Owl always Love you!

Lately, it seems like I'm always late. I consistently run five minutes late for anything, no matter how hard I try.  And now it seems like my posts are always two weeks behind.  I guess it's better late than never right?

I was a cabin mom for the Third levels this year.  I had 13 girls that were in my "family".  Only two from my ward.  This was fun because I got to meet new girls.  We brought little handouts for them so I decided to go with an owl theme.  Since the first night we had FHE on the 100th anniversary of girls' camp, Jacob helped me come up with an idea on making a journal.  I had tried to find cute but cheap journals at the dollar store and struck out.  So he designed and sewed these adorable journals for the girls.  On the back, I came up with the quote, "Remember Hooo loves you." 

On Tuesday, I handed out hand sanitizers and had put an owl sticker on them with a card saying, "Owl promise to be clean....100 ideas on how to make it to the temple."

On Wednesday I handed out these fun rice owls.  You can throw them in the microwave and use them as heating pads, or the girls even put them in the freezer and used them to cool down.  They did take a couple (understatement) more hours then I expected but I was trying to keep the cost down and used my scrap materials. 

On Thursday, I handed a "stress reliever" bag that had bubbles, a punch balloon, and a candy necklace.

And finally, on Friday, I had a cute little owl printout that had a fold up of an owl that you wrapped around a fun size candy bar (I used skittles and starbursts) that said, "Owl miss you, have a fun summer!" 

I really am not that creative.  I got ideas off of the internet (I finally went on Pinterest) and went from there.  Although I was quite impressed and happy with the results.

Jake and McKay crashed on Sunday as I was trying to get everything done, together, and also packed.  I only got 45 minutes of sleep that night which led up to the next five days totaling just less than 13 hours of sleep.  I was okay and was fine with it but somehow it stressed Jacob out.  He informed me that the next time I wanted to take on a craft, I had to get approval from him.  I guess I should mention that this wasn't my first "craft all-nighter" project.  I'll have to show you my journal jars in a later post!

Holiday Weekend!

Memorial Day weekend....

also known as my birthday weekend......

consisted of Jacob going to Maddy's wedding in Utah, loosing my car key at Wal-Mart (and it was never found), and going for a run, falling and getting pretty scraped up.  Although it did have it's highlights.  There was a great BBQ at a friend's house and the kids all had friends over to play.

Kirsten has a fun group of girls from her primary class that live in the neighborhood.  They had a blast having a late night.  They really didn't want to go home....just yet.

My mom sent back to us some homemade raspberry jam (the tuperware broke in the cooler and this was what was salvaged),

and 80 pounds of her "homemade" beef.  The airlines lets you check on coolers as luggage so when you pay roughly $100 dollars to bring home 80 pounds of ground beef, steaks, and roasts, you can't go wrong!  McKay will be excited as she has told Grandma that store meat doesn't taste the same and she HATES browning store bought ground beef.

-MOVING PHASE UPDATE:  We are still moving with just a mini-van and a small trailer.  Its a little at a time but when you are able to move a load and unload the load to the place you want it, it makes a HUGE difference!

Great Graduates!

While we are in the process of moving.... ....and yes, I moved this all by myself, with a little bit of help with my nine year old daughter, Kirsten.  She pushed while I lifted or balanced as I took a break.  After we got it loaded Kirsten came in and said, "We're dead."  She was referring to the fact that her dad may be extremely happy I was moving bigger things or extremely upset.  Although, I am quite proud of this accomplishment.  Anyway here is a flash back to a couple weeks ago on the last week of school.

Katanya graduated from Kindergarten.

It was weird thinking that my youngest will now be in first grade and I won't be going through the kindergarten stage again.

Cruz is going on to second, Kirsten to fifth, and McKay will now be in ninth and onto high school and early morning seminary.  McKay also graduated on the honor roll and the top 10 percent of her class.

Katanya received the positive attitude award.  I would have to say that all of my kids are super students!

A tough decision

Like I had mentioned earlier in the school year,McKay was playing the cello in advanced orchestra and the violin in chamber orchestra.

Here are some pictures of her final concert.

She was always first chair in orchestra until we went to Kansas and chair placement tests were that weekend.  She lost her first chair due to absence.  She ended the year as second violin in first Violins.  This was a big accomplishment for her.

Her teacher was amazing!  I always enjoyed watching them play.

 So then it was time to pick just one instrument to play in the High School Orchestra.  There was no way that she could play both and get all the credits she needs.  She struggled for weeks trying to decide what to play.

The cello won. 

(Here is a picture of McKay and some of her ork dorks and band geeks, as she would say.  They are also some of her running buddies.)