Swim, Ollie, Swim!

This past Saturday I had my first swim meet with the Swim Masters. I was unbelievably nervous because everybody I swim with is incredibly fast. Fortunately my friend Tamy (who is also a newbie) decided to go as well. It was nice having someone else there who was just as nervous and just as slow as I am.

In case you are not familiar with Masters Swimming, it's a national organization that provides workouts with a coach and competitions. I only go two times a week, but they offer workouts 6 days a week. And let me tell you, they're not easy!!! Those coaches know how to work you! It was also through the Masters that I learned more about triathlons. Just about everybody on the team uses Masters to get better at their swimming for triathlons.

The girls came out to cheer me on!

My friend Tamy and I. Look at that pasty skin! Woo!

Getting ready for the 200 meter medley relay

Here's a video of me swimming the 100 meter freestyle. It's not the best footage..... apparently Isabelle kept tugging on Shane the whole time he was trying to film it. (FYI -- 100 meters is all the way down the pool and back). In the end I almost came in first, but that pesky 68 yr old lady beat me! lol! That's okay though, it's not too bad since my goggles were filled with water the whole time. I was lucky I could even see the wall at the end!

Only FIVE days left until my first
Triathlon!!!

Wish me luck!

Look whose wearing glasses now!

Kelly picked out her first pair of glasses today and couldn't be more excited! She loves that her glasses have zebra print on the inside to give it some more style. Her eyes really aren't that bad, it's just a little hard to see the board at school. Since she's a tall one, there's the chance she'll be placed in the back of the classroom and we didn't want 2nd grade to start off with frustration! So far she's in love with them and never wants to take them off. We'll see how long that lasts!

Catch-up post #3 -- Monica's 'Stache Bash

Monica and Justin

My best friend Monica is my best friend for a reason -- she's probably one of the funniest people I know. For her birthday this year she decided to have a 'stache bash to celebrate the occasion. We were all to meet up at the bowling alley with our mustaches to bowl the night away!!!! Of course, I couldn't just BUY a mustache. What's the fun in that? So, I knitted mine:


You know what the best part of that 'stache was? It was bendable!!!! We had a lot of fun bending it into different shapes throughout the night.

Here's Dixon and Denise. I thought they had the most creative mustaches of them all:



Cassandra's mustache was dubbed the Nast-a-stache. Hers was made from her own hair. Clever, but gross. Therefore, the Nast-a-stache.


Showing off my moves while bowling. You know what's funny? when I got up to bowl the first time I was truly convinced that I was a great bowler because I had been playing Wii bowling so much. Turns out virtual is NOT reality.


This is a great picture of Leah and I. I'm pretty sure we stare each other down like this every Sunday in Relief Society.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MONICA!

FHE Parker Style

For family home evening this past Monday Isabelle asked if we could do an activity that she found in a book. It was making "flowers" out of construction paper and old magazine pictures. Almost all of the flowers ended up being circles since apparently that's the only shape we all know how to cut. We probably ended up making about 15 flowers and then took them over to Kelly's Sunday school teacher's house. Below is a picture of a flower that each of us made:


1. Kelly's cat flower. To this day she is still more fascinated with pretend cats than the real one that she has.

2. Isabelle's crazy swirl flower. As she cut it out she just kept saying "Crazy!!!!!!!!!" in a weird voice.

3. Shane's dictator flower. He was trying to assert his manliness during a very feminine activity.

4. My ice cream flower. Mmmmmm..... ice cream


Maybe one of you lucky readers will receive an awesome gift like this from us one day!

Nauvoo Family Vacation

My family decided to take a vacation together this year and what better place to visit than Nauvoo! It's only a six hour drive and fortunately our kids are old enough that it's not too painful to travel with them. We had a wonderful time seeing all of the sites (including Carthage). Well, I can't quite say "wonderful". It really was hard to hear all of the hardships the saints went through and to actually be in the room where the Prophet Joseph Smith was martyred.

One thing that WAS really neat was my parents renting a house for us to stay in. This would be my dad and my brother hanging out on the porch:

And this would be the view from said porch:


Pretty nice, eh? We thought so!
The trip was filled with lots and lots of things to do. Now, I'm not trying to be a theater snob, but some of the productions were LAME!!!!!! At least they were free, right? One of them was really strange. I swear some lady from Utah that was the stake road show coordinator wrote this musical. It was about this girl having to choose between two guys that she liked set during the time of Old Nauvoo. They danced and sang during the good times of Nauvoo, and then mourned during the time of Joseph's death. Then, very oddly, they broke out in jubilant song and dance again because they were moving west! Yee Haw!

