The Murphy Olympics

The Murphy's hosted the Olympics at their house.  First thing we had to do is pick a country to represent.  Ella and I were part of the Qatar team.  Tyler was on team Ireland and I think Nichole was on team Swaziland.  Natalie opted not to participate so she spent the day in the car and Nate had to work.  We all got a bib to wear with a number on it. They had a slew of games for everyone to participate in. 

The first stop for my team was yard curling. We had to throw a ball into a target.  There were rings to the circle and each ring was worth a different amount of points.

The next stop we had was cherry pit spitting.  There were 5 buckets set up.  Each bucket was worth a certain amount of points.  I learned I am not so good at spitting cherry pits very far.

Then we went on to the flamingo toss.  We tossed a flamingo through one of 3 hula hoops that were hanging up at different levels on a tree.  It's harder then it seems.

Our fourth stop was horse shoes.  You had to throw a horse shoe within a horseshoe width from a pole. P.S. I suck at that one.  I certainly did accomplish throwing the horseshoe up high in the air.

The fifth game we played was the balloon toss.  Brooke Cook was my partner in this game.  You would toss the balloon back and forth between each other.  Taking a step back every time you successfully caught a balloon. 

Lastly we did head bowling.  This is how you played.  You would put a pair of panty hose that had a ball in the bottom, onto your head, whip your head around and try to knock over 2 liter bottles.  I felt so goofy doing this game.

After everyone had a chance to finish the game we all gathered for a bbq and waited to hear who won first place.  My team places 4th.  A great time was had by all. 

While the boys are away the family will play

Nate and his friends went on a Halibut Charter this weekend.  Because of this JulieAnne and I were stuck at home with a total of 8 kids to entertain.  So what is the best thing to do?  Take the kids to the movie.  We went to Bear's Tooth (It's a movie theatre that has taken out every other seat and put a row of tables in the place of that seat.  You then order food pizza, nachos, steak, burrito, whatever and they bring it to your seat after the movie starts.  Awesome right?) and watched Madagascar 3 in 3D.  It was fun.  Natalie didn't go she stayed home and watched JulieAnne's little girl.  Nichole also didn't go she had a tennis match that day. 

Enoch is showing me that his finger is sore.  I had a great time texting people and letting them know what Enoch thought of them. Marissa even thought that I had taught him that.  So what if I taught her kid Boob!  It was an accident!  I would never teach a kid how to flip someone off.

 After the movie we went to Old Navy.  The girls hung out with these kids while they were there.  These kids were great they never ran around.  They stayed right by their parents.  They didn't even make a noise.  I wish Ella was like that sometimes!  After Old Navy we went to the park to play.  By the end of the day everyone was exhausted but had a great time.

 Nate and his friends left for the charter at 4:30 in the morning.  There charter was leaving at 9:15 so they had to leave that early.  Nate had a blast.  He said it is really hard work bringing in a halibut.  He even caught a shark and some cod.  While he was out on the boat he got to see some Killer Whales.

 There was a group of 3 other people from Idaho on the boat.  They all caught the really big Halibut you can see in the picture.  The biggest was 100 lbs.  There is also a 60 and 50 pounder that was caught by that group.  Nate and his friends didn't catch that big of fish.  Nate got back around 12:30 the next morning and was completely pooped.  He woke up in the morning and showed me his raccoon eyes they were pretty funny.  Later that night Nate made us some Halibut for dinner.  It tastes a lot better fresh but still not my favorite food.

Education is not filling a pail but the lighting of a fire. ~William Butler Yeats

It is that time of year again.  The time when my children abandon me during the day to further their education.  Stupid education.  This year Natalie and Nichole will be freshman in High School.  I do this every year.  As the girls get older I get floored that they are as old as they are.  So here it goes... Holy Crap I Have High Schoolers. Ahh that feels so much better. My girls are also starting their first year at seminary.  Luckily for them they can take it during the day.  Unluckily for them they have to take summer school to make up for the missing credits that they will be lacking at the end of their high school career.  Besides the core classes Natalie is taking Band and Seminary.  Nichole is taking Sculpture the first half of the year then Photography the second half and seminary.  On the first day of school I went downstairs to get them up at the time they will be normally getting up at (by the way my and 6:05 a.m. do not, I repeat DO NOT get along) and Nichole was till in bed.  They both got everything they needed to get ready and Nate took them to school.  This is the first time that I have ever not taken them on their first day of school.  It was really kind of weird.

