2nd Annual Polar Plunge!

This afternoon we had our 2nd Annual Polar Plunge - exactly one year from last year's first dive into our pool. I think it is absolutely crazy and yet Steve wants to make this an annual tradition. We didn't give our friends or neighbors much advance notice and so we didn't have as many come to the polar plunge this year as we did last year. But we still had a lot of fun. The Williams Family came and took the plunge with us! Brrr...that water is sure cold. This morning when we got up it was only 36 degrees outside. But the sun was out and the outside air temperature was 52 degrees and the pool was a balmy 47.8 degrees! Steve set up the jacuzzi - a blow-up swimming pool with warm water - to help bring the body temperature up a bit after the kids took the plunge. And I provided all the brave plungers a cup of hot chocolate after they got out of the pool! Here are a few pictures from today's fun.

Steve setting up the video camera so we can catch all the action! Brooklyn, Adee and Sydney getting ready to take the plunge!

Steve took the first plunge with a cannon ball!

Steve and Brooklyn swimming ever so quickly to get out of the cold water!

Sadie taking her plunge!

This is Brooklyn's second plunge of the day! A perfect dive off the diving board!

Rex taking the plunge!

Check out the look on Rex's face? Brrr...

Ahh...this is one hot jacuzzi!

Steve and Brooklyn sippin' hot chocolate in the jacuzzi!

Here's a fun video of our 2nd Annual Polar Plunge. Scroll down to the very bottom of this screen and pause the music before starting the video.

When the cats away the mice will play!

While I was in Northern California over the weekend Steve and the girls had a lot of fun playing! Here are some pictures of their adventures! And yes...while momma cat was away all the little mice played and played and played! Doesn't look like they missed me very much! Thursday night they went to the Music Experience Center and Science Fiction Museum in downtown Seattle near the Space Needle. The Music Experience Center is a museum dedicated to Jimmi Hendrix, who was from Seattle, and other early Rock and Roll bands. Here they are performing before a virtual crowd of thousands. They haven't gotten any calls from any talent scouts - so I think the kids are going to stay in school and Steve plans to keep his day job.

Here's a cool work of art made up of 100s of musical instruments - some of the guitars have robotic mechanisms that play the guitars.

Here are the girls with the Space Needle in the background.

On Friday they went to a beach about 30 minutes from our house.

And a short detour to Krispie Kremes...

Then they stopped off at a specialty food store and picked up the ingredients to make Yakisoba fried noodles, miso soup with tofu, gyoza pot stickers and some Ra-mu-ne soda. The soda tastes somewhat like 7 up, but the bottle is what is cool - the bottle seals with a marble from inside the neck of the bottle. You pop the marble down to "open" the bottle - it is way fun. The girls refilled the bottles with other soda and drank it again.

Saturday the girls and Steve went grocery shopping and picked up ingredients for Sunday dinner - Pad Thai noddles - the girls fixed it almost all of it on their own. And they say it tasted pretty good.

Saturday they went to the zoo - check out the footwear for the day - Brooklyn in Ugg boots and Mackenzie in flip flops. And yes, that is hail you see on the ground - the weather was cool, but nice except for the 10 minutes of hail.

Interesting shot of the "wild" life at the park....

Hey, Dad, is this turtle-ly enough for you?

Brooklyn coming out of her shell....

A Great Weekend in Nor Cal

Monday, March 9, 2008

This past weekend I flew down to Northern California for my nephew Brad's missionary farewell. It was such a fun weekend spending time with my family. We had lots of family dinners and get togethers. And it was fun to spend a lot of time with my Mom and Dad. Saturday we went to the Sacramento temple and went through a session with Brad in preparation for his mission. It's always a neat experience to be inside the temple with family. Sunday morning Brad was set a apart as a missionary and then spoke in church. He did a great job and will be an awesome missionary. He will be serving his mission in the Chile Santiago West mission and he reports to the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Utah near Brigham Young University this Wednesday morning. He will be in the MTC for two months learning Spanish after which he will fly out to Santiago for two years. As a side note, my brother Gregg, Brad's Dad, also served his mission in the Chile Santiago mission. Isn’t that neat! Maybe Brad will run into people that his Dad taught the gospel too back 30+ years ago!

What a handsome missionary Brad makes!
Brad and his brother Mike.

Mike, Gregg, Pat, Brad, Grandma & Grandpa Smith!

Thanks for the fun and very memorable weekend. I had a great time! See you in a month in So Cal at Mike and Jessica's wedding!

Mackenzie's Million Dollar Smile

After two and half years Mackenzie finally got her braces off! They removed the top braces 3 weeks ago and then the bottom braces came off last Thursday. It wasn't quite a million dollars...but check out that smile!

What a beautiful smile Mackenzie Kay!

10 Stake Youth Dance

Last night there was a 10 stake youth dance in Lynnwood that Mackenzie went to. She invited her friend Heidi over before the dance so they could get all dolled up together. Steve took some fun pictures of them getting ready. There were hair dryers, flat irons, curler, make-up, hairspray, lip gloss, nail polish and jewelry strewn all over the bathroom. It seriously looked like a tornado had blown through the bathroom but it was just all the "necessities" that these two girls needed to make themselves up for the dance! As you can see from the pictures they had a lot of fun getting ready together.
Check out that bathroom counter!

Steve and I drove a car full of kids to the dance. After we picked up the last friend and before we got to the dance we went through the drive-thru at Wendy's and bought hamburgers, french fries and frosties for all the kids. It was quite an adventure having 6 very excited youth in the car with us. It reminded Steve and I of all the fun times we had as youth going to the church dances.

When we dropped the kids off at the dance they had one of those big search lights waving across the sky. The kids got a big kick out of that and wanted their picture by it. There were 545 kids in attendance at the dance. Mackenzie said it was a lot of fun and they can't wait until June when they have another 10 stake youth dance. What a great activity for these kids to go to last night.