Great American Challenge

We were able to attend Abbie's Great American Challenge award ceremony last Friday. They have been working all school year to accomplish the goals set for this challenge. Below is a picture of the whole group. They combine two 3rd grade classes for the award assembly. They sang a few songs, took turns telling about each state and it's capitol, and of course awarded the students either a bronze, silver, or gold medal according to their accomplishments. This picture is so funny because Abbie is the only one turned talking to her friend above her--so typical of Abbie's personality.

Below is Abbie receiving her well deserved gold medal. They had to memorize all states and capitals, memorize and write the Pledge of Allegiance and say or sing the Star Spangled Banner. We are so proud of her for passing off all three.

This is Abbie's fantastic teacher Mrs. Striblen. We feel so blessed to have had such great teachers for each of our girls this year.

Friends are so important to Abbie. Here are a few of her faves.

This is a clip of Abbie's part for the program. She talked about Oklahoma and Ohio. I thought grandmas and grandpas may want to see what they missed.

Our Weekend

This past weekend has been a long one. After living in this house for eight months we are finally getting the new carpet it so desperately needed. If fact we had plans of re-carpeting even before we moved in because it needed it so badly, but the timing just didn't work out. We have finally painted every room, bathroom, closet and hall. Yeah! We will finally feel like we can kick off our shoes and feel right at home.

While Micah and I moved every piece of furniture and pulled up all the old carpet and pad the girls got a new bedroom for the weekend (in the family room). They thought it was great, but mom and dad are pulling their hair out trying to get everything ready for Monday morning. They have watched way too much TV this weekend as Micah and I have been slaving away upstairs. They also thought this was great considering that during a normal week they really don't watch much TV.

This is the way our house looks in every room downstairs. It feels like we have boxed up and moved all over again. The next week will be interesting putting everything back together again. There is a guest bedroom in there somewhere.

This is what happens when your doing construction work all weekend. I don't even dare open the overflowing laundry chute. Just add it to my list of things to do this week. On the bright side the carpet is scheduled for tomorrow. YEAH!

Bear Lake 2010

Our annual trip to Bear Lake is something we look forward to all year. Now living in Vegas we ended up making this trip a nine day adventure to break up the long drive. First we went camping (last post), then spent a few fun days with my parents seeing Toy Story 3 and eating lots of yummy food. Then we were off to Bear Lake.

Our first night at Bear Lake we decided it would be fun to try the Pickle Ville Playhouse. We have driven past it for so many years, but have never actually been there. Micah looks thrilled waiting for the play. It turned out to be such a fun experience. I think all of us really enjoyed it. The girls are still talking about how fun it was to this day.

This is Avery with her cousin Taylor. I think that phone was attached to her ear most of the trip (boyfriend he he).

During intermission Abbie and Avery couldn't pass up eating a giant pickle at the Pickleville. Aliza settled on a snow cone which they did have a pickle flavoring for. Yuck!

Our days at the beach this year were fewer due to the cold weather. In fact I didn't even get very many pictures this year simply because we were not out playing a lot. We still managed to have a great time without really getting in the water. Abbie made this mermaid sand sculpture with a little help from her uncle Mark.

Aliza had a great time with her cousins taking turns getting buried in this sand pile.

Amidst all the fun activities planned we were able to celebrate a late birthday for Avery with Micah's side of the family while there. She had fun blowing out the candles and opening her gifts.

Avery was in heaven with this beautiful night gown she had fallen in love with the day before at a little shop in Garden City. What a spoiled little girl.

We held our annual talent show which turned out to be a great success. Abbie loves being the announcer and takes her job very seriously. She starts worrying about the talent show right after Christmas. We had many great acts from comedian's to star wars sword fighting. It is always very entertaining.

The wonderful women of the family did their annual talent show dance. We always look silly, but get a good laugh out of choreographing it. Lots of giggles are always involved.

After a treasure hunt, miniature golf, piniata, and swimming at the beach and pools we had a great time being together with our family. Considering we don't see them as often anymore it was so great to spend time with them.

