Talent Show and Skiing

Grace was in the McDonald Elementary School Talent Show.  She did a gymnastics routine and dance with her friend Ashley.  They did great.   The kids were out of school on Friday so we took our neighbors Mckenzie and Paige - up skiing.  It was a great day and we spent the night and had fun in the pool and watching movies! Steve and Derek had to stay home Derek basketball team is in the District tournament for State right now.  He plays again on Tuesday and hopefully are then on our way to STATE.  (hopefully my next post is of them cutting down the net)

Grace and Ashley before the show

Doing some gymnastics

Savannah and Paige

Grace, Mckenzie and Ashley - They love to jump in the snow and then jump in the pool

Great Day for Skiing!

Grace and Mckenzie - so cute they just skied and rode the lift together all afternoon

Paige and Savannah - a bunch of goof balls

Warning: a litte sappy.

So maybe my kids aren't perfect but my husband comes pretty close! He had a birthday this last week and turned 48.  I have always felt like Heavenly Father picked me up and put me right where I needed to be so I could marry such an amazing person.  He is probably the busiest person you will ever meet.  He is the Stake President, Orthopedic Surgeon, Vandal Team doctor, husband and father.  He never complains, he just does what needs to be done.  He asked me once what job I hated the most out of all the things I do.  I told him I hated mowing the lawn.  That was about 4 years ago and I have not mowed the lawn since.  We never fight . . . he always gives me my way.   He keeps us laughing and even laughing at ourselves.  He loves to watch his kids play sports, loves to fly his plane, LOVES the lake house, loves it when his older girls who are gone call to talk to him (unless they talk about affairs of the heart!)  and he LOVES his grand babies.  Things he doesn't like are brocoli, laziness, drivethru's and packing.   Happy Birthday Dad P.!  We love you!

Confession

I mostly blog because I think it is a great way to preserve family history. (okay I do like the comments!)  So obviously you blog the good things and say great things about your family so I will understand if this comes as a total shock to most of you! . . . . .My children are not perfect.  There I said it.  With that being said I decided to blog about the thing that BUGS me the most.  It has always been a struggle with my children from Jackie all the way down to Grace P.   THEY ARE PIGS!   Yep, its true.  I have tried many different ways  for over 24 years to counteract this horrible behavior but to no avail.   Some day I will publish my list.  You would think that by Grace I would have come up with some great way to teach your children, but sadly no it continues to plague me.  So lately I have decided not to do ANY laundry that is not in a laundry basket.  Doesn't seem that hard - there is a basket in every room, in every bathroom, or even heaven forbid, walk 5 steps and put it in the laundry room baskets.   So needless to say the laundry has really piled up in their bathrooms and bedrooms until recently they all complained they had no clean clothes.   Well I said put it in a laundry basket and it will get done.  Still no compliance.  So I continued to only do the laundry that was put in the proper place.  So today I noticed that someone had put all the dirty clothes from the bathroom in the laundry - close but not in a basket.  I almost picked it up and started doing it but stopped and decided I will walk over it and not do any laundry that is not put in a basket.  We will see how long this lasts!  Good thing is we have no company coming for a while.

Children aren't they precious

Who knew they had so many clothes - I think they are wearing dirty clothes to school!

This is only one side of the room the other side is just as bad!

The little Girls

The little girls have been very busy.  Savannah has been playing basketball for the Junior High.  She had 12 points in the last game.  She LOVES basketball and she is fun to watch.  Grace has been asked to join the League team at our Gym.  So she is very excited about that.  She will now go twice a week.  She just had a mini meet and did really well!  She LOVES gymnastics! Other than that we went skiing with some friends last weekend and hope to go next weekend.  We try not to talk about it too much because Derek gets sad.  If the Bears go to State he has about another month of Basketball before he can go snowboarding.

Savannah going up for a shot

doing a little defense

Dismount

Floor rountine

Grace and her buddies

Basketball, Babies and Hawaii

Derek and Savannah are in the Thick of basketball season here in Moscow.   So below are a few pictures of Derek and some of his biggest fans.  I will get some pics of Savannah soon.  Jackie came and babysit the kids while Steve and I went to Kaua'i for a medical meeting.  It was so fabulous - but we didn't take many pictures so you get to see the 4 I took! HA  I guess its more fun to take pics of the kids! 

Go BEARS!!  Jackie made them shirts to wear to their first Bear Basketball game!  Derek is #11 so they shared his number!

I believe this is called a foul!  They didn't call it but the shot was good!

A great Break away!

Steve getting into Vacation Mode!

