parents and pastries. and camera ramblings.

Every year the elementary school does a "Parents and Pastries" morning. 

This means if you show up for school an hour early with a parent and a book you all get a donut.  And a coupon for bowling at Fat Cats.

Mostly I just like being with my circus.  Especially if it encourages reading.

It's time for me to renew my phone contract and upgrade my phone.  I'm struggling with which phone I should use.  I've had, and loved, a Blackberry for the past five years.  I am most definitely not a fan of touch screen.  I want buttons.  West is a supporter of the iPhone.  He has me hooked on some of the game apps.

I think what it's going to boil down to is which phone has the best camera in it.  Sad but true.  I'm tired of sub-par pictures because I use my phone all the time.

And while we're on the subject, ever since my water camera decided not to be waterproof anymore, it's been leaving white spots in my pictures.  Despite what a kind reader said to me about it being spirits in my pictures, I assure you, it's spots inside the lense.  I can see them.  So I need a new water camera too.  Because now that I've had the ability to take my camera into the water, I don't want to stop.

Also, I want a fancy camera.  But I don't know which one.  I just know that I'm obsessed with taking pictures of my family and life, and I'd like them to, you know, actually turn out good.

So that's my to do list.  Phone with a decent enough camera, a water proof camera, and a "fancy" camera.

Is it too early to have a Christmas list going?

spreading the love in hot pink leggings and neon orange Vans

Valentine's Day at our house was perfect. 

West loved the blanket that I sewed for him on my new sewing machine. 

Cas wore a sparkly black dress, hot pink leggings, and neon orange vans to her 6th grade Valentine's dance.

Her favorite dance? The very last one where she didn't have to have a partner.  Sorry boys, you're on your own for Valentine's.

Cali gave me a sweet valentine this morning.

I got to have a last minute lunch with my man at my favorite Mexican restaurant.

I started assembling a three layer, three tier wedding cake.  Red velvet cheesecake.

When I make a cake I like to make sure that the mess explodes all over the entire kitchen.

Cas helped me with dinner by "dehydrating the chicken."  Translation: Cas   defrosted the chicken.

We had some extra red velvet cake batter so we made some cupcakes and spread the love to some of our neighbors.

Don't forget our family dinner by candle light.

Cali's drawings

Cali, first grade.

A picture she drew of herself with our two dogs, Milo and Strider.

 And her self portrait.

Cali Bites the Big One

We're taking this week out with a bang.Earlier this week Cali slipped on the ice at school and got a dark bruise on her cheek, and a bruised goose egg on her chin...

This picture was taken a few days later so the bruises are faded.  But then today I got a phone call from our neighbor who works in the office at the Elementary school.  Cali had fallen during recess and had a huge fat lip.  The teeth don't seem to be loose and she says she can go and try and eat lunch.  She'd been given an ice pack.Okay, that sounds simple enough to me.  And then I got home and saw her:

I hurt just looking at her.  (Excuse the never ending remodeling mess in the background).
"Let me see your teeth, Cali."

And I saw it.  Her brand new, front, permanent tooth is chipped.  The right one in the picture is chipped diagonally up the right side.
*Groan*
From now on Cali's going to wear a football helmet to school.  Do you think they come in pink? With, possibly, a picture of Justin Bieber on it?

Cas graduated from N.O.V.A.

And I'm not talking about the science TV show.
The mission of N.O.V.A. Principles is: "Nurturing youth to seek out positive Opportunities, internalize good Values, and to accept Accountability for their choices in life. N.O.V.A. assists parents, families, and communities in protecting youth from the potentially devastating effects of illegal drugs, violence, and negative media exposure."

