Swimming lesson update

Well, this past week marked the last of the swimming lessons for the girls since it's cooling down after work when Kaylene would come over and teach them to swim. Look at the progress they've made!! Kaylene thank you so much for spending your nights at our house and teaching our girls to swim. We love ya and owe you big time!!

Katelyn swimming

Kelsey freestyle

Kelsey butterfly

Kelsey backstroke

Kelsey loves showing off. But we are so proud of her anyway

Bragging rights!!

Yesterday was our ward's primary program and it was Kelsey's first time participating in it. Throughout the year she has had numerous speaking opportunities in primary with talks and the articles of faith and each time she has had them memorized and done perfectly. So it was not a surprise that when they handed out the parts for each of the kids a few weeks ago, that Kelsey had a talk to prepare.

She practiced and practiced for 2 weeks and was so excited to go to the practice on Saturday and then to say it in front of the whole congregation on Sunday. I kept asking her if she was nervous to stand up in front of everyone and I thought she might get stage fright when she actually saw everyone there, but she did so great!! Kaylene and my parents were there to watch her. Thank you so much for coming and sharing this special moment with her. She was so glad you were here.

I didn't know where she was in the program, but when there was a boy speaking she just kept looking at us and smiling so big so we knew she had to be coming up. And she was next. She got right up there and smiled and said her talk perfectly!!

She was the only Sunbeam to have a talk and her part was longer than most of the senior primary kids as well. So many in the ward came up throughout the rest of church to say how great a job she did. And how could they not, she practically stole the show!!

Kelsey, we are so proud of you and the things you are able to accomplish!!

I was unable to get it on video yesterday when she was all dressed up so cute and ready to go, but she had no problem saying it again today in front of the camera for me.

Turn up your speakers to hear her.

Katelyn is 2!!

I can't believe my baby is 2!! With Youth Conference the same weekend as her birthday it was a little crazy but we managed to get it all in. We came home after church, had dinner and then a little party for her. She opened all her presents, without any help since she had it all figured out with Kelsey's 4th birthday.

I love how intently Kelsey is sitting next to her but not "helping" her.

Kaylene found this book and most of you are thinking that's a boy book. Au contrair, my friends. Not when their dad sells, fixes, and drives one everyday!! She was so excited to get a backhoe book

And ice cream sundae set just for her. They love to play in their kitchen.

We've already played this game 3 times and she loves it so much!!

Opening her last present.

Yes, she got a scooter. How fun for her!! She absolutely loves it.

She's been cruising around the house all night long and all day too.

Singing Happy Birthday. She was so glad this time to song was for her!! If anyone would ask her how old she was going to be, she would say 4 September. Since Kelsey turned 4 she thinks she's turning 4 and was very upset if anyone corrected her. But when she saw that she got to blow out her candles, she didn't care how many there were.

She's been practicing for weeks, blowing out any candle I had lit anytime she would see it was burning!! Happy Birthday, Katelyn. We love you so much.

Youth Conference 2008

This past weekend was our stake's youth conference. The committee chairs were the Stewarts in our ward and we were one of the couples called to serve on the committee with them. We had such a great time planning and working with everyone on the committee, but we are so glad it's over. Oh, to be a teenager again with all their energy.

Our theme was STAND and be COUNTED

The festivities started Friday night with breaking up into groups of 15-20 kids for a "Youth Tube" activity. They were given topics from the Strength of Youth pamphlet that they would need to stand up for and had to come up with a skit about it. Everyone participated and seemed to enjoy it. One of the bishop's emcee'd in between each of the performances and was just so funny.

Then they all moved outside for dinner which was Cafe Rio!! After dinner all the kids got on the end of 3 ropes and tried to pull a semi truck across the parking lot, proving that if they all stand together great things can be accomplished. That was part of our part since Dave can drive the trucks and got one from APCO. He then had to speak after that, to tie it all in together. And yes, they were able to pull the truck.

After the semi truck pull, they moved over to the dirt lot behind the church for a flag retirement ceremony. It was a beautiful ceremony put on by some of the eagle scouts from the stake. Very moving with it being so close to September 11.

On Saturday morning our part of being on the committee was to put together the service project. We went out to Floyd Lamb Park and did a bunch of clean up out there. They had three different areas they could go to and it was a huge success with so many people coming out. This is usually the least attended activities of youth conference so I was a little worried, but we had even more in attendance than we did on Friday night!! We had lunch out at the park and then President Waite spoke to everyone.

