Carpet and paint

As you all know, we are moving.  This move is bittersweet.  We have loved being out in Utah County and have been here for Twenty-two years (that's a long time).  With Tracy's job being out in Roosevelt and with the job looking more permanent than we originally hoped, we decided that we needed to get the family back together and start over fresh.  We were so blessed to be able to have Lanny and Kathy let us stay in their home while they are out serving the Lord.  We decided to give the upstairs a fresh coat of paint and some new carpet before we moved in.  Here is a sneak-peek of what a few of the rooms look like:

 We started out with the same neutral color through the whole upstairs, but Alexa really wanted her room blue.  We decided that in order to make this hard move a little easier for a teenager, we could humor her.  Once we got her room painted, we had a lot of paint still left and we decided we liked the color in small amounts.  We painted one wall in the room that Katelyn is going to be in too and put the removable dots that had been in Alexa's room on the wall.  I think it all turned out so nice.  I hope Lanny and Kathy love it when they come back.

Burning ants

Hayden came to me the other day while I was on the phone with Tracy and he wanted to burn some ants.  I told him that I didn't think that was a good idea.  He said he would be careful and he wanted to talk it over with dad to see what he thought.  It must be a boy thing because Tracy said he used to do that with a magnifying glass as a kid and he didn't see the harm in that.  We don't currently have a magnifying glass so Hayden was going to heat up the end of a stick to burn them with.  I told him to make sure that he just heated the stick and didn't start it on fire.  I told him he had 10-15 minutes to burn ants and then we were done with that.
Katelyn came in the door a few minutes later and asked where Hayden was.  I told her he was out back burning ants for a few minutes.  She happily ran out to join him.  I told her I would be out to get them both in a few minutes.  Five or Ten minutes passed and I went out to check on the kids.  Just as I step out the door, I hear Katelyn say "don't worry Hayden, you don't need to hurry back, the fire is going REAL good".  I could then see the trail of smoke rising from the side of the trailer.  I ran over there and sure enough, they had got twigs, old pine needles, old grass, etc. and had built a nice little fire on the concrete by the side of the utility trailer.  Although the fire was really not going to go anywhere, I made a huge deal out of it and told the kids that the fire department would probably be there anytime and we would get a big fine for starting a fire.  The kids grabbed their glasses of water and hurried and put the fire out so we didn't all get in trouble.  I grabbed a shovel and scooped it off to the side of the concrete and made sure it was good and out.  Hayden apologized for what he had done, his understanding about not lighting the stick on fire wasn't the same as mine.  They learned a good lesson and made me have a good chuckle.  I wish I would have gotten some pictures.

Scholarship

Landon went down to SUU several months ago to try to get a scholarship.  I think he didn't have much of a shot of getting one but they were able to see the great kid that I see.  He was awarded a 4 year, $2000 per year scholarship called the Presidential Ambassador Award.  
Springville High School had an awards ceremony this last week and awarded him the scholarship.  It is so great to see your kids grow up and make good decisions and have good things happen for them. 

Last Chance Dance

Late one night a few weeks ago, Tracy was out watching TV with the boys and I had been in bed for ten minutes or so when we heard this loud knock on the front door.  Tracy went to see who it was and this is what he found.  I could not believe that they could have done all of that with the boys watching TV right there and no one heard them.  The point of all the sticky notes was to ask Landon to Last Chance Dance.  We found all the letters and he deciphered it and found a fun way to answer her back.  They had a great time.