Dance Fusion Begins!

We made it through the first week of school.  It was crazy, but we did it!  The high school had a football game on Friday.  I love going to the games.  The best part is that Dance Fusion was performing.  We love to see Aubrey dance!  Her team is really great this year.  Once again, a bunch of great girls!

I love the view from the football field.  It is so awesome to sit and watch a game while the lights come on in the city.  It is so neat! 

The girls did a dance that they learned at dance camp!  They were amazing.  Dang they looked good!  Oh, and we won the game!  Awesome night!

That Time Of Year Again....

It is time for college football!  Don's favorite time of year next to Christmas!  We hardly watch the NFL anymore, it is all about college.  So Don came home on Friday and put up this Alabama flag.  While he was doing that, I noticed that he was even wearing his Alabama shirt.  He is excited for the season to start.

Even our house is decorated.  Don loves it.

Jamm'n

Believe me, I am not a domestic goddess for sure.  I can cook and a couple of years ago I learned how to make jam.  Shocker!  So every year I order these peaches from Utah.  They are so good.  Just sweet and heavenly!!  They are huge too!  This week has been a crazy week, but today I had to make time to take care of these peaches before they go bad.  So I made some peach jam and some strawberry peach jam.  Then I sliced up some peaches and froze them for cobbler, shakes, and smoothies.  I even have some left over to eat and bake with! I felt like I accomplished something today!

First Day Of School

The day has come, the first day of school.  I struggle with this day!  I love the lazy days of summer.  I love swimming in the pool, vacations, my children sleeping in, relaxing runs without worrying what time I make it back, scout camps, girls camps, EFY, and having my husband home.  We are always busy in the summer, but it is so nice.  It was especially nice because it was the first summer in two years that I wasn't going through some type of treatment for cancer.  So, I was sad to see it end.  To be honest with everyone, I feel some anxiety with the start of the new school year.  I know what is coming my way and how busy I will be.  I am always stressed about trying to balance it all.  I am always trying to fit everything in.  Then again, it is a good time too.  I love seeing my family do all these wonderful things they do during the school year!  It's crazy, but so fun.  So today they headed out.  Ian is now in 7th grade.  He had a good day up until guitar.  They have a new guitar teacher.  The kids were all suppose to have 2nd lunch because they are in seventh grade, but their new guitar teacher told him that he didn't want that!  He decided that he wanted first lunch.  Umm, did he ever think that he had to check with the principal and all of the schedules!  You don't just choose.  Anyway, that messed up Ian's day.  It messed up a bunch of kid's day.  When Ian got to the lunch room he asked the deans if he could get his lunch because he wasn't prepared for lunch at that time.  The deans said no, and poor Ian went without lunch.  He wasn't feeling too good by the end of the day!  I was not pleased.  I am sure tomorrow will be better.

Aubrey loves all of her classes.  This year we were smart and checked her schedule before the year started.  There was a mistake, but we know one of the guidance counselors over there and she is amazing.  Aubrey's guidance counselor isn't, but this one we know is one of the best!!  She takes care of all the kids!  She fixed Aubrey's schedule and the new year started perfectly. Even seminary is perfect!  I love those seminary teachers.  All of them are wonderful!!!

At the end of the day, they were beat!  It was a long day!  They went to bed early, ready to start it again!

Back-To-School Celebration

This week has been busy with me getting the kids ready for school.  We spent our week going to stores to buy the back to school outfits we needed for the first day, shoes, school supplies, dance shoes, hair cuts, eyebrows done, and all the other necessities.  It has been a busy week.  The worse part of this week was Ian's hair cut.  Our stylist is on maternity leave, so I went and just walked into a local shop to get his hair done.  Poor kid, his hair looked horrible.  Lucky for me, a good friend of mine with six kids, took time in her busy schedule to fix it.  He looks good now.  Well, last week Aubrey and her friends came to us and told us that they needed to go to the temple before school began.  Don had a very busy week too, and needed a weekend to rest up from getting his school ready for the first day, but when he heard this request, he dropped everything and made the arrangements. The temple can bring you such a peace to your heart and mind.  Even though the girls could only go in certain parts of the temple (because of their age), I believe it gives them a peaceful feeling and focuses them on what is important in their lives.  It was great because there were a ton of weddings going on.  It is always fun to see all the brides and grooms coming out of the temple.  We even knew one couple, so it was fun to see their family.  It was a perfect day!!! It was everything you want for your daughter!  I am so glad these girls suggested this.  It was a perfect way to start the school year.

