Who's Charlotte?

Dexter turned 15 on April 26. Because of all the graduation hoopla, his grandma and auntie were here from Arizona to help celebrate. Dexter was hoping his grandma got him a CD by the band Good Charlotte. Instead, he opened his present to find a DVD of Charlotte's Web. We all thought it was hilarious...but Dexter gave us that teenager look....

He did it!!!

Emerson is now has his bachelor's degree from Utah Valley State College. He should receive his teaching license some time this summer. The ceremony was wonderful and it was exciting to see Emerson and three of his friends as the first P.E. Teacher Education majors to graduate from UVSC. His mom and sister joined us in proudly watching our favorite graduate walk up to the stand.

In addition to the usual cap and gown, Emerson wore his medallion for graduating cum laude (with honors) and a beaded wolverine (UVSC's mascot). He also wore an eagle feather on his cap. We're all very proud and threw him a backyard barbecue party to celebrate. Our sister-in-law, Sharon Tapahe, received her master's degree from BYU on the same day, so we had a cake made in voth schools' colors that said "Congratulations graduates BYUVSC"

Meet our new baby

We have a new addition to our family. Her name is Scout and she's my gift to Emerson for his upcoming graduation. Scout is a beagle and she's now 12 weeks old. Like any puppy, she's chewing on anything in sight and is very playful.

Emerson and the boys spent this weekend building a dog house for Scout. The house part is done. Now they're building a deck/porch for it. Men!

Pour, oh pour the Pirate sherry...

Dexter did a great job in Pirates of Penzance. They decided to add some obvious physical humor to the show to help get laughs out of an audience too uneducated to get old British humor. Another twist was that they opened with someone impersonating Captain Jack Sparrow and then the Pirate King telling them that it was a different pirate show. Captain Jack was a running gag throughout the show. With the help of the high school's orchestra, the music sounded great. Several of the stars in the cast were impressive singers. Dexter has now retired his pirate duds. I think if we let him, he would wear them all the time. He's focusing on his grades now, so no new plays for awhile.

We've had a long stretch of below freezing weather lately. Nights were dropping below zero. Our pipes froze two weeks ago and we spent Martin Luther King Day trying to figure out where the pipes were leaking. Easier said than done since our 107 year old house has virtually no access to anything. Dexter spent most of the day wriggling under the house and taking pictures so we could see what was going on. The only access we found for the leak was cutting a hole through the vanity , the floor and the wall of the bathroom. The frozen pipes burst the soldering back there. A friend tried to help us solder the pipes and caught the insulation on fire. Eventually, the pipes were back in working order, but we could still hear water running. That's when we discovered the stream running along our foundation. The main water line from the water meter into our house had broken. Even worse, our water pipe runs under part of the neighbor's property.


We've spent the last two weeks turning the water down at the meter (so it doesn't freeze again) and then running outside in the freezing cold to turn it up and then back down so we can take showers and do laundry. Our home teachers rounded up some people to help us fix the pipes yesterday.

The neighbors (elderly) let us know how unhappy they were with us messing up their lawn as we dug a nice big hole to find the leak.

It was quite an adventure and we discovered our sewer line in the process. Our water pipe ended up running under the sewer line.

The leak was due to errors made by whoever put the plumbing in originally. When they tightened the pipe with a wrench, it scraped off the galvanizing.

We're probably lucky the pipe lasted this long before rotting through.

With help from our friends in the ward, we fixed the pipe. We also know that these old pipes won't last much longer. Our summer project will be to put in a new water line -- hopefully in a better location.

A Wii Christmas

Thanks to the generosity of someone very dear to us, we were able to purchas Nintendo's Wii video game system. This was the big Christmas gift for our family. The boys had no idea we were getting this, so it was a great surprise. Emo, Sharon, and I set up the system and then wrapped a box to go over it. The funny thing is they didn't discover it until near the end of the present-opening. When Dexter went to pick up the box, he got a little worried and thought something had gone wrong since the box was

so light.

In case you aren't familiar with the Wii, let me tell you a little about it. It's an ideal system for those who don't normally play video games. The controllers are wireless and many of your movements in the game are done by just moving the remotes around. The game that comes with the system, Wii Sports, lets you play baseball, golf, tennis, and do some boxing and bowling. You box by punching the air with the controllers. (Sharon and Dexter are pictured boxing each other here) You swing the controller to swing the bat, golf club, or tennis racket. I love it because non-gamers like me can play as well as videogame addicts like Dwayne. We've had a blast boxing each other and having virtual family bowling nights. We're all very grateful that our special someone was willing to give up possible profit on ebay to help us have a wonderful Christmas.

Houston, we have a sidewalk!

For those of you who have been to our house in the last year or two, you know that we ripped out our sidewalk in anticipation of putting in a new one. We thought we knew what we were doing, but cement supplies ran out. When cement was available again, it was too expensive. We've had an empty ditch leading up to our house for over a year now. I finally decided to take an extra day off work over Thanksgiving weekend and put in a brick sidewalk. The bricks came from three different neighbors who had some extras lying around. Over the past couple of months, other people had offered to help, but they never came through. While Emo and the kids cleaned the house for Thanksgiving, I put in the sidwalk. It's kind of lumpy in spots, but it's better than having a ditch. Sharon came up from Vegas to spend Thanksgiving with us and got to walk on our beloved sidewalk many times.

There be Pirates!

Dexter has been cast in his school's production of "Pirates of Penzance." He will be one of the pirates. Rehearsals have already begun and performances begin in February. They have created a little website for their play at http://provonianpirates.blogspot.com/

I grew up listening to the music from "Pirates," so I'm very excited to see how they do with it. Listening to Dexter sing some of my favorites makes it hard to have to wait until February to see the whole show.

Halloween

Halloween...that wonderful holiday for trying out alternate identities or expressing your weirder side. With my hectice schedule, I went for a cheap and easy costume. I stuck nametags with different names all over my shirt (having an identity crisis). It got a few checkles and didn't get in my way at work so it was a success. Dexter dress the way he wishes we would let him (kind of gothic) and is a little disappointed Halloween is over. Dwayne (pictured) showed us what he would look like if he cut his long hair. Actually, he went to a party at his girlfriend's house and the afro wig made him look just like her brother. For school, he borrowed his Scout leader's kilt and wore it. Not really a costume, but now he's interested in making kilts part of their Scout uniform since he found it so comfortable to wear. The biggest challenge of the night was trying to keep things quiet so Emerson could get some sleep before work. I opted to put the bowl of treats out on the front steps to avoid constant banging on the door. It didn't take long for someone to dump the contents of the bowl in their treat bag. then I turned off the lights and got back to my homework.

The Gang's All Here!

Dwayne's Eagle Court of Honor turned out to be a great event. I was pretty stressed out trying to work out all the details, but the glitches just made it more memorable. On Thursday, half the electricity in our house went out. We had to use flashlights and oil lamps to light our way in the bathroom and kitchen. Late Thursday night we found out that more family were coming up for the event than we had planned and our house was in no shape to host them. The program was a little late in starting due to some late arrivals and our struggles to figure out how to connect the laptop and projector for Dwayne's slide show. After that, things went fine. Our friend, Carl Moore, performed a hoop dance and a northern men's traditional dance for us. Another close friend, Angela Crank, presented Dwayne with a real eagle feather that she had used for dancing.

We're very proud of Dwayne and we're all so glad that so many family members were part of it. Loren, Mom, Evonne, Sydney, Seth, Gene, Sharon, Erin, Dion, Emery, Brenda, Eriona, and Ethan all came. Loren's not in the picture because he's behind the camera. I'm working on a video to send to everyone who couldn't make it.