Gotta Catch 'Em All

There was an Easter somewhere in the spring.  We were too busy for very many egg hunts with Dax and Cora playing soccer.  But we did decorate some eggs, and this is a picture I took of that day:

Dax decorated his egg like a Pokemon ball because for most of his 4th grade year, Dax was pretty much obsessed with all things Pokemon.  He loved to collect the cards, of course.  Anytime the kid came into any kind of cash, he immediately wanted to buy some Pokemon cards.  Even if he only had $1, he would beg to go to the dollar store and buy a small pack there.

Then, he would bring the pack of cards home, and have a little pack-opening ritual.  He learned it by watching other people open packs of Pokemon cards on You Tube.  Yes, it is a thing.  There are actually multiple people with thousands of followers on You Tube who do nothing but open packs of Pokemon cards and discuss them.  Here is what I learned:  The shiny cards are best.  That's about the extent of my Pokemon knowledge. 

Dax would watch Pokemon movies, play with Pokemon toys, wear Pokemon clothes, etc.  He would talk your ear off about the different stages of each kind of Pokemon (and boy howdy there are a lot of kinds of Pokemon). 

The Pokemon stage has kind of petered out now, replaced by something else...Minecraft.  But I didn't want to leave Dax's Pokemon phase undocumented. 

Arden's gymnastics

Okay, whoa, that was a long break.  I'm not going to try and catch up, just hit the highlights! 

This post will be a catch-up-with-Arden's-gymnastics career post.  Arden has been pretty much dedicating her life to gymnastics more and more every day.  Back in the spring, it was meet season.  She was trying to score out of Level 4 and move up to Level 5.  Luckily for her, she was able to score out (she had to score a 35 total, so she had to average a 8.75 across all four events (vault, bars, beam, and floor).   

She had quite a few meets.  Some went better than others, but she usually placed 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in at least one event.  Gymnastics meets are VERY long!  Dax usually tried to stay home, or at least bring his tablet so he could play Minecraft.  Arden is in second in this picture:

I unfortunately don't know as much as most of the gymnastic moms, and so all of Arden's routines always looked pretty good to me!  She always had a smile on her face at the end of the meet, and I guess that is what is important!  I am always proud of her.  She is in third in this picture:

Arden did have a meet or two where she was just flawless.  For example, at one meet she won first in three out of the four events (I think she was third in the other one), and of course first overall.  Her team even won first place, so there were lots of podium pictures at that meet.  Here are just a couple of her at the top of the podium:

 And again:

 And one excited team!

As soon as the meets were over, Arden jumped right into practicing for Level 5, as she wanted to "score out" of Level 5 in the fall and then compete at Level 6 in Spring of 2019.  This meant no more Fridays off, Arden is at the gym five days a week for hours and hours!  Arden spends so much time at the gym, that I am sometimes a little jealous of her coaches, who sure get to spend more time with her than I do (at least while she is awake!) 

Just a week or so ago Arden had a special meet for her and her fellow Level 5s to try and score out.  She did it!  I missed the whole thing because Preston and I were on a belated 20th anniversary trip (a story for another post), but I was proud again from afar!

While I don't always love how much time Arden spends doing gymnastics (or how much of my money goes to paying for it), I do love all of the things Arden is learning.  She is learning to work HARD.  She is learning that hard work does pay off.  She is learning discipline.  She is learning about toughness, determination, dedication, teamwork, and friendship.  So I guess that is why I keep agreeing to all of the crazy hours and signing the checks.  

So far Arden has been keeping up with junior high and gymnastics pretty well, so we will let her keep plugging along!

Go Arden!  

Cora the Book Battler

This year Cora decided she wanted to be on a "Book Battle" team at her school.  Arden and Dax had never wanted to join this particular activity, so it was fun that I finally got to see what it was all about.  

The third and fourth graders were assigned some books to read.  Some were classics some were newer.  Some examples (that I can remember right now) are:  Boxcar Children, The One and Only Ivan, Charlotte's Web, Moon Shot, Kaija's Mr. Popper's Penguins, and James and the Giant Peach.  Cora dutifully read several of the books and took tests to earn her "pins" during the year.  She had to get a certain number of pins to join a team, and she accomplished her goal.

