Welcome Queen Elizabeth!

Necia & Lizzy

Apparently... dad has won this round. We are now the very excited owners of a playful and adoreable PUPPY! She came from the latest batch born to my Mom and Dad's dog Rudy. She was one of six, and after many protestations about not being able to have a dog here in our twin home in the city... she is firmy entrenched.

The kids (okay, okay and the parents) love her! But who could resist! We named her "Lizzy" which is short for Queen Elizabeth. She has an Elizabethan ruff of white fur around her neck, and since they wouldn't let me name her Shakespeare... this was the next best thing.

Necia spent a whole day working with her on what to do after eating... go to the back door, and go out to do your business. The first night we had a couple of accidents, but since our resident vet worked her training magic... she goes right to the door and hasn't left a deposit inside since!!! YAY! We are still working, however, on her tendency to CHEW everthing in sight. This pic shows her sleeping, but that's misleading... she actually rarely sleeps and wants to play all night long. Good thing she has lots of playmates that are willing to let her jump around and chew their hair while they try to sleep. We may have to start shutting her in the bathroom... yeah, that should be fun!

Salem Hills Swim Team

Kaila is having a BLAST swimming for our brand new high school! She swam for the city team for a few years when she was younger, and of course she spends AMPLE time in the pool all summer being a swim instructor and a lifeguard... so how could she resist swimming in school??

This new team is really enjoying their first season. And the nature of swim meets is that you are out of the pool waiting for your race more than you are IN the pool... so that leaves plenty of time for hanging with your friends, taking pictures and just generally goofing off! Oh, I mean... you spend all that time in intense focus planning your strategy for your next race. You can just see the focus and concentration being employed by these tough-as-nails athletes!

Yeah, she looks really miserable in these pics, huh? Its a rough job, but someone has to do it!

Just giving you a hard time Roo... It's very fun to watch how close they are as a team. They really do work hard, and the entire team is improving every day. Kaila's times have been getting shorter and shorter. She's turning in to a breast stroke phenomenon! At her past two meets the coaches had her swim a 200 IM, which means she had to swim 50 yards of each stroke: back, breast, butterfly and freestyle. I could do back and free... maybe breast if I had to... but butterfly... NO WAY! (oh, you do realize that I mean I could do that 20 years ago... yeah.) And she did it!! All 4 strokes, high speed, and not dead at the end of it! Now THAT is cool.

Kinda cool to be watching our kids in events where it's perfectly acceptable to jump and scream at the top of your lungs! GO SKYHAWKS!!! Whoot-whoot!!

Where DOES the time go???

So I'm sitting here by the front door, laptop in hand (well, lap) waiting for all the little spooks, goblins and power rangers to take my candy... and it occurs to me... HEY! Why not update your blog? It's been a couple of days... Ahem... yeah... weeks more like. Truly... how does time pass so quickly?

Let's do a quick month-in-review: (Imagine this being said super fast...)
Shakespeare competition, general conference, Jr. Drill workshop for the girls, took the kids to a totally impromptu breakfast at Golden Corral, (moo...) Trip to California with drill team: Disney, Universal and WICKED... all GREAT! Baby sat my nephew Scott for a weekend, over-drafted my checking account, (again)! held auditions for the fall comedy, started rehearsals, celebrated 2 neices' birthdays, watched Jada dance at the Scarecrow festival, heard Kaila do a fabulous solo song at the school choir concert, supervised the drama club Halloween party, made clam-chowder for the family Halloween party, enjoyed a bonfire at said party, attended 4 faculty meetings, did 3 weeks of Primary music, taught numerous classes, did inumerable loads of laundry and played a rousing game of Bunco with my best buds! WHEW!

Busy month... October. And now it's gone. Do y'all have those moments where you suddenly realize that a month, or a year, or a childhood has passed... and you can't believe how quickly it went? I'm in one of those moments tonight, realizing that I only have one little chickie who still really wants to trick-or-treat. The older four are all gone to various parties and events with their friends. Poor Erika. I think she was as surprised as we were that suddenly for the first time in her life... no sisters to go door to door with. We had to quickly arrange for a neighborhood friend!

And at the end of the evening, one of her "best ever friends", daughter of our good friends the Carrascos, came to the door. Within minutes they had arranged a sleep-over and an all-day playtime for tomorrow! So her lonely Halloween turned out okay. :)

Sierra did THRILLER with the drill team at a school assembly this morning. It was incredible! They had some of their own choreography, but they did a bunch of the original thriller zombie moves and it was cool! Sierra had this totally intense scary face and she was staring down the audience. Awesome! I had to get a sub to take my class so I could run over and watch. Thanks to the teacher next door for giving up his prep time to watch my 2nd period!

And do I have ANY pics of my cute kids in all their costumes today? NO I do not! Someone has jacked the battery from my camera so I am picture-less... for many events... Halloween, Cali trip, dance stuff, family birthdays... and who the HECK needed a CV3R anyway? No one will fess up, so I guess I need to add that to tomorrow's grocery list. New month... new to-do list!

And more milestones to count: My baby turns 8 this month. That's the last baptism for us! My next-up baby turns 12 and leaves Primary to go into Young Women. And come January... my first baby turns 18. I know SHE'S ready for that, but the parents aren't!

It's definitely a time for deep-thoughts about the passage of time...