Cas has gone through this program at school with a police officer, and has put a lot of extra work into it.  She designed a rocket, went with out media (TV, computer, phone) for a week, wrote her own personal mission statement, not only for the program, but for her life, as well as different worksheets that she had to bring home and prepare answers for. 
She was extrememly proud of herself when graduation time came along.  She felt she had earned it. And she did.  So much in fact, that she even called her dad and had him drive the 3 hours out to see her graduate.  To his credit, he did.
I'm grateful for Officer Albrand and the efforts that she puts into this program.  Cas has spoken highly of her for months now. 
They made the N.O.V.A mission into a cheer that they stood up and yelled with such energy and volume that a lot of the kids were plugging their ears as they yelled.  I have to admit, I was half tempted to follow suit with it.  It was ear ringing LOUD in that gymnasium, and it left me feeling so proud of all of those kids for being so excited about something so good that it brought literal tears to my eyes.
Getting ready for the cheer:

Officer Albrand:

Graduation:

To close the graduation the kids had prepared their own 12 days of Christmas song.  Here's Cas in her "tutu", as she's one of the 8 ballerinas.  I was taking pics with my phone and wasn't fast enough with it to get a picture of her twirling. 

And lastly, but certainly not least, here's Cas with her certificate and t-shirt:

I'm so proud of you Deeds.  You worked hard for this, and you deserve the recognition.  You'll do amazing things with your life.

Christmas Choir

Casidee and Tayler joined the Christmas choir at school this year.  Second year for Cas, first for Tay.  This year their choir was invited to sing at our City Hall.  There's a staggering 122 kids in their choir, the biggest they've ever had in the choir before, and the biggest choir that our City Hall has ever hosted.  We were packed in tight. In front of City Hall:

Tay on the front row with the light blue shirt:

And Cas in the very back on her tip toes so she can see over the massive group that's squashed on the tiny stage, you can see her head:



Last night was the official concert.  They had some pretty fun props, and of course an Elementary school choir is just funny to watch period.  They make great faces.

Don't tell West, but I'm secretly hoping that they get into the musicals and plays in Jr. High and High school. :)



What we did this summer

This summer was full of some pretty fun things. Crazy things. Ordinary things. But all our things. And because I was so busy doing all of these things, I didn't get a lot of blogging done. This blog post is long. And full of pictures. Lots of pictures. And I didn't even add them all on here. But being as it's officially fall, and we have a lot more things on our doorstep, coming up to happen, I better get this all archived for future remembrance. Ready? Here we go!
JUNE
Girl's Camp
Our them was Camp TV (Totally Virtuous). I got to be in my first flash mob, which ROCKED. I made some pretty solid neighborhood friends, not only with the other leaders, but with the young women too. We danced like 70 year old women, invented an infomercial for "Bully B Gone spray", taught the girls Vroom, and how to play skittles. Oh yeah, the spirit was amazing this year. Stronger than any other year I've ever been to.
Playing cards with Mik is pretty easy when you can see them in her glasses.

Above, I kid you not, at this point in the hike some one says, "I spy with my little eye something GREEN!"

Below, our 70 year old granny dresses for our awesome dance skit:

And the beginnings of our flash mob, done to Selena Gomez's "Who says":

Our amazing girls:

Raccoon:

West's mom rescued a lost raccoon that she found while in a cemetery. We got to go check it out. I walked with all four of it's legs sticking straight out in jerky movements, it kind of reminded me of a bat in a way.

Jay-bird's half birthday:

We won't have the kids on Jay's birthday this year (the day after Christmas) so we did her party and gave her presents for her half birthday.

Jay invited some friends over and they played on the slip-n-slide:

And we taught them how to play water balloon volleyball:

She just wanted a plate of brownies for her cake

and then we set up the projector outside and used the trailer to watch "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" in the yard.

West had to cover the street lamp so we could see the movie:

July

4th of July, Independence Day

We had a neighborhood BBQ and fireworks at our house. I'm so in love with the 4th of July and it was perfect this year. I hadn't had my circus on the 4th of July for three years. FINALLY, we got to celebrate it with them.

