Lane WINFO

Lane had a great time with his date, Phoebe Raine, at WINFO!

Of course they had many activities leading up to the dance.

Since it was girl ask boy, they planned a pretty involved Amazing Race

for their day activity.

My friend text me saying a favorite highlight of the race

was watching Lane eat a hamburger.

He was done in 2 bites and so casual about it.

Everyone else barely had one bite down he was
wiping his mouth with his napkin!

I should be so proud, lol!

Apparently he carried his team to victory!

Spirit week with his date.

Casey passed the test and took excellent pictures for me while I 

was at dance competition with the girls.

Some of the girls had a volleyball game so pictures

had to be taken in the dark.

They went to downtown Gilbert.

I had 2 friends that said they saw him!

 

Crazy to think he only has 1 more Winter Formal dance left!

Spotlight Dance Competition

We had ourselves a FULL day of dance competitions!

Waking up at 5am to start getting Della ready was an absolute treat.
Catch my sarcasm?

She needed to be there at 6:15.

Fake lashes on little girls stress me out like no other.

And rushing in the wee hours of the morning stresses me out, too!

To help solve one of these problems the girls got to sleep with their falsies on:)

It was a brilliant idea and saved me oodles of time that morning!

Miss Aubrie stretching them out.

You can't see the madness going on all around them in the dressing room.

Moms running around with hairspray and bobby pins.

Or me helping out a grandma who was put in charge of getting Camilla, her grand daughter,

to competition while the parents were out of town.

She hadn't a lick of makeup on so I scurried to slap on whatever I could before they

needed to get on stage.

It didn't help that she was a "sensitive" girl who winced and complained that 

it hurts anytime I barely touched her face. 

Oi!

Sorry girlfriend, I had to do what I had to do!

I think she hates me now, ha!

They were 3rd to go on!

A good way to start the day off!

A quick costume change and then they danced their

We Like To Party number.

Luckily we were about 25 minutes away so we went home

before having to go back for awards.

Then grabbed lunch and watched Lindi play in her basketball game.

Then back home to get Lindi all ready for her dances!

Della's early morning wakeup call caught up to her on her 3rd drive back 

to the competition. 

Lindi's group pumped to get things started!

First was Wonderful World.

Then Long Jacket. 

Lastly it was the studios production number,

Move It.

Both girls danced in this together.

Della is in yellow.

Lindi in blue.

It was their first time performing the production dance on stage

so they did great considering that.

Back at home Lane was getting picked up for Winfo

and I was giving strict instructions to Casey to take pictures!

 Awards round 2.

Us moms pretty much over it at this point.

It was 9pm and I look how I felt, which was tired!!

To be honest I don't even remember how they placed.

I think it was somewhere in the middle for
overall dances so we will take that as a win!

 

January

I find all sorts of selfies on my phone from the girls.

This one had me stumped because it didn't look "original".

Come to find out they have figured out how to edit  pictures.

 They added lowlights and other things to her face.

I do have to hand it to them, her hair looks really good, ha!

But I am in a heap of trouble when they get a phone someday.

It seemed like the longest Christmas break.

After a week of the dunes and New Years stuff, we still

had a whole week off from school.

We did lots of things like hot tubing at my parents.

Used our pogo passes and GolfLand

We got to meet a celebrity!

Well, a celebrity in our eyes.

David Bowman is a member of our church.

He is a very talented artist and has a website where he makes

videos of the lessons we learn in Come Follow Me each week with his drawings.

It is called Drawn In.

He is so nifty and clever, even I 

love watching them and help me understand the scriptures more.

He has a gift, and I am so happy he shares it with others!

He lives in Snowflake, but came down one weekend to visit a
couple of stakes and one of them happened to be ours!

He taught the kids how to draw a picture of a scripture hero. 

They did pretty good!

I got acquainted with my new Christmas gift from Casey.

We do not give each other gifts for Christmas, but he surprised me this year.

I am a Bosch snob and have been using the one he gave me 20 years ago

as a Christmas gift also!

It still works great, but I saw this Ankarsrum mixer on
 Heather Thompsons instagram page and was intrigued by it.

I mentioned it to Casey one night saying how cool it looked.

 The next thing I know I am opening one on Christmas morning!

I was shocked but SO excited!!

I promised him it is the gift the will give to him every week:)

I was so impressed that I had to post about its amazingness, which

I normally don't do!

It has turned my weekly bread making into a breeze and I 

LOOOVE it so much!!!

Grandma and Grandpa gifted us another
 weekend to Great Wolf Lodge for Christmas!

It was fun having the Utah Lindbloms come in for this.

They ran around in their cousin groups doing all the

activities, having a howling good time together!

While taking the girls to the bus stop, my tire air 

meter starting going crazy one me!

Luckily Gunnels isn't too far away.

  Sure enough

they pulled a screwdriver out of my tire!

Minus the handle.

Good gravy!

I enjoyed the 2 weeks our tress looked like they belonged in a

forest in Virginia during October.

It's like a little treat from Heavenly Father helping me get through the "bitter"

cold month of January.

I hate being cold.

I feel like it's leaves get more fire-y in color each year.

And then they drop and the kids go wild.

This is definitely a novelty for Arizona children!

I'm not too sad it's short lived since leaves get strewn all in my house and car

during this time period.

They sure can watch tv in the strangest positions sometimes.

We had been needing to get the boat on the water to check on some things all winter.

It wasn't an ideal day, cloudy and possibly some sprinkles.

But with the storms Casey couldn't work one morning so we headed on out, just

the 2 of us!

It was a beautiful day with some exceptional scenery all around us.

We shared the lake with a handful of fishermen and that was it!

I have never been on the water with it looking like a glass top surface.

The fog topped mountains almost made it seem like we were in Jurassic Park!

It was so cloudy you couldn't see 4 Peaks at all.

I was wishing so bad I could hop in and wake surf on this 

smooth as silk water!!

Driving on glass was a blast!

Full speed without being tossed and bouncing around.

My passenger princess.

The water didn't seem super cold!

But I bet my body would have tensed up and sunk straight to the bottom

if I jumped in!

I was shocked Casey put on a swimsuit, the thought never

crossed my mind!

The girls had a dance competition.

It was a DAY!

More on that later.

Lane went to WINFO!

More on that later as well.

Softball games for Della!

Mrs. Standage (who is also my cousin) 

came to watch Lindi and Penelope play in their first basketball game!

She is their PE teacher at school.

And is clearly the BEST!!

The leaves getting more sparse, but holy moly

that blue sky!!!

Unreal.

We had all of the youth over to our house after church

so they could watch the worldwide broadcast together.

The girls and I went to pick up the sandwiches from Ned's

Krazy Sub while they were gathered.

Evan, the owner, was SO nice to go down and make this for us to have

fresh for them afterwards.

We really insisted that it was fine to pick up on Saturday.

He insisted back that it was no big deal.

We are blessed to know good, kind people!!

He sure was put to work that day!!

And if he wasn't kind enough, as we were driving away he ran after

us saying he forgot he made extras just in case.

And handed a 3 ft. sub through the window.

Seriously?!

The NICEST guy!

All set up and ready for the hungry teenagers!

Clearly they were a hit!

Every ounce GONE!