Going Exclusive

My friend sent me an e-mail that said her blog and another friends' blog had been hit by people they didn't know and pictures of their kids were being downloaded. I haven't quite figured out yet how to check that on my blog but decided I wasn't going to take any chances. Sorry for the incovenience. I'm also thinking about deleting the other blogs listed on the side so that random people don't blog stalk others who don't want that. It's sad that there are people out there who don't respect other people's privacy. We need a new plague. One that would just wipe out those naughty people like that!! Sorry, that wasn't nice. Anyway, thanks for coming to check out the blog and enjoy your stay!

Dance, Dance and more Dance

Last night Emma had her dance recital. She was so cute. Despite that fact that we had a little tiara malfunction she did an awesome job. In the video you can hear me telling her that it's ok leave it alone! She wouldn't let me pin it down so that was a lesson learned the hard way. She takes dance just over at our Rec Center with another little friend that we babysit once or twice a week. Her name is Avery and she's the little blonde girl next to Emma. The pictures of them actually dancing are from their rehearsal that they did right before the recital. I should have done the video on that one. There wasn't any technical difficulties. Oh well, she'll always remember it now! Grandpa and Grandma Newby, Kayla and Landon and Macin came to support her, as well as, Grandma Childs. They danced to the song "Where were you on our wedding day?" by Billy Joel I think. This was the first year that they had actual dancer costumes. In the past the teacher has gone to Kohl's or some place like that and bought little dresses or outfits. I almost prefer that because then she can wear them again to church. I don't think she'll be wearing this costume to church, but it sure is cute! I also got several videos of the girls dancing to the music of the other dances. Em sure can move. Grandpa Newby was also showing off some of his moves. It looks like we've got another little guy with happy feet! He does this cute little jig that is so funny. I'm glad I finally got it on video. I know his dad won't let me put him in dance so I have to enjoy it while I can (and while it's cute.) Afterwards we went to JCW's for some delicious burgers, onion rings and shakes. OMG they have the absolute BEST Banana shakes!! They taste like a banana cream pie and they are so flavorful. Their onion rings are the best too. It was a fun night and I'm very proud of Emma. She will be moving on up in the dance world. We are going to a professional studio in the fall. I bought her first pair of "real" ballet shoes this past weekend and we'll be getting tap shoes soon. She seems to really like it and is pretty good at it so I can't wait to see what she does in her new dance. I decided to take the summer off for swimming lessons and such so we'll see if she can wait until the fall. Good Job Emmy!

Father's Day

Father's Day was a very busy day for us. We have late church and so in order to see both sides of the family we decided to go to the early morning church with my parents. That means we had to get up at 6:15 to shower and get everybody ready to leave in time. I hate mornings!! The girls and I made breakfast for Jason- Banana Nut Bread cereal. He loves it and it was all we had time for. Then we gave him our gifts. I made him a Father's Day bragbook that he could take to work. The pictures are in the slide show and they are not doctored up or anything. It took me a long time to get them done and I didn't have time to go back and fix things. We also gave him his favorite after shave, a movie and one of his favorite treats-banana chips. Then we quickly packed up and headed off to church. Church was very nice. I always enjoy visiting my parents ward and seeing all of my friends there. I taught the music in primary when I lived in that ward and it's so amazing to me to see all of my little primary kids all grown-up. Some of them are in the youth programs now and I can't believe that so much time has gone by! The primary didn't sing which made me sad but that's ok. After church we had a delicious meal of grilled pork loin, salad, asparagus and herb potatoes. Banana splits for dessert and tons of games and fun concluded our day at my dad's. My parents gave Jason some golf things. Apparently his game is really bad and he needs all the help he can get. Just kidding!! They gave him a box of balls, a really nice glove and a range finder. He's excited to get back on to the course and try out his new things. Afterwards we headed over to his parents house to see his dad and have dessert. The kids had so much fun playing this new Curious George game. I've seen it at Walmart or Target and I've wanted to buy it. The kids loved it so much that they made me play it 6 or 7 times with them. We went outside for popsicles and ice cream and pretty soon we had this horendous wind storm. Did that stop the kids from playing backyard baseball? No Way! Maddie is getting pretty good at hitting the ball and Em keeps working at it too. Jason's mom gave him some much needed socks. She said that everytime she sees him he has holes in the bottom of his socks. It drives me crazy that he wears his socks down to mere threads before getting out a new pair. He does have new socks...and now he has more which I'm grateful for. So, not much going on. Just spending the day with family which is my favorite thing to do. I think Jason had a pretty good day as well. I know that he would have been much happier on the couch with sports on tv, but he was a good sport and spent it with family.

