Pool time

Summer time means daily pool time around here. Unfortunately, it becomes monotonous and boring even. But the heat makes other activities undesireable.

I told Shinara that after she turned 5 and when she could go under water without panic and trepidation (o.k. I didn't use that word with her!), she could stop wearing her "fat" swimsuit (as she called it. One with flotation devices sewn in). So, before her birthday, she began practicing. And she swims with a noodle close by so she doesn't get tired. I was pleasantly surprised at how strong and capeable she was. But I watch out so that others in the pool don't forget that she's not as strong as they are!

The day that school let out for the elementary school kids, I took them and our next door neighbor Chris and Mardi's friend Mimi to the pool.

The girls ganged up on him, but he held his own. The pool is more fun when we have guests. Mandi and her kids have been in Oregon for almost a month and we are really missing them! They come back next week!

Houston, you've got a problem

I took Tersa to the airport this morning for her flight out to Houston. Joel promised the girls they could go after their first year of Jr. High if they got straight A's (as final grades.) So, she is headed out there for two weeks and is looking forward to all of the things planned for her. Aunt Leann has a schedule all worked out and Aunt Lindsay and the boys will be out there for part of her visit too!! Hopefully they will take some pictures I can post later.

Keddi's last day of school

This is Ms. Rice. The reason I switched the girls to track 5 this year was so that Keddi could have Mrs. Kepner (Tersa's 1 &2 grade teacher). What we found out was that Mrs. Kepner went to a different school. When I asked the girls who Ms. Rice was, Tersa said she had been the student teacher for Mrs. Kepner. Keddi had a wonderful year. She is a soft spoken lady who seems to truly enjoy these young kids. Keddi loved her.
Ms. Osinelley was also well-liked by Keddi. She was the student teacher for part of this year.






Keddi, Kayla and McKenzie. McKenzie was the one Keddi spent most of her time with until Kayla moved in. Unfortunately that is when "girl" stuff started and Keddi struggled with these two about why they couldn't all be friends together. She talked to them about it and things got better.
But these are the people Keddi got the most attention from. Berkley, Gus and Christain are her friends and she would chase with them and what not, but Keddi is a "girl" friend kind of girl right now, so drama is more a part of her life than it would be if she spent the majority of her time with this group!

Mardi's Friends

The last day of school was only half of one and after cleaning up their room, they had a class party with pizza, treats and yearbook signing. And for Mardi it was picture time. As I said before, these kids really took her in and let her be part of their class. Many of these kids had been together for years. Chantal and Mimi were the two Mardi spent most of her time with.
Marissa (left) and Kylee (I think) (right) are girls who were in Mardi's kindergarten class.

Damian likes Mimi and therefore was privileged to have his picture taken.

And Oliver was often in Mardi's groups when a project was assigned. I guess Oliver got his picture because she complained about him a lot?!?!?

(As you can see, Mardi spent a lot of time with Mimi. Mimi came here from Thailand knowing very little english. She was in Mardi's class in 3rd grade I believe and Mardi took an interest in helping her and befriending her. So when Mardi joined this class, she and Mimi picked up where they left off.)

5th Grade Promotion

Before we were so rudely interrupted by a flaming car, I was telling you that we were at Mardi's 5th grade promotion.
This is Mr. Neimeier. Ever since Tersa started kindergarten we have been on track 3 but I wanted different teachers than the ones on track 3 for Keddi so we switched. Hard on Mardi since it was her last year. Turned out to be the best thing in the world for her too!! She learned a lot and did quite well with her grades this year. Mr. Neimeier said that he truly enjoyed her and what having her in there added to the whole class.
Mrs. Ball was fabulous too. Technically she is the 4th grade teacher but the fact is that these two teachers team teach and have each grade for half of the day. She was fabulous too and had the sweetest things to say about Mardi. It was obvious that both teachers really got a feel for Mardi and appreciated her. We couldn't have asked for better.

This is some of Mardi's class and the people she spent most of her time with. (Well, three or four girls jumped in that she doesn't hang out with, but what do ya do?)

Shinara's 5th year portraits

They turned out just too cute not to post them all!!! This large one is what we will display in 8x10 on the wall.









Sometimes the pictures on the cute backgrounds turn out so adorable that I wish we weren't so particular about having everything on the wall match!