Cora's team had 5 members, and they were the Five Musketeers.  

They had a coach, and held practices and and everything!  Cora told me that my presence was required at each of her battles, and luckily my work still lets me be pretty flexible with my schedule, so I did my best.  

I was VERY impressed at their battles.  Each team would be given a sentence, such as "In what book does a character save their friend by painting a picture?"  The teams had to answer, "The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate."  They had to answer with title and author.  Both teams knew almost all the answers, and all of the battles were very close.

Cora's team won some and lost some, but she loved her team and had a great time! 

Junior High Orientation...Wait, What?

Back to March.  We got an email letting us know that we needed to register Arden for junior high and attend an orientation.

Wait, What?

Okay, so obviously Arden is in 6th grade, since I can count I know that after 6th grade comes 7th grade.  But that is far away, right?

I guess not.

We dutifully signed up for classes, and off to orientation we went.  We learned about how lunch worked, toured the school (which seemed HUGE compared to our comfortable elementary school) and heard about lots of junior high stuff.

And, of course, we got to practice opening a locker!

I don't know about you, but this was the #1 thing that stressed me out when I was starting junior high.  Heck, I still have the occasional nightmare where I am standing in front of a locker and have no idea what the combination is.  Am I alone here?  And these lockers were HARD to open!  You had to put in the combination, but then to open it you had to use the combination dial as a sort of door knob, which was a hard technique to figure out, at least in the 10 minutes we had to practice.

So, I think it only increased Arden's locker anxiety (and mine), but Arden and Ava could still smile about it, so I guess they'll be fine?

I'm not too worried.  Junior high is still far, far away.

I guess there is actually less than 3 months to go.

Wait.  What?

Arden's 12th Birthday

Well, it happened again!  Arden had another birthday.  Now she is on #12!  She is growing up in so many ways, but still doesn't mind posing with her bunny for me for her annual birthday pictures.  Isn't she pretty?  I think it was crazy hair day at school or something, because her hair seems to be slightly pink and blue.  I can't remember.  That's what I get for falling almost 3 months behind on blogging.  OH well.  She's still cute, even if she isn't a little girl anymore.

 Arden has been really into mystery books and TV shows for the lat little while.  I think it started when we introduced her to "Psych," which is a show about two silly guys who solve murders.  She also likes "Death in Paradise," and has gone through several series of mystery books.  So, she decided for her birthday party she wanted to take her friends to one of the many "Mystery Escape Rooms" that can be found around town.  I found one that wasn't supposed to be too hard, and she enlisted a car full of friends to help her solve the mystery.

I was nominated as chauffer and token adult (and person who pays for everything), so I got to tag along.  Here we are in the elevator!

The girls were nervous and giggly about being locked in the room, which looked like a mad scientist's lab.  The giggles turned into screams when their time officially started and all of the lights in the room went out!  We were completely in the dark, and the girls had to search around for flashlights.  They did a pretty good job of looking around for clues with their flashlights and figuring out the riddles and clues.  Some of the clues involved keys, and we searched long and hard for a key that would unlock the box around the light switch, but it turns out there wasn't one.  Anyway, the last thing the girls needed to do to escape from the room was to type a code based on the numbers of certain element from the periodic table into the key pad on the door.  They were typing in the code when time ran out, but unfortunately we had one number wrong.  Dang!  We didn't escape in time.  But we were soooo close!

It was still fun, and here are the girls posing afterward (Ava looks tall!):

We had a fun and loud drive home, where we had pizza, and of course cake an ice cream.  Make a wish, Arden:

 Arden decided that everyone should play an impromptu game of musical chairs, just like we did at her 5-year-old birthday party (or thereabouts).  Some things are always fun I guess. 

Happy Birthday Arden!

I gave Arden the usual survey, and here are the answers:

Favorite color:  Red
Favorite song:  I don't know
Favorite show:  I don't know
Favorite subject in school:  Nothing.
Favorite book:  I don't know.
Favorite thing to do:  I don't know.
Favorite food:  I don't know (lately she doesn't seem to like anything).
Do you like anything?  No.

