Joshua's 9th Birthday

Joshua received his 9th birthday cake from Sandy Cox, who attends our church ward. She always does a fantastic job on the cakes.

Joshua is truly a bookworm, so the cake theme was perfect.

We gathered together as a family at Grandma Collier's later that day to celebrate Joshua's birthday with the extended family living here in Arden.

New Wolf

Joshua has been hard at work on completing his Wolf badge in Cub Scouts. I think he has a love and hate relationship with Cub Scouts. I think he likes the activities but doesn't like the confines of the structure.

Joshua Survives Cub Scout Day Camp

Joshua went to Cub Scout Day camp this week at Camp Stevens, down by the French Broad River. He enjoyed archery, BB guns, and making home-made paper which they shaped (in cookie cutters!) into shapes to give to their fathers on Father's Day. He also got to play kick ball, make an animal mask, participate in a flag ceremony, and talk about animals. (I imagine they got to talk about animals a lot, since the theme for this year was a Jungle theme!)

He did have a hard time with the running they asked him to do, and some of the boys in his den were just as pushy as he can be, so that was a bit upsetting. But he liked hiking around the camp, and he even came up with the "cheer" for their den. All-in-all it turned out to be a great week.

(In the slide show below you can see a couple of pictures of him, his den, and even his two cousins, Erik and David Hobson.)

Carolyn is 1 Year Old!

The last week of May is a busy one with birthdays: Grandpa Collier, Aunt Laura and Carolyn Garvin. We started out the week with a get-together at Grandma collier's to celebrate all three birthdays.

The next Sunday, May 31st, we gathered together at our house to celebrate Carolyn's birthday. The past year has really flown. Carolyn has done a lot of growing in the short year she's been with us. She's on the verge of walking and already pulling herself up into standing position where she can stand without support for a few seconds.

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In the slide show, my sister, Marian, is sitting on the futon we have in the living room, holding her foot. Right before she came over for the party she hurt her foot. (You can see how swollen it was.) It ended up that she broke her foot, and has to wear a boot for 6 weeks. She can't drive for 3 weeks! I would die if I couldn't drive during the summer!

Time to catch up

It's been too many months since we've posted to our blog. So much for good intentions and New Year's resolutions. Sorry. Life has a way of getting away from us at times.

This picture is actually from our trip to Old Salem, NC (which is near Winston-Salem) where we went over Memorial Day weekend. It seemed fitting to step back in time a bit during Memorial Day. It also seems appropriate to get back on track with our blog starting out with a peek back at the past. We've come a long way, baby!

The kids had fun:

Kitty!

Carolyn has always been fascinated by our two cats, Ashton (here) and Allie. Ashton is now beginning to tolerate her.

We've got snow

We've been living in Asheville for five years now, and we've gotten very little snow. At least compared to the amount of snow in other areas where we've lived, especially Utah. Still the school district has had many snow days. It's gotten to the point where I joke that they cancel school for a snow day when someone says "snow" in the school district offices.

"Did you say snow? We'd better cancel school."

"No, no! I didn't say snow. I was saying it's no..."

"Oh, well, too late. I already cancelled school."


So we all wake up in the morning and discover that there's not a drop of snow on the ground but school has been canceled.

So when it started to snow this past Sunday, I didn't think much of it. But then it kept snowing and snowing until we got about four inches of good snow. I actually ended up shoveling the driveway for the first time since we've moved here.

The kids missed two days of school —Monday and Tuesday, and had a two-hour delay on Wednesday. I'm pretty sure they're starting to cut into their school year beyond the normal snow days allotted at the end of the year.