The boys called from scout camp last night. They said the cell reception is better there than at home. Gavin is having a great time: excited about his rifle shooting skills. Dylan is having an OK time. He might be tired of being away from home most of the last 3 weeks: EFY, white water rafting, now scout camp.

Grace is enjoying being an only child. She is painting her room pink with some help from mom. She is also starting a new musical production at her music school.

Pretty Pink

Grace was the March Hare in a community theater production of “Alice in Wonderland” for the last three nights. She worked hard for the last couple months and it paid off…she was great! Grandpa and Grandma Wride were able to drive down and take in a couple shows.

Our elementary school had an awards ceremony yesterday. Gavin won the Harvey Mudd College award for excellence in math and science!! Harvey Mudd is one of the top science and engineering schools in the country: highest rate of science and engineering PhD production among all undergrad colleges and 2nd ahead of MIT compared to all universities. It’s 1/2 mile down the street from the kid’s school. They sponsor an award for the boy and girl who score highest in math and science on the standardized tests in the 4th, 5th and 6th grades. He also got a presidential scholastic achievement award.

Grace got recognition for academic achievement, citizenship and writing for the school newspaper.

Dylan got an award for getting straight A’s at middle school.

They all had a great year and can’t wait for summer to start on Friday!

I spent most of last week in Orlando meeting my new employer. Stayed at the Rosen Shingle Creek, near Tiger’s place. Very impressed with the new owner and the corporate staff. I got to meet the greatest American mountain climber: Ed Viesturs. He was a guest speaker and I got to chat him up for ~30 minutes at a banquet before he spoke to the group. Very interesting, amazing and adventurous person. He has climbed all of 14 of the 8,000 meter peaks in the world WITHOUT OXYGEN! He’s climbed Everest 7 times and was there in ’96 with the IMAX crew when all those people died. Got to see my high school buddy Tom while I was there.

Saturday the whole family participated at our stake’s Mormon Helping Hands project. About 300 of us went to a huge children’s shelter to work on various project. The youth were tasked with organizing their 13,000 rubber ducks that they use for a fund raiser. We had to sort them in order, record them and package them up. It was a very tedious task! There were 75,000 of us working on service projects across the state.

Saturday night we had a birthday bash for Gavin. Took the group of 12 kids bowling then went back to the house for swimming and games.

Happy Mother’s Day to my babies Momma and all the other Mommies in my life!

Dylan and I went to the Kings/ Canucks hockey game tonight. The Kings are resting their starting goalie (backup goalie for US olympic team) and called up a kid who had only played 6 games in the minors. He had a shut out a couple nights ago for the Kings. His winning streak continued tonight going up against gold medal goalie Roberto Luongo: Kings won 8-3. I was happy, Dylan was sad. They gave out Ryan Smyth bobbleheads, so Dylan took out his frustrations on the poor guy:

Gavin made this awesome helmet for his 3-D ancient history project. It’s a modified lacrosse helmet we had in the attic: removed the face mask and chopped the chin guard. He was turned on to Greek history by playing Age of Mythology.

Gavin and Grace competed in Piano Festival last Saturday. Grace played Downhill Daredevil and Elegy, Gavin played Snake Charmer and Beethoven’s Sonatina in F, 1st Movement. They both played great and scored a rating of “Excellent”. They had to have the pieces memorized and play in front of a professional judge following their sheet music AND an audience. They worked REALLY hard practicing every day for weeks and weeks. Grace is also taking figure skating lessons until she starts working on the next musical: Alice in Wonderland. Gavin and Dylan are taking a break from hockey to get caught up on Scouts and PS3. Gavin just finished book 2 of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Grace has been growing her hair out for almost a year to donate to “Locks Of Love” in Ty’s name. He was diagnosed one year ago next week. On Tuesday she got chopped and the new ‘do looks really cute.

Thanks grandma & grandpa for the early birthday shirt!