The girls helped me make some red, white, and blue strawberries. My dad made homemade ice cream, and West pulled the BBQ out on the front porch. Everyone brought side dishes and desserts and fireworks and we had more food and fun than we knew what to do with.

We inherited a second air hockey table so we set it up outside. It was a big hit.

And it started to rain right at the very end, but not so much that we couldn't finish. Aaron was prepared for it though.

Flaming Gorge

In July we joined a group of friends at Flaming Gorge, on the Wyoming side. It's pretty bare and we've decided that if we go again we're going to stay on the Utah side. It's a lot prettier there.

We didn't have the circus that weekend, so we just took our puppy boys.

L is super mom. See? She even has a flowing cape.

Youth Conference

For Youth Conference we went up and camped at Palisades in Idaho, and rafted the river in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We also checked out the pioneer town of Chesterfield, Idaho. The theme was choices and paths. We played water games with the youth and had THE best camp cook. The mosquitoes were as big as birds, and no spray stopped them. Jeans didn't even stop them. I'm surprised I got out of the four day trip with only five bites. Everyone else had so many they couldn't even count them.

The Teton Mountains were breathtaking. The whole day was amazing. We saw moose and eagles and hawks.

And somehow I ended up jumping in to the river 6 times. It felt amazing. I was told this earned me my man card, but frankly, I'm not sure I even want a man card lol.

A reminder that my Heavenly Father loves me.

Blowing down the brick house:

Want a perm? Can you even imagine???

August

County Fair:

We joined West's mom, sister, and sister's boyfriend at the Demolish Derby, which are always fun. Then we walked around and checked things out. Guess what we found? A camel and a zebra!

"Aint nothin' in the world can make you fall in love, like a night at the county fair"

Neighborhood birthdays

This is what you get when you make friends with your neighbors. Especially when your neighbors are us.

"Hurry, hide the toilet paper!"

Lodgepole

Sunny D hangover?

We took a quick over night trip up the canyon and had THE best time as a family. We had hot dogs and s'mores and played cards. We took a short hike, and mostly just talked and laughed. I love my circus beyond anything.

This picture makes my heart smile:

BB gun shooting:

1st Day of School:

This is what you get when the kids take charge of their own first day of school pictures:

Casidee, 6th grade. Out to rule the school, and loving every minute of it.

Jayme, 5th grade.

Brynn, 4th grade:

Sean, 3rd grade:

Tayler, 3rd grade:

Cali, 1st grade:

Labor Day Weekend

Sean and Brynn's birthdays

Sean and Brynn had a joint birthday party this year. We did another outside movie, setting up two tables, one for each of them.

Happy 9th birthday to Toad man.

And happy 10th birthday to B.

Sean picked black and red for his colors, Brynn picked purple and blue.

Sean wanted a Mario cake with Mario jumping over a tube. He also wanted it to be an ice cream cake, which poses a problem since ice cream melts and fondant freezes rock solid and can't be cut. We came up with a solution and went to Baskin Robins to order an ice cream cake. We asked them to make the icing green, and the piping green and to leave it blank because we wanted it to look like the green tube on Mario. 15 minutes before the party West went to pick it up. This is what they did:

They seriously wrote "Green Pipe (Mario)" on the cake! It wasn't even green! Well... they gave it to us for 50% off (damn straight) and Sean said he was OK if Mario jumped over a birthday cake instead of a pipe. So I scraped the words off, wrote "Happy Birthday Sean", and stuck Mario in.

Brynn wanted a monkey face cake with sprinkles around the edges. She has a lot of clothes with monkey cartoons on them so I asked her to go and get the one that she wanted me to take the face from. Her BFF helped her with the sprinkles. They did a pretty awesome job.

The face Brynn picked was an angry monkey. Sometimes I don't know about her...

Instead of using the projector this time, we rolled out the giant TV that resides in our garage because we're trying to sell it. We just plugged "Rio" into a DVD player.

Whew! And that was my summer. Now I can stop freaking out about how behind I am on my blog.