theMcMurray’s Blog

My two boys, Scott and Toby had their first meet of the season on Saturday.  Scott is currently competing Level 6 and Toby is competing Level 5.  It is Scott’s second season as a L6 and Toby’s first season as a L5.  They both looked absolutely awesome.  Polished and perfect as they could be.  Scott ended up with 1st place all around with an outstanding score of 89.1.  Toby came in 5th place all around with a 1st place on vault and a total score of 80.1.  Their teams placed 1st as well and Toby got to be the trophy taker because of his consistent performance at the meet.  What fun it was to watch them both focus and concentrate so hard on each of their events.  They were disciplined and gave their all on everything.  How can I not be proud of such outstanding boys.  We got it all on video and got to show it off to our extended family the next day at Scott’s 11th surprise birthday party.  I can’t help but brag about them, but they earned it all on their own.  I can’t take any credit, I just get to be sooooo PROUD!!!  Way to go BOYS!

Yesterday was crazy and I had a lot to do.  The kids were locked into what I had to do and not able to do much of what they wanted.  We created this little giving tree for our family.  It consists of a cut out tree and slips of rolled paper with things we can do for each other to bring the spirit of Christmas into our home.  After they complete the action listed they put a colored star (each color representing a different child) on the tree to show something special has been done.  When I returned home last night from a long day of gymnastics stuff it was later on and the kids were all hungry.  Scott quickly jumped in and helped me make the chocolate chip pancakes.  He was able to make them pretty much all on his own while I cleaned up the kitchen.  The other children played nicely together and let us get it all ready without complaint.  Scott continued to help out by picking things off of the giving tree and doing the things that were listed, which in turn inspired Toby & Alyson to join in.  By the end of the night, they had read the girls stories, told each other what they like about each other, Aly surprised me by cleaning the play room, and brought true joy to our crazy disoriented home.  We had some treats before bed and shared our favorite Christmas memories and it was truly special to me.  These are the moments that make me so proud to be a mom of such fabulous children.  It is these moments that help me to realize what life is all about and what this Christmas season is all about.  Thank you: Scott, Toby, Alyson and Fiona!  You are all wonderful!

So it is Christmas, yet again, and what better way to greet this season than to listen to the radio station that plays the same old Christmas songs over and over again! I decided to start listening to them early to help me ‘get in the mood’ of this special time of year. Prior years I’ve been guilty of burying my head in the sand and before I knew it, Christmas was over and done with. So this year is going to be different. If you hear me whistling, humming or singing a Christmas tune, join in with me and we can all have a fun Christmas time. Get into the spirit of giving – go on – give it a try… you just might like it!

Cute thing Fiona said tonight at dinner!  “I don’t want to get you and dad a present for Christmas Mom!”  I responded in a sad joking tone — “Why not!”  She said: “Because it is too hard to know what to get you guys!”  Laughing I told her we would help her choose something for the other one and she was well pleased!

Ian was coming home from his last business trip of the year Sunday night.  The kids and I decided it would be fun to go up to the airport to greet him.  I guess I forgot you can’t go to the gates anymore to meet them, you have to wait by the luggage pick up–not as much fun!   I also forgot that my kids are a bunch of monkeys with tons of energy and to make matters worse I have them all in gymnastics so they think they can flip around everywhere they go.  After the hour wait with these monkeys (includes, playing with the luggage carousels, up and down the escalators, playing tag, cartwheels all over the place, and many more crazy stunts) we finally saw Ian coming and we all hid behind the big gray post so he wouldn’t see us.  Toby jumped out and ran to him jumping into his arms!  It was a shocker for Ian — amazingly enough he loved the surprise.  Bringing the chaos to him was just what he wanted !  All in all it was a success and we were even able to help him get home since the car battery was dead and we had to jump start it! Best of all, all my monkeys wanted to ride with Dad!  YEAH!!!   These are the moments that we will all remember some day!  Love all my monkeys and especially their dad!

