Princesses at a Royal Celebration

 Its Missionary Month for the youth of our ward and every young woman and young man gets a mission call for a month. Savanna got called to the Japan mission and Fiora to the Chile mission. They are super excited and cute missionaries.
While Weston and I were in Colorado, Jared took the girls to a fund raiser princess event at Wadley Farms, designed for young girls and their dads to help a family in our ward. The girls were so excited and even bought tiaras for the event. They had a lot of fun and looked super cute! Jared was also a very handsome prince. The girl in the green dress is Anna Passmore, little Miss Lindon queen, who is also in our ward.

Colorado Open Gym Meet

Weston's gym meet this weekend was in Colorado Springs at the Olympic training center. We drove down Friday with Jessica and Kasen Tayor which worked out great. Kasen has been on Westons gym team for the past 2 years so it was fun to get to know him and his mom better. We stayed at the Best Western and had dinner at Chili's, and the boys had the indoor pool all to themselves for a good hour that evening. Weston is the blue shorts.

 

The facility was amazing! There were double the gym equipment and double the judges, so they got all 80 gymnasts through all 6 events in less time than it takes a Utah gym meet to do half the amount of athletes. There was nice stadium seating too. Unfortunately, Weston came down with a head ache, sore throat and fever the night before the meet, and didn't feel well at all that morning, bummer! I gave him some Advil and we said a prayer and went to the meet anyway, he did his best, but it broke my heart to know he was sick and at a disadvantage during such a big meet. His goal was 60 overall points, he lowered it from his previous meets because there has been inconsistent practices the past two weeks (only 1 practice on a Tuesday!) and out-of-state judges are generally tougher.  Amazingly, even being sick, he managed to pull out a 59.8 overall score! SOOO close to his goal and I'm so proud of him pushing through the pain and learning a life lesson of perseverance.

All the boys underperformed at this meet for one reason or another, Coach Blake was bummed, but the level 6's still managed to get 3rd place overall!  Weston's events can be viewed here.
http://youtu.be/kDv--JLl3YE

Wes was still sick all the way home, I hope Jessica and Kasen don't catch it after being stuck in the car with him for 18 hours and in a hotel room with him all night, but nothing could be done. The Lord was with me driving there and driving home on very little sleep, we traveled safe, I didn't get a headache and my stomach behaved, and the Lord was with Weston during his meet, so I'm praying the Lord protected the Taylors from the illness. Still a really neat experience.

Toes Temples and Time with Cousins

Savanna has a problem with ingrown toenails. She already has a propensity to have them and then has them painted all the time so they are even more stiff and liable to penetrate her skin, so hearing "I have a really sore ingrown toenail!" from her is commonplace. Well a couple weeks ago she had one so bad that it was puffing and oozing and looked frightening, and she was in a lot of pain, so Jared took her to our neighbor who is a podiatrist and he offered to clip both sides of her nail right there and then.  She freaked out a little bit but went through with it, and after she was numb she calmed down but we had a dramatic night of her dealing with a burning toe. She had to go back and get the roots killed, and she insists on wearing closed toed shoes so it has had a hard time recovering completely. Lots of toe pain for Sav.

Fiora our crazy cat lady is now old enough to do baptisms at the temple so she has gone twice, she had to wait 2 hours both times but she loves it so much when she actually gets to be baptized she can't wait to go again the next week!  She gave a family night lesson on her testimony of the temple because she feels the spirit when she does temple work and it makes her happy.

Weston had a sleep over with his cousins Kayden and Trevan last weekend because we didn't go to a gym meet in Colorado and he had no gym, and Kayden's birthday was coming up and they all love to play legos together.  Weston loved having boys to play with all weekend. He gets a long really well with his cousins!

February Fiora fun

 Fiora had a birthday! on Friday February 13th she turned 12 and we had an awesome blueberry gluten free waffle and bacon breakfast ready for her when she woke up. Jared even skipped basket ball to have birthday breakfast with us. We gave her a few presents, mostly cat stuff, and then she got ready for school.

 Later that evening we took her to red lobster for her birthday dinner. Since it was the Friday before Valentines day there was an hour and a half wait, but we all stuck it out and ordered two pounds of crab, which is all of our favorite thing. We could have eaten 4 pounds but it does get to be a pain cracking those crab shells.

Princess birthday girl

 

 Saturday we had a friend birthday party for Fiora with the "giggly girls." She wanted a "backwards party" so she had everyone come in through the "back" door, everyone was supposed to wear their clothes "backwards" and they ate cupcakes for lunch and had hamburgers for dessert. They started out eating under the table but are too big to fit so they ended up eating most of it regularly seated. We played Telestrations then had a present exchange for the guests before present time for the birthday girl, and played "2 Lies and a Truth." It was a fun time!

 Fiora graduated from primary and is now in Young Womens, and she said she likes it WAY better because people don't talk to you like a baby in YW. We took her to do baptisms this last week, and even though we had to wait 2 hours before she was even taken into the font, and even though Savanna and I were kind of hovering over her and bossing her around most of the time, she said she loved it and wants to do it again. Hooray!

Meet Season, Solo Ensemble, Science Fair

The fun continues and we stay busy.  Weston of course has his big extra thing, gymnastics, and it is gym season so its time consuming, but he's only in 5th grade and the demands are minimal. How will we do this when he is in Jr high/High school? I don't know.
3 meets down, 3 to go. Weston did a fabulous job on his last gym meet in Springville. He was tired by the end so he had a hard time with the vault, we saw him do a beautiful warm up vault, but when the judges were judging he fell backwards on his landing. He was so disappointed, but since he scored so high on his other events he still managed to take 1st place out of 18 boys in his division. That cheered him up.  We just love to watch him do what he loves, every meet is a great meet in our eyes!
Check it out.
Floor 11.5
Pommel 10.8
Rings 9.7
Vault 8.8
P Bars 10.7
High Bar 11.2
Overall 62.7
http://youtu.be/_Qr0q0-l1bc

Savanna is practicing furiously on the violin on "The Entertainer" for her solo and ensemble coming up. The teacher gave them barely two weeks notice and she managed to find a quartet and a song to put together a practice session with her group in record time.  She had me schedule an emergency private lesson with her old violin teacher and loved it so much she wants private lessons again. She also wants voice lessons so we might have to wait til schools out. She spends much of her homework hours on math, trying to keep the grade up, and she still has a good attitude about her tutor.

Fiora is still plugging away trying to train her two mice to get through a maze by reinforcing their behavior. The results will probably be very interesting. The only reinforcement the mice seem to care about is finding a way to escape. But she is diligent about doing it every day. We may have to sell the mice after its done because they are very smelly, much more than the gerbil. Science fair projects, what we do for these kids. Fiora's birthday is coming up and she has excitedly planned a "backwards party."  I'll let you know details on that next post!

Jared is still plugging away at school learning out to expand his business. He took me to a social event where I learned more about the program and applicants, this is a picture of him socializing there. He's not a fan of homework but he has been very diligent about coming up with a proposal to expand. He still squeezes time in the morning to work out and stay toned.

I'm still maintaining my goal of 20 hours a week of therapy research and work. I have a marriage workshop coming up next week that gives me something to plan for.  Hope it's fun for those who sign up! I'm having fun putting it together. Theme is "how to stay positive in your marriage", something for which I certainly need lots of information, inspiration, and interaction.