This year Clark turned 14 years old. He seems so tall and old — he is taller than I am and has almost caught up with Elliot. We decided to celebrate a couple of days after his birthday so that all the sibs could come up from Provo for a family party. The grandparents came over as well and we had a yummy chicken divan dinner complete with Grandma's homemade cheesecake. Of the gifts he received, my favorites were the black dress shirt and keyboard tie that we gave him. He will look awesome for his next jazz band concert!
Along with turning 14 Clark had the opportunity to be ordained a teacher in the Aaronic Priesthood at church and now he gets to be Alan's home teaching partner. Sadly though, his campouts with the scouts are coming to a close. They were so glad that he would still be going on the Klondike because he is a master at building fires and tying knots. Their troop won the fire building contest and took 2nd overall (even after getting no sleep because they had 7 boys in their 4-man tent and were sleeping on a slope!)
Elliot Racquetball
Having played racquetball for two seasons now, Elliot is really improving and enjoyed winning several matches. For some reason Waterford has about half the kids that play private school racquetball. We have two teams, so often our kids end up playing each other which is a little lame. It's nice that Clark and Elliot can play each other and that they can take turns wearing their (very competitive but in slightly less better shape) father down. I even tried playing a bit after not playing in over 25 years and I'm as bad as I ever was with only a few community ed lessons shortly after we were married — I will leave it to them!
Michelene's Special Birthday Weekend
And so I'm older. But I guess that's good, because that means I am still here — right?! Aside from being sick in bed with bronchitis the whole week before my birthday, for the most part, I enjoy really good health. I feel lucky that at this point everything still seems to be "working" for me. My birthday weekend we decided to have "get-a-way" by staying here and sending the boys down to Provo to play with their sibs. I didn't feel great, but we enjoyed watching movies, eating yummy food, reading and resting. We also worked on finishing up some family history work and getting some names ready for temple work. It was nice to spend the weekend together on our own, but it also made me a bit sad to realize that we are getting closer and closer to living in this house all by ourselves. I was kind of glad to have the boys come home :) We celebrated my birthday on President's Day and the Provo kids came up for another round of dinner and presents. It's always fun to have everyone here for a few hours.
BYU Basketball
So if you haven't been keeping up with college basketball, BYU had climbed the polls to find themselves ranked #3 in the country only to have a player dismissed from the team. They suffered a bad loss the next day, but bounced back and won their next game. They now find themselves ranked #8 and ready to head into the tournament in Las Vegas this weekend. It has been a roller coaster ride for all of us avid BYU fans.
Provo Kids
Speaking of BYU, all the Provo students are doing well. They are studying hard and working hard to earn and save money. Our married kids, Loren and Anne are doing well and often have their siblings over for meals and movies. It's crazy having half of our family down there — but so fun for them to all be there at the same time.