Time for a bigger trophy shelf!!!

Picture by Maddi Sheridan

Thomas with his first place trophy!!!

Thomas and his "friend" after receiving their first place trophies. Awwwww they are so cute!!!

Thomas swam in the Kearns Holiday Open today and yesterday. He did amazing as usual. He ended up winning the 100 & 200 Fly, the 200 Breast, 200 IM and 400 IM. He walked away with the first place High Points Trophy and got to have his picture taken to be put in next years program as the winner in each of those events and the high points winner.
We had to drive in a super bad snow storm coming home last night and the roads were still not very clear today but it was worth it to have him do so good. He is really doing amazing right now but if you see how hard he works it all makes sense! He ALWAYS makes every practice and works his butt off every time. The next month he will be gearing up for the High School Championships and then the Senior State Championships but by then he will have aged up to 15 and be swimming with the big boys.
So after a 2 day meet and winning the whole show, you would think that he would want to sleep in tomorrow morning.......

but, NO...

He will be up by 6:30...

sitting in the kitchen...

waiting for Kevin to give him a ride to practice.

WAY TO GO THOMAS!!! YOU ARE AMAZING!!!

Big Mistake!

Ever since Toy Story 3 came out in theaters I have wanted to see it, but ever since it came out I have also been avoiding it. The plan was to go see it before Mitch left on his mission. He ended up going and taking Maddi and the boys. He came home and informed me that I would cry my eyes out when I saw it. Well Christmas Eve I made the mistake of thinking it would be a good time to watch it. It wasn't. Mitch was right, I cried my eyes out and more! Toy Story has always been a favorite of Mitchell's and watching the little boy Andy grow up and leave home was more than I could take. It was all too close to home. My kids have grown up way too fast. Mitch is in a different country, Maddi is getting ready to leave home for college. Thomas will be able to start learning to drive a car in 2 months and Jacob just isn't a baby anymore. Time moves so fast. It is hard to believe that I sent Mitch off a boy and he will return a man. I sent a little Woody doll in Mitchell's suitcase when he left for Peru. I noticed in the pictures he sends home that Woody is watching over him in Peru when I can't be. Now if I can just talk Maddi into not leaving home .......

Christmas 2010

What a crazy busy fun filled month. We are so blessed to have such wonderful friends and family in our lives. This entire month was a blur from start to finish and there was not a lot of time to blog about it. Christmas day we were up dark and early in anticipation for Elder Mitch's Christmas call. We were expecting him to call at 7 am but were excited when the phone rang at 6:30. It was a little hard to hear him, it sounded like he was talking through a tube but it was SO fun to be able to talk to him and have him answer questions and be able to talk to everyone. He said that they had a nice dinner in Huancayo on Christmas Eve with turkey and hamburgers...what a combo!!! Then they went on to the roof and watched fireworks at midnight. He told us they were excited to have 5 baptisms that day! He was able to talk for almost one hour before his calling card ended and just cut us off. It was a really hard way to end the call and I was in tears most of the rest of the day but I am really grateful we were able to hear his voice even if it was just for a little while. Hopefully we will be getting our regular e mail tomorrow!!!!

Maddi got her first big white envelope with her first acceptance letter. This one is for Weber State. She is anxiously awaiting the next one for Dixie State where she really wants to go. I am voting for Weber. I'm not too sure I can handle two kids being gone! At least I could call her and go see her whenever I wanted too.I would still miss her a ton!
Good job Maddi!!!

Moving on to Christmas!!!

The ground outside is covered in snow and the kids were itching to put up the tree so up it went! Every year the kids get a new ornament to put on the tree so they each have their own box to put up of their very own ornaments. I did O.K until I opened up Mitchell's box and then I lost it! It seems so strange to not have him here to do these family things! He even got his own ornament this year even though he is far away. Maddi's ornament is a pair of cowboy boots, Thomas got a Texas Longhorns one( I love E bay!) and Jacob got a little baseball player. I guess there is no turning back now... Christmas time is here!!!

Over the river and through the woods.......

On our way!!!

Mema and Grandpa with Mini Mitch

We had the kids make Indian or turkey hats to keep them busy so we made one for Mini Mitch too!

Mini Mitch doesn't have quite the appetite as the real Mitch so we had A LOT of mashed potatoes left over!

The cute cousins and their creative hats!

We, O.K I decided to not have Thanksgiving at our house this year because I was missing Elder Sheridan to much and didn't want to be home bawling the whole day. So we packed up and headed south, leaving the snow and cold for sunshine and cold for a few days. My brother decided to go down also so we had a packed house but it was SUPER fun. The kids had a great time just hanging out with each other and Thanksgiving dinner was AMAZING as always! Thanks Mom!!!
Little did we know that my Dad had just been checked out of the hospital that morning. He had to have another stent put in for another blocked artery. So what says recovery more than having 10 people(six of those being kids) crash at your house the day you get out of the hospital! They didn't tell us because they knew we would have stayed home, and they were right but I am so glad we were able to go . It wasn't nearly as loud and hectic as I thought it was going to be ( it probably was for grandpa though!)
We decided to take Mitch with us on the trip. Kevin's mom told us about a friend of hers that made a flat missionary( like the book Flat Stanley) and takes it with them and takes pictures to send to their missionary. I thought that would be fun so we made a mini Mitch to go on our adventures with us so he could participate in all of the Thanksgiving fun!
We had a really great time and I am so thankful for parents who do so much for us and give our kids awesome memories like we had growing up ! Thanks Mom and Dad for putting up with us! It was so much fun!

