the great remodel of 2010

We decided that activities and school and work and holidays were just not enough fun so we have decided to do some redecorating in the house. What started with a little paint and maybe some new carpet has turned into lots of paint and lots of new carpet. Stay tuned, we'll give you some after pictures soon.

And the fun begins...again.

Been a couple of weeks so I thought I would give you all an update.

Kaitlyn: She finished her sophmore season of Marching Band. They made finals at regionals, which is a BIG deal. They ulitmately took ninth. We thought she might have a break but Winterguard starts tomorrow with auditions for positions. So, she now starts two practices as week. Somewhere in there we are hoping she can keep up with homework. I know she will, she has her best grades ever so far this year! Watch out though, she starts driver's ed in two weeks.

Wells: Has been working on his Eagle project/paperwork. He has one last thing to do and then will be scheduling his Board of Review and Court of Honor. We are so excited to finally have this wonderful goal finished!! He has also started playing club volleyball. They practice twice a week (alternate days from Kaitlyn's practice) and will start competitions in January. It is fun to see him jump and spike. They can't wait to start using his height to their advantage.

Marlene: Is busy traveling and trying to keep up with the kids. She just decided to do some major remodeling during the Christmas break. Stay tuned for before/after pictures. If it works out as well as it does in my head, the transformation will be amazing.

Lee: is super busy at work. They are still growing a lot of algae trying to figure out how to save the planet. Isn't that an awesome thing to do every day? We think so. He's just busy trying to keep track of the rest of us, sometimes it is an impossible task.

Tell us how you are all doing!

busy times...as always

Good day everyone. I thought I would hurry and catch you up on the lives and times of the Cache Valley Martineaus. Kaitlyn has five competitions left. They have a super fun show. I'm trying to get a video of it so you can all see it. It is fun to watch. They are having a great time performing it and are keeping busy with practices.

Wells is busy with MESA and AMRS. He is also thinking of starting club volleyball. The best news is that he is down to signatures and a board of review to finish up his Eagle!! Wahoo!!

Marlene is busy with work and traveling. She is making a travel blanket of all the places she has gone this year and will share a picture when it is done.

Lee is looking forward to another birthday. :) Not really, but he's enjoying work. He got to play with a new algae this week that produces 40-50% oil instead of 5-10% oil. That was very exciting.

That's it for now! We are super busy but when it comes time to putting it all down on paper, we sound kinda  boring.

Hope to hear from some of you soon!!

and here comes trouble!

This week is super busy for Kaitlyn. It's HOMECOMING!! She has five performances and one parade, in addition to helping me sew costumes and still go to school on a regular schedule. :) Everyone wish her luck!

and the race is on..

It's been a few weeks so here is a quick recap to catch up...

Kaitlyn: Marching band takes up all her time. She practices four days a week. Here is her schedule for the next two weeks. Sept 17th: Parent Night, 21st Middle School presentations and Weber Review, 22nd Homecoming Parade, 24th Homecoming game and school preview, 25th Nebo Competition. Now that's how to kick off a season! After Homecoming their next parade will be in Washington DC!! They are so excited to go next summer. By the way, Kaitlyn has her driver's permit. Just thought you might like to know. :)

Wells: is busy with school and school and more school. He has joined the MESA club at school and is still looking for another something to do. He is also hoping to get his driver's license before his sister. Good luck buddy!!

Lee tried all summer and finally found the west edge of the Great Salt Lake. He is super busy at work trying to finesse a production protocol for biofuel and recently coauthored an article on the process. He loves working for EDL. It has been a great change for him.

Marlene is just running like crazy, literally. She finished her first 5K on Labor Day, will be running another on the 18th and is signing up for a duathlon on the 25th. In between there, she is loving work and still traveling.

Well, that's it for now! I hope you are enjoying our updates. We sure would love to hear from all of you!

it's a crazy day in the neighborhood

Well, more than a crazy day. It's been a crazy week. Here comes our update!

Kaitlyn: show season has officially begun and Kaitlyn is super busy. She is trying to finish one last electronic class before the band starts traveling to all their competitions. She will have to work at it but it is possible. She gets to practice four days a week for 2-3 hours each day. Squeeze YW and homework and friends in there and she doesn't have much time for anything else. But that's the way we like it, too busy to get into trouble. Well, one piece of trouble, she gets braces this week.

