If I Were President (Chance, 4th Grade)

I would be a great president. I would do all the stuff that every adult wants like lower taxes and stuff but I would go over the top. First of I would have kids get ripped off less. People always put fake links on the internet that make you buy stuff. Then people rig the arcade games so you lose most of the time. I also think you don’t have to buy NFL Sunday Ticket if your favorite football team isn’t on national T.V.

I would not change school. Most kids don’t want school. But if you don’t have school you don’t get a job. I think there should be less people on the streets. If nobody went to school there would be no doctors, dentists and other good jobs. Here is another point you make money by working. Also every one wants to be rich so why not go to work and get rich. That’s one thing I am keeping.

I think kids should get less recess. If you cut out both recesses you get out earlier. I also think school should start earlier. Then you get out even earlier! I think short days should be on Fridays. Then you get a longer weekend. That’s what I am going to change.

I don’t think presidents should get re-election. They should get six years and out. I think people should change the White House. A lot of presidents have families now. So the White House should have an indoor pool or an arcade or something. They should still have work rooms and stuff. I think if you change that you should do it on the whole other side of the place where the president works. But you never know if they are going to change that.

I think there should be less jails. I think people should just know better. They should know not to do dumb things. I think there should be no laws. Because for the same reason I just said. For example If you drink a lot of beer you will probably get drunk. Do you see what I mean its all common sense. Bottom line here is president would be easier if some people would be less stupid.

Football, Soccer, and Dance

Chance played his second year of tackle football. Shawn had toyed around with the idea of helping to coach the team this year, but hadn't really made a firm decision. When we went to the first meeting/practice, one of the coaches announced that Shawn would be helping to coach. After the meeting, I asked Chance what his favorite part was about the first official practice. He said, "When dad was announced as a coach." Well, it goes without saying that Chance's comment solidified Shawn's decision to coach! Chance was #12 this year, and played starting defense (they called it Black defense) as corner/linebacker. He played backup offense (Red offense) as halfback. The highlight of his season was when Red offense was able to run plays. Chance wore the playbook on his wrist and started calling out plays like he was the man in charge. He was totally in his element! It was pretty awesome. Chance also ran in a point-after during one of the games. I was so proud of both Shawn and Chance – there were practices every day (with the exception of Fridays) with games on Saturdays. It was a sacrifice for both of them to get there, on time, every, single day. However, the Warriors ended up with an UNDEFEATED season!! There was an end-of-year banquet held for the boys at the elementary school where they were each awarded a trophy, and the coaches talked about each of the boys and what they contributed to the team. It was so cool that Shawn was able to talk about Chance and the progress he had made during the season. I was a little bugged, however, because I started to notice (well...I think I noticed all season and put it together at the end of the season) that the "Team Mom" had a little crush on Shawn!!  She would walk by him, touch his arm, etc. She even made some comment at the banquet about the fact that his new braces affected his kissing? What?!? Annoying!! Well, luckily, we won't be on the same team again next year!!

 My Handsome Boy

Biggest fan...of football and snowcones!!

West is such a good sport at all of these events!!

Hannah had her first year of soccer! She was on a team with her best buddy Esi. I am glad she was on the same team with Esi because I think it helped her come out of her shell a little bit. Hannah wasn't too aggressive on the soccer field, but she would get in there and kick around! She'd run and keep right up with the ball. Their team was called the Blue Dragonflies. They don't keep score at this age, but they would consider their performance a win most of the time! I have been tending Esi in the mornings before school starts so her mom can get off to work. It has been so fun to see her friendship with Hannah develop. I think Hannah enjoyed soccer. It will start up again in the Spring, so we'll see if she's excited to continue.

This picture says a lot about Hannah's soccer career.