Sadies

In Mitchell's last e mail home he mentioned Maddi fingers are wrong in her Spiderman web slinging picture from the Sadie's dance at WX. So here is the picture from the dance! Also check out Mitchell's blog HERE to see how GREAT he is doing and how tall he looks next to the little Peruvian family... he looks like a GIANT!

Elder Sheridan's Christmas surprise

Thank you SOOO much to everyone who sent me a note to add to Mitchells' Christmas Advent calendar. I have tried to figure out how to send him a Christmas tree and some sort of advent calendar. This killed two birds with one stone! Now he will have a Christmas tree with a pocket to open up each day in December filled with a note from someone back at home. It turned out really cute and I am so grateful to all of you who took a few seconds to write him a note. It will be a fun thing for him as he spends his first Christmas away from home! I received so many I was able to put more than one message in each pocket!

Halloween

Halloween came and went in a blur. We carved pumpkins. I even carved Mitch's pumpkin for him. We went trick or treating in the pouring rain and hosted Thomas's swim buds for a Halloween party. Kevin and I thought of the scariest movie for them to watch, it scared the pants off of us when we were teens. The movie was... Poltergeist. Needless to say the 80's special effects and gore just wasn't up to par with what today's teens are used to. As we sat upstairs we listened to them ROAR with laughter at our "scary" movie. I guess they were entertained either way, they watched a newer scary movie from this decade when the comedy Poltergeist was over.
All in all it was a fun crazy weekend. Jacob was a vampire, Thomas was a Ghostbuster and Maddi was Rachel from "Glee" which really is the way she dresses anyway so no one really knew that she was dressed up.
Fun times!

Flippin Fast Fresh!!!!

Well today Thomas proved what an awesome swimmer he is! It was his first Woods Cross High swim meet. They are only allowed to swim 2 events and 2 relays. I think both of his relay teams came in second and in the 200 IM he came in second, a big Senior kid from Tooele beat him (but not by much). He then swam the 500 free and actually lapped everyone in the pool. He finished first by over 30seconds, it was awesome! Not bad for a little Freshman! After he beat everyone so badly in the 500, one of the mom's leaned over and asked me what I feed him to make him go so fast. He works SO hard and SO much that it is fun to see him do well. I guess all those 5:30 a.m practices are paying off.

Long time no Blog!

Life has been incredibly hectic this month, but what's new right. We have had a lot of fun but things have been super busy.
I was in charge of our ward's "Souper Saturday" which took up most of my time this month. On Mondays I pretty much do nothing but sit at the computer and wait for my missionary to email. Mitchell's best friends mom said it best when she said it is like being paralyzed, you can't get up from the computer until you get that e mail!
Mitch is doing AWESOME if you haven't yet be sure to check out his blog HERE.
Thomas started his high school swimming career. His first meet was in Tooele last week, if you can call it a meet. It was a relay meet to kick off the season. It consisted of a bunch of relays, most of which were silly ones they never swim in a real meet. Needless to say Mr. serious swimmer was not amused. He is ready to swim and compete and he is not used to goofing off, when it comes to swimming that is. He can test his hard work this Thursday at the first "real" meet of the season.
Jacob has been busy with friends and school and dentist visits. He had to have a muscle cut on the inside of his upper teeth that ran between his two front teeth ( not a fun day- see picture) and one small cavity filled.
Maddi has been busy with school and the dance and work. But good news for her, she is 17 and still hasn't had a cavity! The day of her dance where we had dinner here was also the day of "Souper Saturday" so that day was INSANE!!! She also took the ACT test that day as well because we thought it would be fun to fit in one more activity that day ha ha!. She is trying to decide which college to choose and wanted to bump up her ACT score by taking it again, mostly I think she just wanted to beat Mitchell's score!
Kevin has been crazy busy with work and school, only 2 more months until he is finished. WAHOO!!! So that's our life in a nutshell.
Apologies to all of our Parents that have not heard anything from us lately we are still alive and still love you! Soooo sit down, grab a drink and lets catch up.......................

Crazy Boys

We have the cutest little boys that just moved in next door and now we always seem to have a gang of little pirates or superheros or spies, depending on the day. Thomas went out the other day to see what they were doing and spent a while being roped in to their game. Maddi was ready with her camera...awesome!

Early Halloween

Here is a sneak peek at Jakes costume. He had a friends Halloween party last Friday so he got to try out his costume. He didn't want to put the white face paint on ( he probably won't on Halloween night either, he hates stuff on his face). He is super excited to go trick or treating and just went to the dentist to have a cavity filled so he is ready to make more, bring on the candy!

Happy Birthday to the BEST!!!

I can't forget to mention Kevin had a birthday this month too! We are so lucky to have the best, hardest working, funniest Dad in the world!

Sadies

Maddi went to Sadies this last weekend. Her group dressed in T shirts. The boys had a super hero on the front and the girls were the superhero girlfriend. Maddi and her date were Spiderman and Mary Jane. They went to the Zoo during the day and then back to our house for dinner and then on to the dance. The next day...flowers from the boy she took!