The Sports Page

Here's a wrap up of some of the kids' various sporting endeavors since last summer.

Bingham Football - Tillman is the biggest sports fan of all time. That's settled fact. And football is his favorite. His first day of tryouts he made a point of showing up in an Alabama t-shirt (because he likes to represent) which got him noticed right away by one of the coaches (who is from Alabama and was also wearing an Alabama t-shirt). That was a good thing since right after that Tillman was diagnosed with a hernia and was unable to hit for the rest of try-out week - and had to sit out a lot. Fortunately, that first impression stuck and Tillman was drafted onto a pretty good team. He had a dream season, eventually settling in as starting free-safety (defense), and was outstanding. They won their division championship. It was super fun.






Untitled from Angie Melton on Vimeo.

Following the championship game

With Grandma and Grandpa after the championship

Here's his coach talking about him at the team banquet. Tillman had the time of his life!

Untitled from Angie Melton on Vimeo.

Grace decided to try Cross Country this year at her school. She had a great year! She solidly the number 2 girl on the Providence Hall girl's varsity squad. She was super tough! And somehow, while gutting it out, always managed to look sweet and cute. :)








Noble's knee injury turned out to be a torn meniscus. So he was was unable to train or race for two months.

He worked with a physical therapist every week. We connected with her over cross country since her boys also run, so we got to meet up at all the big races for the rest of the season where she would check up on Noble.

When he finally returned to racing he was advised to take it easy and keep it to a 6 min mile pace, which he disregarded. His knee held up but the triple digit temperature almost did him in. Mike had to help him walk to find shade.

 He had another set back soon after returning, twisting his other knee at a large invitational race. Luckily, that was not serious and the physical therapist cleared him to run again.

Bingham CC had a good year with several sophomore boys taking the lead on the team.

The future of Bingham Cross Country - sophomore speed-machines

Region Champs

Getting his post-race hugs...


We had the entire Cross Country team over for dinner and Mike roped in our neighbor, Andrew Brewer, a Bingham mile record-holder and BYU runner, as the evening's inspirational speaker.


It was way fun to watch him race at state.

(You should have seen 91 year old Grandma Tiede jogging all over Sugarhouse Park chasing the pack!)

And then there's Noble's other sport, long boarding...


He and his bff put together some pretty great videos. Here's one from their day at the Daybreak Downhill competition.


Jessie played a little football herself this fall...at the Bingham powderpuff game. It was Juniors vs. Seniors and unfortunately the Juniors dominated. (I'm pretty sure that one Junior girl that scored all the points was actually an NFL plant.) It was fun to hang out as a family at Ron Thorne field and cheer her on. I think Jess probably could have won it though, if there was a prize for trash-talking.  ha ha.


Jess wasn't able to ride very much this past summer because her horse was lame. When Grandpa got home from his mission she was so happy to take a trail ride with him again.


And that's the sports news.

Summertime at Lightspeed

Literally, if you blink around here you might miss an entire season. So, for the record:

* This year the little boys and I decided that we would make Fourth of July shirts. Sully created this design (which of course Abner wanted to duplicate once he saw Sully doing it). I thought they turned out nicely.

* Stay-cationing ... Seven Peaks, long-boarding Provo Canyon, Mountain West Burrito

Noble snuggling up to his giant burrito.

 * Jess had an impromptu photo-shoot with Dolli.  Here's one of the pics. Pretty girls.

* Girls camp 2016 - JR Property. 

The A-Team. Backpacking with the 4th years. 

The Bishop captured this sweet moment with Grace and her posse on their sunrise hike.

*While the girls were away at girls camp Sully was introduced to the dusty world of Cub Scout Camp. In the days leading up to it he could hardly contain his excitement. He was in heaven with all the Cub Scout pomp and circumstance, the silly skits, the adventure...This picture says it all.

* Mike and I celebrated 19 years of marriage. Dinner at Log Haven and a quiet walk in the woods...

*Jess and her homie, Cassie took their first solo-road trip (also Cassie's Senior trip) to St. George last week. They weren't entirely on their own since they stayed with Mike's parents. They had a packed itinerary: swimming, a show at Tuacahn, shopping, hiking in Zion and a visit to the temple. 

* Meanwhile... Noble spent an eventful week in Lake Powell with the varsity scouts. Lots of sun, water, food, fishing, a trip to the emergency room in Price (not Noble), tire damage, and food poisoning (also not Noble, thankfully). Noble came home with a torqued left knee (excusing him from two weeks of XC workouts - in lieu of real running, he was prescribed "aqua-jogging" at the rec center pool) but with plenty of great memories. He'd go back in a heart beat.