As you can see, she is well on her way to teenagerhood! 

Pray for us!

President's Day Weekend in St. George

Cora's soccer team had a tournament in St. George over President's Day weekend!  Along with pretty much every other soccer (and baseball) team within 500 miles!  The hotels were all completely booked months in advance, but thankfully we knew about the trip months in advance so we were all good, and happily paying the exorbitant rates they could charge since they knew we would pay whatever the asked.  We were lucky, one of Cora's teammates had to stay in Cedar City! 

The drive wasn't bad (piece of cake compared to Missouri!), and the weather was soooo nice.  We dropped our stuff at the hotel and started soccering Friday night, and had two games on Saturday.  Unfortunately, I didn't take any good soccer pictures.  Here is a bad one.  Cora is number 23.

This one isn't too bad.  But no one is actually playing soccer, just having a break during half time.  Cool scenery around the field though, right?

Cora's team did pretty good!  They made it to the championship game on Monday. 
On Saturday night, we also enjoyed a team dinner at a condo a couple of team members were renting.  There was a pool!  By the time the sun was going down, the temperatures were probably only in the 60s, but that didn't stop the girls from swimming. 

 Silly soccer girls:

It did stop the grown ups (and Arden) from swimming, but it was still fun to talk to the other parents.  Arden was pretty bored, but Dax decided he wanted to get in the pool too, so Preston ran and got his swim suit for him, such a nice dad.  It was hard to pry him out when it was time to go home. 

There was a running trail that was RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET from our hotel.  How nice.  I took a couple of runs in the mornings while we were there.  So nice to not have to get all bundled up to run.

On Sunday, we meant to go to church but somehow slept through it.  Oh well.  We decided to take in the beauty of nature, along with everyone else.  Here are the kids climbing around on some red rocks on the hills above the city:

 Another beautiful day!!  We climbed all around the rocks and then visited the gardens at their base.

 Say cheese!

 Cora wanted me to take a picture of her blowing a bubble. 

After our rock climbing, we went for another hike, a little ways away.  However, we had poor planning.  About half a mile in to the hike, Cora declared they really had to go to the bathroom, and refused to water any bushes or anything.  So, we decided to just head back the hotel.  It was such a nice day, that me and Preston wanted to go for a walk, but the kids all wanted to stay in the hotel room and watch TV.  When we got back from the walk, Cora was fast asleep...at 4 p.m. in the afternoon.  With bright pink cheeks. 

Ruh-roh.

I felt her head, and it was very hot.  Of course I didn't pack a thermometer, so I sent Preston out to the store to get one while we stayed in and watched the dunk contest (Go Donovan Mitchell!)  I woke Cora up for dinner, and we took her temperature, and it was around 101. 

We decided to just get some food from the hotel restaurant, and Cora ate a little teeny bit and then went back to sleep.  I sent off a text to warn her coach that she wasn't feeling well, but we were hopeful she would be back to herself in time for the big game in the morning.

Morning came, and Cora wasn't feeling much better.  Also, a big storm blew in overnight, and it rained pretty much all night.  As soon as we got to Cora's game...the rain turned to snow.  In ST. GEORGE!

Remember that sunny red cliff from the second picture in this post?  Yeah...same cliff.  Not as pretty:

Me and the non-soccer playing kids stayed in the car until the game actually started.  Then I got out and went to the sidelines while Dax and Arden stayed in the car pretty much the whole game.  Cora still had a fever, but there weren't many subs so Cora went in a few times and tried her best.  The game was close, but the referee was the worst.  He called a stupid penalty on our poor little goalie because one of the other girls tripped over her hands as she was trying to grab the ball, and awarded the other team a penalty shot.  Our goalie took up about 1/50th of the space of the goal, so of course they scored and Cora's team lost.  It was a bummer.  Cora's coach is the chillest guy EVER, and I have never seen him complain to a ref in the 2 years Cora has been on his team, and even he decided the referee needed a little talking to after the game. 

