MUSINGS FROM MOM & DAD

I finally get to announce my big news! I'm sure you all will never guess: I finally get to start teaching French! That's right-when Jim Mackley transferred to Boulder City, the school had an opening to hire me, and Dan the Man Reese got me right in. It all happened so fast, that I almost didn't get to tell Katy. She just happened to be away for a week when things started to roll. Monday, Ken told me to call Dan. Tuesday I interviewed. Wednesday he called to hire me...just like that. Fortunately I was able to get hold of Katy by email Tuesday evening, so she had some inkling when Dan Reese notified her officially. I am also teaching year book and one class of 10th grade English. So today I've been busy talking to text book salesmen trying to decide on what French book to order. I've also been busy trying to coordinate some sort of plan for year book camp & training this summer. Truly, it all sounds like an exciting adventure. Some of my kids at school have been bugging me to teach them some French all week, so finally I took 5 minutes at the end of class to teach them "Allouette." What fun! I'm also enjoying watching Les Miserables in French, the newest addition to my collection of DVDs.

Meanwhile back in 8th grade, I'm teaching my usual Shakespeare unit of Taming of the Shrew right now. As part of my introduction, one of our vocabulary words is "pun." I tried a different example to explain it to them, and asked if any of them had been to Hoover Dam, and seen the Dam Tour, and the Dam Movie, or visited the Dam Gift Shop, or been a Dam tourist. Isn't it funny how some concepts really get their attention???

Remember how good the front yard looked back during McKay's farewell? Well you should see it now! Between Dad's expert supervision, and Matt's loving care, we now brag a lush carpet of emerald green shag for a front lawn, and several new rose bushes all in bloom. You should see it now!

Well, I'll bring this to a close. We love and miss you all.

--Love, Mom & Dad

MEL'S MELODIES

April Showers bring May floods and tornados here in Iowa. I know everyone loves my monthly weather report, so I just thought I would keep everyone up to date. Mid-April the weather warmed up enough that the kids and I spent a day at the beach, they even swam and soaked in the lake. I stayed on the beach, very content to be warm and not wet. Then two days after that we were hit with a storm in nearby towns funnel clouds were spotted and the rain was pelting down with extreme force. I called my nieghbor to see if I should wake up the kids and go to our tornado shelter (the main level bathroom) she reasured me things were OK until wind was so forceful that the rain would fall horizontally. That didn't happen, but the storm took our warm weather away and it is cold like a NV Jan. Next week the weather will get better or I will leave in search of better skies.

April has always been one of the faster months for me. I have enjoyed my RAGBRAI training, when it rains I don't bike or when Andy can't come home. But when I do get out, I just can't believe how fun it is in comparison with running.

Michael loves biking too. He begs to ride to Kambri's elementary school to pick her up so we do a couple times a week. Now McKayla is learning to pedal using the nieghbor's trike and I have heard her talking to herself, "push yo's pedas Taya so stong" (push your pedals, Kayla's so strong). She rides in her stroller right behind Michael and hears me coaching him up the hills.

Michael had his 4 birthday party yesterday. It was a huge sucess. Kambri planned and cordinated all of the games, Andy took pictures, and I provided our wild guests with a T-Rex birthday cake.

Kambri is becoming such a big helper! She dresses herself, then dresses McKayla. She cleans up her markers and crayons, feeds the fish with out reminders, helps sort the laundry and she has such a great attitude. On Friday I had my CPR cert. for my job, then a meeting for details on the Nauvoo Temple O.H. Kambri planned a great evening of fun for everyone else. First she fixed corndogs and mashed potatoes, then they went to her school carnival, then to ride the carasol (Friday free night), then they went to cash in their cans. All involved had fun, I had fun just hearing about the evening (maybe more fun than the kids.)

I had a great 25 b-day. My V.T. gave me oreos and then took my kids so I could ride 25 miles to celebrate, but I only did 19 because I was worried about getting back in time to pick Kambri up from school. After dinner Andy pulled a chocolate cake out of the coat closet, then took me to his softball game and we (mom and kids) froze to death. We actually celebrated in part the week-end before my b-day. Andy took me to my favorit Italian resturant, then we went to his Dental school formal and danced away while his classmates spilled beer all over the floor. The best was when the waitress at dinner asked us which high school we were from!

So if we don't blow away in a tornado, wash away in a flash flood, freeze to death, or melt in humidity, I will send May news eventually.

Love, Melanie and everyone else

AMAZING ANDY

I wrote a long email and hit the enter key and something happened so I must have lost it. Any way I was going to tell you about how things are going here. I don't have as much time now because I already wrote the email and lost it.

Today I did an occlusal amalgam on #18. It went well except that it was so deep. The boy was 17 years old so I thought any time I was going to expose the pulp. I didn't though and learned a lot from the experience. I learned that sometimes you just can't see what the bur head is doing because of the handpiece head getting in the way of the mirror. So I went a lot by feel and kept moving the handpiece out of the way to take a look with the mirror.

