Jayme Has a Birthday Party. We Met Beyond 5. Christmas Eve Eve. A Catching Up Post.

On Friday (the 20th) Jayme had her birthday party.

She invited a few friends over to watch Harry Potter.  Along with her food requests (pizza, root beer, brownies, cake balls...) we threw in some jelly beans and called them Bertie Bott's every flavor beans.  The girls made up a chart with their own flavor names, which included earwax, vomit, and prune juice, among others.

Pictures to come, as soon as I can steal them off of The Man's phone.

On Saturday we got to go check out a new band called Beyond 5, which my girls instantly fell in love with.
We stopped and grabbed Panda Express via drive-thru and then hit the road for our 2 hour trip to the concert, which was up in Logan.  Yeah, you heard me, 2 hour trip, one way.

That right there makes me mother of the year.

Since they're a new band we hadn't yet heard much about them.  They've just released their first cd, and have just gotten back from touring Asia, so the girls didn't quite know what they were getting into (check out some videos on them on the post I did here).

But as soon as that first song started, my girls were smitten.  Completely, number one fans.

And that might even be an understatement.

I waited with the girls for an hour after the concert for a chance to meet the guys of Beyond 5 and get some autographs.  We bought a poster for each bedroom and while standing in line one of the crew from the band walked up and gave Tayler a cd.

We had both posters and the cd cover signed.

And the girls snuck some selfies with their favorites.

I was so impressed with these boys, watching them interact with everyone after the show.  They were polite and genuinely nice.  Their music was upbeat with a good vibe and none of their songs has anything that would make me uncomfortable having my daughters listen to it.

I'm behind this group of guys 100%.

We listened to Tayler's cd on the entire 2 hour drive home.

Obsessed.

On Monday we celebrated Christmas eve eve.

Since it wasn't our year for Christmas with The Circus and we needed to take them to their other parents the next morning.

I left work early and went home and made wassail, and put a ham, rolls, and funeral potatoes in the oven.

Papa Mike, Granny Suzann, Lindee, Sam, and Morgan came over and spent the evening with us.

Granny made fancy hot coca.  Papa gave the kids his two cents worth.

We talked and laughed, and chilled.  And opened a few presents.

We thought about joining Lindee and Sam to go see the lights at Thanksgiving Point, but we didn't make it that far.  We stopped at a gas station for slurpees or hot chocolate, and then went home to let the kids open presents.  We wanted them to have some time in the morning to fiddle with their new stuff and check it out before we had to take them to their other parents.

This year I put code names on the presents. (I wrote a guest post on that here).

Tayler had some suspicions on a couple of presents and was hoping that she was reindeer.

When we sat down to open presents I told the kids to grab one present and make sure that they each had a different name.

The kids grabbed presents they had guessed could be something that belonged to them.

Cali grabbed reindeer before Tayler could and Tayler was not a happy camper about that.

I told them to open them and then we would see if they were right.

Cali happened to grab a present that could have been for her so she guessed that she was right.  And we went around the circle, the kids saying who they thought the present they had opened was for.  It finally came to a point where we told Cali she was wrong and the reindeer present was not for her, but the candycane presents were.

Tayler, misunderstanding what was said exclaimed, "She gets to be both reindeer and candycane?"  She was completely frustrated.  But then we told Tayler that no, Cali wasn't reindeer and Tayler's Christmas became perfect as she realized she really did get to be reindeer like she'd been hoping.

This was such a fun way to do the presents, especially as they unwrapped them and tried to figure out who had whose.  I'll definitely be doing this every year.

The rest of the week has been pretty quiet for us.  The Circus doesn't come home until after the New Year and I miss them so much.

I'm not used to them being gone for so long.

We usually do pretty good in how we handle the holidays that we don't have kids for, but we haven't quite found our groove with Christmas yet.  We visited with family on Christmas Day, but we'd already opened our presents with the kids so we kicked back with all our Christmas treats and the pile of new movies that I'd given The Man and enjoyed the holiday the best we could.

Next kidless Christmas, we're taking a cruise.  I'm pretty sure I might feel better about it if I'm sitting on a warm beach somewhere.

No Matter How You Cut It...

Is this picture:
a) creepy
b) hilarious
c) a keeper
d) worthy of its own blog post
e) all of the above

Jayme is 12

Watch out world, as of today we now have two 12 year olds in our Circus.

Jayme's favorites right now:
Color: Orange
Food: brownies
Movie: Rise of the Guardians
TV Show: Sponge Bob
Friend: Makenzie

This girl asked for a bow and arrows for her birthday.
Say what?
You bet.

This girl is smiley and go with the flow.

She loves to curl up and draw.

She's always happy.

And goofy to the core.

She couldn't decide what her favorite song was,

but I'm pretty sure brownies will be involved in today's festivities.

Here's to celebrating Jayme!
Happy Birthday!
We love you girl.

What we did this summer

This summer was full of some pretty fun things. Crazy things. Ordinary things. But all our things. And because I was so busy doing all of these things, I didn't get a lot of blogging done. This blog post is long. And full of pictures. Lots of pictures. And I didn't even add them all on here. But being as it's officially fall, and we have a lot more things on our doorstep, coming up to happen, I better get this all archived for future remembrance. Ready? Here we go!
JUNE
Girl's Camp
Our them was Camp TV (Totally Virtuous). I got to be in my first flash mob, which ROCKED. I made some pretty solid neighborhood friends, not only with the other leaders, but with the young women too. We danced like 70 year old women, invented an infomercial for "Bully B Gone spray", taught the girls Vroom, and how to play skittles. Oh yeah, the spirit was amazing this year. Stronger than any other year I've ever been to.
Playing cards with Mik is pretty easy when you can see them in her glasses.

