8th Grade Promotion June10th, 2009

Cole is officially moving on to High School now! His promotion was a very nice ceremony. Cole was honored with 3 Certificates, Honor Roll (4.0 GPA) WEB Leader(where everbody belongs) And of course his certificate of Promotion!It is always a challenge to get a good family photo, Cole is the only one not looking. (there must have been a hot chick walking by)lol

Thank you Grandma Judy For attending Cole's Promotion!

One of Cole's Teachers Ms. Anderson retired after 0ver 30 years as a school teacher. She was an excellent teacher! We wish her the best in her retirement!

Cole gave her flowers and a card (what a thoughtful guy!)

Cole and his Algebra Teacher Mr. Hope. Cole really excelled in math.. he is a brain when it comes to math! A+ all 3 years @ CCMS Thank you Mr. Hope and to all of Cole's teachers in Team Explorer!

Catching up on Life!

Well let's see here where shall I begin? It has been so long since my last post and so many things have occured in our family. I will start with the second to last day of school and work backwards from there. At Highland they always end with a field day... full of fun activities for all of the kids and of course tug of war between the classes. Maddy's class unfortunately did not win any against the other 3 5th grade classes. Here class happens to be the smallest with only 21 students and 5 were gone that day. 16 kids against 25 in each of the other classes... do the physics. They had fun none the less. Sydnee's class won one of their wars... and Presley's class won all of theirs. On this same day the kids get to meet their teacher for the up coming school year. They really enjoy this. Sydnee will have Ms. Johnson for 5th grade(who Maddy has) Presley will have team teachers Ms. Heath and Ms. Conan for 2nd grade... Sierra had Ms. Heath in the 2nd grade. And Maddy will be moving on to Middle School! This Is Syd's class in the middle of a war!
Here is Presley with her 1st grade teacher Mrs. McAllister and a few classmates. Eating their popsicles after Tug of War

Mrs. Grieves has been the best teacher for Sydnee this year. Sydnee improved more than 8 points on all of her state tests from the beginning of the school year. Which is huge and I thank her teacher for encouraging her and helping her stay on task!This is Maddy with her 5th grade teacher Mrs. Johnson! Thanks for a great year!

This is Maddy up recieving one of her awards, next to her is Mr. Ron Neighorn the music teacher. He has been amazing for the kids. He is moving on to another school next year and will be greatly missed. Maddy had her spring Music Program the same evening they had their awards assembly.

In the 8th grade they have an awards assembly that the students get to vote who wins the awards. Cole won The Most Respected award and Most Likely to Be A Pro Athlete Award

Maddy won the Female 5th Grade Athlete of the Year Award! She was so cute.. she had no idea she was getting this award and when Steven and I showed up at her school for the Assembly she questioned why we were there..( The PE teacher had called us the week prior and invited us to attend)

Here are a few more awards Maddy recieved:Exceeded on state Reading,Math,and Science tests and she was the only 5th grader to recieve Extraordinary growth on her state reading test, she not only exceeded but also improved her score by 11 points from the beginning of the school year. That is equivelent to 2 years of growth. Way to go Madelynn!

Sydnee recieved 3 awards(only 2 shown) Exceeding on her state Math and Reading tests. And she was one of two 4th graders that improved more than 8 points on her reading test! I am sooooo proud of you Sydnee! Way to GO!!! (for those that do not know.. Reading has been a struggle for Sydnee. She is very phonetic and as we know the english language is not always phonetic! So I greatly attribute her growth to her Teacher that has spent extra time with Sydnee)

Okay moving on to another fun night that Highland puts on for the 5th grade students.

"Night of The Notables" 6/2/09

The 5th graders each get to pick a person that is "Notable" in history or life... there is a long list from which they get to choose from. Maddy took a liking to Lucille Ball. The students study their person and do a poster board of them. They have to do this all in class so they get NO help from parents. They draw a portrait of them and do a timeline. In class they each have to do a presentation that is at least 4 minutes long.. this is a huge part of their grade. Then they have an evening at the school where all of the students dress up as their Notable person. It starts out they are all sitting around the cafeteria with #'s on them and we have to try to figure out whe they are. Then after 30 min. we all go into the gym where they have their displays set up and we can see who they are and the students hand out souveniers. It is a very fun event!

