2008 Ashton Jr. Miss .... And the winner is!

This next post is mostly for Morgan. She is still very much interested in all that Jr.Miss stuff. I have to admit it, I am too. That's why I still help with the program. We had six girls from our ward who participated; Shyla and Sandi Rankin (twins), Laiken Richardson, Arleigh Grube, Kayla Judy,k and Kendall Wilkinson. It was a fun night. Here are some pictures of the night.

Jessica Lee from 2nd ward was the fitness winner. She certainly deserved it.

Kayla Judy was the Scholastic Winner! Yaaaay!

Arleigh Grube was the Talent winner. she played a piano piece called Rhumba. she did pretty good, some mistakes, but it was nicely done.

Kendall Wilkinson was the winner of the Interview scholarship. She did very well and impressed the judges. Although not the smartest cookie in the bunch (that's Kayla), she certainly can talk when she wants to impress somebody, and she wanted to do that.

Hillarie Hess was the winner of the self-expression scholarship. I have to say, this girl is just beautiful. And she's also pretty smart too and quiet. She's very quiet and I liked her a lot. Hillarie also won the 2nd runner-up scholarship.

Kera Clark, daughter of wrestling coach Mr. Clark, won the 1st runner-up scholarship. She was strong is a lot of categories. And I loved her dress. It really matches her personality and her hair. She was great.

Arleigh Grube was the Winner of Ashton Jr. Miss 2009! She did a great job all through the day. She was also the winner of the Spirit of Jr. Miss. That says a lot about Arleigh; nice and all-around good at a lot of things. I was very happy with the outcome of the program.

I'm glad its over for another year.

Ice Road Trucker

Oops! This is what happens when you try driving in a snow storm

Fortunately our Semi truck was fully loaded which adds to the fun

We had a blizzard yesterday and Zack was out of school yet another day

All these Pictures were taken today which shows that our snow depth hasn't decreased much since our high in mid February. The pipe on this wheel line sits at a little over 3 feet.

Easter Baskets and Snowboots

Yes, we're showing off our snow depth, and we sure are proud of it as you can see from Zack's pose. This is after the snow slid off the garage. March 22nd and there's still lots and lots of snow in and around our yard. What a Spring Break!

Zack and Morgan playing in the snow yesterday.

Alan posing on the snow between the Case shed and the potato cellar. This is looking South toward the windbreak. He could have leapt upon the cellar if he had long enough legs, and if he could have got a running jump.

This picture and the next are Alan on the snow at the east side of the white Quonset (sp?) cellar.Looking North

Looking South

Morgan being weirded out by Shelley and Shelley just being weird. This was taken by Alan standing on the snow in our backyard.

Front yard snowdepth. It has settled a good foot since February.

Does anyone know what this is?

Leah's Easter Egg hunt. There was one downtown, but we didn't make it. We thought it would be fun to have a little one here on the farm for Leah. She traveled around the farm by way of the little yellow sled and her mom.
This is out in the front yard. Leah's basket, is actually sitting on the place where our bird bath is buried under the snow.
Same place, different view.

Picking up eggs out in back between the Garco cellar and the Case shed. The snow depth here is probably about 10 - 13 feet.

Easter eggs hanging from the lilac bush in the back yard.

Leah in the yellow sled. Notice the pink egg in the crook of her arm. She tried to suck it.

Morgan holding on to Leah in the sled heading toward the West side of the house. She would have taken off if her mom hadn't had a good grip on her.

Finding eggs at the corner of the house and the Sunroom.

There was a blue egg hanging on the rosebush by the garage. Leah did not grab it. Leah's basket on the fence with remnants of our other holiday. Talk about not taking down your Christmas lights!

Washington D.C. Day 4 & 5

The Civil War at Menassas and Gettysburg. Today Shelley and Zack went to museums and I went with the group to Gettysburg. Very interesting but too much to absorb. We had a guide that lived and breathed civil war. He gave us "civil war 501" when the group only wanted "101." Now I need to see all the popular civil war movies on Gettysburg again to help fill in the gaps.

