Meditations from Mel

Kambri is loving Kindergarten. She takes everything her teacher says very seriously. She works so hard on all of her projects, many times bringing them home to do a little extra work. Last week her class was reading the book Good Night, Moon-- One line says Good night, brush Good Night, mush. So I made cornmeal mush and brought it to school for the kids to taste. It was a hit! This week Kambri went on her first field trip to Wilson's Apple Orchard. McKayla, Michael, and I went along too. Wilson was there to take us all on a tractor wagon ride through the orchard and we all learned how apples get to the store, then we got to eat them! I had the best apple I have ever tasted in my life! It is called Song of September, I wonder if it is an apple cross unique to Wilson's, I don't know. So today I helped the kindergartners each make their own apple pie. phew! It was a little more work than Mrs. Towers and I anticipated, but the kids seemed to enjoy it!

Michael loves his preschool group. He has a really fun teacher named Misty ( they go on a first name bases at head start) He is learning about making friends and following directions. He is also learning to eat independly, he eats breakfast and lunch at the center. On Thursdays I come and volunteer and stay for lunch. All the kids enjoy when I come, except Michael, he has asked me nicely all 3 Thursdays to go home or go to the store or go to the aerobics. Michael and Kambri are playing soccer on the same team, he is the smallest, she the biggest.

McKayla is just easy-going. She happily comes along with me wherever we need to go. She especially likes stroller rides and getting suckers at the bank. She is learning new words daily. She can say butterfly and I love Daddy and Stop it, Don't and No Way. Yesterday she jumped out of her crib onto Kambri's bed!

Andy is taking his first Micro-biology test today. He has been up late studying most nights this week. He loves riding his motorcycle to school because he gets to park right up close to the Dental school. He is teaching 3 piano students he started last year. And about 5 weeks ago, he finally got tired of me complaining about my weight and he told me how easy it is to lose (yeah right, was me!) Since that day he has consistently lost 2 -3 lbs. every week! His suit doesn't fit anymore and he had to make new belt holes to hold up his Levi's. What a freak.

As for me, I am just tha1nkful to have air to breathe. I am busy with things and people I enjoy and the five weeks I have been dieting I have lost 3 lbs. Not much, but at least my jeans are a little more breathable! Love, Melanie Love--Melanie

PS:Well everyone is back to school here! Including Michael! He started preschool today. Kambri loves kindergarten, she has a great teacher! Remember my teacher, Mrs. O'Connel with one green eye and one brown eye and a little elf in her room and purple cow treat? I volunteered last Thurs and it was so fun! We made teddy bear biscuits.

Reflections from Rebecca

This has been an interesting month for Nick and me. We just kept getting hit with bad luck. So we haven't had the best of luck with our cars. At the beginning of the month I got in a car accident. I rear-ended the truck in front of me. The victim was very good about it though. He pulled off the side of the road, helped me out of my car and gave me a big hug and a kiss. Yeah, ah, it was Nick that I rear-ended. It was pretty frustrating but we laugh now. So my car has been in the shop since. Less then a week later when Nick's truck was parked outside our trailer (his truck wasn't too mangled after the accident - he just has a couple dents in the back and side) a tree branch fell on it. So now it has scratches all over it and a dent on the roof too. Then a couple days later, while parked at a gas station, a great big Hispanic dude dinged Nick's truck door with the bright purple door of the truck he was getting out of. Luckily (for the first time this month) it wiped off. Nick wasn't too excited about a purple polka dot on his truck door, so that was a good thing. We really haven't been too unlucky. It sure has been a different kind of month though. It has been really quite neat to see all the American flags everywhere. We celebrated our two month anniversary this month. Nick took me out to dinner to Macaroni Grill. I really enjoyed our night, except for the opera singer got a little too excited about singing to every table. We picked chiles over Labor Day weekend. Those chiles are like 10 inches long! After we picked a bunch, Nick's dad parked the tractor and trailer full of chiles next to the post office in St. David. I took pictures for dad. He would sure be like to see that chile roaster. Overall, like I said it has really been an interesting month for us.

Love, Becca

Jeremy continues going to classes while I continue teaching classes. No big news here. We had our first Primary Sacrament Meeting Program Rehearsal today. Things were pretty crazy. I'm the chorister so I only have to worry about the singing part, but man oh man were the kids a bunch of hyper-hypos today! I know they are at least ready for the singing part. Last week was the final week I had them in singing time. I wanted to review the songs the entire time and to see how well they knew them. I saw a cute idea on Primary Page.com and took it to the extreme. It said to have three people come in the room and judge the kids on how well they sang and them give them a score on a scale from 1 - 10. Well, Jeremy and I came up with the idea to have three ward members dress up as famous LDS people to be the judges. So Jeremy dressed up as Steve Young (0f course), we had another guy dress up as Dale Murphy (some baseball player), and then we had a lady wear a leather coat, a fancy scarf, and sunglasses and we called her Jewel. I told the kids I pulled some strings and got three famous people to come and listen to them sing some songs. I kept poking my head out in the hallway to pretend like I was waiting for all three of them to arrive. Finally when the kids could not stand the suspense any longer, I introduced each celebrity. The kids mouths were wide open in awe. I know some of those kids really thought Steve Young had come to hear them sing. Since most of the kids didn't know what the three people looked like and they were so well dressed up, they really thought these famous people came to hear them sing. It was so much fun. They had never sung so well before. By the end of singing time they had all scored perfect 10's. As a reward, I passed out Kazoos to the kids on the way out of primary. Jeremy and I thought it was a perfect prize because we didn't have to take home any of these kids blowing the kazoos and also we could get all those parents back who we didn't care much for. It worked, minutes after I had passed them out, parents came up to me and asked me why I couldn't have chosen a more quiet reward. I just smiled smugly!

