Melting Snow and Coconuts

Hello, Family--

Just looking outside at the 'almost-melted' snow! We had a week of above-freezing temperatures, and it rained a little in there, too. I can see most of the yard now, and only patches of snow.

boat shot

SPRING IS COMING. In 3 more days, in fact! Friday was one of those "teaser" days, where it actually got up to 61, or something wonderful like that! I went outside after school and took a long walk. Beautiful, beautiful.

TEACHING IN PARADISE. Kara just finished her first week of teaching the local kindergarten kids in Fiji. She was going to go with a friend, then the friend backed out at the last minute.

Speaking of beautiful, it is Just. Gorgeous. There! Here are some pictures she has sent.

She landed, and then took her big suitcase on the bus to a resort for a couple of days. At that resort, there were 'coincidentally' some people -- about 10 -- from the same volunteer program she is with, there to take a vacation weekend.

bus stop

(People start and finish their volunteer experiences different weeks. These people had already been volunteering for a little while.) So she met them all and hung out with them, then they all went back to the volunteer "bunk-house" together.

view from inside the bus

VOLLEYBALL WINS. Otherwise, we've been watching the BYU Men's Volleyball team play this week. As usual, they are really good. Gymnastics was televised on Friday too. Always fun to watch them, but they don't get televised too often.

OH--speaking of gymnastics! It's crazy what these girls can do at the college level. Avery has been following Shannon Evans, a junior on the BYU gymnastics team. Avery recreated Shannon's floor routine on youtube -- it's really fun! Here's the link for Avery's routine.

Kara with some new
5-year-old friends :)

UCLA also has an amazing athlete on the team right now: Katelyn Ohashi. She has earned five scores of  "10" this year, 3 of them on floor and 2 on beam, or something like that. She's this little tiny girl, only 4 foot 10 inches, and she has so much fun doing the routine it can only make you smile. Here is Katelyn's floor routine on youtube.

CLEANING OUT. I'm still doing the Marie Kondo thing, chipping away at our bins in the garage and other places in the house.

I went to the dentist this week, too. Happily, it was uneventful :)

Have a great week, and especially this Wednesday...that day will be SPRING!

Kari