P-A-R-T-Y



I failed to get any pictures of just Whitney and her date.  It was a little crazy
at the house.  But there she and Tyler are on the left in the dark purple.
Tyler and Whitney have been friends for years.  Tyler has a sister Kassidy
who is Jordan's age.  They have been friends forever too.  Kassidy and Jordan actually
went the Sadies Dance together their Junior year too! We are so blessed our children choose friends from such good families. 

Sadies was last night and we (well mainly Mark) made dinner for Whitney and her group.  The kids always travel in packs to the dances.  This group had 10 girls from the soccer team and their dates.  They decided to be dodge ball players.  Whitney and her date Tyler were "Team Whitler"  Kyra and her date Tyson were "Team KyTy".  And so on and so on with the other girls and their dates.  They all met at our house before the "day date".  After a lesson on how cool indexing is and a couple of scriptures and quotes from Elder Bednar... from Mark.  They had a fun day of pumpkin carving, picnics, and paint wars and then came to our house for dinner.  Mark's famous Japanese Chicken and rice.  I made the salad (opened the bag and poured it on the plates).  Madee took their orders for salad dressing and drinks and she and Courtney served the plates and made sure everyone had enough to eat and drink.    I also made some "Better than indexing cake" for dessert.  This cake has another name in some circles but for this day we decided to call it that.  :)   It was fun having such a great group of kids at the house. 

Yes, I do get paid for this!!!!

Here I am with a few of my fellow educators and BFF's on
ROCK STAR day!  Because being drug free ROCKS!
Red Ribbon week at school this week and Friday we all dressed
like ROCK STARS. 

Me and rockin girls.  Yes I only have 5 girls in my class this year!

Do you ever wish they didn't come EVERY year?!?!?!

Well they do come EVERY year!  It means you and I get one year older and that
the kids grow up way to fast.  Sometimes I want to stop the clock. 



New Birthday outfits!



Yes that is SNOW outside the window in this picture.  We woke up
to a winter wonderland on Madee's birthday.  Luckily by Friday when
we had her party it was a balmy 68 degrees! 

Madee and her cute friends at her party.  We had a birthday Olympics.
We had a soccer shoot, a basketball shoot, a football throw, a penny pull,
timed base run, egg carry race, a spelling bee, and a contest to
see how many words you could make out of the word
"trampoline".  Did you know there are at least
29 words you can make with those letters in less than 4 minutes?

My Boy

How proud am I of this boy? 
Words cannot explain how much I
love him.  My heart aches when I think
about him leaving and living
in Honduras for two years!
Have I done enough? 
Is he prepared to even live on his own?
( Let alone in a foreign country)
I am really putting all the faith I have
in the Lord on this one.  If not for
my faith and Jordan's desire to serve
a mission I know I could NOT let him go!

My beautiful girls

How lucky am I?  I am so proud of them.

Sadies

Sadies is coming up this weekend.  I will post pictures of the festivties because we will be feeding Whitney and all her friends.  She asked her date by decorating his car totally pink with pink ballons, pink feather boas, pink bead necklaces, and a pink poster that said "I would be tickled pink if you would go to sadies with me." He answered her by "decorating her room with blue balloons, confetti, and silly string and this poster.

Suits and Birthdays

We are having our fall break this weekend.  No school on Thursday, Friday, or Monday.  For many in Cedar City it symbolizes the start of the deer hunt.  For us this year it means time to get started on missionary shopping, get ready for birthdays, get the cars worked on, the house cleaned, oh, and find some time to just RELAX!!!!

You just can't have enough purple ties.
According to Jordan.

Getting measured so everything fits just right!

Getting some good advice from his sister.  :)

At the store where we got Jordan's missionary clothes there is a big map with missionaries pictures all over it. 
 Here is the one that Jordan took for the wall.
(Ya that sign should say Jan. 4th 12 NOT 11)

At Red Robin for the birthday lunch.
Courtney will be 13 on Tuesday.
Madelynn will be 10 on Wednesday.
We will have 3 teenagers!
And our "baby" is in double digits!!!!
Where does the time go?

Bakers

Jordan and Madee made a cake on Saturday night.  We thought we would have it for dessert on Sunday.  But Jordan had his friends over later that night and they ate most of it!  it was DELICIOUS!!!!

Learning from a child.

In math this week Madelynn has been doing double digit multiplication. She is struggling with it a bit and on Monday and Tuesday night homework time was EXTREMELY difficult. She got SO frustrated!! Which translated into Mark and I getting frustrated too. Well, Wednesday night she came home with more of the same kind of homework. Mark sat down to try to help her and things went downhill fast. I tried to help and still things were NOT going well! I just told her to let her teacher know she did not understand it and do it with her teacher tomorrow. ( Because I knew she would not cry and scream at her teacher.) It was getting late and she was so frustrated there was not way it was getting done. She went into her room and came out about 20 minutes later. She was completely calm and said, "Mom I said a prayer and I asked Heavenly Father to help me be able to finish my homework and understand it and not be so frustrated. I did all the problems and dad checked it. I missed a few but not many and dad said he would help me fix them in the morning." How proud was I? What a great example of faith Madee is. She KNEW that if she asked her Father in Heaven to help her with her homework He would. Heavenly Father WANTS to help us with EVERYTHING. We just need to ASK! And KNOW that He hears us and will help us if we but have faith.

AWW SCARY!!!!!

BEFORE AWFUL MAKE-UP...

AFTER...

Madelynn and her friend Jessica go to a singing group class called "IN TUNE"  or as grandpa likes to call it ITUNES.
This week they learned how to do "monster make-up".

AWW CUTE!!!!

Isn't she beautiful!?!?!?!?

I went through an ugly phase when I was in middle school.  Courtney is so lucky that never happened to her! 

General Conference Sunday

Preparing our traditional "Conference Breakfast".
Eggs golden rod.

Watching conference with the missionaries.   We were so excited to have the Elders spend the day with us eating breakfast, watching Conference, playing Conference BINGO, and a rousing game of spoons in between sessions.  

Whit and Court enjoying the afternoon session. :)

Madee's own LIVE doll!

This is Audrey and Madee.  Audrey is our new neighbor and lives with 3 big brothers and a new born baby sister.  So whenever she needs some girl time she comes to our house!  Madee dresses her up, does her hair and nails and just does "girly stuff" with her.