One of Everything

So as the summer winds down, we would like to share what we have done this summer. We have done one of everything it seems, so here are some highlights...
One knights of freedom knighting ceremony:


One liberty girls retreat:


One trip to Logan:


One cub scout day camp:


One visit from Grandma Schultz and Uncle John:


One trip to kangaroo zoo:


One hiking/geocaching trip:


One camping trip:


One webelos award ceremony:



One littlest pet shop birthday cake:


One gaggle of girls on a treasure hunt:


One rock and roll birthday cake:


One herd of boys learning their moves from 007 James Bond:


One week of football tryouts:


One cheer leading performance to prepare for:

And one set of parents that are exhausted by the first of August! We can't wait to see what the school year has in store for us!

What a beautiful day!

So, as some of you know, this has not been a typical spring and start of summer for Utah. We had some seriously warm days in February and March and then had lots of snow late into april. Not that I am complaining, we definitely need the water. So the last month or so has had its ups and downs. It will be really nice and warm and then really rainy and cool. Today was great! We had the Pony Express Days parade for Madison. Her hula group had a float in the parade and so we went to watch it. The weather was perfect, warm but not hot. We had sun and the girls looked so cute on the float. Madison wore her tahitian costume and spent the entire parade standing on a bench waving and shaking her hips. Kim, the Hula teacher's mom, thought that Madison was great because she danced the whole time.

Damon loved the parade. He was catching candy that the people were throwing. He also saw the truck for the Utah Valley Thunder football team which is helping to sponsor the youth football and clinics for the Eagle Mountain football. He also high fived most of the new high school's football team. (They are the Westlake Thunder, and the new school opens in the fall) This will be the high school that Damon attends and he was way excited as they walked by and the cheerleaders that followed them. He also thought that it was really exciting that the youth football teams had a truck in the show and that they were blasting the song "thunderstruck" from the back of it. (I foresee my life involving a lot of pep rallies and highschool football games.)

Of course, the parade could not be complete without an injury. Madison was climing on the truck after they parked the float and slid off the bumper. She hit the trailer hitch and scraped her knee and leg. You will notice that in some of the pictures she is not very happy. Most of those were taken after the accident. A couple of the pictures of the float show Madison, but her back is to me. She has the light colored skirt on and is standing and waving.

Celebrating all week

We began our celebrating on Sunday of this week. We had a BBQ with my parents to celebrate Memorial Day. The food was wonderful and we had fun visiting. Monday started off right! I was put on call for work and so I was able to hang out with Mike and the kids for the day. Late that afternoon, we met at a park for a picnic with some friends. Carrie & Ben, Wade & Jenny, Brenda & James, are all people that I went to highschool with and that will still claim me. We had baked potatoes at the park and the kids ran around like maniacs while we sat and visited. It was great fun. We really need to try to get together more often (unfortunately, it takes at least three months of planning before we actually get schedules coordinated). The kids celebrated this week because they were done with school and excited to start the summer. Wednesday night we brought the fire pit out and had a fire and roasted marshmallows. (I'm not sure why Madi is wearing a sun dress and a winter coat?! She is quite the fashion Diva!)

We then celebrated today, Saturday, with Madison's dance recital. She was so cute and their dance was perfect. Nothing like little girls with attitude shakin' it to the song "Fabulous" from the High School Musical movie.

Quick Rundown

So, it has only been two months since I last posted. Not like much has happened. (ha ha). Here is a quick rundown (actually, it is quite long) of the Schultz family for the last couple of months. I have included some pictures.

First, we went to California for Mike's Grandmother's funeral. (Yes, of course we snuck to Disneyland for a couple of days. I can't believe that you even had to ask.) We had a wonderful time. We were able to visit a little with Pat and Sherrie but would like to go out a visit a little longer next time. The funeral was beautiful and the cemetery is an old mission that overlooks the ocean. (Definitely a peaceful and serene place.)

We had a good Easter. The Easter bunny did not disappoint. We had an Easter Egg hunt with our friends the Thuesons. We also went to Baby Animal days at the Jensen Historical Farm in Logan, Utah. Madison loved petting all of the cute animals and holding them. Damon liked petting the animals (although he probably won't admit it). He also liked the blacksmith shop and the hatchet throwing.

Mike and I each had a birthday. I can't believe I am married to such an old man. ( You know that I am 21 and holding while Mike gets older every year.) We each had a good birthday and kept things relatively mellow. We were able to celebrate both birthday with my parents and Chris and Alicia. We were in California close to my birthday and Chris and Alicia were here close to Mike's birthday.
Madison managed to finally lose her two top, front teeth. They were loose forever and eventually were sticking straight out of her mouth. Yes, she looked like some hillbilly. She was quite excited about the two dollar profit that she made out of the deal. She has still been dancing, doing hula, and just started cheer leading. She is in a class with the older girls, and this has added to her delusion that she is already a teenager. She will be having her spring dance recital, hula performance, and a parade performance in the next couple of weeks. I promise to post pictures when I have them.

