Festival of Trees

Charity got sick of waiting for mom to get the tree decorations out, so she used her fabulous creative skills and did it herself. 

Dad thinks she took inspiration from the Festival of Trees this weekend where she had her first public dance performance and, following in the steps of her three crazy sisters, did very well and went off stage saying,

"That was fun!"

You know you are a dance mom when . . .

You have a bunch of these to fix--



Who knew this would be my life?!  =)

This year between four girls, they have

17

hours of dance and gymnastics!

And . . .

I'm now a preschool gymnastics teacher!

My first introduction to dance started at BYU when my roommate Rachel would teach me the dances she was choreographing and then would roll on the floor with laughter while I clumsily tried to do what she asked and failed miserably at it.  Thanks Rachel for preparing me to be a dance mom!  =) 

I may be clueless and it may not have ever been in my life's plan when I was 16 (when Jana and I would make fun of the cheerleaders and drill team and the "deodorant" move), but

I LOVE my dancing addicted girls!

BYU Football

5 BYU Football Tickets - $139.46

(Charity got to go home with Chance!)

6 2010 T-Shirts - $30



2 Hoodies and 1 Hat - $59.18

(Thanks to a Seminary 20% off coupon!)

1 Frozen Lemonade - $4

(The girls said it was definetely worth it!)

Allie's reaction as we walked in the stadium - Priceless!

(55 more minutes, 54 more minutes, 53 more minutes, 52 more minutes, . . . Thanks Rach!)

And to top it all off, it was a full loud stadium

and we won the game!

Not to mention, we saw Jake Heaps!  Aaaah! 

And some band members waved at the girls! 

And the cheerleaders did amazing stunts -

guess what our new life goal will be now!

It was definetely worth every penny spent

and the pain of a late night drive home!

This game lived up to every expectation and more!

We love BYU Football!

Gotta Love Oakley!

Can you count them?  1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 little girly heads. 

We loved August at the pool when we had our own private pool.  This was actually the busiest August they've had in a while-there was actually another family or two there when we were there, but you just gotta love those days when you have the whole pool to yourselves!



Back to School

The 6th Grader

(Tears!  One more year and it's Jr/Sr High.  Yikes!)

The 3rd Grader

(She's loving it and I think this is her year to fly!)

The 2nd Grader

(A happy girl to be back with all her friends!)

The Preschooler

(Our baby is big now! It's her first time for pigtails,

her first day of preschool,

and her first day of dance.  Craziness!)

Payback . . .

Okay, remember a while back on the McBloggers? A few of you tried (in vain) to make us feel bad for missing out on ice cream? Well, here is my response. I had a great birthday. I mean, who wouldn't with 6 precious quarts of heavenly cold stuff?

Love,

Ben

Zumba!

Check out what Ben's been doing this summer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhY0FsBatVo

That would be the videoing not the dancing!

The girls LOVE Zumba.  Mom tolerates it with them occasionally (I'm trying to like it, but remember--the coordination and dance skills of my children did NOT come from their mother!).

Charity doesn't like it.  She wants to go to the ZOO not to ZUMBA!

Grandpa and Charity

We had lots of fun adventures and moments in June, so hopefully I can share a few of those this week.  We've got tons of good pictures that show a glimpse at all our fun busyness!

One weekend we took a trip over to help grandma paint her house (thanks Amron for getting that part of our checklist done), clean (we did okay, didn't we mom?), and set up her new computer (I was pretty darn good with that dairy program, wasn't I?). 

We also got to go in and visit Grandpa.  The old people loved the girls dancing. 

The funniest though was Grandpa.  He may not remember much but his sense of humor is still there.  I asked Charity to move over next to Grandpa so that I could get a picture of them together.  She wouldn't, so Grandpa scooted next to her and then said,

"That was charitable, wasn't it?"

Isn't that so Grandpa?  =)

Cupcakes and Lemonade

"Cupcakes and Lemonade"

(Remember that song Marci?")

We had a fairy tea party for Charity's birthday!

Sarah planned this fairy village cake for months.

We all had a house to make and we made a mess, but had fun.

As Charity now likes to tell me,

"I not two now.  I three!"

(As she hold up three fingers on each hand.)

She's thinking it'd be more fun to have two days of birthdays instead of one though.

Our baby is a big girl!!

"My Three Sisters"

The other three feel unloved and neglected, so here's a few glimpses of them.  They are not neglected or unloved as evidenced by the hundreds of photos and hours of video that we have over the last few months of dance competitions, dance recitals, spring concerts, gymnastic recitals, and track meets.  They are talented, loved, and usually pretty nice girls!  And we love them just as much as we love Charity . . . well, almost.  =)

Charity's Antics

Charity has been cracking us up lately.  The girls want me to share a few of her funny things of the month.