Everyone together before leaving the service project. Wow, what a huge group of kids!! Then there was a dance Saturday night where they had a photo booth for all the kids to get pictures taken and just such a fun time. They ended the weekend with a testimony meeting last night with President Bingham speaking at the end. We were so excited to be a part of something so great but can't wait to get some sleep. Being up till midnight each night and back up again at 6 to get things going Saturday morning is a little much. But what a great weekend!!

Also a huge THANK YOU to my parents for coming up to watch the girls so that we were able to be gone the whole weekend, really only coming home to sleep. The girls had such a great time with grandma and grandpa and really didn't want us to come back home. I think we were missed in the beginning but by the end, Kelsey definitely didn't want them to go home. So thank you so much for a successful weekend with everything!!

Katelyn's potty trained

Well, she did it!! Along with painting the two rooms last week, Katelyn decided to potty train herself as well. I figured I wouldn't discourage her since I was already staying home anyway so we took it in stride and she actually stuck with it. She's been accident free since Friday and we've even made a few short trips out of the house without any problems as well!! She's been far easier than Kelsey was to potty train and that's saying something since Kelsey has been the easier baby all along!! Hooray for Katelyn. The amazing thing I can't get over is that she tells me before she has to go and runs in to the bathroom and doesn't want any help. Kelsey never told me, I just had to set a timer to remind myself that she had panties on and Katelyn is usually right that she had to go, no matter how soon she had gone the time before!!

Kelsey's first day of preschool

Today was Kelsey's first day of preschool. She was supposed to starte last week, but her teacher's daughter was due to have her first baby so she wanted to be there to help out for the first few days. So she started today!! She was so excited to go off by herself and has been talking about it for over a week, wanting to know how long until she got to go. She of course picked out her outfit and laid it all out last night. She was dressed and ready to go by 10 but very upset when she realized she couldn't go until after lunch.

All ready to go, back pack and all!!

Katelyn wouldn't hold still, but I thought this was so cute how excited she is for her big sister to go to school. Although the story was quite different when we got home without her sister. I think she thought we were staying and watching her at school, rather than just dropping her off and leaving. But she'll soon learn that she doens't have to have her sister around all the time.

A leave of absence #2

Now the other reasons for not blogging. While he was camping with his family, if Kimber had decided not to go to California, I was going to stay home as well and paint the two other bedrooms and when Dave came home it would already be done and there'd be nothing he could do about it. Unless he would paint over what I'd done and that would never happen. I've wanted to paint pretty much since we moved in and it's just been a huge argument with us. And I didn't understand because I was not asking him to paint, I would do it all, but he wouldn't have anything to do with it. In his defense I think he was thinking I wanted to paint the whole house, but that was never my intention, because I like the colors downstairs, just the bedrooms needed some color on the walls. We were also supposed to be headed back down to California to help can tomatoes and to see some friends that we haven't seen for 1 1/2 years for Labor Day weekend but when he decided to go coyote and dove hunting instead, I told him of my plans and he didn't really disagree or say too much. He just said, "Don't touch the downstairs." Done.

He caught me so off guard with agreeing to let me paint that it was numerous trips to the paint store for different chip colors and trying to get just the right color scheme in each room. Way too much pressure to get it right the first time and hoping that he liked it enough to let me do it again sometime.

The Before:

The After:

Don't be deceived, the polka-dots were so much work, and that is the only help I asked from Dave was to make it all work together on all the walls. I love the outcome and so does he. Instead of just drab white walls, now everything is crisp green and white and we love it. It took a week for both rooms, and the other room is not quite done yet, just waiting till my dad comes up this weekend to help with the finishing touches!! Stay tuned for that as well.

Katelyn kissed one of the dots when it was still wet and it was all I could do to get her not to cry for the picture before washing it off. The girls were so excited to get their toys back from under the plastic for a week and now everyone is happy.

After I did one polka-dot, Kelsey looked at me and said, "You love it, don't you?"

And Katelyn just kept kissing the wall (once it was dry) and said it looked pretty. They even got to help with painting the closet. They weren't too keen on how long the dots took though.

A leave of absence #1

**Warning** very long post ahead

While I have been contemplating the title of this post for a couple of days now and am not so creative and clever in that department, I have neglected to post our trip to California. Mainly because I don't think the post would do it justice. So it's not one I've necessarily been looking forward to as much as I know I need to document it before too much time passes. Let me preface this with it was such a great trip, filled with fun activities for the kids, laughter, great food, and family. How could you go wrong? You can't. And so you see the problem I have with trying to convey this to all of you. Now on with the show.

It all started with Dave's dad wanting to plan a "man-cation" where he got all his boys and their sons (the older ones that were allowed to come) together for a camping trip over a long weekend. Apparently this is something he would do in the summer with his 5 sons and Dave looked forward to this each year as a young boy.