We biked along the beach!  It was so nice!

Part of our bike ride

It was so beautiful!!  I LOVE Hawaii!

FANS

Derek had a game during the Christmas Break and so the girls thought they would surprise him with t-shirts!  They were really cute!  Derek even got a chuckle out of it and so did his team.  Its hard not to notice so many cute girls! 
Vacation is over and everyone is gone and I am back to a quiet house during the day!  I miss everyone and now I have to do stuff like laundry and cleaning!  Savannah and Grace really miss their big sisters when they leave, we have such a good time with everyone.  We also had Shae (my sister Mindy's daughter)  for the week after christmas and that was really fun.  Well off to the new year 2011 - My New years resolution is to download all Video onto a hard drive so I can make some more family movies.

Doing a little Defense

Derek is of course # 11

Addison and Weston on my Bed!  I miss those little guys!

Jackie is going to have some good arm strength carrying these two around!

Christmas 2010

We had a lovely christmas. It was so fabulous to have all the kids home! The Babies are so sweet we love having them with us.  We started Christmas eve going to the movies with our neighbors and then Dinner at their house I believe this is year 15 of Christmas Eve with the Mosmans!  We had lots of punch (my favorite!), yummy lentil soup (and yes Jennie I had extra for you!)  followed by a fabulous pecan and pear green salad and artichoke chicken!  It was Delicious!  Everyone was woke up this year at 6:00am by Addison and Weston!  We had a great day opening presents, watching movies, playing games and staying in our PJS all day!  We had a delicious Christmas dinner of Prime Rib (Thanks to Cory for the Fab recipe!) and funeral potatoes and then no Pennington meal would be complete with out Grandma Pats "Pink Salad"!    It was a great day and now we still have a whole week off before school starts!  Derek is back to basketball this week 2 practices a day and Steve is back to work - but for the rest of us we will probably do a little shopping and maybe see a movie or two!

Christmas Eve with the Mosmans

Jackie and Weston

Christmas Eve PJ's

Playing a little bit of COSMIC BALL - I had to move all presents they were getting a little rough!

Weston got some Aviators from Santa

Addison loves Christmas!

Addison fit inside Grace's new American Girl Doll Camper! HA

Playing a little bit of Just Dance 2

It's True!

They say Utah has the Greatest Snow on earth and we are now BELIEVERS!!!  We had FEET of powder to ski in!  We have stories of snow up to your waist!  It was the greatest!  It was a great way to start our Christmas Vacation!  We were so lucky Shannon and Cory brought there family up to ski with us which was really nice!  We sure love Cousins!  Even Jackie and Justin and the Babies came up for a night but Jackie said the babies were to young to start skiing!  Maybe next year! HA

The whole crew on our way out to ski

Derek LOVED all the powder

Shannon, Lauren and Savannah

The kids love to play in the snow and then jump in the Hot tub

This is what happens after  you Ski hard for 7 hours! He seriously fell asleep at 6:30

Uncle Steve finally made friends with Ivy - She even said he was on Santa's Nice list! HA

And He Makes the Paper!

We have a big rivalry with the town that is 8 miles from us called Pullman and Derek's Varsity Team played them last night.  Pullman has been undefeated and the paper has been VERY positive in their write ups and they have had an easy schedule!  We have not had the greatest start to our season BUT we have played VERY hard teams and lost by only a few points but the paper has not been so favorable to us in their write ups.  It was a big night!  Derek got to start and did GREAT!  We Won 41-38 and this mornings paper was very favorable towards us and Derek was mentioned in the paper! WOOT WOOT! Since you probably can't read it I will quote the Daily News-
Bears forced 16 turnovers while its offense only turned it over six times.  Moscow did that with starting point guard Lane Brooks on the bench with an injury. 
Filling in the majority of the time for Brooks was Derek Pennington.   "Derek really controlled the tempo," Coach Donaldson said. "We only had six turnovers and we were averaging close to 17 a game.  So we took care of the ball and that's key."  He also hit four clutch free throws in the final seconds of the game and defensively he kept Drake from getting hot late.

Way to go Derek!  He was pretty happy when he got home last night!  He had a great game and now we can quite hearing how GREAT Pullman is! HA

I was so caught up in the game I didn't take any pictures - but here is a great one of him playing Defense.

GO BEARS!

And so another season begins! We love Bear Basketball! Both Savannah and Derek are #11 - it is a favorite in our family - Steve was also #11.  The only draw back to basketball season is it's the same season as skiing!  So that limits our ski season.   GO BEARS!

1st 3 pointer of the season - and it was good!