Bummer all around.  We decided to skip the medal ceremony as a team, and instead we all got on the freeway as fast as we could, because snow was expected all the way home, and all of the other soccer (and baseball) teams would also be trying to get home the same time as us, and there is really only one road from St. George to Salt Lake. 

The roads were pretty bad, but we made good time...until the freeway was completely closed in Nephi.  It took FOREVER to exit and go around whatever was causing the trouble.  Cora mostly slept in the back;

We made it home okay, after 7 hours!  It was a rough ride home, but we had a fun trip despite some bumps.

January/February Catch-Up

Someday I am going to catch up on this thing...and in the interest of that I am going to skim January and half of February.  First up, my Grandma Haun's birthday!  Happy Birthday Grandma!  We had a little celebration at my mom's house. If you are wondering why there is a football on my grandma's cake, it is because we doubled it up with my newphew Xander's birthday also.  Not that grandma doesn't like football...I'm sure she has sat through a few games in her day.

 While the grownups were talking, Cora busted out the Lite Brite from my childhood (my mom doesn't throw things away) and made a beautiful snowman scene!  80's toys for the win!

 Arden was so excited to wear some of Brynn's clothes to church.  So adorable and happy/sad.

Dax is smack dab in the middle of cub scouts, and is a Bear.  Here he is participating in a skit at a pack meeting.  Ah, pack meetings!  Me and Preston fight over who has to gets to go to these each month.   Seriously though, Dax has had amazing leaders his whole cub scout experience, and I am so grateful to them...its not easy!

 Dax also loved playing Junior Jazz basketball during the winter.  He improved a lot!  The schedule was tough (some games STARTED at 9:00 p.m. on SCHOOL NIGHTS??  WHAT??), but it was worth it. 

 There was also one added perk.  JAZZ TICKETS!

Can I just say how much I love this year's Jazz team?  I was worried that we would be a lottery team, but...enter Donovan Mitchell.  I love this kid.  He is amazing.  Ricky Rubio learned how to hit (more) shots, Joe Ingles continues to amaze while looking like a junior high math teacher, and Favors and Gobert are two of the best big men in the league.  The uniforms this year have really been pretty cool too, and I like this floor!  Cora tagged along since we could get discounted tickets, but Arden didn't want to come and instead played at a friend's house since Preston was out of town.  Say cheese!

I was back at the ESA for the Killers concert with a friend the same week.  I love the Killers!  And I think Brandon Flowers is getting better looking the older he gets.  Great show.

Before we knew it, it was Valentine's Day.  Arden's last elementary school Valentine's Day!  She made this Valentine's Box all by herself.  Cute!

 I went and helped with Dax's Valentines party at school.  Their teacher wanted to get a picture of all of them, so I snuck one in while she was doing it.  Fun bunch of kids!

 And we finished off our night the traditional way...heart-shaped pizza from Papa Murphys!

Next up, President's Day weekend trip.

Brynn's Memorial Road Trip

Brynn's memorial service was scheduled for the January 13th.  We looked up plane tickets, but on short notice we couldn't really find anything in our price range.  So....we loaded up the car again and headed out on the road.  We knew the way now, after all.

We got an early start on Friday morning, and drove alllll day.  We drove across Utah, crossed the Wyoming border, got gas in Wamsutter, and it got really windy after that.  The snow was blowing across the high country of Wyoming, and all across Nebraska.  We finally stopped for the night in a town called Kearney, Nebraska (home of the Great Platte River Road Archway!).  It was about 4 degrees and WINDY, but we didn't care, we went swimming!  Indoors, of course.

Well, the kids went swimming.  I ran on the treadmill and watched them through the window.  It was actually a pretty nice setup!  I needed a run after sitting in the car hardly moving all day.  Grandma, Grandpa, and BJ ended up staying at the same hotel, so it was fun to see them.