The teddy bear one was Shara's idea of course. But it turned out cute too.




I loved the forest one of Keddi but didn't want to do the same pose. Doesn't she just look so tall?!?

Enjoying the rain

July is the month for what people around here call "monsoon weather." (It does tend to be the rainiest month of the year, but hardly what many people would call "monsoons!") It has been rainy and cloudy off and on since the beginning of July and on Shinara's birthday we got a bit more rain. Tersa and Shinara were the only ones not in school. They pulled out the umbrellas and stood out in the rain. Sometmes there was thunder for us to enjoy with our rain. But I didn't get to turn off the air conditioning and open the windows at all this year because the temps were still no lower than mid 90's!

4th of July

We had a great 4th! Uncle Mitchell was in town and we always love to have him around. We started the day at a Ward breakfast which included 2 other wards this year. I'm not sure what the point is really, (except that maybe we all want to have the pavillion for the activity?) it's not like there were any games or other things to promote mingling!

At around 10:00 we headed home and got ready to go to the pool. Mandy brought the kids over some time after that and we stayed at the pool until around 1:00-1:30. We each took our children home (mine needed aloe for their sunburns and I needed a nap because of the sun!). We headed over to Wilson's (Mandy's mom was in town) around 4:00 and ate a great meal of bbq ribs, watermelon, baked beans, potato salad.... and hung out until 7:00 when we headed to Boulder city for fireworks. We were joined at dark by the Flinders, Calls and guests of theirs from out of town. Before the show we did snappers and sparklers as tradition dictates. After getting home we re-applied aloe and crashed! And it was only Friday! So we would get to sleep in and recover the next day!

The Passing of our copper car

In Sept. 1998, as students at BYU, Joel and I decided that we could afford to buy our first car. (One very old one had been given to us by my Grandparents and it died soon after we got married. We bought a rust bucket for $400 just before Tersa was born so that we wouldn't have to call anyone in the middle of the night to please drive us to the hospital and after it died, Joel's parents gave us an old one of theirs. We replaced it with this one.) I was so excited to find a copper color and it seemed to be the only one in the lot.

Yesturday, Joel came from work to join us at Mardi's 5th Grade Promotion. About 20-25 min. later the Principle announced that the owner of the car with license.... needed to come see her in the hall. He never came back. Tersa and I wondered where he could be and I had thoughts of him outside talking to a police man. But couldn't imagine why there would be need for that!

After the ceremony and waiting for the girls (because school had ended by then) I called Joel to find out where he was. He told me the car blew up and to please drive to where he was. I was utterly confused. This is what greeted me as I drove up to him. The firemen bashed out the windows so they could put out what was inside. They also had to cut the hood to get to the fire in there. I was immediately grateful for several things all at once. Joel had not been in the car, someone saw the fire and called the fire department, no one else's cars were damaged and we were close to home and not on a highway somewhere! Joel is grateful that he gets to buy a new car!

Shinara's party

Shinara's morning began with her waking from a bad dream. She went downstairs where Joel held her and she told him about the dream. He sympathized with her then said told her Happy Birthday and that she was five. "Right now?!" she asked and when he said yes, she looked down at her body, looked up, shrugged her shoulders and grinned. Not sure was she was expecting exactly, but it seems she was a bit let down.
After breakfast and getting the girls to school, we went to Wal-mart to pick out ice cream and small gifts for the gift bags she would give her guests. We also picked up a bouquet of balloons for the party. Then we came home to decorate her cake. I frosted and she decorated.
We went to Chuck E. Cheese just before 4:00 to set up and wait for guests. She had picked out Hannah Montana napkins and plates but didn't really have a theme for her party.

The kids played around until everyone arrived and I broke out the tokens. We kept them busy with that for just over an hour and then we gathered them for pizza, cake, ice cream and presents.

All of the children except this little boy are friends of hers in the ward. But Radley is a friend from pre-school. She was most excited about him coming and they had fun. None of the children really stuck together while they used their tokens, but Radley and Shinara kept checking up on each other throughout the 2 hours. He's a cute boy and my older girls really took to him. And they wanted to know if he has older brothers. He does...19, 18 and 15...plus a sister between him and the 15 year old. Shinara is going over to his house today to play. Tersa usually opts to stay home when there are errands to run, but I may have company today when I go to pick up Shinara.

