Hidden Talent

Okay, so not many people know it, but I love to skate! I know, weird, and who really skates these days, but I love to skate! There's just something about putting your feet into what feels like 10 pound blocks of concrete and moving around as fast as you can. And, I'm old school so roller skates are what I prefer, not roller blades.


So, on the first, official day of Spring Break when Paige and Kaylee asked "what are we going to do?" I said "SKATE!" There is just something about skating that never fails to make me smile.

Paige has lucky bowling socks and as you can see, Kaylee has lucky bowling socks.

We were super excited to start skating.

It is a fact that I have taught all of my children to be "skate rats" as well. Not very many of them think it is as fun or as cool as they used to think it was, but they possess the skill nonetheless.

Teaching Meagan to skate when she was a little girl was probably one of the few things I did to prepare her for being an elementary education teacher. Why, you may ask? Because she is going to be the coolest, smoothest skating teacher at all of the school skate nights. I secretly think that the real reason she is going to move back to Arizona when she graduates from college this year is because Arizona schools have school skate nights and Utah probably doesn't.

We sure had a lot of fun. You just can't beat 3 hours of uninterrupted skating. What am I going to do when my last 2 children don't think it is cool to skate anymore?

There is just something magical about singing YMCA while moving around in a circle underneath disco balls and the Hokey Pokey on 4 wheels takes on a whole new level of fun.

It's even better when they dim the lights and turn on the strobe lights, although Kaylee says it makes her dizzy.

Here is our last secret of the day........Paige is a hypochondriac. She loves playing sick and thinking about how fun and exciting she thinks it would be to have a cast. We think she is crazy, but she is also pretty entertaining. Here she is after a full day of skating pretending that she has a broken leg and crutches. What a nut!

Party Of The Century!

Our cousin, Annie Jones, is turning 16 tomorrow and so tonight we went to her house to celebrate.

When we got to her backyard this is what we saw. Her family had gone all out and given her the best sweet 16 birthday party ever, including a live band.

Needless to say, Annie was thrilled.

Here she is on the eve of her birthday posing for a few candid shots. I think someone has been watching too much of America's Next Top Model.

There's nobody like our Annie and we love her!

Look at all of this amazing food.

I think almost everyone at Mesa High showed up for this party.

Here are Laura, Emily and Amanda hard at work making sure that everything is amazing and everyone is having a good time. Julia is behind the scenes helping with one of the babies.

They had snow cones. How did they know these are a Cluff favorite?

Yummy popcorn!

Lee was grilling hot dogs for the occasion and the flowers looked amazing.

Devin was there with his band helping everyone to have a fun evening.

Allie, Sarah and Matt say that Annie's party rocks!

And just look at all of these presents that the birthday girl received.

Paige, Sarah and Annie are cute cousins.

Here are Eden, Delia and Allie having a swinging good time.

There was a little bit of rain but not enough to keep everyone from having a great time.

Kaylee liked the Jones' dog even better than the snow cones. She is our dog lover.

This was definitely the best party we have been to in a long time. Thanks for inviting us Annie, you are the best. Happy 16th Birthday!

Shout Outs!

When I used to play basketball in college my coach always had us point to the person who threw us the pass or assisted us in making the play, so today I would like to send some shout outs to the people in my life that made my visit to see Meagan in Utah last week successful. I'll start out by thanking Richard, the goofball and huge support in my life who didn't even blink an eye when I said that I wanted to go and made all of the flight arrangements in addition to driving me to the airport. You are the best!

Another shout out goes to Allie who was in charge of the house and the children while I was gone and did a most excellent job. Allie is lots of fun and the kids love it when she is in charge. Thanks, Allie!

I even heard that Allie went to see her boyfriend, Jack, while I was gone and bought lunch for everyone from Jack in the Box as a special treat.

The trip definitely couldn't have happened without this great guy. This is my father-in-law, Bill, who worked at Delta for a LOT of years so that we could have the nice perks of flying.

So, I went to see Meagan in Utah so that I could encourage her while she wrote her 73 page teacher work sample that was due this past Monday. It definitely was not a party, but we did have a lot of fun talking to each other. Well, mostly I just talked to Meagan and she did a lot of mumbling to herself while she wrote.

This is Meagan at the beginning of the semester and it was her first day teaching first grade.

Now, two months later she is beginning to feel a little squeezed like this tube of toothpaste. In case you are wondering, yes, this is an actual tube that Meg has been using. Who would have known she was a squeezer? But, I guess it's better to take your frustration out on a tube of toothpaste than other people, right?

We stayed at this hotel because it had free WiFi and that is what we needed.

Books like these were stacked all over the hotel room while Meg worked her magic. It took a lot of sources to make 73 pages of magic happen and Meagan knew just where to turn.

We were so busy we didn't even have time to swim in the pool, not that we thought we really would, it's still cold in Utah.

We didn't even turn on the t.v. once.

This is how many cucumbers it will take during the rest of this semester for Meagan to get rid of..................

the dark circles under her eyes. In fact, they might actually be permanent, but if anyone can work them, it's Meg.

Meg, thanks for letting me come to Utah and cheer you on while you got one step closer to graduating in April.