A Wonderful Weekend at the Y!

We took the little girls to Utah this weekend to see the BYU game and spend time with Tyler and Allie! It was a gorgeous weekend with unusually warm weather! Mom and Dad relaxed in Park City while Allie, Ashley and Brooke went to the midnight showing of "High School Musical 3!" on Thursday night. They all agreed that it was the BEST EVER!!

Friday night we all went to the Football Fireside in Provo. It was awesome! Two of the football players talked about being a disciple of Christ. There were two musical numbers, a trio with one of Tyler's roommates from summer term and then all the football players sang "The Army of Helaman." It was amazing! The Bronco's wife spoke and she was great! She has a lot of personality and spunk! I like her a lot! And then Coach Mendenhall spoke and of course, it was great! Tyler said the closing prayer. It was a great night! The church was packed, like it was Stake conference! Pretty impressive!

The game was a little frustrating and scary but BYU pulled it out in the end and won! Tyler kicked great in the pregame and it was fun to watch him!

We had a big Sunday dinner in Park City with all the kids. Allie brought Melina and Mariana up with her for dinner and it was fun to visit with them! We cleaned up dinner and hurried off to the airport. When we got there, they were bumping people and offering $400 so Dad had me get bumped. I spent the next 2 days working on the place at Vintage finishing up all the things on the "punchlist", framing pictures for the walls, and the last piece of furniture was finally delivered! Yea!

"And now, for the story, let's go to News12's Kimber Crandall, for the latest details."

Kimber has just signed a contract and is working full-time as a reporter for News 12 Connecticut. We are so proud of her! If you want to see some of her latest stories you can find it at http://news12.cv.net/video/FC1010HT.wmv and http://news12.cv.net/video/CC1014ST.wmv.

Homecoming Junior Princess~Ashley Holt!

Granite Bay Homecoming Bonfire!

Tonight is probably one of my favorite Granite Bay High activities, the Homecoming Bonfire! The cheerleaders performed a routine, and they were spectacular...Bree does an amazing job with those girls! Allie and Kimber, we still miss seeing you down there! The band and the drill team were awesome! They had the kicking a field goal game...again! The Seniors won with a soccer player making the longest field goal. Tyler, don't you miss those days! And then finally, the floats made their way around the track. The theme this year was "Vacation Destination." I think it is going to be close this year but I don't think Seniors are going to win! I know, I'm going out on a limb! The Seniors traditionally win no matter what! It's just the way it goes! But the Sophomore and Junior floats were both really clever, colorful and creative! Both the Freshman and Senior float picked jungle places and basically all they did was put a bunch of plants on a flatbed! We'll see what the judges say when they announce the winners tomorrow night at half-time. I'm a little bias and hope the Juniors win. For the past 3 weeks we have been hosting the Junior float building at our home. Kids, parents and teachers have been busy hammering, sanding, painting, paper maching, glueing, more painting, stapling chicken wire, rolling up and putting tissue in the chicken wire! All this has been taking place on our sideyard and in my garage! It's been a lot of fun and we've done this so many years now that I'm kind of getting used to all the craziness and mess! I did put my foot down and say "No glitter" this year! I'm still sweeping out glitter in the garage from one of the years Allie was in charge of the float! Here are some of the picture from the bonfire!

The Sophomore Float!

The Junior Class Float!

They picked the SPL (Safeway Parking Lot) as their favorite getaway. It's true! I don't know of any other class that spends more time at the SPL! Every morning you can find them at Starbuck's, getting their frappacinos. After school, they are at Chipolte, ordering their favorite burrito and showing their school ID so they can get a free soda. After that, they head for a Jamba Juice. On Tuesday, the whole school heads for Baskin-Robbins for $1 scoop night, which I was just informed is now $1.25 scoop night. The extra 25 cents doesn't seem to bother the kids. It's still the favorite place to be on a Tuesday night! Then there's Safeway! I'm not sure what the thrill is...I try to avoid that place! Grocery shopping is not one of my favorite chores to do! But on any given Friday and Saturday night, you can see mobs of kids roaming the aisles at Safeway! I'm usually there too doing my last minute shopping for Sunday dinner at 11:35 pm...just before the Sabbath! Well, it was clever and the audience got a kick out of it!