Love Martha

Hey folks. It's cooling off a little bit here. Makes it pleasant to walk back and forth across campus. I love my math class so much and in psyche we are still doing child psychology and we get to watch films about preschool kids' evolving language and how they giggle and it's just so dang cute. It makes me want to come right home and play with Leslie!

Last night for family home evening we went night swimming and before that we all went out and got Terminator swim goggles. They are so cool! They are the ones like Matt has (that cover both eyes, not a mask) and they are shaded like sunglasses, and they are mirrored tint on the outside! Mine and Brent's are silver mirrored, but Kiel and Trevor's are blue-green mirrored. We threw a guitar pick in the spa and then we all swim around like ravenous piranhas trying to grab it and keep everyone else from getting it. It was so much fun! Then for dinner they went to KFC, but I told 'em I didn't want to spend any more money so to bring it home and I would just make something for myself. So then when they came back we watched a movie and ate dinner in front of it. I went to bed around 930, but I feel exhausted today. Maybe I am low in nutrients? I have English in 5 minutes so I am outta here!

I took three tests last week: psyche, pre-cal, chem. I got back the scores on two of em. Pre-cal 80%, psyche 92%. Is that cool or what?! I will get back chem on Wednesday during lab. I am totally stoked because I studied really hard for chem and I'm pretty sure I did well on it.

Over the weekend, I went home to MV to help Chris re-roof his Cedar City house. Me and Matt and Dad and Chris left Logandale at 5:30 in the morning on Saturday. We worked on the roof as soon as we got there. We worked on it all morning. We worked on it all afternoon. We worked on it all night. We finished after midnight (at 12:30) and started the journey home. We got home around 2:30 am Sunday morning, so we almost worked 24 hours. It was pretty tiring if you know what I mean. So today I am totally sore and stiff. My leg muscles feel like jelly and I can't walk fast or go up stairs very well. I feel like I need crutches. I keep getting leg cramps and sometimes as I am walking I will almost fall because my legs just give out on me. But other than that I am in fine shape. I am having a great time at school and I still like my roommates. We have a blast everyday. Between watching movies, buying fish, and playing UNO, we keep pretty busy. I have started getting a little chubby, so I started a swim program. At first I tried to swim laps and tread water, but that got old fast, so now I make my roommates come with me and we play shark and minnows. I am the shark and I chase them around and when I catch one of em I wrestle them and then all of the rest of them come to help their fellow minnow so I end up wrestling all of them until they can escape. Then I do it again! It is a lot of fun and a lot of exercise. I doubt I will play that today due to my physical handicap. I am finding many ways to make Top Ramen. I like it a lot, but still appreciate Mom's food when I go home. They say Vegas is the city that never sleeps, but I am so tired from walking around campus, studying and reading, I have to sleep. So I guess y'all could call me the man that sleeps in the city that doesn't. :) I still love you all and miss you. ill try to be good.

Is it really October 9th already? School started a week later, but just whizzed on by. Tomorrow's the Terra Nova testing, and I've hardly had time to prepare. Of course Ken's work at school seems to revolve around testing, so he's been putting in extra hours preparing for it. Now a few weeks ago, we wondered whether or not Ken would have to even worry about testing this year. Mr. Reese gave him official notification from the School District that he would be surplused. Pretty amazing! Because of the block schedule and a reduction of electives and fewer class choices for students, more and more are graduating early. Combining this with a smaller than usual freshman class this year added up to a student body 25 short of needing two counselors. However, the citizens of Moapa Valley leapt into action. They flooded CCSD with so many phone calls that they quit answering. At this they swamped the office with so many faxes, that rumors report them unplugging the fax machine. Their ultimate decision proclaimed that Ken could keep his job here, at least for one more year. Almost everyone breathed an enormous sigh of relief, with the exception of Virgin Valley H.S., who had counted on getting Ken as their new counselor out of the deal. Isn't it great to be so loved and appreciated!

I've started up another blue jeans quilt. Watching Conference was just the motivation I needed to cut up all the pants I've collected. I thought I had finished, but then I found another sack with three pair of jeans. They seemed rather tiny, especially since they didn't even cover my lap. As I checked the white pocket lining, I noticed "Mom" written as identification: pretty incredible, but these petite dainties were actually mine. I told Matt that the whole experience left me feeling majorly bummed. Matt replied, "Hey, Mom, is that a pun?"

I know these guys have news, but I keep forgetting to get it from them. Summer keeps going to school. Every time she sees me, she asks if Becca or Martha is pregnant yet, and I tell her, "No." Then I ask her if she's pregnant, and she answers, "No."

Yesterday Leslie and I read some story books on the internet. Here's the website, in case anyone's interested: http://www.asiabigtime.com/storybooks/archives.htm

Dad's REAL new truck