The Little Mermaid at Tuachan

I took my girls up to St. George to see The Little Mermaid at Tuachan. It was for lack of a better word AWESOME. I am so glad I did. It wasn't cheap and it was a sacrifice to go but it was so worth the time and money and late night of driving. The show was so well done and it you have ever been to Tuachan you will kow how just being up in those amazing red hills is magical, but when the water flowed over the stage it was all completely transformed it to an underwater adventure. We had a yummy dinner at Cracker Barrel before we drove up the canyon. When we got there we had a yummy snow cone that turned our tongues red and we had a little fun taking pictures! I love my girls and I loved spending the evening with just them and me!

Labor Day

Labor day was delightful.  The weather was perfect. The kids had a blast swimming.  We had yummy food. 

Brock gave it a thumbs up.So did I.

It's that time of year again!

Cheer Camp

Moapa Valley Highschool cheerleaders do a fundraiser each summer before school starts where they invite girls from the area to come participate in a cheer camp.  They teach girls from age 3-14 cheers and dances.  Bonnie and Sam were excited to be a part of it.  Though it may not look it from the pictures directly below Bonnie was all excited to be a cheerleader!  She took some time to warm up each morning  after we dropped her off but once she got into is she loved every minute of it!  The third day of the camp the girls wore their Jr. Pirates t-shirts and practiced for a performance at the end of the day.  I spent most of the morning there taking over 300 pictures of the cute girls who participated!
 Samantha's middle school cheer squad was encouraged to be a part and they even had their own group.    The dance was pretty difficult but they pulled it off with a lot of hard work!

Once Austyn came to tell Bonnie they were going to do some stunting she got all excited!


And look at her go!!

make animated gifs like this at MakeAGif

10 on Tuesday....SAY WHAT???

I know I haven't done a 10 on Tuesday forEVER but i have lots of random thoughts running around in my head so that i feel the need to expunge. (look at me all using big words and stuff)  So let's get to it.

1.  I have a list app on my phone where i put random ideas for blog posts but i am never specific enough when i put an idea down so when i go back to blog my idea i have NO idea what it was even about!! Apparently there should be a blog post about life lessons that has something to do with Brett's broken iPod.  eh...oh well!

2.  I really want to take a typing course because i suck at typing and i wish i didn't!

3.  My daughter is growing boobs. I'm so not ok with this!  (tmi?  sorry dad)

4.  When doing laundry whites must be done first. the reasons are trifold
      a.  They take less time to dry in the dryer so they therefore shorten the overall time of doing laundry.  If done in the middle the extra time they sit in the dryer waiting for the washer to be done washes down the tide scented drain.   (maybe only in my head but whatever)
      b.  If you wash them not first the left over remnant dirt and color from the other loads may make my whites dingy.  *i know probably still totally in my head but whatevs!)
      c.  If whites are not done at the beginning of the laundry day cycle then they will forever sit in a basket of unfolded wrinkleness.  THE END.

5.  Do you think i am crazy for writing out my reasons for why i do whites first?  I kinda do.  I'm totally questioning my sanity right now!

6.  I have started a new "Responsibility Chart" with my kids, I am hoping that by doing this they will grow to be helpful contributing members of this family and eventually society!  It is similar to what I have done in the past with chore charts but i mixed it up a little with "freebee" stickers, 2 a week, that they will get to apply to unfinished responsibilities except for homework and instrument practice.  They each have a paycheck tear pad where they write what they earned for each day and if they earned a bonus.  They each receive $1 a day and if they get all 7 days in the week they get a total of $10. (except for bonnie, she gets $.25) After a whole week of this Samantha and Colby both earned $10 each and Brett for silly reasons only earned $4, he used his freebee's right off the bat, crazy kid! These are the chart and paycheck tablets I made up and will be printing at my lab in tearoff notepads.  Cool huh?  we'll see how it goes!
 

7.  I kinda think i have to do this post because the last one where I call my hubby sexy needed to be a bit buried because he might read it then I will get grief over it, even though he hardly ever reads my blog.  (he is sexy though)

8.  The summer in trailer has been brutal.  Mainly because no air conditioner seems to be able to keep up with the blistering heat.  On average, if the temps are above 105 then we can guarantee that it will be somewhere in the low 90's in the trailer at bedtime!  ROUGH but it's much better now.  Let's hope we don't get another heat wave!

9.  I read a REAL book.  And my real I mean not digital.  I haven't read a real book in like over a year (since i got my ipad) It was wonderful.  I had forgotten how the scent of paper could be so intoxicating.  

10.  The book I read was "The Other Boleyn Girl" by Phillipa Gregory.   I absolutely loved it and would totally recommend it.  I am reading one of the other books in the series "The Boleyn Inheritance" which is equally as intriguing though not as intoxicating since it is not a REAL paper book!

kthanksbye!

Manly Man

Anyone else find it really sexy when your man does manual labor??


Terry has taken to changing his own brakes to save money, the light was really cool so I took pictures, imadork, don't jude me!!

My how they've grown!!

First day of school has come and gone yet again. This year was the earliest of first days seeings how we had to be up to have Samantha to the school at 6:15 for cheer practice before the morning assembly. I decided I like early morning first day of school pictures, it's amazing light!!

Brett is now in 8th grade...8TH GRADE!!! He will be in high school next year, UGGG! He wasn't to excited for pictures but he did put on his best smolder!! He had a great first day and is really excited for 8th grade, he assures me that it's going to be a great year!

Colby as usual just went with the flow, poor kid didn't have to be to school until 9:00 but he braved the early o'clock wake up time so we could go to the middle school to see Samantha perform in the assembly. Seriously though, 9 out of 10 pictures I take of this kid I get a funny face, good think it's a cute funny face! When he got home he said, "mom, if it wasn't so hot, it would have been the most perfect day ever" I'll give him that, it had to have been 115 with a 50% humidity!

Samantha and I had the earliest wake up time at 5:00am. I had to curl her ponytail for her performance and give her enough time to eat breakfast. She was bit nervous and her little eyes are a bit puffy in her pictures but she did wonderfully at the assembly, we are so proud of her!!

Bonnie couldn't stand to be left out of the photo line up even though she will be staying home with me this year for preschool. I got a bit nostalgic looking back at the past couple years. Check them out here, here & here, please don't judge me on my photo skillz...I know I was a bit carried away with the extreme camera tile and over use of vintage actions (I remember when I took those photos I thought i was freakin awesome!! man how things change!!) All in all it was a great first day of school!