Happy Father's Day J!!

Summer Stampede

Two saturdays ago we went to the Utah Kids Club Summer Stampede at Wheeler Farm. The kids had such a fun time and it was an all day event! I volunteered to help at the ticket booth early in the morning and then the first few hours it started. So Jason came with all the kids and did a few of the shows until I was done at lunch time. Emma had her friend Avery with her and Maddie invited her friend Julianna to come along. We brought a picnic lunch so we took a break and ate and then afterwards went over to the Creamie booth and enjoyed a free creamie. The girls love playing on the bounce houses and slides so we went and spent some time there. They had a Karate demonstration there and Maddie was once again selected to go up and break a board. This time she got to keep it! I was at the ticket booth and Jason didn't have the camera so there are no pictures of that. There was just a ton of stuff to do there. Face painting, coloring, origami, squirt gun tag (it was supposed to be laser tag but the lasers don't work in the sunlight), plus all the hundreds of booths they have there of different vendors. My sister in-law and her two boys joined us later in the afternoon. The girls got princess crowns and wands and balloon animals. I was really surprised that Emma got her face painted. She usually doesn't like to do that. Her wand had a pink rose on it so that's what she wanted on her face. Maddie wanted a rainbow. I was really disappointed in the face painters. I could have done a better job with my eyes closed and I can't even draw stick figures with my eyes open! They weren't the ones we thought they were. The one we wanted we didn't find until the very end. But that's ok because it washed right off in the tub that night. My favorite part was watching Maddie hold the yellow albino snake. She was so brave and thought it was really cool. Then she amazed me even further and held the tarantula!! The snake I could do the tarantula?....NEVER! It was really funny because the two boys wouldn't go anywhere near the snake and spider. Nathan enjoyed the little bits of free time he had out of the stroller. Walking around with dad and crawling in the grass. I tried to only put a few pictures of all the fun things we did. So enjoy them in the slide show. Maybe next time you'll join us won't you?

New Moon Trailer

I just saw a trailer for the movie New Moon and I am all kinds of excited again!!! It will probably still be cheesy but I don't care. The special effects are SO MUCH BETTER than Twilight. I saw Jacob transform into a wolf....freaking amazing! Jacob looks really hot in the movie too. Nice and trim. I can't wait to go to it before everyone else sees it (hee hee!) Oh and by the way this is my 100th post. So happy 100th post to me!! Man, I sure do talk a lot don't I!

Last Day of School

Maddie with her Teacher Mrs. Dow

Last week was the end of school for Maddie. (Sniff! Sniff!) She has graduated from Kindergarten and given a certificate to advance to 1st grade. I was really put-out that they didn't do a graduation for the kids but oh well. I'm sure she doesn't care. They do have a Dance Festival the day before the last day and Maddie did such a good job! She got a little confused but got right back into it. She worked so hard to perfect some of those dance steps and showed us everyday *step, behind, step, kick!* Good job Moopsie!!