This morning she was determined to go catch birds in our yard.

"Mommy, it don't work!"

She cracked everyone up at the track meet last week when she ran up to me and asked,
"Mom, what I supposed to do?"

She took pictures of Sarah and ate her crackers.

My favorites are things she has been saying in Sacrament Meeting--although she makes it hard for us to be reverent because we're laughing at her.

Every time she goes to take the bread and water she asks,

"The daddy one or the mommy one?"
She's obsessed with if everything is a mommy or a daddy including the Sacrament bread and water, her snacks, and many other things.  Who has ever tried to decide if a few pieces of bread are mommy or daddy ones?  You didn't know bread and water had genders, did you?

After the opening prayer last week as the sister was leaving the stand, she said,

"Is she nice or mean?"

(It was one of the nicest ladies in Oakley!  Charity has this thing with asking if people are nice or mean.  She decided this week that most of her sisters are mean!)

And she loved her gymnastic recital.  She was so excited to final get to perform like her sisters, but thought it was way too short and asks every day if she can go do it again.

We love Charity!

Front Porch View

This is what we saw from our front porch tonight.  Perfect conditions made for a perfect double rainbow!  Gorgeous!  But too close to us for me to get everything in one shot.  This was my favorite shot but to get it I kept getting rain drops on my lens.  Pretty nice though.  We think it's spring . . . oh, except for the snow we had yesterday that recovered the mountains!  And the snow falls as we count down the days until the pool opens!

Our new house . . . 9 months later

The girls still regularly include in family prayers, "We're thankful for our new house."  And we are thankful for our new house!  We love it.  And here's what we all love most --

Ben

A closet in our bedroom!  And it has a light so he can see what he's putting on in the mornings!

Steph

A dishwasher is heavenly!  Dishes don't sit for days and days now . . . well, except the crock pot!

Sarah

Our map.  But you have to come visit to see why she loves it so much!

Allie

Okay, so she doesn't love it and she still cries on a regular basis including when I asked everyone what their favorite thing was.  She misses the sidewalks to ride bikes on, the fire pit to climb on, the grass to do back handsprings on, sharing a room with her two sisters, and she says she even misses standing by the bathroom door with her legs crossed anxiously waiting for someone to get out of the one and only bathroom.  She struggles big time!   I have found one thing here that she really likes though:

She loves to play on this tractor that's sitting in our backyard (on loan from a neighbor) and sing about someday being in a rodeo.  The girl of many dreams!

Kit

She said she loves having lots of lip gloss in her new bedroom!  And she loved her black and white and red bedroom until recently when she decided she wants bright color polka-dots instead.  Too bad--we are not redecorating every year!

Charity

Charity loves her brown and pink polka-dotted room.  She love to show it off when people come.  She loves to sleep in it.  She loves to play in there with her toys.  She loves to see "our new house" as we drive down the road (thanks to no other houses you can see it a mile away).  "I love our new house!"

Our House

We love our new house and are very very very excited to be able to get a yard put in.  We have lots of ideas and are scared about all the work it's going to take to beautify our two acres, but we are excited.  And I'm excited today because a daffodil bloomed in the pot I bought at WalMart--since I have no other flowers.  It's spring!!!

My grand idea for March!

Oh, What Do You Do?

Oh, what do you do in the winter time, when all the world is blah? Do you clean your house or sweep the kitchen floor or fold 10 loads of laundry? Do you fix a good dinner or wash the walls or empty the overflowing garbages? Is that what you do? . . .

I don’t!

No, Charity discovered a new hobby and she asked me to join in.

So, check out what we do for fun during the long days while she’s waiting for her sisters to get home from school!

I'm Giving In!

After putting this off for years, I think I've decided to give in and do a blog. (But I'm still not giving in to Facebook . . . yet!) For a long time, it just seemed like one more thing on my to-do list, but the girls want to post and I need something creative and fun to encourage me and get me out of the winter slumps, so we'll attempt this and see how it goes. I've already run into the problem which is the reason I put this off--I can't be satisfied with a pre-made background, I want to do my own . . . and it should be working, but it's not. So, instead of doing what I should have, I've just spent two hours trying to create my own background with no luck. And we wonder why I've put this off!

Update:  Wahoo!  It took me most of the day, but I figured out my problems!  Now maybe I should do some real posts instead of playing around with the background!  =)