Mia Hamm

Mia playing on the floor, most likely with one of her homemade yarn balls. She won't even touch anything we buy from the store but will plat with a yarn ball or q-tip for hours!

Mia checking out my birthday flowers (before the lillies bloomed).

It has been a long time since our last post but life gets busy with 2 jobs and church callings! In between all the dances, mutual nights, keeping 28 (soon to be 29) kids from killing eachother we fortunatly have found time to have some sort of a life, even if we haven't blogged about it. I will highlight a few but many more could be mentioned.

1. We got a kitten. Mia entered our home a little over a month ago. We have not been able to get too many pictures of her but she is a sweetheart! We enjoy cuddling up with her but have also found that she has amazing talents. You have to see it to believe it but she plays fetch really well. When you throw her yarn ball she will retrieve it and bring it back to have us throw it again. The trickier the better. She likes it behind the couch or to bounce off the wall and go down the stairs. If you do not make it tricky enough she looks at you and just stands there with a look of " you think I am going to get that wimpy throw?" Mark wants to train her to retrive birds one day so that he can take her as his duck hunting cat. We will see how that goes.

Mia enjoying the Sunday sunshine.

We named here Mia partly because of her skills of kicking around a ball. In this case it is an easter egg that she chases around the downstairs while Lauren works out. She could be a major competitor in animal olympics.

2. Lauren turned 23 years old. If my students happen to stuble upon this website they will finally know the answer to the great mystery of Mrs. Hamm's age. I had my students each write down their guess for my age on a piece of paper. Since we are studying data groups and finding the mean, median, mode, range, minnimum, and maximum of a number set we did this with their guesses. They ranged from 21 to 76. I guess I have one student who believes me when I have told them all year that I am 75. They were more confused when we ended the guessing than when we started. It was amusing to listen to the students reasons for particular ages they chose. "My mom is 32 so she must be" or " what degree do you have in college because then I can caluculate the years you have been out of school." Surprisingly if I had told them when I graduated from High School or College they still would have been off since I did not do any of these things at typical ages. They decided they needed to call Mark at work and find out for real how old I was. I said his phone number out loud without even thinking and before I realized it out came a cell phone and it was ringing. Imagine getting a call from 24 kids surrounding one cell phone. He gave them the clue that I was not 30 when we got married and so they are ultimatly convinced that I am 29 since we have been married 2 years. It made for a fun activity and lots of amusement on my end, frustration on theirs.


Birthday flowers once they have bloomed, still beautiful almost 2 weeks later!

Better than roses which would probably have died a lot quicker.

Mark was a sweetheart and took me out to dinner even after working nearly 70 hours that week. He got me a beautiful wedding band for Valentines/Birthday. It is perfect and matches my wedding ring amazingly well. For those of you who know what my ring looks like, this one is also pav-e, with etching on the side, and is curved to fit around the wedding ring. We found it and couldn't pass it up because we didn't think there would ever be one that went so well! I love it!

Blurry picture but I think you get the point!

3. Mark and Lauren are getting out of the cold! We are heading to Cancun, Mexico for spring break and cannot wait to see the sunshine. Now we cannot complain becuase we are getting more sunlight as March is beginning but actually feeling warmth from the sun, without blowing your heater on full blast and imagining that blue skys and sun mean warmth, will be a nice change. Hopefully we will have time to post pictures soon after we return.

4. Lauren has rediscovered her love for basketball. After trudging through the winter and needing more workout activities I discovered that 20-20 minutes of basketball in the middle of a school day can be very rewarding! I play with my students at recess in the gym an have been having a blast. It is great to have lots of people cheering you on and telling you that you're good at basketball, even when you are not really very good! I have a whole group of followers and have a blast. Now I remember how working out doesn't have to be drudgery.

And a yummy dessert I made on Sunday. It was an experiment I made up, but it is a keeper! Not only were they beautiful but they taste amazing. Too bad most of our dinner guests had to cancel and now I have to eat 7 of them all by myself!

That's all for now because with report cards coming up I need all the sleep I can get! We love you all and miss those that are far from us. Thank you for all the birthday calls and wishes!