Damon has been busy as well. He just had his pinewood derby and did well in the races. His car did not place in the top three but was in fourth place. He designed his car to look like one of the star wars ships, complete with battle damage/wearing and guns. He has been "relaxing" because he has a busy summer coming up with sports. (I'm not sure when video games became relaxing)

The kids have been busy with school and just finished up with school. They finished a little earlier than the traditional school. I am glad that they are done; they need a break. Next year they will not do the online school because they were both drawn for the Charter school. They are very excited and have several friends that already attend.

Mike tested for Lieutenant and placed fourth on the list. He is excited and hoping that he will be able to promote in the next year. We are all proud of him. He also received a commendation from the Sheriff for creating a training class for the kitchen employees, who are from an outside agency that the office contracts with, and we were able to go to staff meeting and see him receive his award.

We have been working in the yard. We spent last weekend spreading 15 tons of gravel by hand. We aren't quite done yet, but we both went back to work and haven't had time this week. We still need to get the garden, the dog run built, the bark down in the flower beds, the backyard cleaned up, and the house cleaned and organized. (You can see that I don't have much on my "to do" list.

Through it all, we have kept our sanity...well, most of us have.

Love ya!!

Number One

So, the kids made it through their Destination Imagination competition. They went to state and won. There were only ten teams at state but they definitely dominated the competition. I was really impressed with the way that they put everything together and how organized they were when it came time to compete. They now have the opportunity to go to the global competition in May. I think we will wait for a couple of years before we try that. We are just getting our feet wet and don't want to get in over our heads in the first year. We want the kids to take a good experience away from this and are afraid that they would be frustrated and disappointed if they went up against some of these teams that have been competing for years. I copied, and posted, the article that appeared in the paper.

Madison's age group didn't even have other teams to compete against so they couldn't compete; but we all agree that they took a first place as well.

Thursday, 02 April 2009

Cathy Allred - Daily Herald

A winning team for the Utah State Destination ImagiNation Challenge Saturday used duct tape to secure a prop and win its acting challenge. "Duct tape solved the problem for the main big challenge to get it to stand up, because it was a part of the background video for the acting challenge," said team member Myla Colletti, 11. "Screws weren't doing it, holding it up. It was wobbly."
Fifteen children from five Utah County cities took state at the finals for the Destination ImagiNation Challenge last weekend.
Sponsored by the Hutchings Museum and Lehi American Legion Post 19, the group consisted of three teams. Of those, one team will go on to the international competition.
"The Hutchings Museum is proud -- as I am sure the Lehi veterans are, as well -- to have provided a place for these kids to prepare for their teamwork and creativity challenges," said museum program director Valerie Meade. "I'm so excited that all their hard work paid off so well."
Destination ImagiNation is a little-known competition in Utah, but in other parts of the world it is popular with educators and children.
A community-based, nonprofit, volunteer educational organization founded in 1999, Destination ImagiNation teaches kindergarten through university-level participants about critical- and creative-thinking skills.
More than 250,000 children and young adults in all 50 states and more than 40 countries compete each season. Two- to seven-member teams focus on finding solutions to two separate types of Destination ImagiNation challenges: Team Challenges and Instant Challenges. Then they present their solutions to appraisers in tournament-style settings.
"In Oregon, Destination ImagiNation, it's huge," said team manager Melissa Price, who is from Oregon. "Usually [Oregon] has a regional competition at the beginning of March. Here there are not enough teams to have regional anywhere and they only had six teams at state."
Other states have 20-30 teams competing at regional events. In Utah, one of her teams didn't have any competition at the state level and the other teams had only one team they went up against.
"Hopefully, I can help get the word out for next year so we can get some more teams," she said. "I feel it's important for the teams to have more competition."
That's not to say preparation for the state competition wasn't tough. The children had been practicing since January, three to four hours each week.
"Every Friday afternoon and work, work, work," Price said then laughed.
There were two teams, the Huskies and the Atomic Air Force, whose members were kindergarten to fifth-grade level. The other team, The Sharp Shooters, is the one going to finals and has three members of junior-high-school age.
"Well, I think they start to learn to work as a team," Price said. "They also learn what to do when something goes wrong. They really learn to work with different personalities. It's fun to watch. By the time the process is through, they become great friends and they really learn to rely on one another."
She said the most difficult thing for parents to do is to not help or guide them.
Adults are not allowed to help in any way, the children have to solve all the problems and do all the skits by themselves. It's completely child-led.
"It's kind of hard for parents to watch while the kids come up with a solution," Price said.
Now the teams are faced with how to raise enough funds to pay for getting to the Global Finals in May at the University of Tennessee. There were 18,000 competitors, all kids, from all over the world at the finals in 2008.
She said they need $5,000 per team to get the props and team members there and to pay for lodging and food.
"We are certainly trying to earn the money to go," Price said. "At least one of our teams is going to go."