The same time as Maddy's Night of the Notables Presley had a softball game. thank goodness it was right there at Highland so we could enjoy both.

Here she is wearing the apron... she handed out little chocolates with a picture of Lucy and Ethel working at the chocolate factory. Maddy was so cute she watched several clips of Lucy on you tube and picked that one and the Vitameatavegamin as her favs! She also had little cups with juice in it that were labeled "vitameatavegamin" Very clever. She was the hit of the evening!

It was easy to dress her up.. since I love vintage/classic clothes! I already had the perfect outfit for her to wear. Even polkadot heels with a bow on them!

A couple other girls from other classes also chose to be Lucy!

I have a red wig that I did the hair up and put it on Maddy.. she said it was itchy and asked me to do it to her own hair! I think it turned out pretty dang good! I put fake eyelashes on her and the bright red lipstick! She had a blast!
12U fastpitch Champions!6/6/09

Maddy's team "The Fury" went undefeated all season and played 5 games in a row to win the end of season Tournament! These girls played amazing!

Here they are after winning the championship game!

This is team picture day!(a few weeks back)


Presley's 8U tournament 6/6/09

She was so thrilled to get her trophy! Presley loves playing softball!
Presley is on the youngest team in the league and they took 3rd place in the silver bracket at their Tournament.

Way to Go Black Diamonds!!!!

14 yr. old Birthday Party Weekend! 5/30/09

I think this photo sums it up! Exhausting! Cole and 3 of his buddies spend the weekend with us. Starting with Friday night, pizza,pop, cake, ice-cream... "suppose to go to sleep" to get up early to head to the Sand Dunes. ummm, yeah... they didn't sleep! Instead they stayed up all night eating anything and everything!Steven took them down to Florence to ride for the day!

Brody, Xavier(better known as "T"),Steven, Randy(AKA Oscar) and Cole

These boys had a blast! Steven let each one of them drive the buggy... (brave)
While the sun was shinning back at home and a toasty 90 degrees... it was windy and overcast most of the day in Florence. Steven wore shorts.. thank goodness he took a sweatshirt. He said he was shivering most of the time! He set up the sports cam and you can see them all wiping their runny noses. A few of them put hankerchiefs to block some of the wind. Unfortunately it was going right up Steves shorts. Oh did I mention he forgot his gloves too! LOL

The boys spent the night again and attended church with us on Sunday! I would have to say that Cole had one of the best parties ever! Thanks Steven for taking them! What an awesome dad!

A week full of Awesomeness!!!

My parents and youngest brother Glenn flew in on Tuesday May 19th... just in time to attend Cole's County track meet. It started out with rain but managed to stay dry throughout the rest of the meet. We got there at 12:30pm and the meet got over at 7:30pm. 19 schools were in attendance for this meet. Clear Creek MS had 7 boys on their 8th grade team.. and with these 7 boys they took first place out of 19 schools with 91 points! I am so proud of each of these boys. They did so well in all of their events. This is their trophy for 1st place!
This is all of the boys. starting from the bottom left, Sawyer Rhinevault, Nico Estibar, Remy Sosasmith, Gerry Gomez,top: Hunter Pattock, Cole Lindhorst & Devauntae Hoffman

Grandpa Merrill got his hair done by one of my girls.. so pretty!

Uncle Glenn's blue teeth from drinking a blue gatorade! Glenn thanks for coming! It is so good to see you after 2 long years!(just returned from his mission)

Thanks Uncle Mike, Aunt Julie, Deagan and Kira for coming to Cole's meet!

This is CCMS 4X100M Relay.. and they smoked their competion and easily took 1st! It was an incredible race! These boys are golden together!

Cole also took first place in the long jump: 18 feet

Cole and his 4X200M relay team took first and broke the previous record!

Cole took 3rd in his 2ooM.. it was a close race.. only .o1 seconds separated him and 2nd place

It was a great day.. so glad to have shared it with family! It meant alot!

