Wow!

Wow, same hair and cheeks! :)

I haven't posted for a while, so here's a little update on the Reckling clan (or as Luke calls us the "Folklings").

Emma is trying to transition into nursery, and it has been a bit more frustrating than I expected. She has never been clingy, and all of a sudden, screams the second I leave the room. I know many people go through this, and it will pass...she loves the toys and socializing--she just wants me sitting there on the floor while it happens. It's fun to see her grow up--she's saying new words everyday. Her favorite phrase right now is, "What is it?", followed by a "Wow". She loves to read "Where the Wild Things Are" and points out Max in every picture. Being a mom is so much fun...I know Grandma and Grandpa love it too!

I am staying busy. I'm happy that there are only 9 weeks of school left. I'm teaching a night class (Spanish 102) at our community college and I am going to teach a couple of summer classes starting in June, also. I love teaching adults, its such a different world from middle school. Next year I'm dropping down to a part-time contract during the day, and I'll still be teaching one class at night a couple of days a week at the community college. I'll be able to be home more with Emma. I'm really looking forward to it!

Shane is 2 quarters away from being done with his diesel program. He has a great job right now working for one of the school districts, and they will convert it to a full-time job once he gets his certification. So next year, he will be home with Emma in the mornings while I'm at work, then I'll come home and he'll work the night shift at work, and I'll be home with Emma. We won't see each other much during the week, but it'll be great to have Shane done with school.

Hope all is well with you! :) Love, Carrie, Shane & Emma

Possible Family Resemblance

Just for fun, here is a picture of Kimberly Valentine on Christmas Eve in 1993. Can anyone see a resemblance to anyone, other than our granchildren are all beautiful ... even the boys!

Easter Pictures

Emma's first real Easter Egg Hunt. So fun!

Love, Carrie, Shane & Emma

Valentine Family Pictures

Grandpa Robert and Ethan Robert

Happy Easter

New baby cousin Robert

Spencer and the Science Fair Award

Our 16th Anniversary in January

The view from Stephen's desk at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.

Ethan's first piano performance. He played "Middle C" and took a bow.

Another family band?

It's a mental sport, so I must be insane!

I want to thank my dad for putting in the plug for me about the marathon. I am touched! I will be dedicating each mile to the special people in my life, my biggest supporters, and I have to fill 26 of them! So anyone who wants to send me an email to wish me well, I would love it, and you will be remembered while I am running! I will look at my list and it will say, "Mile (6) is dedicated to the Folkman Family Bloggers"! It's going to be a blast, and definitely a peak experience I will always remember.

My only regret is that Stephen will not be there at the finish line. The marathon date changed after I registered, and Stephen was already scheduled to be a speaker at a five-day conference in Richmond, VA. He tried to get out of it, or have his assignment changed to a different day, but it wasn't possible. So I told him he has to blow up a picture of his head to life-size, and have the kids hold it up when I get there. Mom and Dad will be there with my kids, and Ian said he was coming, and I think my in-laws and a few others on that side will be there. It's only a month away!

I'm sorry I haven't posted for awhile. I don't have a lot of time to "play" on the computer. I even have to compete with Ethan for a turn nowadays.

So, to update everyone....

It is "birthday season" at our house. It officially starts each year with Ethan's birthday on March 30. All seven of us have our birthdays between March 30 and August 9. Ethan is four now. His best present this year was his new baby cousin born on his birthday. We were so happy about that! Now Ethan Robert and Robert Grant will not only share the same name, but the same birthday too! Congratulations Adam & Shala! We love you!

Anna is 6 and a half, and about to graduate from 1st grade. School gets out the end of May for us. She is a very good reader. Anna is looking forward to her bedroom finally being finished in a few more weeks. She has been occupying a small corner of Amanda and Kimberly's room for a year now. We are in the mudding and taping stage of construction, so it should be ready in a few weeks. I am looking foward to decorating it for her. She will have the girliest, frilly, flowery, princess room I can dream up.

Spencer recently won an award for his science fair project at school, and received the highest rating at the district level. He is getting ready for his first pinewood derby, and is just a great kid.

Kimberly is so ready to be done with Jr. High...
She is excited about her first job when school gets out. She'll be working at Lagoon with Amanda.

Amanda is learning to DRIVE!!!!! Enough said.
Actually, she just got back from a trip to California with her high school orchestra. She had a great time. She has already started working at Lagoon on weekends for the season.

Stephen is very very busy with work, basement construction, his calling as ward clerk, and he always has 2 or 3 other projects on the side such as writing family histories in book form for people, and working on his own writing projects. AND, he still has time to help around the house, and cook, and be the "waterboy" sometimes for my training runs, and be the best husband a wife could ask for! Right now he is on a five-day business trip in Colorado.

