Proud Family Moment!

Such a proud moment in our family!

You might be a redneck if three members of your family are the reigning Pig Wrestling Champions of the County Fair! So my sister-in-law, Mandi, calls me up and says, "I have a proposal for you and you're gonna like it!" She wanted me to be on her Pig Wrestling team at the county fair. So I succombed to the peer pressure and drug Mataia (very willingly) into it with us. What do you know.....we won! With a very impressive time of 13.38 seconds! That pig was no match for us!

Then, not to be outdone by his girls, Jeff joined a team when one of their members was not able to make it. So his team is basically 3 tough high school athletes and him. As much as they wanted to win the men's division, they wanted to beat our time more. One of the boys was Mandi's little brother, Regg, so his competitiveness was coming through, too. They won the men's division and beat us by less than a second with a time of 12. 87 seconds! Dang!

Morgan was on a Pee Wee team and they ran out of time before they could catch the pig. But she still had fun getting dirty and chasing the pig!

So we've been making fun of ourselves all weekend. It's actually a little embarrasing, but it was pretty darn fun. And we came home with $240 prize money between the three of us!

Vegas, Baby!

For Jeff's birthday, I gave him a session at the Richard Petty driving school at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. He got to drive the #07 Jack Daniels car for 18 laps. Being a girl, I don't get what it is about fast cars, but it was a hit! He had a blast and I quite enjoyed watching him have so much fun!

Jeff gets ready to start his laps in pit road.

This is Jeff posing like a dork in his jumpsuit before he drove.

Landon and Lindsay Saurey went with us. Landon and Jeff discuss their first round of driving as they wait for their second round. They got to drive 8 laps, then they took a break and got some pointers from the instructors and then drove the last 10 laps.

This is Jeff on the track.

On Sunday we drove out to the Hoover Dam. It was amazing! If you haven't been there, you should put this on your bucket list! Pretty cool!

This picture shows a bridge that they are building across the canyon next to the dam. It was crazy!

Sunday afternoon we drove out to Pahrump to see Jeff's mom and his brother. They were having a BBQ at the park. So we got to spend a little time with them. In this picture from left to right are: Whitney (our niece), Jeff, his twin brother, Joe and his mom, Sue.

Shanda and Joe, and Jeff and Hali.

On Friday before we left for Vegas we went to Grand Targhee. Jeff and the kids snowboarded and I skiied. We couldn't have had more perfect weather for it. It was a beautiful day and we had a blast!

This is Jeff and the kids on the ski lift.

This is our nephew Foster and the view from the top. It is a gorgeous view of the Grand Tetons! This is God's country!

Finally a new post to the Roderick blog!

I'm finally taking a minute to update the Roderick blog. We have been busy, as usual. I'll give you a little update on each of us.

Chad played 3 on 3 basketball this year. It's a lot of jungle ball. In this picture, they are trying to figure out the difference between wrestling and basketball. (He's the one on the floor.)

Chad started wrestling a few weeks ago. He and his dad are having a great time with this. He has won some and lost some. Whenever he loses, he always thinks the other guy is "cheating." Jeff has been waiting a long time to have a son he can help wrestle. We can only hope that Chad will enjoy it as much as Jeff does!

Morgan has been taking dance this year in Rexburg. She has really enjoyed it and done very well. She got to perform at half time of a basketball game at Madison.

Morgan also played basketball. Jeff coached her team. She loves having her dad coach. She really surprised us how agressive she was. She progessed a lot!

Mataia (#4) is back in volleyball season. She has had 4 tournaments in Salt Lake and they have done pretty well. It's fun to see how much they are learning and getting better each week. We have 4 tournaments left in the season - two local ones and two more in Utah.

How did this happen? Our little girl is not little anymore. She had her first night dance at the Junior High in December. She looked more like 16 than 12! She was beautiful and had a great time! This is a picture of her and her friend, Joslyn before the dance.

We are big American Idol fans around here. The girls are especially fond of David Archuleta, the runner up on last years' season. (They call him David Hotchuleta!) He had a concert in Pocatello and we got tickets and took the girls and a friend. They had a ball! Jeff and I had a ball watching the girls! In the above picture are Morgan, Mataia, Peytan Crapo and Bradyn Bartschi.

Kace is still mom's little buddy! We are both enjoying our time together while the other kids are in school. He has preschool twice a week and we both enjoy that also!

Kace LOVES his big brother, Chad! They are such good friends. He is Chad's little shadow. Kace is still a little clown. He says some funny stuff and keeps us all laughing. He pretty much gets whatever he wants, too!
Jeff's twin brother Joe and his family came to visit over New Year's. It was tons of fun playing in the snow and hanging out with them. This was a picture at the nearby sand dunes where we went tubing. Left to right: Morgan, Jeff, Kace and Joe.

Kace really took a liking to Uncle Joe while they were here. He wanted Joe to sit and watch him play the Nintendo DS for hours. I think Joe kinda likes him, too!

We are ready for spring to show up here in Idaho! We thought we were done with winter, but then Mother Nature hit us with a full on blizzard yesterday. We have had a couple nice days where the weather teases us with what is to come. Mataia informed me yesterday that there's only 45 days of school left until Summer Vacation. Yahoo! I'll try to keep this updated a little more often......no promises, though!