District Champions!

It has been a privilege for Syd to be on such a great team.  They just have the State tournament left!

Halloween 2010

Love to dress up the kids for Halloween!

Here they are right before our ward's Trunk-r-Treat!

Cotton Candy

Librarian

Nerd

Bat

Yummy Cotton Candy!!!

"Kick Me!"

This is Price's first year of skipping the dress-up part of Halloween.  I guess we all have to grow up some time. ;(

Cup Shoes

I don't know if there are words.

I'm not sure if you can tell but, Eliza took a couple of QT cups and put them on her feet for shoes.  She has been practicing all day long.  In one way she looks like she is wearing 4 inch high-heals, in another way she looks like a satyr (you know the goat man from Greek mythology.)

Either way that made me laugh harder than I have in a long time.  

Probably a good way to find yourself with another broken arm.

Choir

When Price was younger he loved to sing.  He would never admit it but I could see it on his face.   When he got older and choir wasn't cool anymore he quit.  

Well, the high school he goes to has release time seminary, for those of you who aren't Mormon - he leaves during the school day to go to a religious class - and he needed class to partner with seminary.  His first choice was Jazz Band but that didn't work with his schedule so his second choice was, you guessed it, choir.  

He wouldn't have joined choir if he didn't have to but I think it is safe to say that he is glad he had to.

He was really good.    

This is during his solo.

After it was over someone came up to me and said I didn't know Price could sing like that.  

Neither did I.

How it happened

We aren't really sure.  It had something to do with follow the leader.

A Buckle Fracture

When ever the big kids are babysitting they call me for kind of silly reasons.  

"Mom, can we have some Oreos?"

"Mom, can we watch TV?"

"Mom, can we have some ice cream?"

I don't think they have realized that I don't care if they have Oreos or ice cream.  They haven't realized I'll never know if they watch TV while I'm gone.  Actually I like it when they just veg in front of the TV when we are gone because they don't get hurt doing that. 

When we got home last Friday night Price was gone at something for school.  Sydney fell asleep reading a book, and Marley was asleep in her bed.  Those are my three babysitters.  Most of the time the two little ones would have been fine but not so this day.   Lane was playing with her friend Tanner and Eliza was crying and holding her arm trying to play with them.  I recognized that every time one of my children is holding their arm because gravity is hurting it, that has meant a broken bone.  It is our 5th broken arm in the family. (Syd has had three of them.)

Eliza LOVES her pretty pink cast!

Pierced Ears

She is beautiful.

Ears before any damage was done

Can you tell she was nervous?

The next day when Lane was going to school I gave her a ponytail so everyone could see her new ears.

  She said, "I just know that everyone will notice that I got my ears pierced, I mean that's all I see when I look in the mirror."

Birthday Hair

My sweet Lane turned 8 years old!

Lane is kind and thoughtful.  

She has been able to empathize with others from an early age.  

I remember when Lane was probably 4 years old.  We were driving down the road one day with Lane in her car seat in the back seat.  I heard some sniffles and looked in the rear view mirror to see Lane quietly crying.  I asked her what was wrong and she said, "This song is so sad."  

She feels things with her whole heart.  

She gets to get baptized and is so excited.

I love this girl!

Marley and Eliza made Lane presents and she was so thankful for them.

Countertops - check!

We have been remodeling our kitchen for nearly a year now.  It hasn't been as horrible as that sounds we have just been doing things as we had the time and money to do them.  So after the cabinets were put in (last Christmas) we got pretty sick of writing big checks.  We had the cabinet company cut us some melamine to substitute for real counters until we could get the ones we wanted.  

This is the kitchen prepped and ready for the counters

Here is the island piece, I really do LOVE it!

I wondered how they would be able to get it on top of the cabinets.  They just rolled it over there will a super-duty dolly and then hoisted it up.  Impressive!

Beautiful!

All we have left in the kitchen is the back splash.  I'm not sure what I want yet.  We'll see.

Cross Country 2010

Syd and Marley had their first Cross-Country meet of the year.  

The girls did great!  I love watching them get stronger and challenging themselves.  

That is what life is all about!

Syd is the tall cute one in the back ;)

Can she be giving it her all and smiling like that?  I don't know.

Storm Damage

This was the scariest storm I have ever been in, and I lived in the Mid-West for 4 years.

Everyone I know and have talked to had some kind of damage to their windows, roof, cars, air conditioner, etc.
Crazy!  But no one got hurt.

This is what our gate looked like after the storm ended.  

We had our big slide out for a party Price had on Saturday.  

Our poor queen palm.  The ground was so saturated that it couldn't stand up anymore.

That is the kid's teeter-totter under that huge limb.

This was a beautiful plant with big leaves.  It looks like someone stepped on it and tore it to shreds.

The leaves were all shredded by hail.

Streets covered in leaves torn down by wind and hail

Giant Pizza King

When we ordered the "giant" pizza we thought 16 people would be able to finish it.

Not so, the thing was huge!

Rob has a really good friend Casey that just happens to show up at different times in our lives without much notice.  He has just happened to be in our ward some Sunday and when Rob looks down from the stand, there is Casey with a great big smile on his face.  He just happened to visit on the day my mom and dad were speaking before they left on their mission, so Casey came with us.  Casey just happened to be in Southern California and spent the day with us on the beach.  That might not seem like much of a feat but as far as we knew he was moving back to the states from England at the time.  

We love Casey!  You can just show up, without notice any time you want!!!

the Ballifs

Whenever we go to Southern California we visit our old ward and go to church with old friends.  These are some great friends that invited us over for dinner.  

The Ballifs are an amazing family.  Just really cool people doing good things!

Word Problems #1

Question:  If you have one little pink plastic dolphin 

and take two adorable little girls to the beach 

and add an undying love of the color pink.  

How do you make both girls happy? 

Answer:  You can make them both happy, just not at the same time.

Surfing