Here is Cole's cheering section! I took all of the girls (including Savanah, Sierra's friend) out of school early to attend the meet.

Thanks Mom and Dad/Grandma and Grandpa Merrill & Uncle Glenn for coming all the way from AZ to support Cole!

Thanks Grandpa Lindhorst and Grandma Judy for coming and cheering for Cole too! He really appreciated all of the support!

14 already! Happy Birthday Cole!

Saturday May 23, 2009 was Cole's birthday. The weather was absolutely perfect so we enjoyed the outdoors with a BBQ

Cake is a must at a birthday party! I think we barely had enough to go around

We picked up a couple extras at the park while playing a game of softball.

I of course had to go around and take my signature pictures... Cole was relunctant at first.

I captured him upside down while doing a flip on the trampoline

Pretty cool huh! He looks like he is sky diving... or flying!


Cole has been asking for some sunglasses, so finally he got some.. along with several new shirts and shorts.. and the scooter.... That was kinda a gag gift... he is always taking his sisters scooters and they cry and complain... he of course thinks it is so funny to take their things but as a parent it gets really tiring to hear your kids cry and say " Cole took my scooter and won't give it back!" so now he has his own and I hope he doesn't take theirs any more. (he probably will just to hear them scream) hey that's what brothers are for right? Oh and he is getting a new phone, we ordered it last night.. so he will anxiously be waitng for it to arrive.. since his broke several weeks ago and he has been using my old pink razor.. until it decided to quit last week... he is going crazy without being able to communicate with is friends.

Happy birthday Cole, I love you so much! You are the best!!

So like I mentioned we played a family game of softball on Cole's birthday... several of us were wearing flip flops.. not the best choice, but hey we managed to not get hurt. Here are Maddy's feet and Stevens... Mine looked alot like Maddy's... until I washed them.. Maddy I think really enjoys being dirty!

Okay so I mentioned that we picked up a couple extras while playing... they came in handy.. to take our group picture!It was soooo much fun! My Mom/Grandma Merrill even took a bad bounce in her chest and has quite a bruise... it was one of those extras that hit the ball.. we will just call him purple pants.. kidding his name is Cody. He was visiting his grandparents and saw us out in the park and asked to join. I am pretty certain that the 15 yr. old girls were the main attraction. He was thrilled with "frashizzle" when he learned they were the same age as him!

Maddy pitched for our team... if you ask her we won by like 8 runs.. she is all about winning!

Also on our team was Glenn, Presley and Grandma

The other team consisted of, Cole, Sierra, Savanah, Sydnee, Grandpa, Steven and Cody (AKA Purple pants frashizzle)

Steven pitched for their team...

G- Man up to bat.... he made the fielders do alot of running!

Sierra... smacked the ball pretty good too...

Grandma hit the ball and would jog to first base still carrying the bat... we decided that both her and grandpa could have designated runners for them!

Check out that form... pretty professional ey!


Birthday boy made us fielders do some running too!

Sierra even did some pitching for her team.... Pretty sure everyone had a great time!

Even Sydnee....

While Grandma and Grandpa Merrill and Uncle Glenn were here they got to go to one of Maddy's softball games... and 2 of presley's games. I forgot to add those pictures in this post. I will have to add them later. We had a great time! Thanks again for coming and being a part of our lives!



Sunday, May 24th, 2009 Cole was ordained into the office of a Teacher in the Aaronic priesthood. He was also set apart as the 1st councelor in the Teachers quorum. I am very pleased that Cole is such a worthy young man and upholds his priesthood responsibilities.

Presley and Glenn saying their good-byes...

Right after church we took a group picture... this is the only one taken with my camera and Cole's eyes are shut... hopefully there is a better one on Grandma's camera.

Grandpa Merrill, Cole and Uncle Glenn At Presley's softball game

Sydnee with Grandma and Grandpa Merrill

Here it is... already time to take them to the airport. The time goes by too quickly. We love you mom and dad & Glenn.. it meant sooo much to all of us that you took the time to come up and spend with us a week full of awesomeness!