Fun with Cousins at Zermatt

Last weekend Wendy (my sister) and her girls came into town somewhat unexpectedly, so we decided to have some emergency fun! We all (us, Wendy and her kids, and Kevin and Patrice and their kids) met at Zermatt and had a great time. It was a great cousin fest! The kids swam (of course); played chess, horseshoes, board games, and "spy"--whatever that is; we celebrated birthdays, went out to eat, and enjoyed gelato (or at least the kids did).

The munchkins also rode the carousel, which the two littlest thought was pretty special (and I think the rest of the cousins thought was a lot of fun, too, but are just a little too cool now to admit it.)


One of the big weekend highlights was the candy bar game. There is a big pile of candy bars in the center of a circle composed of all the contestants. Each takes a turn rolling dice. When a contestant rolls doubles, that contestant gets to pick a candy bar from the pile.

The trick is that you don't want the others to know what candy bar you pick because in the end (after all of the candy bars in the pile have been picked), you have a speed round where contestants who roll doubles get to pick a candy bar from another contestant, only you have to guess the candy bar right when you announce which one you want, or you don't get it.

So each of the kids went to extraordinary measures to conceal their pick from the pile, and that was cause for quite a bit of fun.

The candy bar game reveals kids' personalities. We all had a great time. It was funny to see Morgan's little personality come alive, especially as she "nonchalantly" hid her stash in her shirt!

FYI: If you'd like to stay at Zermatt, let us know as we might be able to make arrangements for you to stay there at a great rate!

Dance Festival: Being Cool Versus Having Fun

Dance festival was last week and the kids had a good time. It would seem, though, that maybe Clayton had the most fun. How much fun could we all have if we just had Clayton's attitude? You'll have to watch the video to understand.

Actually, the dance festival was really fun for everyone, even those without Clayton's energy! This year's Dance Festival was the finale to Hispanic Week at the school so all the performances were traditional dances from Spanish speaking countries. Clayton is currently taking Chinese, not Spanish, so he was the maracas player for the second grade dance. The fifth grade did a couples dance, but they had too many girls for the number of boys, so even though their Spanish is coming along great, Maddie and Kenzie didn't dance with their group either. However, because they had taken sewing, they became the costume committee and made all the cute skirts, ponchos, and hair bows for the fifth grade costumes. They also helped with the decorations, spending two hours making and hanging the chains of flowers along the fences. We ended with the family dance and a picnic lunch of traditional Guatemalan food. It was a perfect morning and we all had a great time. Everbody Dance!

Spring Soccer

Clayton finished his soccer season yesterday, and in his final game he had the eye of the tiger! After waiting on the bench for the first few minutes, he really went after it and scored early on. He was quite pleased with himself and seemed to have a lot of fun, and he had a great "header" off the other team's throw-in. He also had a fun time playing goalie with some good stops.

Coach Weaver, who is a UHP officer, came by our house (with his police car and uniform on) later in the day and gave Clayton a silver dollar for heading the ball during the game. That was a good gesture from a good coach, and it will leave a lasting impression on Clayton. Some neighbors likely wondered why the police were at our house (but we'll just leave them wondering unless they read this post)!

Backyard Theatre

Grandma Besaw has a great selection of kids costumes, and the kids all love to dress up in them. Often when we go to Grandma and Grandpa Besaw's, Madison and Mackenzie become on-the-spot playwrights and conjure a skit for everyone's entertainment as the evening's grand finale.

The top picture is of them rehearsing for a recent production. I was honored to meet one of the play's central figures who let me take a picture of her. She truly did a remarkable job of playing the blue fish in act one and the lovely princess in act two.

Happy Birthday to Melissa

Melissa just recently celebrated her birthday. I didn't take her to NYC, but I did take her to Olive Garden with the rest of the family. During the day she accompanied Morgan on a preschool field trip. That evening we went out to eat and opened presents. The kids were all very excited to give her gifts. I put Mackenzie in charge of all of the wrapping; she did a fabulous job. Hope you had a happy birthday, Melissa! Incidentally, Morgan took the picture of Melissa with the gifts. Looks like we may have a budding photographer on our hands!

Calamari Anyone?

For our anniversary, I took Melissa to Market Street Grill and we had calamari for an appetizer. Melissa thought it would be a good idea to take some home for the kids so they could try some.

We made sure to save nice big ones with tentacles. Morgan didn't want anything to do with it, but the rest of the kids were interested in trying it. Believe it or not, Clayton liked it! Madison (left), too. Mackenzie (right) not so much; she found it quite disgusting!

Hope of America

Madison and Mackenzie got to participate in the Hope of America program, which was part of the kickoff for America's Freedom Festival. They've had a great year in 5th grade with Mrs. Styler, and they've looked forward to Hope of America for a long time. About 3,600 kids from elementary schools in Utah County performed in the program at the Marriott Center at BYU.

