Groove Dance Competition

Loaded up and ready to head to Mesa for a dance competition.  This is Logan's first big competition and he is thrilled as you could imagine!

I sure love having Aubrey living with us!  She makes things fun and crazy at times :)

Hunter is such a stud!  He loves his dance girl friends!

They danced wonderful today!

Oh these two kill me!

We were so happy that Justin decided to come down to watch the competition.  Ella did great watching all the dance routines.  It was fun to be together as a family to support the kids doing what they love!

After the competition we took Gavin Rogers with us to eat.  We got quite the looks with this big group of kids.  Hahaha....love that Ella is picking her nose in the pic!

We can thank Aubrey for the amazing cat swimsuit that Ella is wearing.  I am pretty sure it is going to be a fight to get her to wear anything else.  She had to wear it to bed even!

Ella was so entertained using my belt to pretend like she was fishing on the hotel bed.

Oh she giggled and giggled.  And well so did I!

Logan's jazz number was AWESOME!  Took first place overall!  Great job!

Hunter's group did wonderful!  By the end of the competition Hunter told me he didn't feel good at all.  He thought he had strep throat.  Took him to the Urgent Care and she enough he has strep.  Poor guy was sick that whole time.  You would have never known it when he was on the stage.  He did amazing!  Way to push through feeling so bad!

Love watching Kiersten dance!  She definitely shines on stage!

It was a great weekend!

Ended up trading in the van and getting a pearl colored Yukon Denali XL, so yeah it was a GREAT weekend!  I am happy to not be a van mom anymore.  Although the van had some nice features like the sliding door, which made it easy for kids.  But I am more of an SUV mom.  Ideally I like to have a small car to do all the running around that doesn't involve everyone and then a large SUV for family trips.

Dress Up Week at DPA

The kids sure love when they get to dress up at school.  This is Love of Reading Week at DPA.

Ryker, Logan and Grant

This day was dress up aa your future occupation.  Grant is a CKC worker and Logan and Ryer want to be professional hunters.

The boys rode their bikes to school today and I had a couple of people text me about Logan in hi skin outfit.  It was pretty funny!

This was Wacky day.  Logan pulls it off well I'd say.  Doesn't his smile radiate fun!

Grant was looking pretty rad on Wacky day too!

This was hero day.  Grant is an Army man and Logan a fire fighter.

Grant looks like he is going to poop or cry.......lol.  Nope that is just his serious Army man face.  Oh my gosh I was dying.

Glad he would give me a smile!  That's the sweet Grant face I love!

One day was pajama day....thank you for an easy day....love mom!

This boys were so excited to bring their stuffed animals today.

It was a fun week and they did lots of fun activities at school.  We still love our little charter school!

I am a Proud Momma

What do you do when your teacher tells you "You can't reach your goal." and "You'd have to pull a rabbit out of your hat to reach your accelerated reading goal."  All in front of the entire class.....

Well this is what you do....

You work hard, you stay up a little late several nights, you put in the work, you "pull the rabbit out of the hat" and you

PROVE HER WRONG!!!

So proud of Logan for reaching his AR goal this quarter after having his reading teacher tell him he couldn't do it.  I hate it when someone tells one of my kids that they won't be able to reach a goal or something.  It took hours and hours of building Logan's confidence back up for him to believe he could actually reach that goal.

A few of my kids have the personality that if you tell them they can't finish something, they will instinctively want to prove you wrong.  Logan is not that kid!  He believes what he is told.  I want to slap that teacher in the face for what she said to Logan in front of his peers.  But I respect teachers in general too much to ever do that.

There are a few good things that came out of this experience.  First, Logan learned that he can do seemingly hard things when he puts his mind to it.  Secondly, he learned that hard work pays off.  Finally, he learned that his brother, Hunter loves him and believes in him.  Hunter did a great job being Logan's cheerleader and telling Logan, "Man you have to reach your goal so you can prove your teacher wrong."  It was sweet to see and hear Hunter building Logan up.  Such is not always the case.

Way to go Logie Bear!  You are an amazing reader and one hard worker!

You can do anything you put your mind to and never believe anyone who tells you otherwise!

