New Church Callings

I knew it was coming, but was still slightly surprised when Norm & I were asked to meet with the 1st councelor in the bishopbric today before church. We have been serving as the wolf den leaders together for the past few months. I recently found that my class schedule was not going to be condusive to having den meetings in the early afternoon. I did what I have only done once before and let the primary know that I would need to be released from the calling. Norm & I hoped that our new callings would allow us to spend time together as being wolf leaders did, but we didn't hold out much hope (knowing that the primary was short on teachers, & that Norm had just been released from 4 years of teaching primary we didn't think they'd put him back in with me).

So, Norm is now the new assistant cub master (a calling he's had before) and I am teaching the Valient 9 class. I actually only have half of the 9 year olds because there are 16 of them. Andrew will be one of my students & I know all the other boys from working with them in cub scouts. I was surprized to find that of the 8 boys that are that age, 6 are in my class (I wonder what the thought process was on that one?). They're an active group of boys. I was asking Andrew about the kids in his class on the way home (he didn't know I was their new teacher) and he filled me in on who the always good, sometimes good/sometimes bad, and troublemakers were (I pretty much knew it all already and was impressed when he included himself in the good/bad group, Kellie- Kennedy made the always good list). He also told me that they've scared off all their teachers, so the boys think they're pretty "bad"

Anyway, it will be a needed challenge for me to keep their interest & keep the misbehaving at a minimum (I already know who to keep separate). It's been quite a few years since I've had a calling as a teacher in primary (approx 10-11 yrs ago I held the calling for a few months before we moved to Seattle & since then it's been mainly primary/relief society pianist or cub scouts) so any of you who have more recent experience, I'll gladly take advice.

book list

So a friend of mine (hi nancee) posted this list of 100 "classic" books that supposedly the average person has only read 6 of. I got to 28. How many have you read? (I'm especially interested in how many you have read, Janette, and you too Kassie, my english majoring sisters). I do think that Jane Austen shows up too many times. Surprisingly, I haven't read any of her books.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (loved it!)

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (great easy read)

5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (one of my favorite h.s. required reading, love the movie too)

6. The Bible (the majority of it)

7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (h.s. requirement, don’t remember much other than big brother)

9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott (read when 12-13 and loved it)

12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (h.s. requirement, don’t remember much)

14. Complete work of Shakespere (have read many, but not his complete works)

15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (great book)

17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (started reading on my own once, couldn’t get by the swearing)

19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20. Middlemarch - George Eliot

21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (read in middle school I think, too much description for my liking)

22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (h.s. requirement, didn’t hate it, don't remember much though)

23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (very funny)

26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (h.s. requirement, didn’t love it, but didn’t hate it either, had a great teacher that made it interesting)

29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (read it once)

30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (just read it recently, found it tough to get through)

31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (h.s. requirement, remember feeling sorry for the girl)

32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (have read them all multiple times and love the series)

34. Emma - Jane Austen

35. Persuasion - Jane Austen

36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

37. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (have read it multiple times, love it, need to read it to the kids)

40. Animal Farm - George Orwell (read in 8th grade! Way too early to get much out of it, am thinking about reading it again sometime)

41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (liked it, but a bit creepy at times)

42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (I’ve seen all the movies does that count?)

46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

47. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

49. Atonement - Ian McEwan

50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel

51. Dune - Frank Herbert (started to once, but too long & didn’t catch my interest right away)

52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt

63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac

66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

67. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fiedling

68. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdi

69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville (we read Billy Bud instead, don't recommend it, even my teacher didn't like it)

70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

71. Dracula - Bram Stoker

72. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (one of my childhood favorites)

73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

74. Ulysses - James Joyce (my h.s. teacher had us read another Joyce book intead, can't remember the name though)

75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

77. Germinal - Emile Zola

78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

79. Possession - AS Byatt

80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker

83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

86. Charlotte’s Web - EB White (another childhood favorite)

87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (h.s. requirement, very violent as I remember)

91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

93. Watership Down - Richard Adams (another we read in 8th grade, too much went over my head, just remember the rabbits)

94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (another great kid book, my kids loved it)

98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

(The last two were missing, so my friend made some up)

99. Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

100. Twilight series - Stephanie Myers (just finished reading them all, not too bad, the main character is a bit too whiney/needy for my liking though)

Andrew & Toady They Went Acourtn'

Norm found this toad (too big to be a frog I think) as he left this morning. He sent me to get the kids. They were all pretty excited, but Andrew was the most interested. I really wanted to get him out of the yard since I wasn't sure if it was one of the poisonous (to dogs) toads that roam these parts. Andrew was game to try and catch it while I supervised. After chasing it for a while, Andrew was able to catch it. He really wanted to keep it, but I convinced him that it would be better to take him across the street to a nice pond where he could live a happy life. So that's just what we did.

