Rugby vs Olympus

Saturday, Olympus came down to play us in rugby.  We annihilated them.  It was 38-0 at the half!  Ben stayed out to start the 2nd half.  Then he came back in with about 5 minutes left in the game.  In that last 5 minutes he made a Try and kicked 2 conversions making 1 of them.  In the first half he kicked 5 conversions and made 3.  They have anther kid that likes to try to kick as well but he hardly ever makes it.  So Ben had 13 points in the game!  It was pretty crazy.  The JV did well also.  Wes, is great.  We love to watch him.  He and Ben are very smart about the game.  They are on a different playing field than a lot of the kids.  But I think it's because they have Suene to coach both of them along.  They final score of our game was 60 -5!

You can't see Ben because the ref is in the way but that kick was perfect!

 My favorite part of the game.  The bow and the high five's!  

 The ref for today's games is our friend Chad Gough.  His thigh are Ben's life goal.  I talked to him before the game started and asked him if I could take a picture of his thighs so Ben could put it up on his wall to have something to work towards and he laughed and said yes.  

So here are Chad's swole thighs...

And here are Ben's...he needs a little work.  But I wouldn't be surprised if in ten years from now they looked a little closer to Chad's.

Our next game is next weekend in Herriman.  We are a little scared.  They beat us last year and we are hoping that their big kids all aged up!  I'll let you know how it goes.  We have a big weekend planned.  Utah just got it's own FIRST EVER PROFESSIONAL RUGBY TEAM!!!!!  It is located just up in Herriman and their opening game is this Friday and since we have a game against Herriman on Saturday we bought tickets!  We are SO excited!  Then Saturday morning we will have Easter with my family and  rugby that afternoon.  Priesthood session of conference that night for the boys and then Sunday a miracle will happened...we were able to get tickets to the morning session of General Conference!  Easter Morning!  WHAT!?!  I know.  It's a blessing from Joel's new calling.  We are so excited.  It's going to be great!  I can't wait to tell you all about it. 

Parent Weekend

So every quarter our work has a parent weekend where the parents come to visit their children and to take counseling classes together on how to strengthen their families.  It's a great program and on Friday night we have a big dinner for everyone with a program.  Sometimes the program is done by the kids and other times it is done by the staff.  This time it was the staff's turn so we did a big Ellen Degeneres Game of Games type show.  It was hilarious.  Ruben and Joel were the Emcee's and did a fabulous job.  They were actually players in the 1st round of Egg Roulette where two people sit facing each other and choose and egg and smash it on their head.  Now some of the eggs are hard boiled and some are not.   The first person to get two raw eggs lost.  Well, Joel got 2 raw eggs in a row!  It was great!  I videoed the first one.

Here is Joel after Ruben found a hard boiled one, saying there's no way that he is going to get back-to-back raw eggs.

Joel picked the egg closest to Ruben just in case the ones by him were hard boiled.

 Not the case.   He walked around with the piece of shell on his forehead for 5 minutes!

Then they had a couple non messy games for the kids and then a couple more rounds of Egg Roulette with other staff members and then Joel did a game with Dr. Chad and Carlos, one of the therapists.  Joel would ask, what seemed like, an obvious question but wasn't. If you got it wrong you got a bucket of something pored on our head.  Dr, Chad lost.  Bigtime.  It was awesome.  The kids loved this entire show.  I think it was one of our best one yet.  We are glad that it's over so that the week can go back to normal and kids can concentrate on school again.  We have been going to these for 10 years now and these people are our work family, as dysfunctional as they are, we all love and care about each other and it works.  It's great to help these kids and see the change that comes into their lives for good. 

Passport and Soccer vs Snow Canyon

Josh and I went to go get his passport taken care of on Monday the 19th.  It's amazing what I don't remember about when we did this with Shayne just a few 5 years ago.  But it was a quick appointment and the lady was super nice about it.  It did end up costing us an arm and a leg but it will be worth it.  The only appointment they had available was at 12:15 so Josh took his church clothes to school and changed at the Wells' house and hurried and slicked back his hair before he met me at the post office.  One of our ward members works there and every month when I send Sophie's medications I get to talk to him about her.  So he was extra happy to see Josh there.  Especially because he is in the YM's program with Josh.  His passport should be here in a month and we are officially down to 100 days left before he leaves!  Here's what his cute picture turned out like.  Very handsome.

Later that night Pine View went to Snow Canyon to have their butts handed to them by an 8-0 mercy rule game.  It was sad.  They boys gave up.  

 They play Hurricane next week and they haven't won any game this season either so it should be a good game!

Spring Break 2018!

We did NOTHING!  Basically.  Josh had 2 home games so we didn't go anywhere and we don't have money to do anything so we did yard work because the grass that I work so hard to keep nice keeps dying.  Monday, I told the boys what crabgrass I wanted pulled up and then I went to work and came home to it looking close to the same way that it was before I left.  So, Tuesday I made them a HUGE chore list to do inside the house while I went to work.  Most of it got done before the soccer game.   Joel tried to fix the sprinklers the next day and it ALWAYS frustrates him.  I've asked him a million times to teach me how to do it so I can just fix them when they break but he won't.  So, the lawn and I are at his mercy of when he can fix the sprinklers and then I have to calm him down afterwards.  Friday we did go to the park for a picnic with the Wells' before Josh's other game.  Vernon Worthen Park has redone their park so that they have a new playground, trail and parking lot.  It's really nice.  It's always fun to have some time off with the Wells family.  We don't do it as often as we should.  I think that we should probably schedule a once a month thing like the Beckstrands so that the cousins can play together more often.  Saturday I trimmed the Oleander tree near my bedroom door and then started on the grass to figure out what the problem was.  I didn't understand why, after I baby it so much, it keeps turning yellow and letting the crab grass take over.  Then after 2 hours of working on one spot I found them.  GRUBS!!!  Dang little grub worms had eaten all of my lawn roots and that's why it died.  BUGGG!  Literally and figuratively.  So we stopped everything and went hiking.  I will have to deal with them later.  We met up with the Wells kids at the Narrows (Satan's Buttcrack).  The kids ran up through there about 5 times.  Joel and I stuck around for as long as we could but it was still another work day for us.  We has to take a dozen Red Rock kids down to Vegas to see a Cubs game.  They were in town for Spring training at the 51's field.  It is the one perk that Joel and I get to do every year together.  It was a cold day in Vegas. Weird.  But it was a great game 11-2 for the Cubs over the Indians.  

Ben figured out how to pump the swing to get them higher.  He said that it was a good ab workout. 

 It was a lot of fun!

 Joel pushing Kyle and Evan.

Josh had 2 games.  Tuesdays was against Desert Hills and Fridays was against Canyon View.  We lost to Desert Hills 4-0 and we lost to Canyon View in double overtime in the last 10 seconds!  3-2!  It was horrible!

Hiking Satan's Buttcrack

 

It was a great and well needed date.  Now back to the daily grind of regular life and back to school!