Sharp Shooters - (Back Row)
Myla Coletti, 11, Lehi
Erika Meade, 12, American Fork
Summer Price, 14, Provo
Robbie Robinson, 11, Orem

Atomic Airforce - (middle row)
Damon Schultz, 10, Eagle Mountain
Jason Spoons, 9, Provo
Jeffery Coletti, 8, Lehi
Hunter Thueson, 10, Eagle Mountain

Huskies - (front row)
Kelsey Nettles, 8, Lehi
Reilly Price, 9, Provo
Sadie Thueson, 8, Eagle Mountain
Jeniel Zimmerman, 7, Orem

Weekly wrap up

So, here we come to the end of another week, and I am finally getting around to posting on our blog. First, I will tell you about Valentines. The kids had a skating party the Friday before Valentines. We went to Classic Skating (yes, it looks like it did when we were kids) and they exchanged valentines, had treats, and skated/ scootered. I know you are wondering; no, I did not skate this year. I was feeling less adventerous than normal. I do crack up when I watch the kids and see how excited they are to do things like the hokey pokey on rollerskates. I laugh because we were the same way when we were that age. Mike worked on Valentine's so dinner dates are not doable. We had gone to dinner as a family the week before and we went to Famous Daves. The kids love the food there and there is a ton so we figure we ate enough to make up for that dinner and the one that we would normally have on Valentine's.:) Mike did send me flowers and they were beautiful roses of a variety of colors and in the cutest vase.
Well, the weather here has finally started to warm up. Yea!!!! This last weekend was in the 50's and the kids should have been outside playing. However, they decided that they wanted to spend the weekend inside, sick, and Mike joined them. I just tried to steer clear of all of them. Damon and Mike both had the stomach flu and Madison had an ear infection in both ears. So, knock on wood, I haven't been sick yet and don't plan to be. Mike is off for the next four days so we are hoping that we can all get outside and enjoy the weather. All of us need to get out and enjoy the sun!

Just an Update

This is just a little post to catch up on our lives. First, I must start out with very important news...the Utah State Aggies have been ranked in the top 25 in three different polls. They won again tonight and are hoping that it will improve our ranking. (Utah state, hey, aggies all the way, go aggies, go aggies, hey hey hey!) Now that we got through that; I can't believe that we are now into February, it is flying by. It was beautiful today and the kids were able to go outside and play. Madison and her friends were out running around and playing littlest pet shops. Damon and his friends were out in the back yard shooting plastic cups with their BB guns. They had quite the target range set up. I was just thankful that they could go out and play; they have had cabin fever for the last month or so.
The kids are enjoying school. Madison loves her science, art, history, french, and language arts. She is not too fond of Phonics because she thinks that it is too much work. Damon is loving his literature, history, science, german, and art. He doesn't love the language arts or the composition because it involves too much writing.
Mike is keeping busy at work. It is that time of year when all of the crazy, homeless people want a place to stay so they get arrested. Three hots and a cot. I am keeping busy with everything going on. Needless to say, our house looks like a bomb went off. (Please don't plan on visiting unless you give us a month's notice so that we can dig out the front room) LOL. I keep waiting for the neighbors to call for search and rescue.
Our families are doing well. Mike's parents are enjoying the beach and the warm weather (we are all jealous). My parents are doing well, they are planning their next Disneyland adventure for March. Chris and Alicia will be out in April for her brother's wedding. We are excited to actually see them twice in the next couple of months. Tim and Beverly (Mike's brother) are keeping busy in Florida with work and teenage girls. Ryan and Kim (Mike's brother) are busy with work and family. Chris and Alicia (My brother) are busy with grad school, research, and teaching preschool.
Just for the record, Mike has decided that we both need to get in shape. He wants to lose weight and tone. He thinks that my stick arms and chicken legs are in need of some muscle. So, the other night we started and we brought out the new excercise ball with all of the whistles and bells. We followed the nice DVD workout that came with the ball and the lady on it was very nice and very helpful. The next day we both hurt, could hardly move, and decided that the lady on the video was actually evil. We will see if we decide otherwise in the next couple of weeks.
All is well and we are glad that everyone else seems to be doing well.
Love ya,
Michelle