Kindergarden Comparison

So I was looking through old photos yesterday and came across Cory's kindergarden graduation pictures. I thought that he looked really young in comparison to how Rachel looks now & how Andrew looked 2 years ago. I guess chronologically he was the youngest (his b-day of Aug 30, makes him the youngest in his class), but I still think he looks much younger than the other two, with Rachel looking the oldest to me even though chronologically Andrew was the oldest when he graduated. Let me know what you think.

Kauai & Oahu Trip aka: 14th Anniversary Fun

So, as many of you know, Norm & I were able to take a trip to Hawaii. Specifically the islands of Kauai & Oahu. We had a great time. Here's a run down of our daily activities:

7/5: Woke up bright & early at 3 am so we could leave by 4 am for the Phoenix airport. Our flight to Honolulu left at on time 6 am. We arrived in Honolulu at 11:30 am Hawaii time. We had a couple hours to kill at the airport before our flight to Kauai. We happened upon a nice garden area where we enjoyed the nice atmosphere. I thought the birds there were really cool looking and fed some of my trailmix to them. They were fearless and I even got a couple to eat out of my hand:

We then flew to Kauai and arrived there at 2pm. We got our rental car and decided to pick up bikes so that we could ride down Waimea Canyon the next morning. After picking up our bikes we found our hotel and settled down for the night.

7/6: We woke up bright and early (actually we woke up around 3 am and had to force ourselves to sleep for a few more hours) and drove to Waimea Canyon with our bikes. On the way we picked up a second rental car for the day so that we could leave one at the bottom of the canyon. We drove to the top and checked our the lookout there. It was pretty awesome to see the Na Pali Coastline from up above. After gearing up, we started the 19 mile ride downhill (well mostly downhill). There were a few uphills and not being in biking shape, I had to walk my bike a few times. Once we reached about mile 12, it was all downhill from there. I was a bit fearfull at first, but I really enjoyed myself. When we reached the bottom we decided that it was so much fun, we wanted to do it again. We took the time to have some lunch and then headed back up the canyon to pick up car #1. We drove both cars down, left car #1 at the bottom this time and drove car #2 back up to milepost 11. Then we did it all again a second time. It was just as fun.

7/7: Another early morning so that we could meet our boat tour. We left at 8:30 and headed up the Na Pali Coast. It was a beautiful morning. On our way up, we saw lots of spinner dolphins and a few sea turtles in the water. The views of the coastline were awesome. We were able to go into a few sea caves and one in particular was really cool. It was completely open on the top and you could see the sky above (see pics below). We stopped for lunch & snorkeling. I was surprised by the saltiness of the ocean water (I made myself laugh when I realized the reason my snorkel tasted salty was because it had ocean water on it). We saw a sea turtle or two and got a really great picture. There were also plenty of tropical fish. Very fun. I just wish I could have stood to dive down lower like Norm, but wasn't comfortable with it.

This is the view from the coastline that we saw from the top of Waimea Canyon.

Inside the cool open cave

Looking up

7/8: We decided that we'd take a hike today. We found a hike that originated at the end of the road on the north side of the island. It was 2 miles to a beach & then another 2 miles to some falls. We figured 4 miles each way, no sweat, that will take us a few hours. When we arrived at the trailhead, the signs there suggested that the hike to the falls & back would take 6-8 hours. What!! We were not prepared, but still figured that with our 2 bottles of gatoraid we'd be just fine. Our last words. We headed out and soon discovered that the trail was very slippery & difficult. Right away I started rationing my fluid intake. We made it to the falls and enjoyed their beauty. I was pretty tired and starting to get a bit grumpy though. I was happy to swim and cool down a bit. It was very humid. The hike back was all about reaching the car. I slipped and fell a few times (you can see evidence in the pic below) which didn't help with my mood. By the end of the trail I was definately dehydrated and wanting to get to a store asap. Once I got some fluids in me I felt much better and appologized to Norm for being so whiney on the way out. I decided I'll never be so unprepared for a hike if I could help it again.