The kids all sat on one side of the Marriott Center and wore red, white, blue, or yellow shirts to create the image of the American flag. The program consisted of a number of patriotic songs. The preceding video was the finale song, which was quite spectacular. Watch to the end to see what the "flag" looked like.

The girls were very excited for Grandma and Grandpa Besaw to come watch them, and it worked out great for me as I happened to teach class that evening and just walked over from my classroom after finishing teaching.

After the program we went to Baskin Robbins for an ice cream treat. The kids are always crazy about ice cream. In the end, they all zonked out on the way home! They were so exhausted it was funny. We all had a lot of fun, though.

Spring Break at Zermatt

For Spring Break this year we spent a week in Midway at Zermatt. No phone calls. No doorbell. No work. No Disneyland. It was fabulous!


We probably spent about 20 hours actually in the pool. The kids were completely content to swim, swim, swim. When we weren't swimming we were either playing games or watching Hannah Montana or Suite Life of Zach and Cody.

We did make an occasional trip into Heber for treats. The kids loved Dairy Keen and Melissa and I particularly enjoyed the bakery at Tarahumara. I would so like a chocolate chip pecan cookie right now! Unfortunately, we also had to take Madison to an InstaCare as she got an earache. She rebounded really well, though.

What is the fascination with jumping on elevators? Clayton and Morgan were quite the crack-up as they'd jump up and down on the elevator and tear out lickity-split as soon as the doors opened, racing down the hallway.

When asked whether they liked Disneyland or Zermatt better, they all agreed: "Tie!" Looks like there's no need to go to Disneyland again. It was nice to spend so much time together as a family.

Our First 5K

Kent (Melissa's brother) is the superstar runner in our family. A few months ago he took Clayton on a 5K fun run. Apparently Clayton has runner's blood coursing through his veins because he did quite well. And so began our family adventure of preparing for the big 5K held by Clayton's school.

Before getting ready for this 5K, I think the farthest I'd ever run was about 800 meters, so running 5 kilometers seemed like a mountain of a hurdle. Melissa, Clayton, and I prepared for a couple months, though, by jogging the course 2-3 times per week. By the time the big day arrived, I'd gotten to the point where I could at least jog the whole thing. Hurray!

On the day of the run it poured buckets, and it was very chilly out. The run was on May 2nd, which should have been decent weather.

As you can see from Clayton's big toothless smile as he crossed the finish line, he probably had a lot more gas left in him. He's a natural at age 7 clocking in at 29:18. Among the students from his school who ran the race, he came in 3rd; 1st and 2nd were two 12-year-olds, so he did pretty darn good! He beat Melissa by a minute, and he beat me by just over two minutes! But we all finished! We're very proud of Clayton for doing so well, and we're grateful to Kent for getting us off the couch! Oh, and by the way, Kent won Men's Overall . . . of course.

New York for a Weekend

Melissa surprised me on my 40th with an announcement that we were going on a trip to New York City. We had a great time. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the top of the Empire State Building, Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, American Museum of Natural History, the Manhattan Temple, and a couple of plays--Mary Poppins and Blithe Spirit. It was fun to see Rupert Everett and an 83-year-old Angela Lansbury in Blithe Spirit. We unsuccessfully tried the lottery to get Wicked tickets, but that didn't work out. We still had a great time, though, but I'd have been pretty bummed if we hadn't already seen Wicked.

Eating there was a lot of fun, too. We went to Tavern on the Green, Serendipity, Magnolia's Bakery, Katz's Deli (Where Harry Met Sally), Mimi's, Maoz, and even the Sbarro on Times Square where the stunt driver just crashed a Ferrari filming the upcoming Nicholas Cage movie. What's not to love about eating in NYC? Especially WITHOUT kids!!! Melissa was so excited to eat warm food when it was supposed to be warm and cold food when it was supposed to be cold! Ah, heaven. The frozen hot chocolate was rather exquisite . . . especially after Melissa made me jog from the American Girl store near the Rockefeller Center to Serendipity so that we could make our reservation on time!

Of course we went to Canal Street, Wall Street, Ground Zero, the Rockefeller Center, Central Park, and a number of other places, too. We had quite the clandestine experience on Canal Street getting whooshed away into a minivan on a side street by a little Asian woman covertly transmitting messages to her sidekicks to determine whether the coast was clear. Melissa was quite pleased with the outcome of the operation. Mission accomplished!


Thanks, Melissa, for a wonderful 40th birthday party! Thanks also to Rod and Terry for watching the kids (and picking us up from the airport), and to Dad for dropping us off! It took a team to pull it off, but we did! It was a fabulous couple's getaway.