Saturday I ran a 5k (3.1 miles). It went well I made it in 20 min and 20 sec. Last night I ran on the treadmill and made 3.1 in 18 min and 22 sec. that's almost a 6 minute mile. Infact I had the speed up above 10 mile per hour for the whole time which would be a 6 min mile, but it takes so long for the treadmill to get up to speed that it doesn't work out to be 6 in the end.

We took the kids to Morrison Park on saturday. You know the one with all the ducks. Michael rode his bike the whole way and Kambri rode and walked up the hills. It is about a 2 mile round trip. Kambri complained and whined and Michael just plugged and toughed it up. Things are good here and the weather is hot. Better than freezing cold like it was a week ago. See you later --AA

After the extremely fun trip to Logandale last month, nothing has seemed quite as exciting. Jeremy and I continue our lives with nothing too eventful. Here's our latest:

For spring break we devoted a few days to home improvements and a few days spending time together in a romantic getaway. Our home improvement projects varied from indoor to outdoor projects. We completed the projects and then took off to Carmel and enjoyed ourselves in the strangely quiet town. By the end of spring break we had beautified our house and strengthened our relationship.

One of the projects included adding a lot of noise makers to our apartment. Jeremy finally completed his home stereo system. For the past few months he has transformed all of his old car stereo equipment into speakers for our front room. He had everything to his satisfaction except a working amp for his bass speaker. We went to the local flea market and he found an amp that would work. He took it home and played with all the stuff and 15 minutes later we had a working sound system loud enough to blow the windows out of our apartment. My favorite part about it is the new amp is clear and the insides light up when you turn it on. It makes me want to dance.

We also added some new potted plants to our back patio. I talked Jeremy into getting some tomato plants. I know Mel is an old pro at this stuff and I decided it is about time I try and grow some veggies. We only planted three plants, but hopefully it will be enough to make a small batch of salsa.

We finished our improvement to do list by Wednesday and left the next morning for Carmel. That has got to be the quietist town I've ever been to. It's almost eerie it's so quiet. There are no farms so you don't here any cows. There are no big business buildings and there are no traffic lights. All the houses look like these dreamy cottages. The weird thing is it's kinda like a city because in the middle of the town there are 6 to 8 blocks completely full of shops. They are not the usual shops though. There are a lot of art galleries and shops that sell weird exotic things for thousands of dollars (nothing was under $1,000). We had fun looking and playing at the beach. We didn't actually stay the night at Carmel because there were no low budget motels, just fancy bed and breakfast places. So we stayed in a near by city. It was a nice, relaxing trip.

The break did both of us good and we came back to school feeling refreshed. Marching band is good. I don't really do much, just tell the kids to march straight and to stay on step. I gave up trying to demonstrate the correct way to march though because I looked more like a drunken duck trying to waddle! So I just try to help them from going so crooked when they march. We'll see what happens. I changed all the performances from highly competitive band reviews to noncompetitive parades. I hope the kids will have a positive experience from it all. Besides early morning marching rehearsal, all my classes are preparing for our spring concert in May. We won't have any guest soloists this year, but hopefully it will be pretty good anyway. The other day I was snapped harshly back to reality when I realized I might not be "as cool" as I used to be (or maybe I never was????). My adv. Band students were playing something upbeat and they were playing it good. I got so into the music I forgot where I was and began jiving my body and shaking my head to the beat of the music. With in moments, my kids stopped playing and began laughing uncontrollably. Here I thought I was jammin' like Brittney Spears and my kids thought I was this crazy older lady with ants up her pants! I guess I'm not as cool as I thought! Well I definitely will think twice before volunteering to chaperone any school dances!

Jeremy and I hope everyone is well. Again, we sure enjoyed our time with you during MK's farewell. Thanks for the happy memories!

BABY BOOMINGS IN BECCA

Dear Family,

Nick and I have been up to a lot this month. Remember that palm tree?? Well it is long gone (and it went safely). Nick sent me to the grocery store while him and his brother went to work with the chainsaw. I was glad I didn't have to watch...Nick was smart to send me off. However Fawn came over while I was gone. She saw the whole thing and let me know how much I missed out. So after the palm tree was gone Nick was really excited to get some new grass seed planted. But first he had this idea to install a watering system. He had the idea just before the morning session of the Saturday conference though. So he hooked up his system to the computer (we listened to conference from the Church website) and set up his speakers out front. That way he could listen to conference while digging up trenches. We figured if no one complains about the Mexican Polka or Metallica from the neighbors they shouldn't have a problem with conference, right? After he finished installing the system we sat in our lawn chairs and just watched the sprinklers for a while water our dirt and dead lawn remains. The next weekend he went down to ACE Hardware and rented a roadatiller. He put on his hat he bought in Mexico and tilled up the yard while I raked out the Bermuda grass and then we planted until dusk. The next morning we got up early ready to combat birds after what happened last time we tried planting grass. To our surprise there were no birds! In fact we never had a problem with birds this time! So now our grass is just coming up. We are excited to have a nice lawn. We even sit on our lawn chairs and watch it grow!

