another.  The kids were exhausted but felt really great about what they had accomplished in the end.

 Eden's age group swam 50 m, biked 4 km, and ran 1/4 mile.

Eden's handle bars came loose while she was biking, so when she went over a speed bump, suddenly her handle bars had fallen forward so she had to really lean over to finish her bike race.  She was such a trooper, she just kept going!

Cross that finish line... Well done Eden!

Dallin's group swam 100 m, biked 8 km, and ran 1/2 mile.



Transition from the swim to the bike.

We caught Dallin half-way through his biking to cheer him on!

He did it!!

We're #1 Triathlon Champions!

Swim Meet

This was the first swim meet Dallin and Eden have ever participated in and it was so much fun! One of the blessings of being such a small community is that everyone places! So even the worst swimmers got ribbons in their heat because there were sometimes only 3 kids in that age group doing that particular stroke. It was a real confidence booster for many. Mike was MC for the meet and Emma and her friend Samantha below were just two of many young siblings cheering on their older siblings. After the meet had ended, they did a couple silly relays with the adults. Rolling a watermelon from one end of the pool to the other without using your hands, and swimming across the pool with a shirt on then switching it to the next team mate. It was hysterical!

The View

The lighting is kind of weird on the second photo, but the first is a picture of Marion riding toward our front yard, so this is a view of the neighbors yard, and the second photo is our backyard, which is really as green and bright as the first photo but just came out strange.

Park Play

This is an average day playing at our neighborhood park. We can't usually spend more than 30 minutes out there, it just gets way too hot and uncomfortable. Just look at Eden and Emma's faces, they are so red!

January

I officially deem this, the longest month of the year! I don't know if it's because of all the anticipation leading up to the end of December and then ringing in the New Year, but after that... this month lasts FOREVER!!

Marion Learns to Ride a Bike

Marion learned, in just 2 days, how to ride a bike without training wheels. She had one good fall on the 3rd day. She was going too fast around a corner, but she has learned very quickly when to slow down, how to lean and turn, and how to start on her own.

Temple Square

On our way back to Indonesia, after a marvelous and spledid summer in Idaho, we had a 7 hour layover in SLC. When we arrived in the airport we saw large signs advertising tours of temple square in just 2 hours. So we went for it. It was a really wonderful opportunity to take our kids there. Dallin was the only one who had ever been there with us before but he was only a year old at the time. The kids really loved it! The only thing we didn't get to see in our short time was the conference center. Maybe for our next layover!

Marion Throws a fit

I was watching the girls playing Barbie's together at which point Marion got really frustrated because she couldn't get a shirt or something on one of her Barbie's. She threw the Barbie at the couch at which point I started recording this video. I thought her temper tantrum was hilarious but what followed the tantrum turned out to be even more funny.