FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL -
Aug. 12th, 2010

Poor Jordynn- HATES pictures.  And, first day of school was also portrait  day.  Evil mom made her curl her hair, and told her to think of something funny and show her teeth when the photographer takes the picture.  This forced smile she has here just doesn't do my beautiful daughter justice.  
Can you say T-E-E-N-A-G-E-R??  Gotta love the girl though!  And I do.  I love my "JoJo".  Look out 8th GRADE- here she comes!

My sweet Kaylee- -already in the 4th grade.  Where does time go?  Kaylee gets to have her first MAN grade-school teacher.  So far (almost a week into school now) she is happy with him.  She also just joined the school music program and will be learning to play the VIOLIN!  She's so excited for this. 
Go Kaylee! 


And then there's Ashtyn.  3rd grade already.  New classmates, new teacher, all the questions and unknown territories to cover.  Wow- it's going to be a big year.  Ashtyn has gone from not wanting to pull her back in any way, and not allowing me to touch it at all, to wanting me to put it in a "high pony tail" every day.  She has discovered that having longer hair now can actually be fun to pull back.  It's amazing the things a 3rd grader can learn! 

Of course we know that MILEY is not old enough for school, but she does get her backpack full of books and toys and asks me to take her to school anyway.   I do pack her lunches sometimes so she can take it with us when we go run errands.  This satisfies her for now.  I will say that she does plenty of learning while she watches Barney ON DEMAND (Comcast).  She has also started taking gymnastics on Friday mornings and that is quite the sight to see.  The girl is strong, I'll say that much.  Her teacher of course loves her to death.  She's a little firecracker, that's for sure.  The best thing about watching her during class is seeing the huge, beaming smile she has on her face, non-stop.  Love that girl!

Summer Vacation July 2010

We just returned home from a 2 week vacation. We had such a great time. It was hard to come back. We spent time in Vegas (Nevada), Utah, and Idaho. We even hit Arizona, Montana, and Wyoming (Yellowstone).

Here are a few classics of our fishing trips spent at the greatest place in the world- our cabin in Idaho! This was Miley's first visit up there. She had a lot of fun and picked up the fishing thing right away.

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Bret and his brother hiked to the top of Mount Timpanogos in Utah. It was definitely a full day's task. It was an amazing and beautiful hike. They were feet away from mountain goats. They had to hike up a glacier and the best way back down was to slide down on their bottoms. Way, way down! They had a great time together, making for another memorable "Bret and Bart Adventure". Good job guys. Glad they came home safe and no one was bleeding or broken!

MORE PICTURES and stories to come later.....

A quick Sunday afternoon project

I've been needing to make more birthday cards to have on hand for those birthdays that just kind of sneak up on you. So, I sat down on Sunday afternoon and whipped these up.
I needed to be quick, so I found these cute pre-cut flowers ready to assemble,
stamped a birthday message and a stem, applied the flowers, added some ribbon and
Vio la! These will hold me over for at least next month. :)

Tootsie Roll piggy banks

As many of you know, my big creative question is: Before I throw it out, can I apply paper on it or paint over it?!?!? So, before I decided to throw out these cute tootsie roll containers/ party favors my daughters received from a birthday party (btw, "Thanks, Aunt Kelli"), I decided to cover them with paper and a bit of ribbon, then applied Mod Podge. Still can be a piggy bank, or another candy holder, or I can make it a cute pencil/pen holder for a teacher gift. I'm actually not quite done embellishing these, but it's a very simple project that anyone can do. Just thought I'd share!

Have a fun, creative day! :)

Ashtyn's Carnival Style Birthday Party

For Ashtyn's 8th birthday, we had carnival games, popcorn machine, ticket redemption booth, and more! Here are a few of the home made cardboard activities that I made. Ashtyn begged for a picture cut out. I wasn't too sure about doing it. Once I did, I was glad. The party turned out fun. The kids enjoyed their prizes, the cake, the corn dogs, the popcorn, the cotton candy, and all the games. HAPPY 8th Birthday, ASHTYN!

Balls had to land on a circle with a star. This was a tricky, but fun game.

Ashtyn modeled in each of the photos while her friends took turns being the clown.
The photos are part of the thank you cards Ashtyn is sending out.

Depending on what # you landed on, determined a small prize you could win.

The basic bean bag toss game earned 1,2, 3 or 4 tickets.

Other games included a ring toss on soda pop glass bottles, rolling pennies on a Twister mat to land in the middle, fishing pond, mini basketball toss, and guess the # of gumballs in the jar. FUN FUN!

Science Fair project

Tonight we had the privilege of going to Modesto to the County Science Fair Awards ceremony. Jordynn's project, which had advanced from school to the county won a GOLD medal! Yay!

I forgot to bring my camera, or else I'd be able to post pictures of her receiving the medal, along with the project's big blue ribbon on it. I'll post those later.

When we arrived tonight, Jordynn's project had a little note attached, advising us to check with a woman in charge. She told us that there were 192 science projects, and they were requesting to keep the top 8 to display in the county district building for 3 weeks. Jordynn's was one of these top 8. In fact, her score was 98/ 100!

Some credit, of course, goes to dad who helped out with the construction of the launcher, mom helped with computer details, and Aunt Kristi helped out with graphics. Here is a picture of her actually conducting the experiment and the poster board before she turned it in.