Our Lives: March - July

Time for another big up date.  Again it’s been almost 5 months since our last update, so this will be another big one.  Thank fully now that we have “smart” phones we do take a lot of pictures…and since a picture is worth 1,000 words, this will mostly be a picture diary with some thoughts and memories attached.  

A few pics of the family.

Volleyball - Malia played volleyball this spring.  After the first couple of practices she was a bit nervous that the team she was on would not win any games.  Once the season started she realized that her team really was not that bad.  In fact they had a tournament at the end of the season and her team won!  Malia did awesome.  She is a great server and sets really well.  She has a good feel for the game and understands that there should be a bump, set, then spike.  We really enjoyed watching her play.

Mothers Day - Deena has really been hitting the gym hard these past several months.  She's really been into cycling, and has started to teach some classes.  She really works hard to make some good playlists and keep the class on their toes.  She is always running her creative ideas by me (Brent) to see if I think the class will like it.  They must...she's been getting a lot of compliments.  So for mothers day I thought I'd feed her hunger to "spin" and buy her a new bike...one that actually goes somewhere :-)  She's been spending quite a bit of time riding and is planning to do a race in August.

Baseball - For the third year in a row Tim Bastedo and I decided to coach a little league team (Upper Minors).  Tim is a die hard Dodgers fan, so again we were the dodgers.  I was very excited for this year because I was going to get to coach both Cole and Jacob on the same team!  During the regular season we went 14-3.  Two of our losses were to our rivals...the Giants, and the other one was to a team we split with during the regular season, the Tigers.  Then came the tournament.  Our first tourney game was pretty easy, but then we had to play the Tigers.  Jacob pitched most of the game and did a great job.  We won 9-4.  Then came our arch enemies...the Giants.  The second time we played them we lost 11-0 (both games were early in the season).  We worked hard to get our kids ready for the big game and they had improved each game.  The game was awesome!!  Jacob pitched the whole game and held them to 1 run (we also had some great defense) with 10 strike outs and no walks.  Jacob and Cole each had 2 RBI's and we won 7-1.  It was awesome!!! Even more so because the Giants came in to the game undefeated!  Jacob ended the year with 95 strikeouts and an .852 on bas %.  Cole developed a lot during the year and ended the year with 11 RBI's.

Our season did not end there...  Jacob tried out for the 10-11 year old all star team and made it.  Again, I coached the team with Tim (and a few other assistant coaches).  We started the all star tournament with a field of 5 teams...the top 4 would go on to regionals.  We ended up winning enough games to come out of the pool as the #3 team.  Jacob won both games he pitched.  The team had 4 LDS kids on and none of them played on Sunday, so we had to have 14 kids on our team just to make sure we did not have to forfeit any games.  In regionals we played pretty well, but only the top team moved on to state....and it was not us.  The highlight of the all-star season was when we played a team that had beat us 30-3 and 19-1.  We came in to a loser out game and we ended up losing by only one point... 12-11.  We had an inning where we scored 8 runs.  We had them on the ropes, but could not quite get it done.  It was a great season though.  Baseball started in April and went through Mid July...a long season.

 Our game vs the Giants

All star team

My work sponsored a family bowling night.  One of Brent's best bowling nights ever. 

Claire and Jacob helping me with the garden!

Guns! - One of the things I love about Idaho is that everyone has a gun and there are lots of places to shoot.  This year Deena, Malia, Jacob and Cole all got to shoot guns for the first time.  Jacob's first experience was at the Father and Sons camp out.  He got to shoot a pistol.  For the 4th of July we went to some friends house and they had a shooting range, so Deena, Malia and Cole all got the chance to shoot.

Gap to Gap Relay Race - In May we took the family over to Yakima for my nephews Eagle Scout court of honor and Cooper's baptism.  The weekend we were there Yakima was holding their annual gap to gap relay race.  The race involves a run, bike ride, kayaking and an obstacle course.  They had many different team categories for age and gender.  Jacob and Cole formed a team, Claire was on a team with her girl cousins and Malia was on a team with her cousin Tyler and his friend.  The event was really fun.  There were kids everywhere and there was always lots going on.  Claire and her posse ended up 3rd in their age group and Malia and her posse ended up 2nd in their's.  It was a great day.

School Ends - The kids all had end of year assemblies.  Malia's was a school talent show and prize give-away.  Malia and two of her church friends sang the song "Popular" in front of the whole school.  It was so awesome.  Malia practiced really had and sounded great.

Jacob had a big award ceremony and was fortunate enough to be the recipient of many awards.  One of the awards was only given to 3 students in the whole school and the other was the attendance award for not missing one day of school.  Toyota gave all the kids who did not miss a day of school a 18 speed bike!  Cole's class got to roast smores at the end of the year along with making homemade ice cream!  He also got to shoot a bow and arrow and play some other games.

Claire had a recital that she performed in.  Of course it was really cute.

Claire holding a rabbit that the cat was chasing.

Kid Camp - Malia did her annual kid camp again this year to earn some money.  She really works hard to make the kid camps fun, and is very prepared.  She had a different theme for every day and also fed the kids some snacks.  The weather was not great, but at least it did not rain every day like it did last year.

Sunriver - we had a great time at Sunriver with Deena's family as usual.

Playing at the Lake - We had so much fun playing at the lake on our boat, and our friends boat.  Playing on the water is one of our most enjoyable family activities.

Dallin's Birthday - For Dallin's b-day we went to Coeur d'alene's new waterpark and played.  It was really fun.