Above, I kid you not, at this point in the hike some one says, "I spy with my little eye something GREEN!"

Below, our 70 year old granny dresses for our awesome dance skit:

And the beginnings of our flash mob, done to Selena Gomez's "Who says":

Our amazing girls:

Raccoon:

West's mom rescued a lost raccoon that she found while in a cemetery. We got to go check it out. I walked with all four of it's legs sticking straight out in jerky movements, it kind of reminded me of a bat in a way.

Jay-bird's half birthday:

We won't have the kids on Jay's birthday this year (the day after Christmas) so we did her party and gave her presents for her half birthday.

Jay invited some friends over and they played on the slip-n-slide:

And we taught them how to play water balloon volleyball:

She just wanted a plate of brownies for her cake

and then we set up the projector outside and used the trailer to watch "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" in the yard.

West had to cover the street lamp so we could see the movie:

July

4th of July, Independence Day

We had a neighborhood BBQ and fireworks at our house. I'm so in love with the 4th of July and it was perfect this year. I hadn't had my circus on the 4th of July for three years. FINALLY, we got to celebrate it with them.

The girls helped me make some red, white, and blue strawberries. My dad made homemade ice cream, and West pulled the BBQ out on the front porch. Everyone brought side dishes and desserts and fireworks and we had more food and fun than we knew what to do with.

We inherited a second air hockey table so we set it up outside. It was a big hit.

And it started to rain right at the very end, but not so much that we couldn't finish. Aaron was prepared for it though.

Flaming Gorge

In July we joined a group of friends at Flaming Gorge, on the Wyoming side. It's pretty bare and we've decided that if we go again we're going to stay on the Utah side. It's a lot prettier there.

We didn't have the circus that weekend, so we just took our puppy boys.

L is super mom. See? She even has a flowing cape.

Youth Conference

For Youth Conference we went up and camped at Palisades in Idaho, and rafted the river in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We also checked out the pioneer town of Chesterfield, Idaho. The theme was choices and paths. We played water games with the youth and had THE best camp cook. The mosquitoes were as big as birds, and no spray stopped them. Jeans didn't even stop them. I'm surprised I got out of the four day trip with only five bites. Everyone else had so many they couldn't even count them.

The Teton Mountains were breathtaking. The whole day was amazing. We saw moose and eagles and hawks.

And somehow I ended up jumping in to the river 6 times. It felt amazing. I was told this earned me my man card, but frankly, I'm not sure I even want a man card lol.

A reminder that my Heavenly Father loves me.

Blowing down the brick house:

Want a perm? Can you even imagine???

August

County Fair:

We joined West's mom, sister, and sister's boyfriend at the Demolish Derby, which are always fun. Then we walked around and checked things out. Guess what we found? A camel and a zebra!

"Aint nothin' in the world can make you fall in love, like a night at the county fair"

Neighborhood birthdays

This is what you get when you make friends with your neighbors. Especially when your neighbors are us.

"Hurry, hide the toilet paper!"

Lodgepole

Sunny D hangover?

We took a quick over night trip up the canyon and had THE best time as a family. We had hot dogs and s'mores and played cards. We took a short hike, and mostly just talked and laughed. I love my circus beyond anything.

This picture makes my heart smile:

BB gun shooting:

1st Day of School:

This is what you get when the kids take charge of their own first day of school pictures:

Casidee, 6th grade. Out to rule the school, and loving every minute of it.

Jayme, 5th grade.

Brynn, 4th grade:

Sean, 3rd grade:

Tayler, 3rd grade:

Cali, 1st grade:

Labor Day Weekend

Sean and Brynn's birthdays

Sean and Brynn had a joint birthday party this year. We did another outside movie, setting up two tables, one for each of them.

Happy 9th birthday to Toad man.

And happy 10th birthday to B.

Sean picked black and red for his colors, Brynn picked purple and blue.

Sean wanted a Mario cake with Mario jumping over a tube. He also wanted it to be an ice cream cake, which poses a problem since ice cream melts and fondant freezes rock solid and can't be cut. We came up with a solution and went to Baskin Robins to order an ice cream cake. We asked them to make the icing green, and the piping green and to leave it blank because we wanted it to look like the green tube on Mario. 15 minutes before the party West went to pick it up. This is what they did:

They seriously wrote "Green Pipe (Mario)" on the cake! It wasn't even green! Well... they gave it to us for 50% off (damn straight) and Sean said he was OK if Mario jumped over a birthday cake instead of a pipe. So I scraped the words off, wrote "Happy Birthday Sean", and stuck Mario in.

Brynn wanted a monkey face cake with sprinkles around the edges. She has a lot of clothes with monkey cartoons on them so I asked her to go and get the one that she wanted me to take the face from. Her BFF helped her with the sprinkles. They did a pretty awesome job.

The face Brynn picked was an angry monkey. Sometimes I don't know about her...

Instead of using the projector this time, we rolled out the giant TV that resides in our garage because we're trying to sell it. We just plugged "Rio" into a DVD player.

Whew! And that was my summer. Now I can stop freaking out about how behind I am on my blog.