Hannah has also been taking dance from MY old dance teacher – Kathy Carver! Talk about crazy! I never thought that Hannah would take dance from my old teacher! It never even crossed my mind! But she LOVES Kathy and has learned a lot from her. The group is called Utah Dance Academy. Hannah is already doing pirouettes, and she will leap and sashe from room to room. Hannah was taking from Jenny's Jazz, and I don't think she learned a thing! I have been really impressed with her progress. We decided to have her take a break from gymnastics and do dance instead for awhile. I would really like to get her into a group that does dance and gymnastics maybe twice a week? I don't want to overdo it for her, but I do want her to be involved and they are both activities that she really enjoys.

And this picture says it all!

A Big Move

Doug Christensen, Shawn's friend in our ward, started talking to me and Shawn about possibly buying an older home that had come up for sale in the ward boundaries. The older home would have to be torn down, but it was on a ¾ acre lot that was very nice. Shawn and I had toyed around with the idea of moving, but we always figured when/if we moved, we would move south so we could be closer to our offices in Salt Lake. We really like the house and area we are in right now. Anyway, we started looking at houses in South Ogden, one thing led to another, and suddenly we made an offer on a house in South Ogden that we both really liked! It was a whirlwind and so crazy, because Shawn and I have a hard time agreeing on houses that we like. He really likes the one level, rambler style with a basement, and he doesn't mind older homes. I tend to like homes with high ceilings that are newly built. But when we saw this house in South Ogden, we both really liked it and agreed on it. It is in a wonderful location, and we are so excited to move. We are waiting to move until we return from our Disney trip. The kids have mixed feelings about moving. They really liked the house we bought, but they are a little sad about leaving their friends and school. I should probably be a lot more nervous about the move than I am, if not for anything, because of the fact we haven't even sold the house that we are in yet! But for some reason, I feel really good about it. I think if we are going to move, we've got to do it now before the kids get any older. I think the older they get, the harder it will be for them to leave. I hardly remember moving to North Ogden from Layton when I was in second grade. The only thing I remember was that my old teacher, Mrs. Condra, would let me move to the front of the class when I couldn't see the board. When I tried that with my new teacher, Mrs. Coleman, she yelled at me and I was really embarrassed! Other than that, nothing traumatic happened!

Pics of our North Ogden house {at its cleanest!!} ...sniff sniff...

Primary Program

Gotta love the time of year when the primary program rolls around! Grammy, Grandpa Ted, Grandma April, and Grandma Debbie all came to see the kids in the program. This year, the theme was on reading the scriptures. The kids had filled out a piece of paper each week they read their scriptures, and then they hooked all of the papers together in a chain. The chain wrapped around the entire chapel! It was so cute. Both Chance and Hannah did a great job on their parts. Of course, Chance lost his piece of paper with his part on it so I can't post it here, but I wanted to post Hannah's. She had given this part as a talk earlier in the year. It was a fairly long part, so she had to get up with older kids instead of her own class. She had the whole thing memorized and did such a nice job! Chance gave his part very last and finished the program beautifully.

School Awards
Chance and Hannah both received an award from the school last week. Chance's teacher mentioned that when Chance was finished with his work, his nose was somewhere in a book. That reminded me of myself at that age! Hannah's teacher described her as a "model student." No bigger compliment than that one! I was so proud of both of them. Hannah and I were over at Grandma Debbie's and Grandpa Brad's, and I told them that Hannah got an award for being a "model student." My dad replied, "That deserves some money." He took out his wallet and gave Hannah a $5.00 bill, which Hannah very shyly accepted. That might not seem like too big of a deal, but I was immediately taken back in time to my Grandpa Dale - whenever he found out about something good we had done in school, he'd whip out his wallet and give us a dollar. Or, he'd take us in his room and let us pick out some quarters. We thought that was so awesome!! What a great memory.

Short and Sweet summary of Halloween

My spider entry for the neighborhood pumpkin contest was...well...average.

And if it wasn't bad enough to only take THIRD place, I had to tie for third with CHANCE who made this hideous BYU pumpkin!!! haha It did make me feel a teeny bit better that our neighbors who won (taking first, second, and tying for third) made it their goal this year to "beat Natalie." Ha ha ha, gotta love it.