We ended our trip with making t-shirts. We had such a great time, and can't wait until next year.

Camping with the Bass family

When Micah and I were first married we bought a small little town home in West Jordan Utah. As Newlyweds we were anxious to meet friends in our new ward together. The second week of church in our new ward there was a couple sitting not to far from us in Sunday School who looked about our age. I leaned over to Micah and said "I am going to meet her today." I went right over and introduced myself to Lana Bass and we have been the greatest friends ever since. In fact she is one of those friends that when you see them you can just chat and chat for hours on end (in fact we did almost do an all nighter one night without even realizing it). After all these years we treasure those great friends we met in our first ward together, and will never forget all the fun memories. When the Bass family extended an invitation to meet them at Palisades by Manti we did everything we could to be there. In fact we were already headed to Utah for our annual trip to Bear Lake so Palisades was a perfect stop on our way. We were able to spend two nights and three days with our dear friends.

It wouldn't be camping without roasting hot dogs and making smores!

We did a lot of camping with the Bass family the first few years of our marriage. In fact the last time we camped together I was just barely pregnant with Abbie (crazy). We even camped at Palisades together which had to of been over 10 years ago. Now we each have three girls who had such a great time playing together.

Lizzie enjoying some time cooking with her dad. It's so nice that our kids are getting to the stage that camping is becoming fun again. For awhile it was just too much work with such young babies. They are at the perfect ages to head out camping more often.

The beach was rocky rather than sand, but the kids still had a blast. In fact we spent one whole day just sitting at the beach enjoying the company while the kids played and played.

There were a lot of cute little fish that the girls enjoyed catching. The funniest was when they used a sand bucket to hold one of these cute fish and before realizing it Aliza had filled the bucket up with rocks. Poor fish must have had a huge headache if he did survive. Oops.

They were so tiny and cute.

The water was perfect for the kids to play in. Not far from the beach there was a floating dock that they would swim to and jump off--keeping their life jackets on at all times of course.

How we ended up with so many cute girls I don't know. They had such a great time together.

The Bass's were even kind enough to share their four wheelers with us. Abbie was old enough to drive this little one on her own. She, of course, had a blast.

Unfortunately, I came home with absolutely no pictures of the adults on this camping trip. That means that we will just have to do it again sometime. hehehe Thank heavens for life long fantastic friends. I sure wish we could see more of you more often.

Our Sweet Andrew

Yes, he is cute and furry but who knew owning a guinea pig could be so expensive. A few weeks back he was scratching like crazy so we took him into the vet. Turns out he had ring worm (I know, totally gross). We put him on all the medicine and after two trips to the vet we thought we were in the clear.

Last night while we were giving him his medicine he literally jumped out of my hands. He landed on the ground squealing and couldn't use his back legs. We didn't know what to do other than take him to the emergency animal clinic. I felt so horrible considering I am the one who dropped him. Abbie was the only kid awake and since it is technically her pet she was very emotional. We explained to her that he may have broken his back and she needed to say her goodbye's. We went through the whole goodbye process and Abbie was consoling him letting him know that heaven will be better than here anyway. I took him to the vet at 9:30 at night. Of corse they were very busy there with sick and hurt animals so I didn't get home until almost 12:00 p.m. That was a killer in itself. I'm getting too old to not be getting my beauty sleep. Turns out that by the time the vet saw Andrew he was using his legs and fine. If I only would have waited until morning. He is now on a very expensive pain medicine and is doing well. It's a good thing we like Andrew because after $600 and three trips to the vet in six weeks he better like his home here with us.

Settled

I had a funny realization yesterday. As I was talking to Micah on the phone chatting about our busy weekend plans I realized something. I was going over what we needed to do to prepare this weekend. Two friend BBQ's at our home, tending for two families while they go to ward temple night (us not going only because I am blessed enough to have a friend I switch babysitting with and went earlier in the week), Avery's friend pool b-day party, and not to mention that I am teaching a combined lesson with all the YW on Sunday and I needed time to prepare for. Micah simply took a deep breath and said "I think we must be settled." After many months of saying "we just moved here" which it really hasn't been THAT long I think we are finally feeling good about where we are. We still miss our family and friends more than anything, but it feels good to be "settled." Crazy to think about all we have been through the past year. Glad to have made new friends, and especially glad to be able to head home and visit old ones. We are blessed!