 Nichole rode the bus home from school and told me about her day.  Nichole had a good day.  She has her best friends mom for English and her YW leader's day for World History.  She only has 6 people in her seminary class and 4 of  them are all in the same ward.  Which happens to be 2/3 of the youth in our ward that go to seminary. 

Natalie had a game after school so I didn't get to talk to her until after her game.  She liked her first day of school.  She got lost one time but a teacher was there to help her out.  Her seminary class has the kids that carpool over from the other school here in Eagle River.  Because of this her class is packed with kids. She has a lot of classes with her friends that are older. 

 

 When we went to High School registration we found the girls lockers.  We has to laugh because Natalie's locker is so much bigger then Nichole's and Nichole is the taller of the two. 

After the girls were sent off for the day it was time to get Tyler and Ella ready.  Tyler is going into middle school this year.  He's a 6th grader.  The unfortunate thing about the middle school this year is that they didn't have any schedules or lockers ready for the kids because they had some last minute rescheduling because of a last minute change made by school administration in the district.  Tyler had to go into 6th grade never having dealt with lockers or with a schedule.  He didn't know where is was going or how to open his locker.  He had to pick up his schedule.  He was extremely anxious and sick to his stomach.  Poor guy.  Turns out his day went a lot better then it started out for him.  He has several of his friends in every one of his classes.  He is taking band and art for his extra classes this year.  He is going to play percussion in band.

 Ella is going into the 3rd grade this year.  As the first day of school approached Ella would ask us not to talk about it because she would get so nervous.  Two days before school started we went to check who her teacher was.  She was ecstatic to learn that her teacher was Mr. Cano. Ty's 4th grade teacher.  Mr. Cano has this program in his class where you can earn Cano cash for doing various things.  It is spent like money too.  You have to pay Mr. Cano if you have to use the restroom an excessive amount of times or if you get in trouble for something.  But he pays you for various things too.  Like handing in your homework on time and being quiet.  If you go into debt he has you make it up by staying in from recess and stuff like that.  Ella is excited because in her first week of school she had already earned 22 Cano dollars.  She loved her first day of class and was ecstatic to see all of her friends again.

 

 

 On the second day of school she rode the bus.  She is the only kid that is picked up at this stop so I go out there with her every morning.  Boy do I not look forward to the cold, snowy mornings.

 This was a pose that Ella insisted on doing.  She is such a ham!

In tennis the addict moves about a hard rectangle and seeks to ambush a fuzzy ball with a modified snow-shoe. ~Elliot Chaze

Nichole has decided to take up tennis this year.  She is doing quite well at the sport.  She gets very excited to play the game.  I went to one of her games the other day.  I haven't ever played a real game of tennis before.  I have played around with a tennis racket and a tennis ball before.  I had to have someone explain to me the game.  I may not understand it as well but I do understand when they scored a point.  She didn't get to finish her first game she played because they had already been playing for 2 hours so they called the game.  But her first game like Natalie's was against her own school.  The second game I went to she played doubles's.  Her partner was her good friend Carrie.  They won that game.  It was fun to watch even though I wasn't exactly sure how it was scored.  Like most school sports here in Alaska will have a short season depending on when it rains and when it s... (sorry I can't say the "S" word on my blog).

 Nichole was so nice to pose for the camera for me.  I didn't realize that she was crossing her eyes until after I got home.  The turd. 

 Nichole trying to dry off the court.

 Ella took this picture and told me that she got "An action shot."

 Here is Nichole in some real action shots.

Flag Football the sport for all the girls who think that are bad a$$!