Shelley and Zack went to National archives, Museum of natural history, and the Holocaust museum. I let them have the camera today so they were not inclined to take pictures of the holocaust. Here are a few pictures they did take.


The original Declaration of Independence in the national archives

Sienfeld fans should recognize this display

Pictures from the Natural History Museum

This the largest near perfect cut diamond, at 22 ct the Hope Diamond

These two pictures were taken a couple days ago of the Korean war memorial. It's of 19 soldiers walking through a rice patty. Best time to see at night....pretty eerie

Day 3 Commentary

It was so late last night when we came in that I couldn't blog anything. Alan posted what was there, so I'm going to tell you what we did. First we went to Larry Craig's office. The senators get huge offices with huge staff, and the representatives don't. We only stayed there long enough to get pictures with him and then some of his staff took us on a tour of the capitol. Very cool, except the guy who took us acted like he didn't care if we were there or not. I couln't hear about 75% of what he said. The rotunda was beautiful and there is one statue of a famous person from every state. We went and stood by Pres. Brigham Young's statue for a picture, because we recognized him not the man from Idaho. And then lots of our group did the same thing. We're mostly Mormons and you just can't take the mormon out of us. We get excited when we see a prophet, even if he's been dead for a long time. We saw the old rooms of the senate and supreme court. Very small, but really neat. Then we went upstairs to the gallery? and watched a democrat senator ramble on and on showing tons of charts about how it would be OK to raise our taxes just over 2% over the totally ridiculous and astronomical figure of last time when the republicans were in charge. We considered standing up and heckling the guy, but thought that wouldn't go over very well for Idaho.
Next we went to lunch at Union station, which is very neat. It is the station for Amtrack and is really beautiful and large. You can take a train here and go to Grand Central station in 3 hours only $60. Then we went to talk to our representative Mike Simpson. He is a lot of hot air. I can't believe we keep voting him in. Reminds me of McCain. Then we went to see the Library of Congress which was so ornate and so decorated with paintings on the walls and ceilings and statuary everywhere. The floors are tile and there are mosaics everywhere too. I like this building a lot. They don't let you in the part where the books are. I think you have to have a GOLD library card to even get in that door. Then we went next door to the supreme court building and saw statues or busts of all the supreme court justices. Not so impressive inside, but very impressive on the outside. The steps and the pillars are beautiful and very justice-y. You get no impression of mercy. Then we went and talked with Senator Mike Crapo. Crapo is our best legislator, now that Craig is on his way out. Then we walked down the side of the capitol building and around the front. We wook picures everywhere and also saw Ulysses Grant memorial which is very cool. Old soldier on beautiful horse.
At 6:30 we went on a tour of DC at night and saw all the monuments lit up. Some that we hadn't seen and others we had. We went to the Jefferson memorial, and architecturally speaking, (which I'm not) it was the most beautiful. The Korean conflict memorial was absolutely stunning. Very different with 19 creeping soldiers coming through a rice paddy. And at night it was eerily real. The faces on these 19 statues showed all sorts of emotion; fatigue, fear, sadness. We saw the Marine corps monument which is the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima. It's huge and Zack and I got into an argument there so I only remember it was huge. I remember the argument better. We saw the white house last from the backside. It doesn't look as large as from the front. We took the picture of us to show you how we could be a first family. Of course Alan would have start watching the news a little more, quit watching so much weather, I would have to lose weight so I would look better in some cool first lady pant suits, and Zack would have to learn how to smile more so he could make a good impression on the people of the country. He would make a good "first son," don't you think?

Washington DC Day 3

These are out of order and not much commentary because I'm tired from a big day at the Capital visiting legislators then night tour of city. So here are some of the highlights...




At the Wall of the Vietnam Memorial



In front of the White House



Yes, that's our Senator on the left




Taken from back lawn of Capital




Jefferson Memorial