august catch-up

Emma finished the swim season at the Gold County Meet. She improved a lot and came to really enjoy it. Now she has a big stack of ribbons and at the awards ceremony, she was given a coach's favorite award.

50 yard freestyle
start of the season: 46.32/end of the season: 42.43
25 yard backstroke
start of the season: 26.42/end of the season: 23.38
25 yard breaststroke
start of the season: 26.89/end of the season 24.34

Anne is eating cereal. Still not napping. Crying a lot. Wanting to be held all the time. Still super-duper cute.


I've been exercising 4-5 times a week. Eating.....better. Down 6 pounds. I am thrilled to be moving in the right direction but still feel daunted by the long road ahead.

We have continued to meet with our history and science co-op through the summer. Last week, we talked about the Trail of Tears. Sad, sad stuff. We ended on a lighter note with face paint.

Yep, even me.


We discovered a new park in our little city. We spent a perfect evening playing on the playground, kicking soccer balls, rolling down the hills, swinging and enjoying the fabulous view and sunset.

This picture just makes my heart happy!

Emma has some weird cyst on her eye.

I photographed my first wedding! I totally loved it. I know I made some mistakes out of inexperience but I think on the whole everything turned out well. I hope I get to do it again. And again. I'll be posting pictures here soon if interested.

We went to the open house at IMFT (Dave's work). We entertained ourselves for almost four hours with carnival games, an inside tour with lots of educational stops, lunch and a climb inside a fire truck. We are so blessed that Dave has such a wonderful job.

We started school yesterday. Emma thought that was unfair since the rest of the neighborhood goes back on Thursday. What can I say? I'm just a mean mom. Of course, I have big plans for the school year. New curriculum to try out. Favorite curriculum to continue. Lots of art/craft/cooking/fieldtrip ideas to complete. This is our sixth year. Suddenly, we are the veteran homeschoolers. When did that happen?

It feels great to be getting back to our regularly scheduled program.

im flash rocks

On Saturday, we went over to Dave's work, IM Flash Technologies, to enjoy the fun and festivities of their Open House. Kudos to IM Flash for putting on a great party. We arrived early and got started playing all the carnival games. The kids collected lots of candy and enjoyed snow cones and cotton candy.

When the heat started to be too much we went and got lunch--barbecue sandwiches, baked beans and potato salad from Goodwood. Finally, we made it inside to the "spine" where all the different areas of the company had stations set up to teach about what they do. Unfortunately I could not take any pictures once we were inside. The kids got to "buy" candy, sort it in the warehouse, eat ice cream made at Process Integration, cut wafers and look through microscopes in Test, sample candy and games from IM Flash-Singapore, and race remote control cars at the Automation Group. They also saw Dave's desk upstairs and got their very own badges made. We were there for four hours! The company was offering an in depth tour which I did not get to go on this time. Hopefully I get another opportunity.

I asked Dave why the company was doing this and his reply was, "because they're awesome." They really are! Thanks IM Flash!