So in March, they figured out a weekend that would work for everyone and set a date. It wasn't until the 3rd weekend in August. Who can wait that long? Anywho, going along with this, all us girls decided that if the guys were getting together, we would too. A sort of female bonding, back in college experience, except with kids tagging along. I must admit, I was a tiny bit skeptical about the whole thing since we haven't all been around each other for any extended amount of time. I mean, with Dave's family of 5 boys and 3 girls, and only 1 sister not married yet, it can get, for lack of a better word, overwhelming. The girls that ended up getting together were none of Dave's actual sisters, just the in-laws because one sister went camping for their last family vacation before school started, one is in Iowa, and the other isn't married and didn't want to hang out with us and all our kids.

I invited Kimber to ride down with me to sound more appealing for her to go and she agreed. So we had the girls in the far back of the car and Vance in the middle seat, with the other seat folded down so everyone could watch movies and get back to them. The ride down was pretty uneventful and we made great time with only 1 bathroom break. We stopped at Fo Fo Figgily's to let the kids run around for a couple hours and then it was the last 1/2 hour in the car to grandma's house for swimming and pizza. Five minutes into it, Elise broke her foot so she was out for the rest of the planned trip, but made the best of it.

A huge undertaking, but she decided to take all 9 kids to Target to pick out a toy. With 15 people in the toy section it can get a little hectic, but everyone came out with something to play with for the weekend. Kelsey picked a little piano and Katelyn picked yet another tea set. I'm questioning Kelsey's choice because I didn't take into account the drive home. But with her all the way in the back it wasn't too bad!!

After that we went to Heather's house where we were all staying and the kids all played outside again while we figured out the sleeping arrangements.

They all thought it would be fun to pile in the power wheels while Kelsey chauffeured them around.

Katelyn and Vance getting in the action. And although they never went anywhere, they didn't care!!

The next day it was off to the beach. We went to Paradise Cove where they have a few umbrellas out on the sand and pretty close to the water so we could watch the kids play in the water while we were in the shade.

Katelyn was not sure about the whole water thing at first, but eventually "warmed up" to the idea. The water was freezing but that didn't stop them for long.

This is about much of her body that got in the water, once the waves receded.

Kelsey kept calling the ocean a "river" or that "pool" when she asked to go back in. She liked it a little bit better, at least until she walked out of the ocean and had dry sand sticking to her wet legs. She did not think that was fun at all. I don't blame her, I'm not a lover of the beach either, the whole sand thing is just gross. I prefer the pool too.

After the beach, we went home and it was off to the salon where Dave's mom set up appointments for all of us to have pedicures and manicures done while she watched the kids. Thanks so much, Val, it was so nice to be pampered for an afternoon.

The next day we were off to the Santa Barbara Zoo and then over to the pier for lunch and a boat ride to see the sea lions. That was the highlight of the trip for everyone.

The boat ride over to see the sea lions.

I love the look on Katelyn's face, still not sure about this new adventure.

Kelsey and Chanel checking out the ocean.
It was pretty cool to be that close to them and by the time we left the kids were all "barking" like the sea lions.
Just relaxing on the buoy and swimming in the water.

The pelicans and they all thought of Nemo.

In one straight stretch of the trip, the captain let each of the kids who wanted to, drive the boat. Kelsey jumped at that opportunity first and thought it was great. And for a treat, she got a sucker.

Katelyn was next, but her look is not one of joy. Of course she could not be outdone by her big sister. I think the sucker was more what she was wanting out of the experience.

Amazing what a sucker can motivate the kids to do.

After the zoo and boat, it was back home. Heather got 3 girls to come over and watch the kids while we all went out to dinner. It was such great food and a wonderful time had by all. Val ended up picking up the tab and paid for the babysitters as well. Way too generous, but thank you again. Each night after the kids went to bed, we stayed up way too late, watching the Olympics, talking and enjoying each other's company and laughing way too hard. We all had a great time and all the kids played and got along together. Other than Elise breaking her foot, there was no other drama the whole weekend. The next day it was time to drive back. We all had to say good-bye and the kids did not want to leave. With the promise of doing this again next year in a different location, they got in the car and we headed for home.

The guys seemed to all enjoy their trip as well and it was a huge success all the way around. Thanks to Heather for planning all the festivities, getting the babysitters lined up and hosting all of the craziness that 9 kids can bring into one house. To Kimber for driving down with me and continually throwing snacks back to them and keeping the peace. A huge shout out to Valerie for pampering us more than we needed while we were all together and to everyone else for coming and making this possible!! We had a blast. Anyone up to coming to Las Vegas next year? No painting party necessary!!

Stay tuned for the next leave of absence.