Yep I sure did use that as my title to this post.  Natalie decided to try out for the flag football team this year.  Tryouts were over a week long where they learned the basics of the sport and then used them to do running drills and catching drills.  She made the C1 team.  She is one of 3 freshmen on the team!  She now goes to practice everyday after school for 90 minutes and comes home tired and beat up.  Literally.  She has already sustained 3 injuries all thankfully relatively minor.  Her second day of practice she got elbowed in the face and couldn't eat anything that was too hard to chew.  2 days later she fell during a drill and landed with her arm funny behind her.  She pulled the tendon that is attached to her thumb and was in a brace for almost a week.  That was the worse of the injuries so far.  She also has sustained some wicked turf burns.  Darn that astro turf that everyone uses here.

She has already had 2 games.  The first one was against her own team.  Because they have 2 C teams if one of the other schools don't have a C team the schools C2 team fills in.  The C1 team won that game 2-0.  The second team they played they tied the game 12-12. 

Natalie is really enjoying the sport and learning a lot about team work and training.  Now if only it was a sport that colleges recognized and gave scholarships for.  At least she still has track for that.

 Natalie in her Chugiak Mustang uniform.  She is even wearing her game face.

 Natalie and 2 of her injuries.

 Natalie at her first game when she was playing the schools other C team.  She is #47!

Look who turned 30! What a big milestone she has hit in her life!

My friend Marissa Murphy celebrated her 27th birthday this August.  In order to celebrate we (JulieAnne, Erin, Megan and I) decided to surprise her with a party.  Ok the party itself wasn't a surprise as much as what we were going to do at the party.  Marissa's favorite thing is food.  She is kinda a "foodie".  And she loves dessert.  Because of this we decided to take her on a dessert crawl around Anchorage.  All that she knew was that we were picking her up at 6:00 and that she was eating.  Before her party I had to manipulate information out of her.

Me: If someone was going to get your family fast food for dinner tonight, what kind of food would they get them?

Marissa: Why? Your getting me fast food?

Me:  I didn't say that.  I said IF someone was going to what would it be?

Marissa: I thought that we were eating dinner tonight.

Me: I didn't say that I was taking you out to dinner tonight.  I just said that you would be eating.

Marissa: Oh ok then Pizza Man.

See how sneaky I can be about getting information from someone.

My friends JulieAnne, Erin, and I went to pick Marissa up pizza in hand.  She grabbed a couple pieces of pizza and asked if she should be a pig and take another one.

NO!!! her husband and I yelled at the same time.

Then we took off to our first destination.  We had a very specific time that we had to be there by because others were going to meet us there.  We had to be there by 6:30 which we would of been if we could of found parking.  Our first stop on the dessert crawl was The Alaska Cake Company.  I got a key lime tart thing and Marissa got a Bacon Cheesecake tart.  They were both really good.  After we ordered the rest of our group (who also couldn't find parking) joined us.  Our group now consisted of Megan Johnson, Ruth Sena, Dene' Quimby and Brooke Cook.  We all chatted and enjoyed our first treat.  When it was time to go we told Marissa about our little catch.  We could not continue onto our next destination until she completed 2 things on our scavenger hunt list.

The first was get something out of a strangers pocket.  No I don't mean steal I mean ask them for an item from their pocket.  That was too easy.  She jumped out in front of someone on a bicycle and yelled "STOP, STOP, THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!"  and the poor sap did stop. 

Marissa:"I need something from your pocket"

Poor Sap feels pocket:  I don't have anything in there

Marissa "Nothing at all?"

Poor Sap "Just my chapstick"

Marissa "That works."

Then the nice homeless guy gave her his chapstick and took off on his bike.

Marissa throws her hands in the air and yells "I GOT HERPIES"

 The next item on the scavenger hunt was to get a group of at least 4 people to do the "superstar" pose.  We took off wandering the streets of down town Anchorage.  Passed several people and came upon a group of tourists.

Marissa:"Hey can I get you to do something for me?"

Group of innocent tourists: "No" starts walking away.  One kind on stops "I'm sorry we don't speak English." 

We take off on the streets again where we come across a group of young'ens.

Marissa: "YOUNG PEOPLE, YOUNG PEOPLE, STOP THIS. IS. IMPORTANT!"

