I've Been Thinking

I've had lots of thoughts running through my head this week...thoughts about our new president and our country, about the economy and education, about same-sex marriage and human rights, about faith and religion, about right and wrong.

I was so excited to see the inauguration of President Obama. I think it's important that he is a black man, that as a country we've elected him as our president. But I worry about the actions he's taken this week.

It's a complex time. I was talking with some of the teachers at school about a recent news article that said that in spite of the economy, gun sales have been through the roof since Obama was elected. People are scared he'll take away their guns since he's for gun control. One of the teachers was strongly for gun control, the other against, and I could see the validity of both of their arguments.

I read that Tom Hanks said all Mormons are un-American because of their support of Proposition 8 in California. Me? Un-American?

Lots to think about...

Basketball, basketball and .... more basketball

This is the time of year when basketball consumes our lives! This week, I watched 7 games, six of them in a 24-hour period. Our son, Josh, plays on his school team and we travel to every single game. Because we're a 1A team, that means a lot of distance driving. This week, we went to Ogden. The picture at left is David and I with the two other parents, Rick McCloskey and Fern Caka who also travel to every game. We're often the only fans at away games, but we cheer as loudly as possible!
Josh is a jumper, I secretly think of him as "Tigger". He gets tons of rebounds and usually gets the tip at the start of the game. He loves to steal and typically scores 10-12 points a game. David and I LOVE watching him play. Can you believe the kid who is deliberating fouling Josh in this photo threw a big fit when the foul was called on him? Kellie took this picture and said, "Mom, I have a picture of that foul." We offered to show it to the kid, but he didn't take us up on it. :)

Our girls all play on Jr. Jazz teams through the city, their games are all on Saturdays and I coach Alissa's team. This week, Jenna played a double-header, a game at 8am and the second at 9am. They won the first game by a miracle shot in literally the last second that tied the game and sent them into overtime. It was awesome! Jenna is a scrappy player who will go after every ball. She ends up on the floor a lot; the coach loves her aggressiveness.
On Saturday, Kellie scored 14 of the 24 points for her team - she's go the lay-up down which is more skills than most 6th graders her age have. She and her friends have been playing basketball together since third grade.

My little team that Alissa is on goes by the name "Viper Monkeys" ( I know - tough girls!) Half of them are in their first year and just learning to dribble, so we don't worry too much about the score, just about passing the ball around and guarding our man and trying to dribble without traveling. As one of my little girls said when I told her she couldn't dribble with two hands, just one, "But that's hard!" Alissa is one of the tallest girls in the league, so she enjoys rebounding and shooting over everyone's head. She has also mastered the lay-up and scores lots of baskets.

I have been coaching my girls in basketball since Jenna was in third grade. I can't play basketball myself, but when the city called me and said Jenna wouldn't be able to have a team since they couldn't find a coach, I volunteered. Being me, I headed to the public library and checked out videos and books on coaching basketball. After five years of coaching, I'm still not a great dribbler myself, but I know how it's supposed to be done and I can teach the kids to do it!

Gresko Family Reunion

All my brothers and sister and their families were together in Arizona for a couple of days. We had this picture taken and were amazed at the size of our family. There's probably no more kids coming so our final number is 32 (20 grandkids, ten kids and spouses, my mom and dad).

Family Pictures

In spite of the fact that my husband is a professional photographer with two high-end cameras, we find it very difficult to take a family picture. Our dilemma: who is going to push the button? We just can't bring ourselves to pay someone else to take our picture, so we put it off.

This Christmas, though, I was determined to get a picture in our Christmas clothes, so I told everybody, "Don't change after church - we're taking a picture!" We got the camera and everyone all set up and took several shots using the timer. How this works: We all get in our spots and David focuses the camera, repeating over and over "Don't move! Don't move!" We emphasize the spot on the camera where we're all going to look (right below the "Nikon" lettering). Then he pushes the button and the light starts flashing and we are all counting down from 10 and he is running to his spot and I am saying, "Get ready! Look at the right spot. Hold still. Smile everyone!" David barely makes it in time, the camera flashes, and I walk over and check out the image to see how we did.

We had to take this shot 7 or 8 times and there's still a few things I'd fix, but it's pretty good for doing it on our own.

Love the Babies

I've been visiting all my family's blogs today and there are some beautiful babies there! My favorite is my little niece, Taryn, who shares my birthday and will turn one this coming Wednesday. My cousin, Tara just had a sweet little boy and my kids couldn't get over how cute my cousin Tiffany's little girl, Madison is. My brother Nathan had pictures taken of his four kids and I each child was darling and I love seeing my cousin Lori's kids, especially Luke who looks just like a Gresko!
My son Josh likes to give me a hard time that I don't love him anymore now that he's not cute and little. Not true, but it is hard to snuggle his 6'2" frame! And my "baby" Katie is seven now and quite the sophisticated little lady. Enjoy those little ones. It's hard work, but when it's over, you'll miss it!

Setting Goals

Last night on TV, I watched "The Last Lecture" and two episodes of "17 Kids & Counting" on TLC. I was inspired by two things. First, one of the pieces of advice from Randy was "Be good at something; it makes you valuable." Then, the cute mom of those 17 kids showed their daily schedule with everyone's goals for the day and she said, "Very rarely do we we accomplish everything on the chart, but we have goals. We have something that we're working for."

I decided that my family needed goals like that, too, so today we created our own individual schedule. After we filled in everything, all of my kids remarked how they had so much "free time." We even added piano lessons and practicing back into the day and they still have all this time to play with. It was a great activity and I'm hoping it will help us feel a little more in control of our days and the direction our lives are going in.

Hiking to Timpanogos Cave

I've lived in Utah County since I first came to BYU in 1988, but I had never hiked to Timpanogos Cave until today. I'm not sure where the inspiration came from. I was doing housework on Friday and realized "Hey - our family hasn't hiked to the cave" and suddenly, we were driving up American Fork Canyon on Saturday afternoon.

Unfortunately, you have to have a ticket to get in the cave and the lady standing right in front of me bought the last four tickets for the last tour of the day. We were all a little stunned. The kind ranger said, "Well, we're open tomorrow and it's the last day of the season." So....we decided Sunday afternoon was the day for us.

It was a tough hike - 1.5 miles of switchbacks up the side of the mountain. My mom came with us and felt every painful step, but she and all of us made it to the cave mouth just in time for the tour. This cave is incredible! We spent an hour walking underground through three caves that have thousands of stalagtites and stalagmites and "cave bacon" and "straws" and all sorts of weird stuff. We crawled through the narrowest crevices to get from one cave to the next, crouching low in some spots so we wouldn't hit our heads and hiking up long flights of stairs in other parts.

It was a pretty cool day and a neat experience! If you're ever in Utah County, I highly recommend it.