A wet cave near the trailhead

I was pondering do I really want to go any farther? I can see the falls from here.

7/9: After wiping ourselves out on our hike, we decided to take it easy today. We drove to a few outlooks where we could see some of the other falls on the island. We relaxed by the pool, read, and went swimming. I appologize for not knowing the names of these falls. I'll have to look them up and add the info later.

Wailua River: we were planning on kayaking it the next morning.

7/10: We slept in a bit, woke up, and packed our bags. We were leaving Kauai at 9:30 pm. After checking out, we found a place to rent a kayak and headed up the Wailua river to the secret falls. We came to the kayak pull out and hiked the mile to the falls. This hike was much easier than our last, though just as wet. After swimming in the pool, we hiked back to the kayak and headed up the other fork of the river to find the Fern Grotto & swimming hole. At the swimming hole, Norm found a rope swing and took a few turns on it. I couldn't find the courrage and passed. The Fern Grotto was kind of a let down, but pretty none the less. After returning our kayak, we headed back to our hotel, grabbed our books, and read by the ocean for the last few hours we were on Kauai. I was sad to have to go.

That's me at the base of the Secret Falls

7/11: After a late arrival into Oahu the night before, we woke up early to go wait in line to see the USS Arizona. We arrived at around 7 am (we had planned to be there by 6:30, but didn't make it) and there was already quite a line. Once they opened, we were able to get tickets for the 3rd group. It was a great experience to see the film and then take the boatride out to the memorial. It was very moving to think about what had happened on December 7th and the changes that occured.

After viewing the USS Arizona Memorial, we took the drive to La'ie where BYU Hawaii, the temple, & Polynesian Cultural Center are located. We weren't able to attend a session at the temple because they were closed for their summer cleaning. We did walk around the grounds and found them very beautiful. We then went down the road to BYU Hawaii and walked around the campus. Very small in comparison to BYU. Finally, we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center to spend the afternoon. It was very cool to see all the different island countries represented and find out more about each of them. We viewed an IMAX movie about the coral reefs. Saw some cool demonstrations & hands on activities. That evening we went to a luau and ate some very good food. They even had a small show there. As part of that show, they invited all couples who were celebrating their anniversary to come up on the stage and dance, so we had a nice dance together. Finally, the evening ended with an awesome show that we really enjoyed. I took some video and will have to post some if I can.

7/12: Last Day :( We began our morning by putting on our suits, grabbing a book, & walked outside our hotel to Waikiki beach. We enjoyed a relaxing time reading & swimming in the warm ocean. We did a little shopping to find the kids a shirt from hawaii and then headed back to the hotel to pack up & head to the airport for our 3pm flight home. When we got through security we looked at the departure board and found that our flight had been delayed for 3 hours. We decided to take advantage of this opportunity and head to the garden, find ourselves a bench & enjoy a few more hours in Hawaii. Our flight left at 6 pm and arrived in Phoenix at 3 am Sunday morning. All we had left was our 2 hour drive home. So, we pulled into our driveway at 5 am Sunday morning. We crashed of course. Greatfully, Aunt Jocelynne told us to relax & sleep as much as we needed while the kids played at her house. We are forever greatful to Grandma Fran for keeping our kidlets occupied while we were away. They had a great time.

First Day of School

The kids started the new school year today. Cory in 7th grade (I can barely believe it!). Andrew in 3rd grade (He's one of the tallest in his grade). Rachel in 1st (She was so excited to be at school all day). They all wanted to wear their new shirts & necklaces we brought back for them from Hawaii (I'll post some of our pics of that trip sometime this week). My cute 1st grader
He loves his turtle shirt

He's getting bigger isn't he

The crew!

Of Geckos And Teeth

Wow! It's been a while since I last posted. I'm going to have to play catch up.

Our most recent happening is that Rachel lost her first tooth! She lost it on Monday. It had been a bit wiggly ever since she knocked her mouth on Rosco's head. I figured it was time for it to come out because her other front-bottom tooth is wiggly as well.

"smile big rachel"

Yesterday Andrew discovered that we have a "pet" in our garage. We have a gecko living out there. The kids were sure that he was poisonous but I assured them that he wasn't. Usually in the summertime we have a ton of crickets in the garage and I didn't notice until we discovered the gecko, that I hadn't been hearing them this year. Now I know why. For now, we just need to be careful when we drive out because I don't want to squish him. I'm glad to have him living out there.

I guess we could call him Rin 2 (after Matt's old gecko)