The Sophomore float skit! Brooke is on the far left in the light blue dress!
A close up of Brooke during the skit! Just in case you were wondering what exactly Brooke is doing...she is performing an Indian dance. Without any practice or rehearsal, I think it went really well. Especially because no one in Granite Bay really knows what an Indian dance is supposed to look like. Tyler, you may not want to show Landon this post! Sorry about Brooke's scary looking eyes!

The Junior float skit! That's right...just a bunch of teenagers, running around like crazy, just like they do every night of the week at the SPL (Safeway Parking Lot!)

Still Undefeated in League!

Brooke remains undefeated in league meets by winning the XC race today at Nevada Union. She wasn't feeling well and realized that her symbicort (her inhaler for her asthma) was empty when she got there. I was on the rode heading for Nevada Union, which is about an hour away, when she called. I had an extra inhaler in my purse but realized that it was an old onewhen I to NU. At that point, Brooke was a little frustrated and said, "I just want to get this race over with!" To which I said, "Well, the faster you run, the sooner you will get the race done!" Well, she wasn't kidding when she said that she just wanted to get it over with! Even though she felt sick the whole race, she took off running like crazy, leading the whole way and was a little shocked when she found out that she took off 25 seconds from her best time that she had run on the NU course, just 1 month ago!

The start of the race!

Leading the pack and ready to pull away after the first lap!

Out in front of the other runners!

Christina, Annie and Brooke are all smiles at the end of the race because they PRed (which means they broke their personal records)on the Nevada Union course!

Aunt Ginny's Funeral

I flew back to Utah to attend my Aunt Ginny's funeral last weekend. It was wonderful to gather with many of my dear Whiting cousins to honor and remember my sweet Aunt! Ginny suffered from a serious illness and high fever in her early childhood, that left her mentally handicapped throughout her life. As a child, I looked forward every summer to our visits to Grandma Whitings' to spend time with Aunt Ginny. We colored, did puzzles, walked to the corner store to buy candy, played in the park, swang in the swing on Grandma's porch, gathered eggs, picked corn in Grandpa's field, played with Ginny's dolls and sat on the front steps in front of Grandma's house and played tag. She loved all of her neices and nephews very much and we loved and adored her too. It was a wonderful tribute to Aunt Ginny to have so many of her neices and nephews come together and spend the day honoring and remembering her life!

My family at the lunch after the funeral.

My sweet sister, Susan and our cousin, Leslie Shephard from the Olson, my dad's side of the family. Leslie moved to Mapleton right after she got married and befriended Aunt Ginny because she was my mom's sister. She has been so kind to her all these years, so the Whiting cousins asked her to sing at Aunt Ginny's funeral. Leslie's sister, Margo Freestone, also came to the funeral. It was so sweet to have cousins there from both sides of the family!
Mom and Aunt Alma having a chat and catching up on their kids, grandkids and great grandkids!

Celebrating at Frankie, Johnny and Luigi's!

After the race at Stanford, we met up with Ryan and Erica Nielsen at Mark's favorite pizza place, Frankie, Johnny, and Luigi's! It was great to see the Nielsen's and meet their new little baby, Trent! What a cutie! The new little mother, Erica, looked fabulous! It was so fun to catch up with them. Erica and Kimber lived across the hall from each other their freshman year in the dorms and she was the first person that Kimber met at BYU! Erica is one of Kimber's dearest friends and has joined us for many family dinners, activities and even went to Africa with us! She is definitely an extension of our family, so it was really fun to spend some time with them! We are so glad they are back in California!

The new mother, Erica, looking fabulous and baby Trent!
Dad and Brooke with Trent! Babies always love Dad!
The Nielsen family looking adorable!
Brooke can't get enough of Trent! What a doll!

Madre and Erica, together again!