Flagstaff, track, and snow!

Wyatt's favorite sport to do is track. He does the triple-jump as his main event. An opportunity came up for him to go to a big invitational at Northern Arizona University and compete in their Skydome. We debated on whether to go with him or let him go with the few team members who were competing. In the end we decided to make a little road trip out of it and take him up there. Kent and Kurt came along, but Grant was coming home for the 3-day weekend and didn't want to go with us. Why would he? He had the opportunity to have the house to himself! Yikes! We were a little concerned, but trusted he would be a good boy. ;)

It's a fairly quick trip up to Flagstaff - only a couple of hours. Arizona is an amazing place - you can go from desert to snow in 2 hours! And sometimes less. We stayed in the Courtyard Marriot which was a nice hotel with an indoor swimming pool, that Greg and the boys enjoyed. The other team members were in a hotel across the street from us so Wyatt went to hang out with them for a while that night.

It started snowing Sunday morning and we were thrilled! The boys hadn't seen snow in about 10 years. Kent and Kurt barely even remember it. Fortunately we borrowed winter coats and gear from some friends before we headed up there - we didn't have much of our own. Since it was snowing and I wanted to take pictures, I stood at the window of our room while K&K played. (OK, OK, I'm a wimp.) Greg joined in for a while too.

We wandered around Flagstaff for a while after that. Take my advice, don't waste your time going to the mall..it's about the most pathetic one I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of small town malls. 

Then we headed over to the NAU Skydome. Flagstaff is a cool place to go to college...if you like the cold and snow...so it was fun to get a taste of being on campus while it was snowing. The Skydome is pretty huge - NAU basketball is played in here so the track meet was setup around the basketball floor.

 

They have a big Lumberjack (it's the NAU Lumberjacks) both outside and inside - I forgot to get a picture of the outside one. Darn.

We ended up here a little toooooo early. Like 5 hours too early. Thankfully they had good Wi-Fi so I just played on my Nookcolor the whole time. And we watched Wyatt walk around with his friends.

Finally it was time for his jump. This was a huge meet - state records were set in a few events! Wyatt did well, but he's not yet up to his personal best from last year since this is just the beginning of this track season.

 

After he jumped, we left to head back home. It it had started snowing again, so we took it slow and easy until we were out of it and down the mountain some. What a fun couple of days! But that was enough cold and snow for me for this year. I was glad to get back to the warmer weather and safer streets.

Oh, and the house was intact when we got back. Grant had even vacuumed! :)

My Office Photo Border

When we built our house I was telecommuting from the electric company I worked for so we needed an office space for me. This room has always been an office, but also part guest room, and at one time a full scraproom. Several years ago my dad and I painted it when he was visiting, but I needed something for a border along the top. I was heavy into scrapbooking at the time and had lots of double prints of photos. So I came up with the idea of a photo border. 

The border is made up of 4x6 photos and  4x10 photos (typical size of a panoramic photo). I used duplicate photos I already had, plus I also took a set of of panoramics where I went around the house and shot favorite objects inside and outside the house. For example, part of a quilt, our front door, piano keys, trees outside, plus I took some panoramics of the boys. 

Then I used navy blue cardstock and cut it to about 5 inches wide. I ran all the cardstock through my Xyron, then also stapled it to the top of the wall. Then I ran all of the photos through the Xyron and just centered them on the cardstock and on top of the staples. They stuck really well. 

My office doesn't have all this craft stuff in it anymore, especially since I now digi-scrap. But I do still have my shelf of old toys. The photo border cost about $50 for the photo printing, cardstock, and Xyron usage. And so far so good...it has not fallen off!