On the last day of school I had a lot of fun things planned. But first, do you ever have those moments where things just aren't going quite like you wanted and you say to yourself "if one more thing happens today I am going to blow-up!!"? Well, I had one of those days. The entire month of May was filled with careful planning on my part and other people calling me at the last second to change those plans, and of course THEY couldn't change THEIR plans I had to change MINE! Well, I had had enough and thursdsay night was just the last straw for me. I went home after choir and blew-up to Jason and wrote a nasty e-mail (that I never sent) and thought that I had it all out. I was still fuming when I woke up though. So, I had planned to make Maddie's teacher a watch for her Teacher Appreciation Gift, but the lady who had my watch face conveniently forgot to bring it to me. So I decided that I would give it to her on the last day. Well, she still didn't get it to me so I went over there and caught her by surprise and got it. I can't make the watch band without the face. So, Friday morning I hurried up and finished making two watch bands and quickly made a card that said "To a Child Love is spelled T-I-M-E" and thanked her teacher for giving so much of it to Maddie. Each bead on the band had a special meaning and so I wrote that down for her as well. Then I made her a fun orange one for summer. So, then I jumped in the shower and got myself clean just in time to jump out and go pick up Maddie and give the gift (keep in mind that my hair is still wet and I have no make-up on.) Then it was off to take Emma and Avery to dance class. Then Maddie and I headed home to quickly make our lunches to take to my mother in-laws work. We were going to go there for a picnic and feed the ducks and play on the playground. Maddie and I had a really fun time working together and she was so excited. I'm just about to head out the door to pick up Emma and Avery when the phone rings. I shouldn't have answered it because I would just barely make it there as it was, but I glanced at it and saw that it was my mother in-law. So I answered it. Apparently nobody else had made a sack lunch (even though I had made phone calls and told Liz the night before that this was what I was doing) and so they wanted to go to McDonald's and so could I put my lunches in the fridge and meet them at McyD's. Well, now it's not a huge deal to open the fridge and put 4 lunch sacks in it and close the door and be on my merry way...but it was the principle of the thing. I asked if they could just bring their lunch and picnic with us, but there was talk of the girls feeling left out, blah, blah, blah, in the end, I threw the lunches in the fridge with upset tears in my eyes and lead-footed it to pick up Emma and Avery now 5-10 minutes late. I kept telling myself that it was no big deal, but there was that little voice that kept telling me that it was okay to be mad and throw a fit because it happened again! It was ok to be upset because I could have spent that time doing my hair and make-up rather than making lunches that I had specially gone grocery shopping for the day before! (and at Walmart no less!) I had everything planned and somebody at the last second wanted me to make it more accomodating for them. I tried to be happy with a smile on my face for the kids so that I didn't ruin their fun, but things had been boiling for too long and now they were boiling over. Needless to say that I was not in a good mood that afternoon and I tried not to speak to anybody for fear that I would bite their heads off and just tried to get through lunch. Of course it wasn't Liz's fault that I was in a bad mood. She didn't do anything wrong. Like I said, I shouldn't have answered the phone and then none of this would have happened. Or, I could have just not thrown a fit. It just happened to be the wrong time and place to throw a wrench (however small) into the works.

After lunch I had already invited my sister in-law and her two boys to come over and swim on the slip and slide. I didn't think that she would want to come after the way I behaved, but she did come and I was so glad that she did. Kristy and I are more like sisters than sisters in-law. We can talk to each other about our moods and our day and not feel bad. We can vent and help each other get through the emotions and then we're done and feel tons better. We had a great afternoon watching the kids play. Apparently there's more than one way to slip and slide. Watch the video and you'll see.

Avery-just run across it (the first few times she crawled all the way down but then she just started running instead.)

Tyler-run all the way and then slide into home!

Zack-be a man and slide on your tummy!

Emma-prepare yourself by getting into a diving position and just go for it. (she would start back at the tree-take a deep breath-start running and stop as soon as she got to the slide and then take another deep breath and go into a diving stance and then slide)

Maddie was at her BFF Julianna's house having a swimming party. When I picked her up Jason and I were supposed to go to the temple and Kristy was going to watch the kids, but time had eluded me and I wasn't ready to go. So Kristy and I decided to take the kids to see the new movie "UP" in 3D. We had such a fun time. That is a really cute movie and has a lot of funny parts in it. Maddie gets really sensitive when animals are getting captured or hurt and had a hard time in a few spots. I won't spoil it for you but it was really tender. The kids loved it and I can't wait to see it again. Jason had some guy time with his brother Todd and Nathan watching the basketball game. Despite my poor behavior during lunch (sorry everybody! But if you only knew...) it turned out to be a pretty good day. Now on to summer fun!