Avery Turns Seven

It's still hard for me to believe that my "Sweet Aves" is actually seven years old. She started out her birthday week (yes, it was all week....we celebrated a lot) with her Grandma and Grandpa Chidester and Aunt Penny who came for a short visit. It was a really hot weekend so we swam and stayed in as much as possible. By request she had pizza and cheesecake for her birthday celebrations while they were in town.

We decided to celebrate Fathers Day a few weeks early by heading over to PF Changs while my parents were in town. After we waited 1/2 an hour after our reservation time to be seated, then an hour for our food it turned out to be not such a great experience. I only share this next tid bit because of Avery's comment after the fact. While we were waiting for our dessert we were all just talking when Avery got the most disgusted look on her face. Micah burst out laughing and we couldn't figure out what had happened. Turns out that a scantily dressed lady in a tube top was using her hands while talking and her fingers managed to pull her tube top right off. She hurriedly put it back on and staggered out of the restaurant after having a little bit too much to drink. Avery leaned over to me and said "that was the worst birthday present ever." So sad that she had to see that, but her comment was too funny. We made up for it the next night by going to Lake Las Vegas for ice cream. It was so fun to see the live bands there and have some yummy gelato.

On Avery's actual birthday she was thrilled that I brought her McDonalds for lunch and ate with her in the court yard of the school. She had a great day at school wearing her birthday crown and receiving a lot of extra attention for the day.

After school we spent the hot afternoon in the pool (hence in all of her birthday pictures they are all freshly showered and in their PJ's.) After dad got home and swam for awhile we had Avery's birthday dinner. It is always interesting what each of my kids pick for their birthday dinner. They can pick whatever they want and Avery picked ham with potatoes and gravy. We gladly made that for her and enjoyed dinner together as a family.

Party Girls!

She was happy to receive this big, pink package from her Grammie and Gramps Phillips. She could hardly wait for dinner to be over to open it.

This was a candid shot of Aliza's face while Avery opened her gifts. It was so cute to catch her expression of excitement.

She had asked for Webkins and Zhu Zhu pets for her birthday. She received this cute poodle webkins from Abbie.

In fact she was so ecstatic about her Zhu Zhu pets that the next few pictures had to be taken with her Zhu Zhu pets. These little guys are definitely a big hit at our house. We haven't had any until her birthday. All of my girls are really enjoying them.

And I have to mention her poor melting cake. Avery had this cake idea from a Strawberry Shortcake cook book that she wanted me to copy. It was a white cake with one red heart on the top. I spent all day making strawberry freezer jam for the middle of this lovely cake (as the recipe called for) and then our house was so hot I couldn't keep it from melting the frosting. After I finally had to stick it in the fridge it looked kind of sad. After all that hard work no one really ate the cake. Couldn't blame them......but I went through a lot of work to just throw the cake away. Boo hoo I know!

We let Avery choose what kind of party this year she would like with her friends. We offered to take her anywhere. Bowling, movies, pedicures, and all sorts of other ideas. All she really wanted to do was swim. I was a little nervous about having other kids over to swim so we stuck to only letting her invite 3 friends. With those friends and their siblings that came along we had just the right amount of kids for a fun time. I regret not getting a good picture of the whole group.

We swam, ate pizza, played a few games, swam more, and then had cake and ice cream cones. It was a perfect little party for her. In the picture above they are playing Duck, Duck, Splash.

We played pool ring toss and a game that I found online called Dolphin Swim.

Basically, it was a race to see who could use their nose to get a ball to the other side of the pool. Sounds simple enough, but it was tricky. You could use your arms to swim, but not touch the ball. I was really fun to watch the balls going all over the pool not necessarily in the right direction. It was definitely not easy to do.

Avery had a great day and like I said before I just can't believe that she is seven years old already. My kids are growing up way too fast.