* Reno-with-Roy has picked back up again after a brief hiatus (i.e., all our camps and Roy's camps).

They poured the concrete foundation for the spiral staircase which was installed earlier this week...without a handrail on the top landing - (what the??!). Apparently they have to do it that way so they can measure after the staircase is installed. Then they manufacture the railing. In the meantime I have to keep an army of neighborhood children off this shiny new death trap. It should be completed Monday. Wish us luck for a safe weekend. 

* We finally made it official -  Noble's Eagle Scout Court of Honor was held this past Sunday.

I wish I had taken the time to get some better pictures of Noble with family members and his leaders. Thanks to Mike's dad for getting some and sharing them with us.

Grandma came sporting her own boys' Eagle Scout pins.

One of the best parts of the Court of Honor was the color guard - all brothers of the Eagle candidates. There were two older, already Eagle Scout brothers who directed, two scout age brothers (including Tillman), and two Cub Scout age brothers, which including a very earnest and excited Sully, who prayed the night before that he would do well helping with the color guard especially because he was just 8 years old. He took his duty seriously. I wish that we had taken a good picture of the group of brothers together. By the way, Sully only bumped into the wall and ceiling a few times, and nearly missed dragging the flag of Utah through the food on the table on his way out. But as people moved to help him,  he refused, determined to do it on his own. It was awesome!

* For a few years I have felt drawn to do something to help with refugees, but I didn't know what to do. When I watched the Women's Session of LDS General Conference this past April, I felt that my prompting was validated and now I had a direction in which to go. We signed up a few months ago through Catholic Community Services to volunteer with newly arrived refugee families. We attended the meetings, went through the background checks and recently we were assigned, with other members of our group. to an Afghani family with a mom, grandma and 5 kids. They arrived last week. Already this has been an awesome experience, especially for the kids. When it was time to meet them at the airport I wasn't sure if I should bring all of our kids, but decided to bring them (all but Abner). I was so glad that I did. When the family, speaking no English, stood there shaking our hands a little nervously, it was the sight of our children that put them at ease. They smiled, walked up to each of them and kissed their cheeks. Grace said it was the coolest experience ever. We are assigned to help out for up to two years with this family. I'll keep you updated on the process.

Life is good.

Where to begin...

Procrastination + infectious disease x technical difficulties = over a month without checking in here on the blog.
To sum up the past month: We've been busy with projects & accomplishments, rest and rejuvination and germs running amok.

Projects and Accomplishments

On a rainy MLK Day Mike and Noble put together this SWEET sk8 and long board rack.

We shoveled lots of snow this spring

Abner was pretty proud of this this Lego ship with a Star Wars windshield, pizzas and a Christmas tree on top. And that is the party hat he made a preschool.

Grace made the honor roll at Providence Hall

Sully and Abner built this space ship and space helmets

Our desktop computer finally breathed its last (after 7 years of diligent service). The U.S. Army (Sean) swooped in to diagnose the problem, back up our hard drive, help us choose a new computer, and then load all our info onto the new computer (remotely from Logan. like magic. while putting baby Mae to sleep. Sean has super powers.) - this took him two lengthy house calls, and another evening from home.

The kids had fun with baby Mae when Sean and Kim came to call.

Webcam pic of Sean the man. Fixing computers and putting babies to sleep with his SKILLS.

Rest and Rejuvenation 

Sully leading an afternoon yoga class in his room. 

We took the 4 day Valentines/Presidents Day weekend and went south - spending a day skiing / snowboarding at Eagle Point, east of Beaver, a day at Zion and chilling at the Melton's (our cold weather get away destination) in St. George. Here is the at Eagle Point.

ALL SIX KIDS on the slopes (Eagle Point has great week day deals - which makes taking 6 kids skiing possible).

This is how Sully nd Abner finished the day.

Zion was really crowded - but cleared out as the afternoon  went by. The weather was absolutely beautiful.

Walking the river at the Temple of Sinawava

Weeping Rock

Hanging out at Grandma and Grandpa's

Oldest and youngest - at the Costa Vida in Fillmore

As soon as we got back home from our trip Abner wanted to get straight back up to the slopes.

Germs Running Amok

With all the other stuff going on  -  we have also been fighting one infectious disease after another - for about 3 months.  I AM SO DONE WITH SICKNESS. After a couple of rounds of strep, I got on Amazon and bought a box of  rapid strep tests. Between strep, the most potent cold virus in history, strep again, and now hand, foot and mouth., I have really had enough. Sometimes that's how it goes. I'm going to go disinfect some more stuff.