Samuel – Page 25 – David & LaReita Berky

Samuel Martial Arts Tournament

Sam won second place in his age/division

Running cousins this morning for Spanish Fork Fiesta Days celebration. After Benjamin not doing so well in the Tour de Donut on the bike, I wanted him to experience something I knew his was good at – running. So Benjamin and Samuel did the 1 mile fun run with Matt. Benjamin’s time was 8:27 and Samuel’s time was 14:05. I started running with Benjamin, but he took off when Samuel and I were slowing him down. Benjamin also decided that he wanted to run barefoot, but did opt to run in socks since that would be slightly more comfortable. This was because he wanted a pair like my Vibram 5 fingers shoes, but they are too expensive for growing feet!

The older cousins ran the 10k. Brandon with his good friend Matt, Jared, Alyssa and Holly. In fact, I think after Brandon finished his 10k, Matt’s 1 mile fun run started and LaMont wasn’t ready to run with Matt, so Brandon jumped in the race to run with Matt. What a fantastic big brother!

Preschool field trip to farm

The Joy School group that I’m in has been great this year. Not only has saved money, but has been fun to choose what field trips we could do with the kids. (See the Instrument Petting Zoo post).

Today we went to Pleasant Grove to the Hee Haw farm where the farmer’s wife did a fun little presentation, then the kids got to go pet (chase) the new animals, go on homemade slides and rides. Pretty good for $6 admission. (And smart business practice for the farmer!)

Jacob ABSOLUTELY loved the animals. He kept going back to the rabbits and wanting to pet them. I had to chase a couple of the rabbits that got out of their cage because of all the attention they were getting from the kiddos.

Samuel’s favorite was the LOOOONG homemade slide. Complete with a water puddle at the bottom 🙂 ! Fortunately he wore the right kind of pants that dried quickly when I had him sit on the black, really warm tubing.

2011-04-27-FarmSam

December Updates

December 21st – massive snow storm:

2010-12-21_08-02-snowstorm

Anthony braves the storm to survey the damage:

2010-12-21_08-03-21_421

Building gingerbread houses:

2010-12-24_11-04-gingerbread-houses

Halloween 2010

Traditional Halloween didn’t really happen this year for lots of reasons. It was celebrated on Sat the 30th. It started hailing at prime trick-or-treating time, so there weren’t many that came. It was just plain miserable outside. We didn’t even get our traditional fire set up out front. AND we forgot to get a picture in all their costumes. Oh well.

One notable thing was that James bought his costume this year with his own money! It was $21.34 and was a Star Wars character – like Jango Fett, but something else. This year Samuel wore a different costume each day of the week. Ben finally settled on wearing the orange jumpsuit prisioner costume and a blue wizard-looking hat. So he was the “Prisoner from Azkaban”. Yeah. Nobody realized it until we told them, then they smiled. Pretty ingenious for a 6 1/2 year old (who just finished having the book read to him). Anthony was himself, which made costuming easy. And Jacob just stayed inside with mom while she made homemade tomato soup, grilled cheese and fresh apple cider. LaReita’s cousin (well, 1st cousin, once removed) Jonathan Mitchell* was the door handler. Dave drove in the car being the back-up for the boys and friends Carlos and Cesar as they ran through the cold drizzling rain.

*Jonathan works for Dave and LaMont in the Find-A-Code business. He and his wife moved to Washington this summer. He came back here this week to do some conferencing with Dave.