First Day at New Schools!

Vincent is ready for school. First day at High School. He is trying not to smile. He is not at the school that he wanted or ever thought he would end up in. Vincent is at an Alternative High School - Robinswood this year. This is the year for him to get some organizational skills and learn how important homework is.

Our hope is this school will motivate him. Also we will work with ADD issues to get it under control.

The good think is his classes are really small. 10 to 15 people. He takes 4 classes a day, 90 min each. He will get lots of one to one time with the teachers and will be able to monitor things better. :-) Vincent said today that he was a little overdressed. Not sure what that means. I plan on visiting the school and volunteering alot this year.

How cute is Andrew! Just melt my heart! I love those dimples!

Andrew is going to a new Elementary School this year also. We decided Spanish Immersion school was too hard to monitor at home. He was falling behind and I could not help too much as I don't speak Spanish. But it looks like he might be able to practice at his new school. Half the students are Spanish speaking natives. I heard lots of other languages that I had no idea where they were from. Should be interesting.:-)

Lake Hills was recently rebuilt. They tore down the old building and now they have a beautiful new school!

So far so good. He seems to like his new teacher. He knows a few kids from the neighborhood. I saw a few kids from church and even a couple from his old school. I know Andrew will do great!

I was wondering about the busing at this new school. I am used to paying for a bus to pick up the kids for their old school. It took a while for the counselor at the school to explain to me that you don't have to pay for a bus if it is your neighborhood school that you are assigned to. Yeah! That is Awesome! We will give it a try tomorrow.

Pacific Coast Challenge 2009-Vincent

We are the Champions!

We spent the weekend in Bellingham for a soccer tournament. Vincent's team did very well. They came in first place! They played 5 tough games in 3 days. It was interesting to see how different the teams played. Being on a Premier team is alot different than what we are used to.

The boys did get to play a Lake Hills select team during the tournament. It was fun to see boys that we have know for a long time and their parents. Vincent and the boys had a slow start to that game. I think they were trying too hard to beat their friends. They won in the end. Good thing. It would have been hard to live down.

Vincent had a some great games. He played Right Back position. His team has started to figure out that his side line throw ins are huge. They are working on getting some plays to go with it. Vincent scored a goal from a corner kick! It just curved right in the top corner! It was pretty amazing.

Vincent got new shoes right before the games. Not good timing, but his old ones were falling apart and we had to exchange them for new ones. Of course Vincent did not want to wear band aids to protect his feet. So he has some big blisters now and walks alittle funny. Oh why don't they learn to listen to their mothers?

Good job Vincent! Keep up the good work!

Good Bye Ron!

What can I say about Ron. I miss Ron and Dorothy alot. They both were a big part of my life! It is late and I need to get up early. But I wanted to make sure I shared my quick memories of Ron. Things that come quickly to mind when I think about him.

• Always had great hair
• Never got angry with us as kids or adults
• like to see all the current movies
• loved Dorothy
• My best friend and cousins Dad
• Married Gary and I
• Even when people crashed his car he was still kind to them (Jan)
• Let Dorothy spoil us
• shared his nice house and pool with most everyone!
• loved his family and all the cousins!
• He loved cute baby Todd
• Don't touch his car or his office were the rules.

There is alot more memories. I am thankful to have been able to have him as a role model growing up. I know that he loved us all and cared about what happened to us.

Love you Ron!

Good Job Gary! US Citizen!

Gary with his certificate.

Gary is now a US Citizen! He has been thinking of doing this for a long time. Not too many benefits. But now that he has lived here over 20 years why not! Now he can travel and not get bugged by the customs agents for not being a us citizen.

There were 173 people taking their oath that day. Out of 173 people, 43 different nations were represented. Gary looked like the only person from England. Seattle is defiantly a melting pot of people. It all went really well and they had a short movie welcoming everyone and a message from President Obama. It was very crowded and lots of people taking photos. We got there just in time to get a chair to sit in the back row. Lots of people had to stand for the ceremony.

We are glad that Gary is here to stay in the USA! He still is a British citizen also, just in case :-)

Gary Whoops! It was a close call!

Ok why did I let Gary up in the attic? He is still not feeling well (ok he is still feeling terrible). David came over to help us with some computer problems. The router kept booting us off the Internet. So David came over with the girls and the girls requested to watch High School Musical 2.

To fix the router David and Gary had to go up in the attic and work on the equipment that is kept up there. Gary had been feeling dizzy all day and still running a fever. All of a sudden I hear this loud noise and think that some one has fallen down the stairs. But no I look up in the stair well and find a huge hole. And I hear Gary's voice.

He is so lucky he did not fall thru the ceiling! Of course it would have been the farthest place to fall in the whole house.

I guess I need to call a fix it man to fix the hole. It is nice that the hole is in the stairwell, as all the other ceiling's would be hard to fix.

Gary is having a MRI done on Friday. Yeah. He is still having his side pain. Also running a fever and is dizzy from a change to get off his pain medicine. He had a few very bad days. We think the worst is behind us. :-)

50th Wedding Anniversary!

I drove down to Utah for a Family Reunion for Mom and Dad's 50th Wedding Anniversary. We had so much fun. The whole week was packed with all kinds of activities! It would take me along time to tell all about it! Here is a quick outline of our week!

Gary almost made it to the Party on Friday. He had a plane ticket. But he was having a bad week so i told him to stay home close to his doctors. It ended up being good for him to stay home. He needed the rest and our schedule would not have been good for him. We missed him alot. I know he was sad to not be there. He really was. :-)

Sunday- Drive 13 hours to Cindy's-collapse and sleep

Monday- Drive 3 more hours to Brian Head meet family and head to Zion National Park

Tuesday- Play on ATV's and explore Brian Head and have fun with family

Wed- Play at cabin- Clean Cabin- Head back to Lehi

Thursday- Temple Open house Tour in Oacker?-Salt Lake City Temple Movie of Joseph Smith-Adult Dinner at Brazilian Grill

Friday- Family photo session-Picnic in Canyon for Mom and Dad-Program

Saturday- Swim party at Stoddard pool- Dinner and Talent show at Todds Showroom in Heber

Sunday- get up at 5am and drive home following David and girls back home!

Here are a few of my favorite photos! We put all our photos together at the end of the week and there were over 2500 photos taken all week. Alot were duplicate! But crazy amount of photos taken!

We left a place for Gary's photo to be added later. We really missed Dad at the party.

Andrew - Julie - Vincent

David-Julie-Dad-Allison-Mark
Todd-Mom-Scott-Cindy

The Westra family- It was fun to be all together again. I am sure Greg and Johnny were having fun watching.

The whole Westra Clan- Everyone was there except Gary. Pretty good for 36 people. We all got along and had a great time. We put on a picnic for Mom and Dads friends. The program included a song by the grand kids and children and then the grown up boys sang a great song also.

We spent a few days in Brian Head. Johns boss let us use his vacation house. The scenery was awesome and we had a fun time exploring on the ATV's. Jenn's idea was to do a photo shoot in the Aspen trees. It turned out pretty cool. Good Idea. Too bad not everyone was there. It also rained 10 minutes after we were done getting back.

Sittin on a tree

The whole gang. Kind of looks like a scene from a movie?

Emily - Mitchell - Julie

Brendon - Andrew

David - Tiffany - Natalie

This was my favorite photo. They look so cute and happy!