Dance Recital 2011

Meredith had her first dance recital this past Saturday.  She takes Ballet 1 with Miss. Claudia, whoms she adores!  The concert was very well done and the girls did a fabulous job!  Here she is performing her "Ribbon Dance":

Track and Field 2011

The YMCA on our school site was offering an eight week track and field course.  We enrolled Trevor because

1.  He loves to run

2. We wanted to improve his speed for baseball

He had a great time!  It was a very well run program.  At this level all the kids competed in all the different meets (400m, 200m, 100m, 50m, long jump, football throw and relay).  Here are some pictures of him at his meet against about six other schools in the district. 

His favorite event was the 400m (he got second place).  He got 1st on the 50m, 2nd on the 200m and 3rd on the 100m.

 Trey, Trevor and Dallin

Trevor, Aidan and Payson

Happy 14th Birthday Madalyn Nicole!

Happy 14th Birthday to our favorite 2nd born daughter!  From the minute you were born we were so happy to have you be part of our family!  You are beautiful, you keep us laughing, honest, hardworking and have a beautiful testimony of your Savior Jesus Christ.

We love that you and Mackenzie are not only sisters, but best friends.  Family is so important to you!

 (2 years old)

 (6 years old)

Now that you are fourteen you get to go to Church dances, Youth Conference, Super Activity and High School!  We hope you enjoy your special day with all your friends and family!

If you can make it here, you'll make it anywhere!

Madalyn's 8th grade dance was Friday, June 17th.  She looked absolutely stunning in her dress and shoes!  It helps that she is a natural beauty inside and out in our eyes :)!

Before the dance she met up with some friends from church for "pre-dance" pictures.  There were eighteen kids from our church there with three others missing from the pictures.  She is sure blessed to have such a great youth group to share this experience with!

Claire, Madalyn, Addison and Samantha:

Madalyn and one of her BFF's Hailey:

She sure has lots to choose from..haha!

Here is a picture of the entire gang (minus 3).  They lined up in height order with Madalyn only 5'4" she is on the shorter side.  We think she is still growing!  What a good looking bunch!

Her sparkly shoes!  I tried to convince her to get heals to help give her a boost in the height department, but these went so well with her dress that I could not argue...too bad they did not have any in my size!

Daddy and daughter!

Pictures at the Dance 2011

The theme of the dance was "New York, New York:  If you can make it here you'll make it anywhere".  The MPR was completely transformed into difference scenes of New York:  Central Park, Manhattan, Skyline, Broadway, the Statue of Liberty and the Subway.  I asked Madalyn to take lots of pictures of the decorations at the dance, but these are the only ones she took.  The rest were of crazy girls dancing!  At lease I know she was having a great time!

When the students entered the MPR the hallway was decorated like a subway tunnell with the grafitti provided by the parents.  She took pictures of the note I left and the one Mackenzie left for her:

Performances 2011

June is always a busy month with end of the school year performances and Singers Company performances.  This year we only have two children with performances since our older two have chosen athletics over performing arts recently.  Luckily they are able to get a lot of performing opportunities at church.

So we start with Meredith's Singers Company Performance.  She did a great group of songs including "What a Wonderful World", "It's raining Sunshine" and "Grandma's Feather Bed".  She had a solo in Grandma's Feather Bed.  That song has a lot of words (fast also), but the girls all did such a great job!

Trevor and Meredith's music performances were back to back this year.  Works out perfect for us parents!  Their music teacher, Mrs. Baker, was voted as the best music teacher in all of Orange County!  She does a wonderful job at directing the children.  The harmony and tone of the third graders was amazing! 

19 Year Anniversary Getaway

As many of you may know Ryan and I do not go away with eachother sans kids very much.  So for the third time in 19 years we decided to sneak away for the weekend and go to Palm Desert.  We stayed at the Westin Desert Willow Resort..we love this resort and have stayed there before.

We started our vacation doing what I like to do...keeping busy!  We took a 20 mile bike ride through the San Andreas Fault.  We got our own private tour which proved to be very educational!  There were three stops along the way to learn about the landforms, vineyards, date farms and the Salton Sea.

In some areas the landforms were horizontal and some were verticle. 

Our self portrait infront of the aquaduct:

Toward the end of our ride we rode through a grape vineyard and then stopped at a Date farm.  I LOVE DATES!  Ryan is not real fond of them :)!  I got to sample all sorts of different variety of dates and have a date shake..yummy!

Here is Ryan with our personal tour guide Clotair (from France).  He use to pilot hot air balloons but after he retired he started this business.  He has some great stories to tell!

We thought this golf cart was cute.  We teased Mackenzie and tell her that we bought this as her first car!  She did not appreciate that!

The rest of the weekend was spent doing what Ryan likes to do on vacation:  lounging by the pool, going down the water slide, playing water volleyball and water basketball, tanning, reading, going to a movie and eating (I like all those things too).

This is our new favorite Mexican Restaurant on Hwy 111 in Palm Springs.  Can't wait to go back and eat there in July!

Here is the view from our room: