Mark..Get Set...Go...

Twice a month, our church does an activity day for the girls ages 8-11 years old. Unfortunately, my girls have dance during these activities and never get to go. We totally made an exception for tonight. They decided to do a Daddy/Daughter Powder Puff Pinewood Derby. Chris helped the girls make their cars, but he couldn't go because he was teaching. They had sooooo much fun though!

Morgan got the "Rockin' Roll Derby" award.

Shelby got the "Speed Demon" award. There were only a couple cars that could come close to Shelby, but if she was on one particular lane, there was NO beating her!!

Here are all the girls together with their cars. There was some VERY creative ideas. My personal fave was the one that looks like a Rainbow next to Shelby.

Still Alive

No we haven't fallen off the face of the earth... We've just been super busy!!! Since the last post, the girls have started back at dance, I've quit my job (ok so "cut back" apparently the term "quit" freaks Chris out!) and I started hair school!
So far, I LOVE school. I'm the old lady in class, but that's ok. This past week, we started learning to wrap perms and do manicures. We'll be cutting next week! (O!M!G!)
The kids are doing great in school. Soccer is almost done! (YAAAAY!!!) Dance is in full swing. Shelby is going to a dance convention in 2 weeks. Chris is BUSY as always.... lots going on!!! I promise I'll post pics in the next post.

Old School Skate

The kids have been begging me to let them have a play date at Old School Skate, but it just hasn't happened. I decided to FINALLY let them have a HUGE play date. We invited ALL of their friends to join us for a "Friends Get Together", where they could all just meet up at the roller rink and Chris and I would supervise. One of the mom's and I counted and I think there were about 27 people there from our group. I forgot my camera, so you'll just have to settle for cell phone pics. 

About an hour into it, Preston said his butt hurt and he was hot and wanted to go home. His little friends were leaving by then, so Chris took him home.

 I love this little group of girls. There is 9 or 10 little girls that all hang out together. There's little to no bickering or fighting. They don't get mad when there is some "pairing off"... it's great. I realize that it won't always be that way, but I hope that they can all stay friends even if they aren't all BEST Friends.

 This little girl's Mom was one of my first friends here in Cedar City. We even shared a baby shower when we were prego with Shelby and Baylee. She recently moved to our school and started taking dance classes with Shelby. Shelby just ADORES her!

 Ok, it's no secret that Shelby is..... timid!!! She's taken a little bit of time to get used to the whole "standing up on something that can and will move out from under her" thing. HA! Luckily, she has good friends that were willing to hang around the wall with her most of the night.

 Morgan doesn't have a timid bone in her body. This is the best picture I could get of her because she was CONSTANTLY flying by me.

Several of the moms and I talked about how much fun we used to have at the roller rink. The kids had a blast and I had just as much fun watching them. I think this is definitely a "must do again" thing.

Back 2 School

Once again, Back To School was a huge deal in our house!!! We started out with our annual fashion show. Yes, I'm still alive because NO Chris did not ask for receipts! HA! Actually I've been buying things on sale here and there all summer, so when the kids started pulling out all of their new clothes, they had WAY more than I realized they had! I just have to say that I think Morgan's lunch box is the cutest thing ever! It's the pink leopard print bag that looks like a purse.

Typically, Preston is pretty into the fashion show. Not so much this year. He made it through 1 shirt change before he decided it hurt too bad to pull his shirts on and off every time. So, this is what he did instead.

School began on Thursday, so we started the day with a big breakfast of french toast, bacon and fruit salad. I really think it's funny that each year they rotate who gets to pick breakfast on the 1st day of school, but they always choose the same menu no matter who is picking! I don't think they've made that connection yet! LOL  We did hair, packed lunches and took LOTS of pictures.

Morgan's outfit cracks me up. She got these pants for her birthday from some friends of hers, but didn't have anything to wear with them (they have sequins on them so she was a little iffy) Well we found this shirt with the glitter peace sign and a vest made of sequins. Then I found sparkly black Converse tennis shoes. Ok, so Mogo isn't exactly a "sparkly kind of girl" but she LOOOOOVES this outfit!

He got his stitches out the day before school started and the Dr. REALLY stressed the importance of wearing sunscreen to minimize scarring. Bless his heart, he walked around with his hand up like this for 2 days trying to protect his face from the sun HAHA
On an even cuter note: Words cannot even begin to describe how excited he was to wear his new shoes!! He has been BEGGING for Sketcher Z-Strap Hot Lights all summer.  He put on his own "laser light show" with the shoes. I have to admit it was DANG CUTE watching him bounce around. You'd have thought the child had never seen a light before.

See.... they do like each other sometimes.

Once again, I met the kids at school to make sure they found their classrooms ok. Preston was already at his desk trying to get started on his "Bell Work". I didn't go take pictures of the girls cause they're "too cool" for that stuff now!

All of the kids reported that they had A GREAT DAY!!!! Preston has the same teacher that the girls had for 1st grade, Mrs. Van Blaricom.  I wish her luck because he is NOTHING like them!!! Morgan has Mr. Niles. He's taught her Spanish for the last 2 years, so she knows him pretty well and likes him. Shelby's 3rd grade teacher, Mr. Hunt,  moved up to 4th grade so I requested him again this year. They all have amazing teachers, so I think they'll all have a great year.

****Friday afternoon, Shelby and Morgan found out that they both made Jr. Company.  they're pretty excited.  Let the sibling rivalry begin!!!

*****Update on Preston's face. How amazing does he look for only 1 week???? You can barely tell anything happened!!!

Poor Little Guy

Friday evening Morgan and Preston were playing outside with Zac and Tatum while Shelby and I hung out in the house. All of a sudden my front door flew open and I hear "MOOOOM!!" I also hear Preston's "hurt cry" (or at least as close to one as you get with him) I honestly figured Morgan had hit him or something and was running in to tell "her side" before he got to me. I wish!!! She yelled "PRESTON'S HURT!" and I see him running towards me followed by my neighbor. This is what I saw:

 My neighbor said that he came around their corner and fell so hard and fast that he didn't even have a chance to put his hands down to catch himself. He fell right on his eye and then slid across the asphalt. I loaded all the kids into the car and we rushed off to the E.R. I knew he needed stitches in his chin, but when they told me he needed a CT Scan on his head, I have to admit I was FREAKED!!!! Hello.... he's my baby!!! I finally got ahold of Chris and his Aunt and cousin were nice enough to come get the kids so we could stay with Preston. Preston was so brave. I'm impressed by how well he handles himself sometimes! They took him for  the CT scan and he didn't move a muscle the whole time. If you know him, you know that this is a really big deal!! He doesn't sit still for 2 seconds let alone long enough for a CT scan! Anyway, the scan came back clear of any broken bones and head injuries!!! YAY!!! They cleaned his road rash and stitched him up. This is him before the pain killers kicked in:

And this is him AFTER: The hospital gave all the kids goodie bags. He plays a mean game of ER tennis HA!

The best quotes of all time came about this time:
1)He wanted to see his face so I showed him the pictures. He said, "Dude, it's bad when your own face makes you want to throw up" and started making gagging sounds.
2)"Mom, can you ask them to take my blood temperature?"
"Your blood temperature? Why?"
"Cause I left a lot of blood on the road and I want to make sure I have enough to live."
"Well how do they check your blood temperature?"
"They use that squeezy thing on your arm"
  HOW SMART IS THAT??????????
The fun was short lived, cause a short time later they restrained him so they could "sew him up".  He's got 5 stitches in his chin. He's really ok. It looks much worse than it is, but he's pretty sore! He keeps complaining that his teeth hurt, but I don't know if it's because his jaw is so bruised and swollen or if he actually hurt his teeth. We'll take him in next week if they aren't any better or get worse. He has to go see the dermatologist next week to have the stitches removed and the road rash checked. The cut on his cheek is still pretty "oozy" and I personally think he needed a stitch or 2 there as well. I called our pediatrician and he said he felt like it would be ok (yeah, cause it's not his kids face) The ER Dr. says his face will be scarred, but advised us to try some of the over the counter ointments to help reduce scarring.
This is what he looked like this morning... his eye is swollen so he said, "Mom call the Dr. there's something wrong with my vision" I said, "Open your eye silly!" He opened his eye and said, "Oh that's better"  hahahaha

All in all, Chris and I are considering ourselves EXTREMELY lucky!! This could have been SO much worse. Thanks to everyone that has called or sent us messages! We both really appreciate it!

Disney. com

So the girls video was posted on Disney.com (yes ALL of the videos were posted, but NO they don't care.) They were STOKED!!!! Feel free to leave a comment on there and be sure to "Like" it. Shelby wants her video to be on the "most liked" HA!

http://makeyourmark.disney.go.com/s/78j12r?cmp=Dcom_emc_MYM_vidview_ready_u13_extl

Videos

Can I just say how much I love the video feature on my phone? The best thing about it is that I can video the kids and half the time they don't realize that's what I'm doing!!!!!
The 1st video is of Shelby playing with bubbles. She was cracking me up. Keep in mind that she is VERY grown up for her age. She doesn't really play with a lot of toys anymore and acts like a little teenager half the time. This is why I the fact that she GEEKS! OUT! over bubbles just makes me smile!!

I love Preston in this video. He's in his own little world with his ice cream cone and frog tongue. HA!

Shelby and Morgan are both IN LOVE with a show called "Shake It Up" Well, Disney was doing a contest for the show where little girls could send in audition tapes for a chance to be on the show. I NEVER let the kids do stuff like this, but bless their hearts they worked their little butts off choreographing this dance, so I had to let them submit it. They did the dance ALL by themselves. We had a few glitches (like the fact that they made the dance up to this song-we got it all taped and THEN figured out that it had to be to a SPECIFIC clip of this song, so they had to switch a few things up and re-tape it.) I realize I'm a little biased, but I think they did pretty good with the choreography considering their ages. My favorite part of the whole thing was that it took at least 50 tries before they got one where they weren't BUSTING UP laughing at each other!!!

Watch out Ty Murray

As promised, here's MoGo's 1st attempt at the bull:

Pioneer Day

As usual we went to Escalante for the 24th of July Celebrations. The 24th of July is the day we celebrate the Mormon Pioneers settling UT.  It's a BIG deal here, in fact I think most small towns do more for the 24th than they do for the 4th!
Anyway, we got up early Saturday morning and drove to Escalante. We were in a hurry, so Chris was going a little faster than normal around all of the twist and turns. The kids spent the last 45 minutes of the ride pretending they were on a roller coaster. They laughed HYSTERICALLY the whole time. They had Chris and I in tears laughing at them laughing!!! I swear there's no better sound than that deep belly roll laugh coming from a kid.

We made it just in time to watch the parade. I swear my kids get more candy at this parade than they do at Halloween. And yes, Morgan got a stupid frisbee from the forest service!!! (Thank Goodness! HA!)

We got a kick out of Preston! Preston CAN! NOT! STAND! fruity candy. He won't even eat a sucker!  But he LOOOOOOOOVES a Tootsie Roll!! So, as they're throwing out all of the candy at the parade, Preston stood there and looked at the ground searching for a tootsie roll. That's all he'd pick up. Once he saw one though, he made a mad dash for it and heaven help anyone that got in his way! At one point a guy walked up to him and tried to give him a piece of candy and Preston just shook his head and walked away.

After the parade, we made our way to Grandma Almeda's (Chris' Grandma) house for lunch and play time. The kids LOVE Grandma Almeda's house because they get to basically do whatever they want to do! She's so patient with them and let's them "help" her cook, finds old toys (most of which were Chris' or Brit's) for them to play with, gives them old jars to hunt for bugs with... they name it-she's game!

Every year they do a "carnival' in the center of town. It's definitely not anything elaborate, just a few booths and some inflatables for the kids, but my kids have a BLAST! For the last 2 years, the girls have had a snow cone booth. Those girls worked their little tails off this year. They made $160 in 2 hours! So they've made a total of $225 this year to help buy their school clothes.(Please notice the homemade signs. I especially LOVE the one where the $1 is BACKWARDS! HA!)

Each girl took a little break to go run in the races. Boy were they glad they did. Morgan took 1st place and Shelby took 2nd in their age divisions. I laughed SO HARD when Morgan said, "It's probably cause Escalante is so small and the kids here aren't used to running." Yea, it's not quite that small! Preston spent the whole afternoon with Aunt Brittany playing on the water slide and inflatables.

After the carnival we went to the Rodeo. The girls had a ball! Preston... not so much.

Chris and I took him home and left the girls with Brittany and Jon.  She got to be the cool Aunt by letting the girls ride the Mechanical Bull. Here's Shelby's 1st try. I'll post the other videos when she sends them to me.