Hannah didn't enter hers. This was our first year of carving. She looked really cute with a candle inside! (the pumpkin, not Hannah!)

Chance was a "scary" football player this year. ooooooohhhhhhhh

Hannah was a genie. Even though everyone kept calling her a gypsy!

Westaboy was a spider! It was cute when he crawled, it really looked like he was using all 8 legs! This was Chance's old costume, I can't believe I kept it this long!

Lovin' this fall weather!! Wish it could last forever!!

Hannah, continued...

Had to post this, especially since my last post was about all of the funny things Hannah does. I found this hanging in Hannah's room, underneath her bunk bed. Luckily I found it! We had them for dinner on a Monday and I found it on a Friday! I wouldn't have known what it was had it not been labeled!! hahaha

Shawn's 30-something birthday

For Shawn's birthday (36, I think!? Wow!) I surprised him with a quick trip (just the two of us!) to Las Vegas. I noticed that Kevin James and Ray Romano were going to be doing a show in Las Vegas on Shawn's birthday, so I bought tickets. It turned out to be really funny! I was a little worried it might be crude or profane, but it was relatively clean, especially Kevin James. He was hilarious. My favorite comment that he made was when he asked if any of us had tried the delicious dipping sauce that comes from the George Foreman grill! We flew to Las Vegas and stayed in the Golden Nugget hotel. It had just been remodeled and it was really fun! There was an awesome swimming pool that was set in the middle of an aquarium with huge fish and sharks! We hadn't ever visited the old strip before. Fremont Street was buzzing with all sorts of crazy people dressed as characters – everyone from Big Bird to PeeWee Herman to Ozzy Osborne! The entire street is covered with a lit screen that plays music and shows little movie-type clips. Very cool! It was fun to get away.

I wanted to get this for West.  But refrained.

Me and Chuckie on Fremont Street - I had to get this pic for Steph's kids.  Freaky!!

Hannah's Field Trip to the Zoo

I thought that since I went with Chance on his field trip to the zoo in first grade, I should probably go with Hannah on her field trip to the zoo as well. Hannah was so excited to have West and I go down to the zoo with her. The only problem was, it was FREEZING!! It was a snowstorm! And the first grade was taking the field trip rain or shine! Luckily, I had brought West's cover for his jogging stroller. Otherwise he would have looked like the abominable snowman by the time the zoo trip was over!! I really wanted to leave early, and Hannah was crying that she was cold, but we stayed 'till the bitter end! Hopefully she has some good memories!!

West just happy to be here, enclosed by the jogging stroller cover.

Chance's 9th Birthday

Chance's 9th Birthday
We decided to do a Nerf Gun party to celebrate Chance's 9th birthday. We held it at the LDS Church bowery that is near our house, and asked everyone to bring Nerf guns. It was utter madness. Chance invited over twenty kids and all of them came! I didn't really plan any specific games other than simple capture the flag. I also thought they could do a target practice and win a prize. Somehow target practice turned into Chance wearing the target and seeing if the kids could shoot him! Soon, everyone wanted to wear the target and have a turn! I think it turned out to be a great time. We ordered pizza and breadsticks and it was incredible how quickly it vanished. Kids were grabbing and flinging pieces of pizza right and left. If you didn't rush in to grab one, you were out of luck. We had Oreo and chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches for cake, because Chance isn't really a cake fan.

This picture doesn't even show half of the kids; don't ask me what I was thinking!

Mom & Loo helping with Westie, always so willing to help!!

The highlight of his birthday was receiving an iPod touch as a gift. He was not expecting one at all! It has been a really fun gift. A few days after he received it, I received a text message from him on it. I didn't know that you could text on it! Then, a few days after that, I received a call from an unknown number. To my surprise, it was Chance calling me through his iPod touch! He had figured out that he could download an App that let him call through the wireless network. It was pretty funny!