Happy Birthday Shinara

Five years ago, very early in the morning (5:00), I called my friend Jenny to come to my house because I had been having contractions for several hours. As I paced and breathed in the kitchen and she watched anxiously telling me I should really get going, we both wondered (her aloud) "Where is Joel?"

An epidural was my friend as I delivered this 10 lb. 6 oz. beauty. Shinara is a sweet and very tender-hearted little girl. She is fair and just and brave enough to do something about it. She makes us laugh all the time and she really dislikes the Sabbath (dresses, limited movies to watch, church and not getting to play outside.)

Selected-done

We took our verdict back into the courtroom where there were now six officers (there had only ever been three with two rotating out every once in a while and our bailiff) and the judge read it over first and then the court reporter read it out loud. Then we were asked if that was our verdict and we all said yes. The defendant was handcuffed while we were thanked for our service and sent back to the deliberation room. We waited there and talked for a bit until the judge came back and again offered his thanks to us for having been there. He made it around the room and shook each of our hands before leaving. In the meantime, the Prosecuting Attourneys had come in and after thanking us also, wanted to know why we had chosen "not guilty" on the certain accounts and we gave our reasons. Then they proceeded to answer some of our questions and tell us about the defendant. This was his third conviction and he would get 20-life. In Nevada that means 20 years served before any consideration for parole. We were told a little about his history and his family (some of which testified). What a mess!! The two that had struggled with their doubts were asked if they were glad now. It made me think. It's hard to be in a jury sometimes. I said silent prayers all through the trial to get a sense of the guilt of this man, but never felt strongly one way or another. I had to depend on the evidence, my own knowledge of children and the life experiences of others on the jury. I think that I was taught a lesson in this process. The law is important. It's set up was inspired. It can't be perfect because it depends so heavily upon people who aren't perfect.
Oh, I'm sleeping just fine.

Selected-more

There were several people in the jury that would have signed "guilty" on every one of the 20 counts against this man as soon as we came into the deliberation room without any disscussion at all. But two of them were very adamant about their doubts on some of the counts. I would never have thought it, but we deliberated for three hours before submitting our verdict. We would go around the room and take turns talking about what things convinced us of his guilt. I had taken pretty extensive notes of the little girls testimony and it is what we used to decide "not guilty" on three of the counts and to try to help the other two people see why we were so determined to vote "guilty" on everything else. Neither of the two had children. It was interesting to see 12 strangers with their varying genders, age, race and experiences in life, come together to render a verdict. At one point though, someone conceeded to a decision on the last count we were debating and I said I wasn't comfortable turning in a verdict that we were not all in agreement with. She had felt "gained up on" several times and said as much. There were some strong personalities in the room and passions ran high but no one meant to attack her. She thought for another few seconds and just said it was fine. I wasn't sure what she needed or wanted in order to come to a consensus with us, but I was not comfortable she got there.

Selected-cont.

I struggled for 15-20 min with getting to sleep Mon. night. But having prayed before bedtime and specifically asking not to have disturbing images invade my dreams, I was pleased when I woke the next morning rested.
Tuesday consisted of witnesses for prosecution including the 13 yr. old (now) that we were all there for. It was unpleasant but again, with innocent presumptions, I weathered the testimonies rather better than I would have thought possible at first. Wednesday was mostly witnesses for defense and felt like a waste of time. I could vent about the attorney's lack of skill and weak case to you for hours but still, it wasn't her case to prove. The burden lay on the State and they did a pretty good job. By late Wed. afternoon witnesses were finished with and we were allowed to go to our room to deliberate. That was interesting!

Selected

I have been occupied since Monday with the case I was selected to be on a jury for. What a year of learning some things regarding how our country works! I was confident that I would not be chosen so was rather surprised when I was. It was a criminal case. I know that young people sometimes read this blog so I will not give details. Suffice it to say that the assault was by a male to a 7 year old little girl. The last incident occurring when she was 10.
My stomach churned with the little information I was given about the case as they began the jury selection. I wondered how I could possibly sit and listen to what we would have to hear. But it all came down to "could you be objective and impartial while listening to the evidence and in deliberating the case." As much as I wanted out of this particular case, I didn't feel that I could say anything to get out of it and be honest. I was a mom with four children that were near the ages of the child in the case, I knew the State would want me, but not the defense. We began opening arguments as soon as the jury was selected. Honestly, I didn't have an opinion one way or another whether or not the man was guilty when we started. We were told that he was innocent until the evidence had been presented and I truly saw him that way. But I left the courtroom with the opening statements in my head and thought I was going to be a basket case through this process. I was not to talk about any aspect of the case with anyone, not even fellow jurors. I dream and was worried that images would keep me from sleeping well or at all. But I calmed myself with knowing that I could ask for a blessing and that God created this government to work this way (in general) and that there was probably a significant reason I was there. I learned things about myself that I didn't know I was capeable of.