As for me, I am busy with running, Young Womens, running, piano lessons, running, PTA, running, etc. We are planning Girls Camp right now, so the girls and I are looking forward to that. It is the week after school gets out.

In general, life is good!!

I love our family blog. I have had fun this morning catching up with all of you! I looked at Zach's myspace page and loved the documentary, and the song. Good luck on the show in May! Ian's trebuchet is the coolest, and I love all the pictures everyone is adding to the blogs. I was so happy to see pictures of Kris and Marcos and their family. It has been so long.

Love to you all!
Linda, Stephen, Amanda, Kimberly, Spencer, Anna, and Ethan.

P.S. In case you don't have my email address...lindamaevalentine@msn.com

Upcoming events

Since Linda and her family haven't posted lately, I will remind everyone to remember May 19 to keep Linda in your prayers. That's the day she runs the Ogden Marathon, at age 34-11/12, a goal she has had for quite a while. She recently completed a half-marathon and is pretty optimistic she will pull this off. If you are not amazed, you should be.

Trebu-what?

Hey everyone,

I am in between group meetings right now for school. I just thought I would take the time to post something fun I did over the weekend and in between studying my brains out desperately trying to graduate (I won't believe it until I see it).

Anyway, my friends and I have formed an "adventure team" that plans fun things to do and then ACTUALLY does them. It's crazy I know. So what is it that we did you ask? Well, it all boils down to running-a-muck, and right now running-a-muck that means we built a trebuchet. (I wonder if anyone like my Dad is rolling their eyes right now.)

There was no real reason behind building it, it just sounded like fun, so we did. We tried to model it after one of the famous trebuchet's of history called the Warwolf. You can see how accurate we were in the pictures, it's an amazing resemblance if you ask me. We used left over wood from a house my friend built for his family and a utility bucket to hold the counter weights (dirt and rocks) We were eventually able to throw a potato well over 100 feet (we didn't have anything to measure with but we feel it's close) using the mighty power of GRAVITY! (Some of us could throw the potato ourselves that far, but hey we had fun.)

We decided to name the trebuchet Death, partly because one of my friends just wanted to write it all over it because of how unsure we were of our handy work, the other part is because we did almost hit ourselves. Our release pin was too vertical, which means the trebuchet would release too early, we actually threw a few potatoes backwards. So here are the pictures, one is of myself and my friends, the other is of the trebuchet in action (you can see a potato in the top right corner). I hope you enjoy them as much as I did doing it.

Ian

Zach probably won't get around to doing this himself, but he and a bunch of his friends from seminary and high school have an indie rock band, and are playing their first show in a couple of weeks at a teen center in Redmond. They are pretty excited, although some of you might look at this and think they are a bunch of nerds, playing in a nerd band, and you might be right! Four out of the five are all getting ready to go on missions, and the other one (keyboard player) is non-LDS.

You can also check out their myspace page at myspace.com/stayontargets, where they have one of their songs, and a documentary film that one of their friends did for them. They've been psyched out by the number of hits, and I promise I've only been responsible for about less than ten of them! We'll let you know how the concert goes, and probably post some pictures!

Proud Dad, Kevin

Hello World!

We thought we'd make our posting debut in style...by announcing to everyone that we recently had our baby! Now some of you may think that this is some sort of April Fools' joke, but as much as I'd like to pull it off, too many people already know the truth. Weighing in at 6 lbs., 13oz., Robert Grant Folkman was born on Friday, March 30, 2007 at 2:53pm. Named after his grandfathers Robert Folkman and Grant Robertson, our precious Robert came to us unexpectedly 10 days early. Thanks to the gifts and hand-me-downs from my dear sisters and in-laws, we didn't look too unprepared when we brought him home from the hospital today. Abbie (2) is glad to have her mom back and her baby brother at home.

Just to catch everyone up on the rest of our lives (as it has been a long time since we sent out an email, not to mention posting on the family blog), I graduated from BYU with a degree in Construction Management in April of 2006. I now work for ArrowStar Construction out of Orem, UT. ArrowStar has three divisions: ArrowStar Commercial, ArrowStar Communities, and Arthur Lewis Fine Homes. While I work with all three divisions developing and implementing business systems, I primarily work as a project manager in our custom home division (Arthur Lewis Fine Homes). As we are not yet a large company, I am also the IT manager. Shala graduated in December of 2006 with a degree in Geology and will be participating in graduation ceremonies later this month. She is happy to be done with school and looking forward to being a full-time mom. She's also excited to be able to spend time scrapbooking. Abbie is a beautiful, happy, strawberry blonde, blue-eyed, 2-year old girl that has spring fever and an Energizer battery. She keeps going, and going, and going....