Wells: The youth climbing team doesn't have enough takers right now so Wells is not climbing this fall. He is planning to join a couple of clubs at school to do something fun. The club meetings start this week so weill see what happens there. He is making huge progress on the classes he does at home and so far is able to balance both school and home classes. I keep pushing him to go faster, he keeps pushing to go slower, and we somehow manage to meet in the middle and get things done pretty well. He has 1.5 classes to finish and then gets to take a break for a little bit. The length of the break depends on how fast he works! Sometimes that motivates him.

Lee: super busy growing algae and trying to figure out if we will soon be driving cars with algae-produced fuel. He was helping a friend move last week and came across a 1947 Farnsworth radio and, yup you guessed it, brought it home! It is kinda fun to have in the house. He tuned it to an oldies station so we listen to antique music on an antique radio.

Marlene: was away from home more than she was home in July and August. She is still running (will be doing her first official 5K on Labor Day) and riding (looking for another supported ride before the cold weather really hits). Three weeks at home has done wonders for her diet and she is down 7 pounds so far. She's hoping to lose another bunch before she starts traveling again.

Well, that is about it for us! We are just running and running and hoping to catch up some day. The biggest problem we have is that we are not sure what we are trying to catch!!

Hope to hear from you all soon.

school time!

The kids go back to school tomorrow!! We are all so excited to get back on a regular schedule. It's been a crazy summer and we have had a lot of fun, but here's not another adventure!

still recovering...but a different reunion

This last week has flown by so fast I wondered if it has really been a week. Well, here goes.

Kaitlyn has be busy with guard. That's her whole life and not a bad life at that. They marched in the Hyrum City Parade (thanks for the cheers!!) and is now preparing for Bountiful and Day's of '47. This is their only overnight trip of the summer and they look forward to it all year. They are not going to Lagoon this year because of the huge expense for Washington DC next year, but will still have a lot of fun. She is almost ready to take the final test for two more classes and then that leaves only one class this summer. We are both happy she picked easy ones this year. She had a blast at Girl's Camp, despite the rosy skin when she got home.

Wells has started climbing with the youth climbing team again. They are the best! Thanks to him, we had the perfect spot for climbing at the reunion. He finished the first of his four classes and then went to scout camp. Kaitlyn came home from Girl's Camp with a rosy complexion. Wells came home from Scout camp as a red skin. He's in a bit of pain. I hope it settles down a bit as he heads to EFY tomorrow. Yes, Wells is going to a week of EFY and yes, he is staying overnight at the dorms. I'm lazy and didn't want to go drop him off and pick him up everyday so he's staying. :)

My big news is that I'm sporting the new Droid X and loving it!!! I know it's a cool phone when even Kaitlyn can't figure it all out on the first try. She ususally knows all about my new phones within 10 minutes. Not this one. I'm also super busy with RFPs and travel. Such is my summer.

Lee is running more experiments trying to figure out how to get the algae to grow for production. It's been a crazy summer for that but he loves it. We can't wait until we are all running our cars on algae. :)

recovering from the reunion

We all took a couple of days to recover from the reunion but it was so worth it! It was great to see everyone. Carolyn, we missed you and your family!! Since the reunion, Kaitlyn went to girl's camp and back and has a nice sunburn to show for it. Wells has been busy with homework and almost has the first of four classes finished. He has also been a tremendous help in the yard this year. Speaking of which, check out our shed's new paint job! Thanks to Lee and Wells for finishing it up while the girls were away and playing. I've just been up to a whole lot of mischief. We are all home now for about a week and have a lot of plans for summer fun!

We hope to hear all your plans soon. Please start blogging!!

and on and on it goes

We had another week of guard and homework. Although, the kids kinda took the week off because I was in Ft. Lauderdale for most of the week. Wells and I rode the "Antelope by Moonlight" ride on Friday. It is 22 miles from the marina to the ranch and back. I thought it was going to be easy and pretty flat. Boy was I wrong. There are some really good hills on that there little island. We had fun. The ride started at 10:00 p.m. and we finished about 12:30 a.m.. Yup, 12:30 a.m. We then drove home and went right to bed. Wells and Lee planted half of the trees for Wells's eagle project and Kaitlyn and I went shopping. We then all came home and tilled the garden, started scraping the shed so we can paint it next week, trimmed all the trees, watered all the flowerbeds, and watched Avatar. It was a full afternoon. Now the kids are downstairs playing rock band with some friends. I'm about to go for an evening walk with Georgie and have some ice cream. Lee is enjoying a drive and is, possibly, somewhere in the state. That's about it for us this week.