What made this oh-so-strange was that we had just gone on a carriage ride tour of historical Nauvoo. At one point we actually went down the "Trail of Tears" now called the "Trail of Hope". Anyway, while we passed this part of the tour, the tour guide told us a little of what happened that day. The saints were given a 4 hour notice to leave Nauvoo. It was -30 degrees. We all were told to turn around and look at the beautiful temple that they all had sacrificed to build, and to realize that they never saw it again. I'm sorry, but you can re-name it "Trail of Hope" all you want, but I still don't believe the saints were THAT jubilant when they were packing up to head west. We were slightly weirded out.

Here are the kids at the visitor's center:


Playing Pioneer games before the pageant (which, by the way, there were NINE adults in the house when we were trying to figure out how to spell "pageant" and only ONE knew how to spell it correctly -- Shane. He was also the only one who recieved his primary education outside of KY. Thank you Oregon Public School Systems!)




The whole family outside of the Nauvoo Temple: (minus Guy and Rebecca)

The best picture in the world of my parents with all of the grandkids. Priceless, no?


We had a wonderful time and the kids loved being with their cousins so much. My favorite part was the pageant (spelled correctly after a google search). I would even go so far as to say that it was better than the Palmyra pageant. But that's just me.

And, for your pleasure, I thought I'd add one more thing. You see, we do lots of really neat things as a family and we take lots of pictures to document those really neat things. However, I am usually the one holding the camera. My thinking is this: If I were to die today, what pictures would there be for the kids to remember me by? What would you put in those sappy memorial slideshows at my funeral? Pictures from high school? Get outta here! So I explained all of this to Shane and asked him if he could please make sure that it was recorded for all of my posterity to know that I, Ollie, went on this vacation. All I have to say is this -- Job well done honey.

Catch-up post #2 -- 10 yr HS reunion

Aaaahhhhh..... High School. It was somethin', right? I had a lot of fun in high school. To give you a little background, I am from a very small town smack dab in the middle of Kentucky. When I was growing up, there was only one high school in the whole county. At the time of our graduation we had the largest graduating class to date -- 111 students! The people that I graduated with were the same people I went to kindergarten with. These were people that I spent the majority of my life with! For the most part the school was pretty good. We didn't have a whole lot of selection when it came to classes, but we had some really good teachers (and of course some not so good teachers). Everybody knew everybody even if you never spoke a word to each other. You knew every person in the school, no matter what grade they were in, and their entire family. Very different from where I live now.

It was really good to go back home and see everyone just to see how much everyone had changed. So many people had kids, careers, and other things going on in their lives. It wasn't high school anymore! (Well, until the booze came out -- then it started to become more like high school) Most of the people that I graduated with still live in my hometown and keep in regular contact. What Shane and I found to be the funniest was that there were about 7 or 8 girls that all worked at the same Elementary school. These girls were also best friends in HS. Shane also found all of the southern accents funny as well. I was a little surprised that so many had actually married someone else from our graduating class. But all in all it was really good to go and I'm really bummed that more people didn't come. We only had about 50 from our graduating class to show up, so that was kind of a let down. Hopefully more people will come to the 20 year!

Class of 1999

My Cousin Adam and I

C.D. and Jaime -- they got married right after we graduated and now have 2 kids together


Crystal and Jotisha -- Crystal and I have been friends since before kindergarten. She lived down the street from me and we would spend our summers together doing crazy stuff!

The loss of a loved one...

On the morning of July 4th my sweet Uncle Kris passed away. Just a couple of months ago he was diagnosed with refractory anemia with excess blasts / high grade myelodysplastic syndrome. It's basically a really weird form of Leukemia. They're still not sure what causes it, but they are pretty sure it's not genetic. His course of treatment was very involved and ultimately led to an intense course of chemo followed by a bone marrow transplant. Unfortunately his body just couldn't handle everything and he passed away early that morning.

I loved my Uncle Kris. He married my Aunt Krista shortly after Shane and I got married. I had Kelly a few months before their son John was born and so we all grew really close together since our children were so close in age. We also loved Kris right away simply because he was the most sweet and loving person you could ever meet. One of my most favorite memories of my Uncle Kris was from this past Thanksgiving. They flew in from Arizona and had reserved a small car to rent and use while they were here. Well, for some reason or another the reservation got mixed up and they ended up with a big, shiny, red Hummer. It was awesome! Kris took Shane and I out for a drive in it and we were having a little too much fun with it. We took it over to the church parking lot and had him drive over sidewalks and other stuff (sorry Mom!). It was like we were all dumb 17 year olds again.

I really miss my Uncle Kris and I'm so sad that I won't be able to attend his memorial service in Arizona. My Aunt Krista and my cousin John are doing as well as they can and have forunately recieved a lot of help throughout this whole process.