Once again I am surprise but they stop.  Why I am surprised young people are pretty stupid.  Sorry young people out there but really you are.

Marissa: "Can you guys do the Superstar pose with me? You do know the superstar pose right?"

upon completion of the sentence all 20 "Young people" in unison break into the superstar pose. It was great!  Marissa then thanked them profusely and gave high fives (which is amazing anyway because she doesn't do high fives).  Laughing and joking around with the "Young People" as they leave.  One even came up to her and asked her for her phone number.  To which she replies "NO" and walked away.  Hey I guess she still has it even 7 months pregnant.

 After she got her 2 items on the list passed off we went to Modern Dwellers Chocolate Lounge.  Marissa and I both got a iced hot chocolate for our dessert there.  As her challenge on her scavenger hunt she needed to talk someone into miming that they were stuck in a glass box with her.  That was an easy one.  There was a group of about 7 biker people and Marissa just plopped herself right down in the middle of them and just started chatting like she had known them forever.  Some how she convinced this guy whose name is Red to pose with her. He had the biggest knife attached to his leg.  Marissa kept making sure that he wasn't going to stab her with it.  Before we left he asked her if he could take her away with him.  We asked him if he was ready to take care of her unborn child?  He was completely willing to take on that responsibility.  We also told him that her party day just happened to land on National skinny dipping day and that was how we were going to end our evening.  Red wanted to go with us.  He tried to give us his number so that we could call him so that he could meet up with us.  Then he yelled out the door as we were leaving "I am a certified lifeguard."  If we actually did go skinny dipping and we actually called him to go with us he would have to swim with his big ol' knife just in case one of us got attacked by a bear.  I think he could take him.

Our last stop on our dessert crawl was The Sugar Spoon.  Which just happens to be my favorite dessert place in the area.  We ended up hanging out there for several hours.  We all just gossipped and had a swell evening hanging with the girls.  Marissa said that she thought that our evening was epic and I am inclined to agree.  It was so much fun and can't wait to do something like this again!  It goes down as one of the best girls nights that I have had!  Happy Birthday Risky Sue!

Goose Lake

I tried to get out of the house when ever the days were beautiful here.  Most of the time it was just to the park but on occasion we would go somewhere fun.  This particular outing was to Goose Lake.  I had heard mixed things about Goose Lake.  But now that I have been there I think that I will go back.  It wasn't dirty and gross like I had been told. It was nice because there was a place sectioned off for the kids to play in the water.  We only stayed for a few hours but it was so nice to bask in the sun and the warmth.

The kids made their own hot tubs (that would be what the little pools of water are).  Then they would go and sit in them.  The water was chilly but it didn't seem to bother the kids at all.

Tyler and Ben.  Those two are always so goofy together.

Reed is so cute because he is always concerned with what the little kids are doing.

The little girls found the "Hot Tub".  Paige sat down first and patted the ground and told Ruby to "sit, sit" and Ruby did.  They would splash and splash.  Then they would laugh and laugh.

Liam was very upset at the two little girls and yelled "THE BABIES, THE BABIES ARE RUINING EVERYTHING!!!!"

 I put Paiges hair in a mohawk.  When she saw her reflection in my sunglasses she got very upset with her hair and kept trying to make her hair go down.  It was so funny to see her so concerned about it.

 Ruby started off really clean and in a really cute swimsuit. 

 Ella loved walking out in the water.  She kept wanting to go out.

 Ella was very mad because she did not want her picture taken at all.

 Yep I totally photo bombed this picture of Liam and Enoch.  That's how I roll.

 

The boys had fun covering Tyler's foot with mud.

 I asked Ella if I could take her picture.  This was her response.  I think it's a no.

 Now both Tyler and Ben have 1 foot covered in mud.  Liam helped them cover it.  They thought it was fun breaking out of their mud cages.

 I snuck this picture of Ella.  She would purposely turn away if she saw me with my camera at her.  So I just put it on my knee and took the picture.

Tyler with Enoch.  The older boys did really good making sure that the little kids got to play with them too.