MAYLIN2007

I am exhausted. I feel like I have been running around for days. I really am never home. We have been working on Ken's assessment, working with teachers etc. We are excited with what is going on. They found she has an incredible math IQ. It is off the charts. They have also found that her foreign language skills are also miraculous. She can move from one dialect to another, easily. It is amazing. We are putting some programs in place to help her in the weak areas and to promote these strong areas.Her weak areas are in the language arts. Obviously, we have always known that, but it is nice to put a number to what we see. We are expanding her tutoring time from 2 days a week to 4. She is also taking some exercises classes 3 times week. Alex is taking them too. Austin planted his wheat today. He is so funny. Maylin was sick last week...yeah, I am late getting this picture up, but it is so cute I wanted to share. She ran a 103.8fever for about 4 days. While she was sick we tried to get...

Okay, so now that I have a moment...all be it a short one, we are building a mudroom onto our house. That probably doesn't sound very exciting, but I am thrilled. It is located in our garage. If you go out our old door that takes you from the house to the garage, you will now be going through an arch way and stepping into the new mudroom. My extra fridge will be in there!!! Yeah, no more cold morning trips out to the extra fridge for milk. And there will be great cabinets so the kids can put their shoes, backpacks, coats, jackets, whatever. That is super thrilling! No more piles by the front or back door. Now everything will have a place. I have a closet by my front door, but it is filled with our Sunday coats. I also have one by our back door, but it is filled with our vacuum and big 10 gallon buckets with my flour and sugar, so this will be awesome. I am hoping it will be done by the end of April. We will see. The new door that you can see in the picture now goes out to the garag...

We are doing a little bit of construction at our house. So excited! I love new things like this. Gives me something to look forward too. More details soon, but here is a sneak peek. (At first pictures wouldn't show. Reloaded them and they look fine on the screen, but when you publish they go sideways.....UGH!!!    

The state science fair was Wednesday and Thursday. Austin did it again! He won 2nd place over-all in engineering again! We were so excited for him. To be honest, he was a bit disappointed. He wanted 1st this year. I guess I can't blame him. He also received the Roots and Shoots Environmental Award, the U.S. Metric System Award for Best use of the Metric System (that one impresses me a lot!) and he got another $4,000 scholarship to a local college. We are so proud of him! He is glad it is over. The stress was getting to him.     Here are Austin and his partner Erik setting up. Erik didn't really do a lot with the project but give major needed moral support. Any prize they got last night he turned it over to Austin. He kept asking why he was even there since he didn't do much and Austin kept saying because I need you. I think it was a good comfort to Austin to know he had a back up during the interview. Their project looked great.   During the actual interviews on Friday, ...

I guess I better clarify...she said do you want to wait for your husband or do you want to be seated now. Pretty clear. But thanks to all of you who tried to soften the blow with saying she must have thought I was the daughter or even better the granddaughter. But, alas, not so much. Tonight we were at the State Science Fair so Austin could set up his project. It was held at the college I graduated from. While there, I saw a room full of young men in suits. I said to one of them that they looked like LDS missionaries, but without the name tags. The young man said, "We aren't missionaries we are just here for an interview." Oh, yes, I said to him I remember that the students go to church in the school buildings and it was obvious now that they would be there if they had an interview with their bishop. I said to him, "I forgot. I was just here a couple years ago and you know how you can forget." Then I asked him what year he was born. He said, "1991." I ...

Today we are celebrating our 4th year together. I can't believe how quickly time went. Our Gotcha Day is still a vivid memory and it certainly was filled with so many emotions. Maylin is celebrating the day with a fever. She has had a cough since Thursday, but last night a fever started. It was 103.8. We got it down to 101, but never got it to go away. She still has it this morning. At first I felt badly she was sick on this special day, but then, what better way to celebrate Gotcha Day than in your mama's arms being cared for? She is so sweet and we love her so much. We are grateful for the blessing of her in our life.

We had family visit us today. It was wonderful. We had a great visit even though it was just too dang short. We loved every minute. We didn't do anything fancy, just stayed at home and enjoyed talking and catching up. We celebrated a birthday. That was extra special. It was a nice reminder of how great family really is. Thanks for coming.