We are so excited to see everyone next week!

time flies when you are having fun

This week has been one crazy thing after another, just like every other week we have around here.

Kaitlyn had a full week of guard and is trying to cruise through six (yes, that's six) summer classes so she has time to play/sew during the school year. She is currently taking Driver's Ed, Computer Tech, and Fitness for Life. She has been cruising through assignments pretty good and made huge progress. We're not sure she will finish before school starts but it won't be from lack of trying. Kaitlyn has also started running in the mornings before guard and was challenged to run a 5K by the end of the summer. So, she and her mom have been training. They are shooting for their first run in September.

Wells finished his summer English class through the High School and is getting a head start on English 11. English at school does not agree with him but English at home does! So, he has a goal to get through all four classes before Labor Day. Cheer him on! He also had his Eagle Scout project scheduled but the contact at Logan City forgot and didn't get stuff ready for him. He is now trying to figure out another day to do it. Needless to say, he's a bit frustrated. He will still be able to get everything finished before the end of the summer. Wells has been thoroughly enjoying his new bike. He went on several 10-mile rides before his mom was able to go with him. Well, she pushed him to 18 miles and he pushed her to go faster. Their first ride together is next week. They are going to ride 23 miles around Antelope Island at night! It is going to be so much fun. And, Wells will get in some nighttime driving hours--win, win for everyone

Lee and Marlene have been crazy busy at work and trying to keep up with the kids. We are having a hard time deciding if it will be a good thing or a bad thing to have a teenage driver.

This week in Hyrum, Utah

Kaitlyn started a new season of color guard. As a freshman, she decided to try out for guard captain (unheard of in these parts). She didn't make captain because the instructors were worried about how the juniors and seniors would react. BUT, she did make guard secretary which is the #2 most important position. Her instructor said her routine was the favorite of everyone. She is now marching three days a week for practice and more when they have a parade. She is so, so, so excited to have something to do!

Wells finished another merit badge and has his Eagle project scheduled for next week. That leaves him with only one merit badge to finish and then all the paperwork. Expect to see invitations to his Eagle Court of Honor by the end of the summer! I think I'm more excited to get this thing done than he is.

The rest of us? We're just working like normal and trying to keep up with the kiddos. We are also working really hard to get our yard redone. We have about half of our flowerbeds redone and are hoping to finish them up this week. Our next big project is to repaint our shed. We decided to paint it like a big, red barn. That should be fun. We'll have to post pictures when it is done.

We hope all of you are doing well! Blog soon. :)

Another week in the life of those crazy Martineaus

This has been once CRAZY week. Fun, but super crazy and actually more like 10 days. May 27th was the kids' last day of school. We headed out to Moab for some warmer weather, spent two days in the national parks, hiked around, got blown around, and earned two Jr. Ranger badges and 1 bonus badge for knowing about the crusty dirt. It was fun weekend.

Then, it was Memorial Day. I went for a practice ride on my bike (40 miles) and then came back to laundry, dishes, house cleaning, etc. We did break away and run to the movie that night. I had to leave at 4:00 a.m. the next day to catch my flight to Boston for a conference.

The rest of the week consisted of working, conferences, summer school, and a whole lot of nuttin'. Today, however, was quite excited (at least for me). I've been training for a cycling ride for a couple of months. Today was the day of the ride. I was registered to go 35 miles but feel so good, I changed my mind and went 57 miles! It was so much fun!! After the ride, we went and picked up a used bike for Wells. He has promised that he will ride a half century (50 miles) with me at the end of the summer. I think we will both be able to go further than that but 50 miles is a good goal.

Here are some photos.

Me five minutes before my distance was called. Notice my coordinated outfit!! I got the bike first and then had to go out and get everything else...and it had to match. My fam thinks I'm crazy.

57 miles later and I am still smiling! I really didn't expect that. If any of you ladies are up to it, we should create a team next year! :)

Remember When

REMEMBER WHEN. . .

our family consisted of 8 kids and 1 grandchild.

Welcome Martineaus! We hope you come back often to see what everyone is up to. We hope you often post information about your happenings. We hope you join in the family circle. Welcome!!