The girl's also invited their Sunday School Teacher and her husband.  We love them.  She is an awesome Sunday School Teacher and such a great example for the girls.

After the temple.  We went to lunch.  It was a great day!

 

Girl's Camp

A couple of months ago I was asked if I would go and be a camp cook for my stake (A group of wards forms a stake.).  Of course I said yes!!!  I had missed girl's camp for two years due to dealing with cancer.  It was hard to watch my daughter go to camp and know that I was not going.  I couldn't go.  So when this opportunity came, I jumped at it.  Then two months ago, I was called to be the 2nd Counselor of the Young Women's Presidency.  I am over the 12 - 13 year old girls.  It is so much fun.  When I got this call, I was super excited.  I just felt like I was finally getting my life back to normal.  Doing things that I did before I was sick.  I felt so grateful and happy to be back serving the youth.  I honestly felt like it was a gift!!  Now, what to do.  Do I cook or spend time with my girls? I realized that it is hard to get camp cooks, so I decided to cook during the day and be with my ward in the evening for the spiritual stuff.  Anyway, what do I care....I was going to girl's camp!!!  Our theme for the week was "Anchored in Christ."  I can honestly say that this Girl's Camp was the most spiritual camp I have been to.  There was a perfect balance of fun and spiritual things.  Our ward was the Grand Canyon Beach Bums.  It was great to cook and kind of have an outside look into the girl's day.  I was able to go to a couple of things when I had down time, so I wasn't able to get a ton of pictures! 

The view from our camp was amazing.  Every morning I woke up early to cook and this view would greet me.  It rained for the first two days, but I have seen worse up at camp so I wasn't complaining!

I haven't been up in two years, but they are always making improvements at camp.  One of the new improvements was permanent tents!  Oh my gosh, these are awesome!  They are huge!  Like, I can stand in the tent huge and six leaders can sleep in the tent and still have a ton of room huge!  Also, cots were provided.  I used my own, but this is such a help!  The one bad thing about camp was that we had no water.  The water at the top of the camp was bad.  This is where we were camping.  So they had to have water brought in and there were no showers by us.  It was kind of a pain!  The water problem was caused because of the forest fire on the mountain that happened last summer.

Yes, like I said, I was one of the cooks.  So, some of the pictures of the girls happened at meal time.

You can always tell where we are because we had light blue hoodies for our beach bums!

This year Aubrey was a Youth Camp Leader (YCL) meaning that this was her 5th year at camp.  You can't miss her with her crazy hats and light blue hoodie.  The YCL's run the camp with the adult leaders and participate in roll call and flag.  The girls do a lot of dancing and singing.  It is not easy.  They are busy the whole day!

The first night we had Brother Steele come up for a fireside.  He is an awesome singer and so good with the youth.  He spent the first half and hour singing popular music!  The girls loved it!!  Then he did his fireside and sang three beautiful songs.  It was so good.

The service project went on all week.  The girls worked on making caps for "Caps For Cancer" organization.  All week long I would see girl's working on them!  It was awesome!

Our girls do activities like zip lining, archery, BB gun shooting, rock climbing, and repelling.  I was lucky to have some free time so I was able to get some awesome pictures of Aubrey and her friend McKell repelling.  Aubrey was so funny.  She was yelling, "Oh Mylanta!"  Even if she was nervous, she did it!

Every night the Bishops would come up and participate in the Bishopric games.  This was before they had to do firesides and stuff.  Unfortunately we didn't have a bishopric member to do this, but President Edwards who is in our ward stepped it and won it all!!!  On the last night, our Bishop did awesome!  He almost won the whole thing!

We weren't suppose to, but a girl has to do what a girl has to do.  Yep, wash our hair.

When we had some good weather some of the cooks caught some rays!

Super Hero day was so cute.  We played games and danced all day to music.  It was awesome!

The YCL leader was awesome!  All the girls loved her!!!  I am so grateful for wonderful leaders like her.  They are fun and have such a strong testimony of the gospel.  The girls need to hear those testimonies!  They are amazing ladies who give their all to girl's camp!

Camp cooks also fill in where we are needed.  Even games!

It was such a good week.  I really got to know the girls.  So many of them I didn't know, and now I feel so close to them.  We are so blessed with such wonderful girls in our ward.  Their testimonies on the last night were amazing!  These girls are so strong!!!  I just love them!

After a full week of amazing firesides, high adventure, testimonies, good food, and staying up late, Aubrey came home and crashed!!!  This is the way she was all Saturday!  Makes it all worth it.

This was the song the girls sang everyday!  You can't listen to it without feeling something!  It just brings tears to my eyes every time they sing it.