I was lucky enough today to have one of those spiritual teaching moments with my boys, Scott & Toby.  They had just asked their dad today a question about some extended family members they were concerned about.  Scott wanted to know if they would get to be in the celestial kingdom or not?  Well, on the way to my niece’s baby blessing today we talked about that subject most of the way up there, which led to missionary talk.  They both wanted to know all about missions and were very determined to serve one.  We spoke about the purpose of life and why we want to share the gospel with others.  We also spoke about respecting other people and how we should love everyone no matter what they believe.  It was awesome to answer there questions and hear their responses to such important subjects.  What it all boiled down to is what is this life all about!  How can we make this life the best possible?  They were so receptive to my answers and it was incredible to bear my testimony to them over and over again during that 30 minute ride!  These are truly precious moments in my life!

It is always fun to watch your children learn and explore things.  Especially these little ones that think they are really great at new things.  My littlest girl Fiona was not able to come with us to the family get together today for Erica’s blessing due to her sickness.  She instead stayed behind with her dad.  When I returned home later today I got quite a surprise when I took a good look at her new hair do!  According to her dad she had gone up to use the bathroom and was up there longer then usual.  He checked up on her after she had taken the scissors to her beautiful strawberry blonde hair!  She told him: “Mommy is going to be so proud of me, look how great I did!”  Boy was I ever proud!  HE HE!  When I saw her I could tell she was very concerned at what my reaction would be.  I asked nicely: “Did you cut your hair today?”  She responded shaking her head yes and smiling like she was excited that I liked it!  I said: “Wow~  When did you do that?”  She immediately burst into tears.  I hugged her and assured her I was not angry, just surprised!  As she relaxed a bit, I asked her, “So why did you cut it honey?”  She retaliated saying: “I don’t want to talk about it right now!”  Needless to say I had to convince her a little later that we would be need to visit the hair dresser tomorrow to make sure it is the prettiest it can be, because as you can see from the photo I will be posting, it isn’t QUITE there yet!  AHHHHHH!!!!!!!!  So there it is~  these little experiences sure do teach us BOTH a lot!

Here’s a picture of the Fiona’s personal hair cut (by herself)!

Driving home with all the kids in the car, I didn’t fully come to a stop at a stop sign and caught sight of a police car in wait. WalMart was the next turn in, which I quickly took. Looking back I saw the police car was moving to intercept, so I pulled into an open parking stall and waited! Looking through the forest of windshields, I could see the Police car patrolling, slowly moving on by… was he looking for me I wondered!
So thanks WalMart for helping me evade a ticket today! … that is if the Officer was going to pull me over!

The Arduino Duemilanove board is such a fun little thing to play with.

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software.

Both Scott and Toby helped out in creating a visual and audible light detector.
We used:

• 8 Light Emitting Diodes
• 9 resistors
• 1 photo resistor
• 1 piezo speaker

here is what our Arduino experimental board looked like:

We ended up creating the following C file to upload to our Arduino board to test it out. We found that in total darkness, all the LED’s are lit and there is no tone emitted. Whereas walking outside turned all the LED’s off and the speaker output a high note.

Today, Scott and myself went GeoCaching around the east side of Utah lake. We were in search of “travel bugs” and “GeoCoins” but came up empty handed! We raced to the last cache in the hopes of finding something grand, but couldn’t even find the cache!
But the good news is that Scott was able to place his first Travel Bug into the system. We called his Travel Bug “All American Scott” since that’s the name of his gym and we wanted to add a gymnastic spin to the goal of the travel bug.
We hope the travel bug will make it’s way to Scotland and find lots of people with medals (hopefully fellow gymnasts) that will, hopefully, take pictures of themselves (with their medals) and post them on the travel bugs homepage.
Feel free to join along in the adventure of Scott’s travel bug at the following URL:

All American Scott Travel Bug

Happy travels Travel Bug!