Yesterday we picked our first strawberry from our garden. It was about the size of a cherry tomato. This is the first item we've picked from our garden we planted a little over a month ago. We also planted cantaloupe, green peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, and lots of okra. From the seeds that we planted some of everything has come up, except for the cucumbers. Which this turns out to be ok since we planted them right next to the cantaloupe. Nick's dad told us right after we planted them that cantaloupe and cucumber cross pollinate. So at least now we won't have any cantalumbers.

We have also been yard saleing lately for baby stuff. We got a steal on a little white dresser and about 10 or 15 newborn onesies for 10 cents each. The trick to yard saleing here is that you have to beat the Mexicans. I'm not kidding. They go from yard sale to yard sale with these big trucks with big board supports on either side of the bed and fill them up with stuff. We saw a nice high-chair and baby walker in one. They're funny when they see competition. We pulled up to one yard sale the same time as one of these trucks. So they jumped out of their truck, left their keys in the ignition, and left both doors wide open so they could beat us to the goods. I guess we need to be more agressive to make out with the buys.

My last day of class is next week, May 1st. Then I have finals for the next week. I can't wait for this semester to end. The semester has been soooooo long! The time short, but the classes long and stressful!

The baby moves so much! We can just sit back and watch him squirm. In one of my classes a girl and I sat and watched the baby move. She was so funny. She couldn't believe that you could actually see him move like that. It sure is fun. Last night, just before I fell asleep in bed Nick asked me why I was elbowing him. I was confused and told him I hadn't moved. He realized that my tummy was just barely touching him and he could feel the baby kicking. So now if I want I can elbow him and just blame it on the baby.

CHRIS & SUMMER

These guys are so busy we hardly seem to see them. Chris works all the time, and Summer has tackled a full college load this semester. Most recently she conquered Hyper Studio for her Computers in Education class. Next week Summer has finals, plus she's squeezing in a piñata birthday for when Leslie turns four. What a woman!

MATTHIAS AND HIS...NEWSLETTER ARTICLE!

I guess I'll start from now and move backward. Last week was prom and man, what a time it was! I had a wonderful date with senior Amanda Cordes. The day time activities were nothing special but just fun horsing arounds in Vegas with our group. But the dance but spectacular. First of all, Dad taught me how to drive the KenWorth and let me use that. So we arrived in style to an incredible out-door dance. I say incredible because the whole atmosphere was perfect. As we started in on the clear spring evening, a full moon came out as a spotlight to accent the occasion. The decorations were wonderful, the company (and mom and dad as chaperons) were joyful, and the evening was perfect. (I have pictures!)

The week before that was the debut (and finale) of our play SEE HOW THEY RUN. I believe Leslie's comments sum it up the best: "Matt you were crazy!" A plot review would be a little bit unnecessary as that was hardly one of the play's features. It was energetic including fight scenes, love scenes, chase scenes, and a reverend running about in his underpants threatening all with a fire poker! I guess you just had be there. But don't worry, I've got pictures of that too.

The week before that, Jazz Band traveled to festival and gave an absolutely amazing performance. We only received excellent marks but we truly feel we've accomplished all of our year's goals and ever so much more. Currently we're preparing for our Spring Concert. For it we chose two of our festival songs and three of the hardest songs we possess. Our growth this year has been amazing and I can't wait to be a senior next year to have it be even better. (sorry, no jazz band pictures, however I've a surprise at the end. Keep reading!)

Speaking of seniors, I find that my funnest classes are with them right now. So lax and comfortable, they've mostly lost the will to care. However they are most enjoyable to exchange stories with. Before the prom and the play and jazz festival, I got together with two: Brad Solomon and Caleb Holyoak for a physics project. Our job was to create a Rube Goldburg Device. Its task: to turn off an alarm clock. Here's what we came up with. Alarm sounds and weary sleeper pushes button on Seasame Street music box causing music antennae to lift dislodging can of beans which is free to roll and stomps Hot Wheels launcher which releases Hot Wheels car that rides down track and jumps to knock golf ball off tee that falls into golf ball shooter launching ball into funnel tube where it rolls down hitting a set scissors cutting string which releases sling shot that shoots sodden rag at alarm clock shutting off the alarm, all while music from the initial step lulls you back to sleep! The whole process takes about 2.2 seconds! (I believe my picture will increase clarity).

Now for my surprise. My hotmail account has been shut down due to excessive junk so I recently set up with a yahoo acount. My new address is mattatoowie@yahoo.com. While looking at some of the yahoo features, I saw "website with geocities". I got an interesting idea. With a new website from geocities and a little bit of new innovation with my audio skills, I've recorded our Jazz Band festival songs into MP3s and they are available for your listening enjoyment! The site is:http://www.geocities.com/mattatoowie/. What do you think, was that surprise even worth reading my article?

Another busy month has passed and this time I think I'll start to believe them when they tell me things are winding down. But I won't believe them too much. :) --Love su hermano, Matthias (McKay's letters are rubbing off on me!)