Schmeffers

I thought it was time I highlighted my Schmeffers(Jeffrey). He is such a good kid - such righteous desires. I have always said he is going to be prophet someday. He is so gentle and loving to his sisters and always obedient to his mother and father and I am not exaggerating when I say ALWAYS. My father described him perfectly when he said, referring to Jeffrey, "There has never been a more perfect child on the earth except the Savior". I can honestly say I have NEVER had a problem with him. He has never talked back to me and never argues when he is asked to do something. I don't know how I was so blessed to be given such a special spirit but I am thankful I have been. He has been so busy focusing on school that I feel he has been neglected on our blog. Here are just a couple things he has been up to.

In his honors class, Earth Science and Geology, they take field trips to all the universities for what is called NUMUN, Northern Utah Model United Nations. What happens is the honors students are divided into pairs, and each pair is assigned a country. He was assigned to represent Libya, and his topic to debate was human trafficking, or the modern slave trade. His school placed second, and he recieved an award for excellence. He loves that they get dressed up for these. Here, he is also holding his manila folder that he brings with him to all these field trips. This trip was to the U of U. He left at 7:00 in the morning and didn't come home until after 6:00. He also recently had a fun language fair field trip to BYU with his Spanish 2 class. He was in the language bowl category, where random questions were asked of each team member. His team took first place when he answered the last question of the competition correctly.


He also wrestled again this year. This is a picture Emma took last night at his banquet. Five dollars for the whole family to eat dinner - if for no other reason we went for that. He was not really into wrestling this year though because of his busy school schedule but he enjoyed it.

Olivia's Birthday/Tea Party

Olivia had a fun birthday party with her friends on Saturday. She, like Emma, wanted a tea party. They all seemed to have a good time.

They all loved the food. Of course the Wheat Thins with the cheese spread were the big hit again. I forgot the ham and cheese plate in this picture.

The waitresses, Taylor and Mikalya.

All the girls enjoying their lunch.

Olivia saw a pin the tail on the donkey game at the store and had to have it for her party.

She also wanted a pinata. She's a little far from the target here.

Emma put her pretty baptism dress on for the party.

Since Jeff didn't make it easy for them to find the "bat", Olivia played around with him a little too.

Jeff is hitting the pinata to get all the candy out now.

Olivia and her birthday cake. Angel food cake with chocolate syrup and whipped cream.

All the girls together.

New Chicken Coop

Jeff has been working hard on a new chicken coop. Ours is a little small and we would also like to get a few more chickens. He is having fun building it and is pretty proud of his work. here he is hard at work.

Jeff stopped at a house along the road because he saw wood sitting around their house. They were putting in a new fence. Jeff asked if he could have their old wood but somebody had already beaten him to it. They later called him and said they still had some extra wood if he would like it. Perfectly good wood for free.

Jeffrey is a big help and it is good for them to work together on it.

More pictures to come as he progresses.

Can You Guess What is Happening?

This is so fun... stay tuned for more.

St. George, Utah

We took our first trip to St. George on Saturday. Taylor and Mikayla had a dance competition at Dixie College. None of us have ever been there before. I thought it was beautiful. I was impressed with how clean and well kept all the streets we went down were. We have a lot of pictures because we filled our one day there with a lot of activities. We left about 6:30 in the morning and returned home at 3:30am. Now that we have seen what there is to do there, for next year's competition we will make a whole weekend out of it.

I love these pictures of the kids sleeping on the way to St. George.

First thing we did in St. George was go to the college so Taylor could do her dance. She is in the middle up front in this picture.

Jeff took videos of the dance, I just need to figure out how to download onto the blog.

After Taylor's dance we went to In 'N' Out for lunch. Apparently everyone else from the dance comp. did too. It was packed. We ate out in front of the dinosaur museum.

They had a fun sandbox where you could dig up fossils.

After lunch we went to the temple. Actually, we went down Main St. first to find real live polygamists because we heard they can be found down that street. Our friends saw some but we weren't so lucky. The kids were disappointed. it reminded me of going down Castro St. in San Francisco. The grounds were so pretty at the temple, I wanted to take a ton of pictures but of course no one wanted me taking their picture so I didn't get as many as I wanted or the shots I wanted.

You always have to get this shot don't you?

When my family was walking ahead of me, the song that came to me was "I love to see the temple, I'm going there someday..." . It was neat to think of my whole family heading to the temple.

This was taken at Brigham Young's winter home which I didn't even know he had. I believe it was in his older years he went here for health reasons.

We did a little climbing too. It wasn't a big climb but it was really fun. I think the kids enjoyed this part of the trip the most. Here, they didn't want me to stop taking pictures. There were several people getting professional pictures taken. A bride was taking pictures in her white dress. If she had to climb anywhere for a shot, she put a garbage bag with holes in it for her legs on to protect her dress. It was funny looking.

Here is Jeffrey on top of the scary jack-o-lantern.

Jeffrey got to this point and then I told him to come down now.

I couldn't go this far with them. I realized I am a little uncomfortable up that high when there is a ledge you can fall off of. SCARY! Beautiful view though, you can even see the temple behind them.

"Who are these children coming down...". I only wish I had a sword for Jeffrey to be holding up. You know, Saturday's Warrior's?

This is where we were climbing. Everyone went up on top of the Dixie but me. I climbed other areas behind this that felt safer.

Then it was back to the dance competition for Mikayla to perform. She is on the far end.

She's in the back on the right. Mikayla finished up just after 10:00pm and we headed home so Jeff could make his 6:30 am meeting at church the next day. Did he make it after only three hours of sleep? No.