That night in Kearney, Cora was sick all night, throwing up about once an hour.  It was a rough night for everyone, and I will never use a hotel ice bucket again. :)  She still felt bad in the morning, but we somehow transferred all of us into the car in the morning.  Cora proceeded to throw up into a large soda cup about once an hour for the first couple of hours of the drive, after which we would quickly find an exit and fertilize a corn field.  No fun!  But we had to get where we were going, so we just kept driving.  I was in the back on cup duty while Preston drove, so no pictures of anything.  Cora felt a little better after the first couple of hours, and mostly just slept the rest of the way through Iowa, Kansas, Missouri.

We got to Dan's house right around dinnertime.  Chase and Drake were headed out the door to a trampoline park, and they invited Dax to come along which he happily did.  The rest of us (even Cora who was feeling much better) ate dinner there with Dan and Lori and some of Lori's family.  Everyone seemed to be doing as well as could be expected.  The girls loved meeting Penny, Brynn's new kitten.  Dan and Lori were making some final preparations for Brynn's memorial service, so we didn't want to bother them too long.  

One of Lori's friends let us use her dad's condo for the weekend, so after some visiting we headed over there to settle in.  It was a really nice place and so nice to have a quiet place close by Dan's house.   Dax was invited  to sleep over with Chase and Drake, so I brought him some clothes and he was happily playing video games with the boys.   

That night, Arden got sick and threw up. Another long night!  Brynn's funeral was the next morning, so poor Arden had to stay behind.  Preston stayed with her, so that left me, Cora and Dax to represent the Zauggs.  

They had the funeral at a large auditorium at the campus where Dan works.  The lobby was full of pictures of Brynn smiling and laughing with her friends and family.  It was fun to see them, and remember what a fun and happy life Brynn had had before and between cancer.  But was oh so hard  to think that it was over so soon.  Oh, my heart.

The memorial service itself was a wonderful celebration of Brynn.  There was a song by a choir of Brynn's friends.  Kohl talked, and did an amazing job (he is such a great kid, and reminds me a lot of Dan.)  There were three slide shows of Brynn's life set to some of her favorite songs ("Dear Theodosia" from "Hamilton,"  "You Can Be You" from the band Saint Motel, and "You Will Be Found" from "Dear Evan Hansen."  Four of Brynn's closest friends shared some memories, and they all did great and showed a lot of poise.  Then Lori and Dad were brave enough to say a few words themselves, and I was so impressed with their composure through their heartbreak.  (I can't even say how much I admire those two and the way they have handled everything).  There was a last musical number, a great talk by Brynn's stake president, and my dad said the closing prayer.  Lots of tissues were used up by me.  Cora was okay, but Dax struggled a little too. 

After the service, we headed back out through the foyer, where there were some of Brynn's favorite treats (goldfish crackers, junior mints, chocolate chip cookies).  We headed outside for a balloon release.

 The day had started out cloudy and dreary, but during the memorial service the skies and cleared and the sun was shining brightly.  It was a tender mercy.  We all said "We love you, Brynn!" and let our balloons fly.  Away they went.  Up,

 Up,

 And away. 

Goodbye, Brynn.  

It was sunny but still freezing, so we went back inside to look at some more pictures and sign the guest book.  There were thousands of people at the service, so it was a long line!  Brynn touched so many people. 

After I made the kids pose for a picture, we had just decided to head back to the condo.  On the way out, we noticed Washington, Brynn's favorite stuffed animal.  He was sitting on a table by some pictures of his missing best friend.  He had always been a floppy-looking thing, but sitting there on the table, he looked like the saddest, most lost little dog I have ever seen.  It broke my heart.  I pointed him out to Dax, who has a soft spot for the stuffed friends, and we both couldn't help but drop another tear or two for poor Washington, who looked how we all felt. 

Cancer SUCKS.

By the time we got back to the condo, Arden was feeling better, so we had some lunch and then relaxed.  Later that night there was a dinner for the families.  Lori's friends and their ward brought food in on Friday night, and also put together the dinner for us, and did so much at the memorial.  The community support really was amazing. 

Each table at the dinner was decorated with some of Brynn's favorite things (tennis memorabilia, playbills from musicals, some of her old dancing costumes, etc.).  They also had Polar Pops from the Circle K, which were Brynn's favorite drink.  We all got one to drink in her memory.

