Katanya turned six on the 18th! She wanted to go shopping and pick out pictures and things for her "new" room.
Betsy and her family showed up early evening. We were excited to have them come and visit!
Anya chose Chuy's for dinner. It is a family favorite for many! Our wait was unfortunately long and they even dropped Jacob's and McKay's dinner so their wait was even longer. Although, you can always rely on it being tasty.
We celebrated the evening with an Ice Cream Birthday Cake! Happy Birthday Anya!
June 17th, we drove down to San Antonio for our cousin's baptisms. When Jacob pulled off Cruz's shirt so he could jump in the pool, his tooth came with it.
Now he's my little Snaggletooth. The other one is pretty loose but he still hasn't lost it (3 weeks later).
P.S. Somehow the tooth fairy left a double wager. None of us know how that one happened.
McKay asked me a couple weeks ago why we didn't have an updated family picture. (And then a follow up question why we didn't have pictures like her friend's family.) The answers: I didn't have one for the first question, but the second was because I didn't want to pay for a studio one.
So once again, I asked Betsy to take some family pictures for us. She took our last ones....a year and a half ago.
She does an amazing job!
So here are some of my favorites....
....and some of the "personalities."
After I had McKay snap a few of Jacob and me.
Jake didn't really want to smile but with McKay's techniques I'm afraid she just took over the job as his "smiling coach. (Sorry Pete.)
Her secret....
....watch the video above from the time frame 2:20 to 3:05. It's McKay's secret weapon to smiles.
When I went to girls camp as a teenager, we had to pitch tents and cook our own food. Here, we had cabins, some of us had A/C and the staff at the girl's scout camp cooked our food. More on the food in just a sec. I got put with the third years and by chance, we were in an air conditioned cabin.....with fans. McKay was a second year and they were all in the treehouse bunks, without air conditioning but it had electricity. It could have been worse. Fourth year were on cement platforms with screens and no electricity. McKay chose a top bunk and by the time she unpacked, it was covered with sweat. So I took her straps to her duffle bag and tied her fan into the rafters. She slept fine and even complained that she was too cold on a couple of the nights. Jake would have been so proud of me!
The first time I saw this picture, I realized how much McKay looks like me.
At camp, each ward was suppose to have their own "camp" shirts. Since all of our Young Women had just gotten their "I'm A Mormon" shirts a couple months previous, we decided to get zumba hip scarves for all of us. We also learned a dance to the song "Arise" (click here for a free download from lds.org) We got the original seven value colors (Faith-White, Divine Nature - Blue, Individual Worth - Red, Knowledge - Green, Choice & Accountability - Orange, Good Works - Yellow, and Purple - Integrity) and then we had gold coins so that everyone represented "Virtue." Maybe I can find a video of the dance floating around. However the video below is the one our Beehives made.
I had less than 13 hours of sleep from Sunday night to Friday afternoon. On the last night of camp, one of the other leaders texted me at 2am and asked if I was still awake. Of course I was as I was packing so she told me that some of our Beehives had come up with a song and memorized a dance to go with it! They are so talented!
I was so ready to be home! I want to give a big shout out of THANKS to each of my friends that had my children for a day. It made it so much easier on Jacob and me. This sign was up for less than 48 hours and yes, our HOA turned it in as an "eyesore".
They even missed McKay. Just a little.
Back to the food. It was awful and very limited. I'm really not a picky person but the only good thing I can say about it was the salad was okay, but it often ran out before I could get to it. I was lucky to have FABULOUS counselors and a good Bishop who brought up some "brown bag lunches" during ward time on Wednesday. It's amazing how good a PB&J sandwich is when you are hungry. I also had a dear sweet friend from the ward that brought up some goodies on Thursday when she came up to teach a class. You don't realize what a staple food is for us. Especially with a bunch of teenage girls!
Our theme this year was "Shine Your Light." It was amazing. They tied in lighthouses, candles, and flashlights with it. We did several service projects throughout the week and there really isn't a better feeling then when you are serving another.
If you would have asked me on Sunday before I left for camp if I would go next year (or again for that matter) I would (did) say "No Way!" By the time I came home, I was saying I would do it again and couldn't wait for next year. To put it short, I LOVE our Young Women!
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!
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!
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!
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.)
I knew it was a big thing. They call it Wellness Day here but it is the same at Field Day or Play Day back home. I didn't realize just how big this was! A week before school got out, I pulled up to drop the kids off in the morning and we saw all the inflatable toys in the parking lot, McKay's words were, "I'm jealous. I never got this."
They started off the day bringing all the classes out and doing a dance. Then by grades they got to perform there own cheer / dance to compete for the "year long banner rights." From there it was a little fun run around the block for all the kids. What a rat race!
I volunteered to go around will Katanya's class and help out where needed. All of the classes rotated every 20 minutes. There were games....
Building / Creative thinking games, trampoline jumping inflatables....(On this mountain, I had to lift a kid up to put the last bucket on. They were having problems sharing so we put them together for one big mountain. As we were taking pictures a gust of wind came along and blew it over on them.)
Water stations, (why didn't Jacob think of this in Idaho)
Water Inflatable Slides....
and more water slides.
Judo demonstrations,
and bungee trampoline flip throwing things for the older grades.
By the time we had an hour left, the kids were exhausted.
This is one of Katanya's friends. By chance we are moving right next door to them next month. Its a small move (ha ha, is anything a small move with Jacob's things?), so hopefully going a couple streets down the road won't be too stressful.
I loved being able to come in and work with Katanya's class and teacher this year! Her teacher is one of the best! I have been grateful to have had FABULOUS kindergarten teachers for all of my children.
And last but not least there was a picture taking station. We have to have pictures right?
