February 2002

Clark’s 5^th Birthday
Well, our baby has turned 5 years old! (He says he’s not a baby!) Where does the time go? Many months ago he decided he wanted to have a "Scooby Doo" birthday party with a piñata, so for his very first party, we invited six friends over to play games, have ice cream and Scooby Snacks out of a doggie dish and hit a Scooby piñata. I think everyone had a wonderful time!

We celebrated the day before his b-day with Grandma and Grandpa coming over for a Sunday Birthday dinner. Clark chose roast for dinner and we had a "Scooby paw print" cake for dessert. Then we opened presents. This was the year of the Rescue Heroes. He got a couple for Christmas and a couple more for his birthday. He and his friends really like to spend time rescuing everything they can think of!

Trivia question: Just how long can a helium balloon last?
Answer: Clark’s Scooby Doo birthday balloon is still up – 5 weeks and counting!

Valentine’s Day
We started the day with pink heart-shaped pancakes and finished with grilled cheese sandwiches with heart-shaped centers, raspberry jello with whipped cream hearts, and cherry 7-up. Lest you think the day was all about food, we did spend the entire afternoon tracing each other onto butcher paper and coloring ourselves. We had done this many, many years ago and Phillip wanted to do it again. The biggest challenge always seems to be the face!

Olympics
The kids were out of school for the entire Olympics; the school took a week of vacation away from us at Christmas and combined it with our spring break, so (sing this part...) Here we were together, together, together, oh oh here we were together, so what did we do?

• We slept in every day!
• We watched the Olympics every night!
• We had a lot of treats.
• We read a lot of good books.
• We wandered around Olympic Square.
• We saw the Chihuly glass exhibit – Oh so cool...
• We saw the movie "Return to Neverland"
• We went out to lunch at Sweet Tomatoes
• We wanted to, but didn’t get to go sledding – no snow.
• We had friends over.
• We played games.
• We tried new recipes.
• We watched movies.
• We had Valentine’s Day fun.
• One of us got a singing telegram!
• One of us tried to put in a few hours at work everyday.
• One of us had a birthday!
• Some of us saw "Light Of the World" at the Conference Center.
• Some of us slept over at Grandma’s House – and got spoiled!
• Some of us watched a very exciting basketball game between BYU and UofU!
• Some of us took practice ACT exams on the Internet – now that was fun...
• Some of us tried a restaurant called the Dodo.
• Some of us got to see Short Track Speed Skating at the Delta Center!
• All of us missed watching the closing ceremony fireworks out our very own windows, thanks to terrible local TV programming! (Can you tell I am still bugged?!)
• All of us spent time resting and relaxing from the rigors of everyday life!
• All of us had fun.

Melora and Thomas
Our good friends Melora and Thomas Collette from New Hampshire came for the second week of the Olympics. Michelene and Melora both had birthdays that week so they treated themselves to shopping, lunch and birthday pedicures! They hadn’t spent their birthdays together in about 15 years!

We took the Collettes, the older kids, along with Michelene’s sisters Melinda and Melanie to see "Light of the World." It was fun all riding in Hugo together. We took a short? detour on the way home to get pictures of the cauldron at the stadium and then finished off with root beer freezes from Dairy Queen. We especially want to thank Alan’s mom, Pat, for taking the boys over night!

The next day, just the Moms and Dads went back downtown to see the short track speed skating. It was a bummer that the USA teams did so poorly, but it was pretty cool to be there.

Michelene’s Birthday
For my birthday, I requested hash browns and strawberry soup with yogurt for breakfast. Loren and Phillip had stayed up late the night before to make it and it was wonderful! After breakfast Melora and I headed out to shop at Gardner Village where we also had lunch at Archibald’s. After lunch we headed to the Treehouse Athletic club – to their spa for birthday pedicures. If you have never had one, don’t, because then you will want to have another one! We had to drive home in our complimentary deluxe paper flip flops, because our nails needed to dry. We had wanted to see the movie "Kate and Leopold", but it was no longer in the theaters, so we settled for a movie at home on my bed. Loren prepared my birthday dinner (Panhandle Chicken – my usual at Bennetts!) Instead of cake, I requested cream puffs. Phillip took this project on and had great success.