Jury Duty

We had a great 4th of July weekend and I will post about it later, but today I have to be at the courthouse by 12:00 for Jury selection proceedings. Hopefully, they won't want me. Today we all had dental cleanings and were at the dentists office from 7:00-10:15! Mardi and Keddi were late to school and Tersa will have to watch Shinara, pick up the other girls from the bus stop (in 108 degrees) and help with homework! I could be gone until 5:30. Fun stuff at the Barber house!

Scott and Katie's Wedding day

We were rushed Saturday morning because we got up later than I wanted to and the girls wanted to play out in the yard (which they did as I packed). At 9:30 we left to visit a BYU roomate of mine who lives in Sandy. Nikki, Dirk and their daughter Brynna entertained us until about 12:15 when we rushed off to the wedding at Mt. Timpanogus (sp?) temple. (Addmittedly I was a tad late. I would have liked more time with my friend.)

After the ceremony we stood around outside to wait for them to come out and stayed long enough to be in a group picture. My children were starving and we went with Aunt Michelle, Meghan, Rachel and Aunt Marcie to the Brick Oven for a late lunch. Then we went up to BYU to walk around the "Wilk" for a bit. We spent some money of course and then headed to the reception which was held outside at an amphitheatre right next to the temple they were married in. It was a grassy area with rabbits running around and I let the girls kick off their shoes and run amuck. (As much as our girls will anyway!) We ate, visited, danced and relaxed. And I took three pictures. Shocking I know. I did borrow my brothers video camera to film the little girls dancing, but I would have had to follow all of the girls all over to get pictures and they were always moving!!

The little girls are with their Aunt Katie (now we have two.) The four men are my father and three of my five brothers. (Cameron, Brady (#6), Shae (2) and Micah (8). Mardi is with two of Shae's kids, Meghan and Rachel. And Ben could not get his father's (Brady) attention and found butt biting to be rather affective.

Big Cottonwood Canyon

There was a BBQ at a pavilion in Big Cottonwood Canyon for Scott and Katie and that is where we went at 4:00 Friday afternoon.

When we first arrived, some of my siblings were playing in a field with a ball and bat. Keddi wanted to play so I told her to ask her uncles. Thanks to Uncle Caleb (in picture), Uncle Brian, Uncle Micah and Uncle Brady for pitching to her and helping her get her batting down. Actually, she hit pretty much everything that was pitched (well) to her. We had to get her to stand sideways to the pitcher, but the rest of it came pretty naturally to her. She had fun!
Shinara started off playing with cousin Thomas who was born just a month and some after her. They were playing in dirt, with rocks and jumping off the big rock while Keddi batted. Later, Mardi led Thomas, Keddi and Shinara all over the area we were in, exploring. Unfortunately I would only let them go where I could readily see them and though that still left plenty of space, it just wasn't enough sometimes.

Mardi found a stream and many other things she enjoyed when she was exploring on her own. That is what she did at first. Then she included the other children and they enjoyed themselves. We didn't get back to Aunt Nancy's till late again!

Continued Utah Trip

On Friday morning, we woke up late and took our time getting ready for the day. Uncle Gale had invited us to pick strawberries out of the garden to have with breakfast so once everyone was showered and ate some cereal, we went out to pick strawberries.
Then, until 4:00 we lounged in the hammock, played in the sand, Mardi climbed the cherry tree and we ate some cherries, jumped on the trampoline, Mardi played with the dogs and the younger girls helped Aunt Nancy in her garden. It was a relaxing day with so much to enjoy. We loved having access to a real yard with grass and fun things to do. It only got up to the mid-high 90's and the girls were outside pretty much the entire day!