Girls Trip to California

And we are off...

on a girls trip to a beach house in Oceanside.

Can you tell we are a little excited?!?!

This beach house was one of the condos next to the one we stayed at last summer with Tif and her kiddos. 

Two of my favorite things....sandy toes and salty kisses!

This was our view for 5 days!

#sorrynotsorry 

We took the girls out of school Wednesday and left early that morning.  It's pretty easy traveling with just teenagers!

Coffee cake as an appetizer was at every restaurant it seems.  Must be a cali thing.  What ever the case, it was delicious!

Crunchy Banana French Toast.......

don't mind if I do.

Okay twice I have this for breakfast at two separate places.  I mean I had to compare who's was better right?

This one was from Breakfast Club Diner

Beach Break Cafe

Seriously yummy food!

Oh how I love this girl and her perfect botox face.  She could make her forehead wrinkle if she wanted!  She is so gorgeous to me I don't think she needs that botox stuff!  I just love her!!!

I could walk on the beach everyday and be a happy happy person!  I just LOVE the beach!  So wish we lived closer to it.

This was a fabulous idea....not sure who's idea it was but whoever it was is a genius!

We had so much fun with our four girls.  I just count Aubrey as one of mine.  She has a wonderful mom, my sister Marla and I would never want to nor have any desire to replace her as Aubrey's mom.  But I just count her as my own because I love her!

Ummm yes we had an elevator right in our condo.  It was so freaking sweet!  Cambry and I took every chance we had to use it....lol.  Good times!

Yes this would be ANOTHER picture of us eating.  That's one of the main things we did on this trip.  This was us at Breakfast Club Diner.

We also enjoyed Ruby's on the Pier several times.  

Good food + great company = unforgettable memories

Look at our beautiful girls!

These four girls are seriously so fun!

They laughed and joked and laughed some more.

The water was FREEZING cold but that didn't stop these die hards.  They loved boogie boarding and Tif and I loved watching them and hearing all their stories.

What a great little dive in Oceanside.....the Flying Pig.

My plate of chicken with hush puppies was Divine!!

These girls had so much fun posing for pictures.  They were amazing "present" lifeguards....LOL!

It was fun to meet Tif's aunt, Liz.  She was hilarious!  Thanks for treating us to the Flying Pig!

This relaxing girls trip was just what my soul needed.  I relaxed on the beach, had no little ones to watch or bath, read two books on the trip, listen to the waves, ate way too much, laughed a lot and had a wonderful time!

Best picture I could get because Kiersten didn't like the idea of posing how I wanted her to.

Thank goodness Aubrey saw my vision.....isn't this a cool picture.  I love the way the sunset is lighting up her face.

Oh these girls seriously cracked us up.  This would be them teaching each other how to two step while we waited for our table at Ruby's.  

Aub's is obsessed with sharks!!!

SO when we ate at Joe's crab shack and they had a SHARK ATTACK drink we had to get the alcohol free version of it.  There is a vial of red grenadine in the sharks mouth.  The waitress screams "SHARK ATTACK!"  Then pours it in the drink and everyone around cheers.

It's a fun thing.  The drink is nasty but you get to keep the plastic shark so that's cool.

We had to get a picture of Aubs with this hanging shark.  And yes she asked if she could climb up on the shark to eat her dinner.... hahaha!

I love this group of young women so much!  They make my heart happy!  I feel so blessed to have been able to get away for some much needed girls time!  Thanks to my mother in law for watching Ella for me and Justin for holding down the fork over the weekend!

This picture was taken on the balcony of our beach house.  It was wonderful to listen to the waves as we went to sleep every night.  Can't get enough of this place or this beautiful lady!

Why yes I think a pound of snow crab legs sound good to me!

These bibs were crackin' us up....

get it "crackin" us up....LOL!

Anytime you get to dip your dinner in melted butter its a good dinner if you ask me!

I love this picture!  We didn't even plan it.  The three of us were just taking a selfie, then later we noticed the girls were in it as well.  We cropped out the fat guy that was in the right hand corner.  You're welcome!

We literally just "hung" around for 5 days on the beach and IT WAS FABULOUS!!!