Winter Formal SJHHS 2013

SJHHS Winter Formal this year's theme was Mascarade and it was Sadie Hawkins style at Soka University in Aliso Viejo. Mackenzie asked Reece Halter from school to go with her.  Reece is famous at the school for eating a banana on a specific day each year while the other students cheer him on.  So she had their Calculus teacher deliver Reese a package that read "I would go BANANAS if you would go to Winter Formal with me".  He had to open the package of bananas to find Mackenzie's name at the bottom.  It was pretty cute!

 Reece Halter, Mackenzie and Trevor Lindsay

All the beautiful girls!

Madalyn Gets her Driving Permit!

Look out California drivers another Jones girl is going to be on the streets!  Driving a car that is!  Madalyn passed her permit test which puts her that much closer to driving independently.  What a great day it was for her!!

Meredith's Family Birthday Celebration!

This year Meredith has continued to grow at an unusual pace so we bought her a new bike to keep up!  She loves riding her bicycle around the park and culdesac!

She chose kept with her annual tradition of birthday dessert at Farrell's!  Yum!  I think she likes all the attention when they sing to her :)!

Meredith's Friend Birthday Party

Meredith's friend party was a Breakfast Birthday Bash!  The girls all came in their pajamas, they ate breakfast, made a cupcake jar craft, played minute to win it games and had a fun photo booth shoot with Justin Beiber!

cupcake jars the girls made as a craft!

Happy 9th Birthday Meredith!!

 Happy 9th Birthday Meredith!   You are growing up to be a kind, helpful and caring girl.  You have brought so much happiness into our home.  We love how service oriented you are, willing to learn new skills around the house and caring you are.

Have a happy birthday!

three weeks old

one year old

two years old

three years old

Loss of Wisdom...

Mackenzie got her wisdom teeth out on the last Friday of the Christmas break.  They have been bothering her for about 8 months, but we had to wait until our HSA account replenished in the new year since we do not have dental insurance.  She was hesitant to do it over the break because her social life is too important to be stopped haha!  When the opportunity arrived for Dr. Spoolstra to remove them she finally agreed.  It was last minute, but I am glad she finally got them out!

Since Dr. Spoolstra is a friend of my mom's because of being in the dental field he gave us a discount and let my mom be in there to take pictures.

Here she is before waiting to get her IV...she was so dehydrated he had to look in three different spots then finally relinquished and put in it her hand.  Did not faze her one bit (definetly does not get that from me..I HATE IV's)!

 

Here she is during the procedure which took all of 15 minutes.

Here is an aftershot with Grandma Wright.   

Her siblings were all hoping for some funny video footage when she woke up, but there was none.  Her first words were where is my phone I need to snapchat this!  She was a great patient!

Rose Parade

As a little girl growing up my family would go see the floats up close before the parade started, be interviewed by KTLA channel 5 news and go into the 'white house'.  You see, my Step-Dad Mack's brother Mike was an attorney for KTLA and he also lived down the street from where the floats line up.  We would spend the night at his house on New Years Eve and get up super early.  I have very fond memories of this experience. After Mack passed away things changed and we stopped going to the Rose Parade.

This year we decided to take the kids and let them experience it!  The teenagers were excited about it the day before, but the morning of when we had to be out the door by 6:30 a.m. they were not too thrilled!  Luckily once we got there we had a great time!  The floats were all so beautiful!  We got to visit with a couple who were getting married on the Farmers float right in the middle of the parade, pose with performers and meet a few REALLY NICE HGTV host (Carson Oosterhouse and Nancy O'Dell).

One of my favorite floats with meaning was the Donate Life (not pictured).  On the float there were people holding pictures of a family member who lost their life and donated their organs.  Seeing these people up close and the emotions they were feeling was really touching.  

This float was made by some pet food company.  The neat thing about it was that one of the military personnel riding on the float just returned home from Afghanistan and was there to surprise his wife and son who did not know he was home!  It was really sweet.

Not sure the purpose of these two guys, but we all got a good laugh from them.  They must have been freezing!!  

Here are Nancy O'Dell and Carson Oosterhouse.  They were telling us all about the 2013 Dream home and how even though it is the smallest it is Nancy's favorite because of its location on an island off South Carolina.  Carson and Ryan were enjoying their conversation about a Celebrity motorhome show he just filmed.  Carson said some of these motorhomes were unbelievable!

After we were done looking at the floats we got some yummy breakfast and went home and took a nap!!

Happy New Years!

We spent a nice evening at home playing with our friends the Albrights for New Years Eve.  The older girls went to the Laguna Niguel Dance.  We had fun playing games, snacking and lighting sparklers!  Trevor and Meredith really wanted to stay up for the midnight celebration so we were sure to keep everyone busy.  We only lost baby Marley and Coby (6 years old) just before midnight.  The rest of the kids made it all the way to midnight to celebrate with sparklers and blow horns!  Happy New Years to all our family and friends!