We talked and remembered, and had a good night.  We got a picture with all of the siblings, since we don't get together very often!

After the dinner, we headed over to a hotel to go swimming with Val, Grandma and Grandpa and the Clarks.  I had forgotten my suit, but again, lucky for me, there was a treadmill with a view of the pool! 

The next morning we hung out for a while at Dan's house.  It was fun to talk with Lori's family too.  The girls liked playing with Penny, and Dax again loved hanging out with Chase and Drake.  Lori was sweet enough to give Arden some of Brynn's old clothes, and Cora got one of Brynn's old necklaces.  It was amazing to me that Lori was thinking of giving to others already, and willing to let go of some of Brynn's precious things to some grateful cousins.  Some of Arden's most worn clothes these last few months were Brynn's.

Before too long, it was time to head out, back across the country.  We had decided to take a slight detour and try to see Mount Rushmore.  So, we headed across Missouri, and turned north at Kansas City and headed up through Iowa through the snow.  We had a hard time finding a place open for dinner on a Sunday night, and searched unsuccessfully for a hamburger in a town called Hamburg.  We finally stopped at Sioux City, where the temperatures were deep in the negative.  We were practically the only people in our hotel!  No pictures were taken since it was mostly dark. 

The next morning was seriously COLD!  Temperatures were around -10, not counting wind chill, and it was WINDY!  I was really worried for most of the morning that we would get a flat tire or have some other car trouble and actually Freeze. To. Death.  We drove across the Missouri River again, and large chunks of ice were floating in it:

 Ice was growing on the inside of our windows as we headed across the plains of South Dakota.

We crossed the Missouri again at Oacoma, where it was frozen solid.  We stopped for lunch, and tried really had to get a parking space very close to the door, since temps were still negative and the wind was still howling.  Even the locals at the restaurant were talking about how cold it was.

I was wondering how things would be at Mt. Rushmore, but as soon as we reached the Black Hills, the wind died down and the sun was shining brightly.  The temperatures rose up into the teens, which is still horribly cold, but so much better than what we had been dealing with that we were pretty excited! 

Here we are!  We had the place ALL TO OURSELVES!  See the presidents in the background?  No wind at all.

 Here is a closer picture of all of them.  Washington is of course my fave.  I had been listening to the "Hamilton" soundtrack a lot, so I felt like it was okay that Jefferson had to look over George's shoulder forever since he wasn't too nice to our boy Alex.  Nevertheless, we were all suitably impressed by the mountain. 

 The visitor's center luckily had great views, since it was too cold to spend too much time outside.  Again, we were lucky to have the place pretty much just for us.  The exhibits were really interesting, and the kids were actually pretty entertained for a while.

Here is the closest I could get to putting the girls next to the presidents.  Dax didn't want to play, he just wanted to go to the souvenir shop and get his promised souvenir. 

We spent a lot a time in the souvenir shop, since that is apparently the most important part of a tourist location.  Finally the kids made their selections, I found a good Christmas ornament, and off we headed again. 

Here is a view of George from the side, as we drove away down the mountain.

The Black Hills were beautiful, and we saw a few deer with really fuzzy tails before the sun set around the time we passed Crazy Horse.  We headed out of South Dakota and into rural Wyoming.  There was hours of nothing to see in the pitch black darkness, and we ended up eating dinner at a gas station because there was really nowhere else to eat.  We made it all the way to Casper because...there was no hotels for like 2 hours until we hit Casper. 

The next morning we let the kids sleep in, eat a leisurely breakfast (free breakfast is a requirement for a hotel for my kids) and then swim (which is also a requirement). 

Around lunchtime we headed out for the last leg of our journey.  It was a beautiful day across Wyoming!  We passed Martin's Cove, but didn't stop.  I thought Wyoming was actually really pretty in the bright winter sunshine. 

It was good to get home and get out of the car.  Again, the kids did really well on the long road trip (other than the throwing up), but I think they were happy to be free from the car as well.  We were all glad we did the trip to honor Brynn and celebrate her important life.  We would have driven twice as far.  She will be missed more than words can say.