The girls got to stay up for fireworks before crashing in Grandma Almeda's living room!!!!

Sunday Morning, we hung out at Chris' dad's house for a while and the kids PLAYED AND PLAYED AND PLAYED... all was well until we realized that Preston's lizard had died. Suddenly the world came to a screeching halt and we had one sad, heartbroken little boy.  He insisted that we bring him home with us and give him a "proper burial. We now have our 1st pet buried in our backyard. 

Chris had the day off today, so he took the kids to the movies and then spent the afternoon with the girls at the shooting range. The girls LOVE the shooting range!! Preston and I went on a mission to heal the whole in his little heart (HA!) Let me introduce you to "Knuckles"  (Please ignore the orphan child's dirty face) All is right in "The World According to Preston" now!

It was a busy weekend, but the kids had fun. Growing up, I never appreciated the little celebrations in Williston. I always thought they were "podunk". The older I get, the more I realize that things don't have to be big and extravagant to be fun. I like the "small town" stuff more and more every year!

Good Friends

My good friend Martina came down this past weekend to play! I love Martina!! I seriously laugh so frickin' hard every time we're together. Since she lives so far away, we only get to see each other a couple times a year, so we have to make the most of it!! She brought her babies (holy cow they're getting big) so we did a lot of stuff to keep the kiddos entertained.
My kids had never been skating before, so we thought we'd check out the new skating rink. Preston fell several times but kept trying. One time that he fell, he really hurt his tailbone. He started flopping around holding his butt. I told him to hop up and he yelled, "Let it heal first. Let it heal first!" Martina and I were ROLLING!!

It took Shelby a while to get the hang of it.....

but eventually she got the hang of it.

Of course, Morgan picked it up right away.

Little Miss Madi was just a little tyke when we lived next to each other. She's so grown up now!!!

See, they do get along every once in a while.

On Saturday, we took the kids to the "lake".

Shelby had so much fun hanging out with Alyssa.

Maycee was born the day after they moved away. She's 4 now!!! Blows my mind! It's been a long time since I had a little girl that loved to dress up in all of my stuff. I asked her if she would marry my son one day. She said, "Is your son Justin Bieber fever?" She wasn't at all interested in marrying Preston HAHA!

They left last night, but we're looking forward to seeing them again soon!
Tonight, we went to the July Jamboree. It's a street fair that we have every July.  So tell me: Can you see the difference between the 2 pictures?

Preston had to make them let him off.... the girls had a blast.
After the hamster wheel, the girls got color extensions put in their hair. They think they're somethin' else now.....

Shelby got hot pink and Morgan got red.

4th of July

We had a pretty good 4th of July weekend. We went fishing at the Lake on the Hills on Saturday. Preston caught his first fish, which he was quite proud of. The girls were a little pissy about the fact that they didn't catch anything but... OH WELL!!! No, I still don't like fishing. Chris is convinced that if I keep going I'll learn to like it... NOPE!!!! STILL HATE IT!!! But I do LOVE LOVE LOVE watching my kids have fun!

This little guy kept swimming back and forth the entire time we were fishing. The girls were convinced that he was either 1)the dumbest fish on the planet cause he wouldn't swim out and eat the bait or 2)he was mocking them cause they couldn't catch him... either way he frustrated the heck out of the girls!!!

Monday morning, Chris took the kids to the parade. Have I mentioned that Morgan has a little bit of an attitude? Yeah well this is how she watched the entire parade.....

All because Preston got a frisbee from the Forest Service and she didn't... (Grandma Charlene-In the interest of making all of our lives a lot easier on the 24th, could we please get a dang frisbee for this girl at the parade in Escalante?)

Shelby and Preston had a blast though!!!!!......until he got to the movie theater looking like this... poor little guy thought he was going to freeze to death!
We finished the weekend with a BBQ and some fireworks. All in all a fun weekend together!

Rock Em Sock Em

I know it's been a while... I just have to say that I adore this little boy! A few months back, Preston got in trouble and lost every single toy he owns... YES! EVERY SINGLE ONE!!! He earned them back, but has been quite content without them, so I only gave him a few and left the rest in the garage. This is now one of his favorite games. Apparently I was the only child in America that never had this game growing up, but whatever....I have it now (sort of). I love his little face!!