General Conference

Chance was asked if he would like to sing in General Conference with a group of children from our area. What an awesome opportunity! They chose eight kids from our ward to participate, with approximately 350 children altogether. However, the immediate problem we foresaw was a conflict with football. To play football, you must dedicate yourself to practices every day, with games every Saturday. General Conference practices were every Sunday, with a few practices on Saturdays. Chance wanted to participate in the choir, but was torn between missing games on Saturdays. Shawn and I ensured that Chance made this decision himself, because we did NOT want to be responsible for him being miserable on the days where the choir practices conflicted with football! We completely removed ourselves from the decision making process, as we did not care either way, and actually wanted him to be able to play football because we knew how much he loved it. We reassured him that we truly did not care what he decided, and that we would be happy with either choice. After careful consideration, Chance decided he would be willing to miss a few football games in order to have this amazing opportunity. After making the decision to be part of the choir, we received the choir schedule. It turned out that Chance would be able to play in every game with the exception of his last one, which was the same day as the conference performance. It turns out he made a great decision. Chance has not complained once about attending the practices, which last two hours each and require the kids to sit completely still and sing. The kids were told not to be nervous, because there were only about 7 million people who would be listening to them!! Augh!! I attended the dress rehearsal at the Conference Center and took a few pictures.

Emma Longhurst * Amanda Turner * Allison Lippert * Mikell Manning

Oskar Petersen * Anderson Clements * Seth Adams * Streamer Redd

We were offered one ticket per family through the choir to see the performance. We decided to stay home and watch conference on TV with Hannah and West. An attorney I work with, Steve Bednar, offered us some of Elder David Bednar's conference tickets because Elder Bednar is speaking in the same session as the children's choir, but Steve was then later told that the tickets could only be used by Elder Bednar's family members. The tickets were on the 7th row of the conference center, which probably would have been the only place we could have sat and actually had a good view of Chance! Another attorney I worked with who was called to the Seventy, Elder LeGrand R. Curtis, Jr., is speaking in the same session.

I am watching the conference session right now from the comfort of my own home. I am feeling so emotional as I see the children sing! I have seen Chance's cute little face a few times. The kids look and sound absolutely beautiful. I am so proud of all of them, and I hope Chance will remember this experience throughout his life.

Sarah Redd Haslam

Shawn's sister Sarah was married this September! She was a gorgeous bride. She married her “kindergarten boyfriend”, Jake Haslam. They have known each other for years, and they just look like they belong together. Their families are in the same ward. We all love Jake, and he is such a good match for Sarah. One would have thought it was Shawn's daughter getting married – he was so nervous for her! Nervous we were going to be late to the temple, anxious for everything – it was pretty funny! He is very protective of his little sis. In fact, he gave her an old fashioned “chastity belt” for her shower gift! It was a good laugh!! That gift came as a final gift in a long line of funny gifts that he has given to her for her past birthdays. I was able to help do Sarah & Jake's wedding video, and I also took her bridal and engagement photos. It was quite a bit of work, but I hope she liked the end result. I was really nervous (probably similar to Shawn's nervousness!) because I really wanted her to like the shots. That's something you can't go out and re-do! But her announcements were designed by my sis-in-law Brooke, and they turned out AMAZING. Sarah & Jake were married in the Salt Lake temple on a gorgeous fall day – September 22. Afterward, they had a reception in her front yard. It looked so pretty. She had fall colors with lots of twigs and branches intertwined in her flowers. I couldn't believe how she had transformed the yard! Sarah has a really good eye and vision for decorating. There were SO many people who came! I couldn't believe it. It was a steady stream of people coming through the line to congratulate them for a solid two and a half hours. After cutting the cake, the dancing began. I have never seen, and probably will never see again, my father-in-law Bryan busting a move the way he was on his driveway! It was soooo funny! Everyone was dancing and just having a great time. It was a perfect day, and we are so happy to have Jake in the family.