Lindsay turns 6!

Here she is just 6 months old!

Now my 6 year old!

What a sweet girl my little Lindsay is! She is really the baby of the family. We have tried so hard to help her stop sucking her thumb (trips to the dentist are not happy days at our house because he keeps telling us that she better stop sucking her thumb or there will be major problems), but she just has a hard time. She tells me, "I want to mom, but my thumb just tastes delicious." Oh well, life goes on and eventually she will decide it is important to stop.?

Here are some of her other cute qualities:

• She is a great peacemaker. She will usually be the one who gives in and makes everything work. Sometimes she wonders why no one else does this, but not for long.
• She has the most incredible facial expressions. Her puppy dog eyes and mouth in a pout can melt any heart!
• She tells it like it is. Sometimes I wonder if she is really turning 13 instead of 6. She can sound so grown up.
• She is great at entertaining herself.
• She doesn't really like dressing up (I don't even think she really knows this about herself. She tries to like it when friends come over and want to play dress up, but the fun only last about 15 minutes for her and she NEVER just goes and plays with the dress ups on her own.
• She and Kent can be best friends. She really misses sharing a room with him. She mostly likes sharing with Amber (when she is nice that is:)).
  

Lindsay came into the world quickly. We were getting in the car to go to the hospital when I knew she was coming too fast. So, the paramedics delivered her in our bathroom. At church recently, the teacher asked the kids what hospital they born in and Lindsay came home very upset. She asked me why she had to be born at home in the bathroom instead of a hospital like everyone else. I told her one day she would appreciate the fact that she has an unusual birth story, hope I am right:)!

I will be taking treats to her class today. It will be fun to see how she is doing in school!

Happy Birthday!

June 2009

Girls Camp came early this year and we were leaving on Amber's Birthday. She was really bummed that we were going to be gone for her birthday. So we tried to celebrate for several days before we left:)! Here are some pictures of us at Red Robin for dinner.

YUM! Everything was good! It was fun to go out!

Amber liked the ice cream sunday. She even shared some!

After dinner we went home and opened card and presents! It was a great day!

We (Samantha, Paige & I) left for Girls Camp early Wednesday morning, June 3rd. Girls Camp was great. I had not been since I was a young women...so I had lots of reservations and concerns. My biggest concern was that I was going to forget something or not get something done just because I didn't know what I was doing. Well it all worked out and for the most part I was pretty (I am trying to think if I should say sane or in control...neither one really works) okay with how things went. I only got frustrated once and now I look back and could kick myself for how silly that really was. Oh well. I know that life is a learning experience and I am going to keep trying to learn to loosen up. I can look back and see what I needed to have done...next step, do the right thing in the right moment! (Good advice, now how do I apply it to my whole life?). Pine, Arizona is where camp is and it is beautiful. The days were warm and the nights were cool. Actually little cold in the middle of the night and most of us got a little cold. Fortunately there were "real" bathrooms with running water and everything. They even have showers, but we were each only allowed one for the whole week. The stake provided the food and most of the classes, etc. So really it was not very stressful and mostly fun. I think all of the girls had a fun time and I have lots of ideas for next year!

Here we are ready to go! It is off to Girls Camp!

This was Bishop's Day. The whole Bridlegate crew!

When we got back from camp there was not much time to rest. Summer was in full swing. Kent and Lindsay started swimming lessons and Samantha started a two week project that I will get into in a minute. I signed Amber up for a week long performance with the Gilbert Fine Arts Association (GFFA). I wanted her to have some acting experience. In the end she choose to be a stage manager and wasn't on the stage at all...go figure! I can't remember exactly what Paige was doing those two weeks, but she must have kept busy:)! On to Samantha...

Samantha wanted to earn some money this summer. Last year she did a cleaning service. She did several jobs for people, but wasn't very aggressive about getting more work. So we did some brainstorming and she decided on doing a 2 week theater camp for kids. She worked up the fliers and gave them out to lots of friends and family (she was better at getting the word out this year). She had two classes. An older group who met 3 days a week for a couple hours in the afternoon and a younger group who met 2 days a week for a couple of hours in the afternoon. I could write a ton about this, but I will refrain and just try and sum it up. They put a performance on at the end of the 2 weeks. It turned out cute, of course there were lots of glitches, but I think she did a great job pulling it off for her first time! Overall it was hard work, but a great experience. In fact, at the beginning when the families paid her she was concerned because she hadn't done much at that point. Fast forward to the post performance. I asked her if she felt like she had earned the money then and she said she definitely had.

We had the performance at the Church
and spent most of the afternoon getting everything ready.

Here are the boys waiting to go on stage.

In the younger group we had divided the kids up into two groups
and each group did the same two plays.
So the audience had to watch each play twice,
but it gave each child a lot of time on the stage!

Here is the end of the evening! WHEW!! We made it through!
Everyone did great and hopefully they all had fun!

On June20th our stake was assigned to help work on the Temple Grounds, so we took our kids and joined in. Dave and I had actually gone on a long bike ride that morning and so we were a bit late joining the clean up crew. In fact they were just finishing up. However, they were able to find some plants for us to plant and so we were able to serve despite our tardiness:)!


We got our tools and equipment and off we went!


Hopefully we put the plants in the right spots...it was kind of hard to tell.


All in all, it only took about 30 minutes to do our job. Not too bad.




I know Paige had a few things going on in June and one thing I know for sure was that we had signed her up for a guard start class with a friend. She had a fun time learning to be a life guard. There were kids of all ages in the class and she thinks that she wants to do it again next summer.

As for Amber and her acting. I was feeling sad that I had paid so much money for her to be behind the scenes, but fortunately, my friend Mary did a play for her sing and swim (she does this for free for the kids that are her kids ages just for the experience...she is extraordinarily amazing!)this summer. They worked on a short musical version of Cinderella and Amber got to be the lead. In my next blog entry you will see more about this along with the performance pictures.

Well, that is the first 1/2 (actually a little more than half) of June....more to come!

Time to start blogging again!

Now that I have taken a "summer break," I am back. I know that this is the only way that I am going to get a family history done. I have seen the books made from blogs and they are incredible.

Since my triathlon, life has been a little crazy. I am probably going to just have to sum up some of the main events because I am not patient enough to go back through the months and write details about everything. So here is the sum up for May 2009:

CRAZY, CRAZY & CRAZY. I am sure most families that have kids involved in any type of baseball/softball feel my pain. Actually, I know that my pain and craziness did not even touch some of the others I know who had more kids involved, but alas this is our story...so here it is! Fortunately, I had friends with kids on every (scratch that), both (now that I remember the truth...I only had 2 kids playing...it seemed like a lot more at the time) teams. Most of them had 2 kids playing too. We helped each other by taking kids to the games many of the weeks. Some weeks my kids had a parent at their games and some weeks they didn't and some weeks they had two (those were pretty unusual). Of course there were Choir performances, Orchestra Concerts (Paige had 4 this year and I made it to 1/2 of the last one...too many conflicts!), school programs, graduations and promotions. Then to top it all off I had Girls Camp preparation and Dave had "Survivor Man" (priest activity) prep. Dave and the Priests left on Memorial Day and came home on Thursday, May 28th. Samantha, Paige and I left the following Wednesday for Girls Camp. On the last Saturday in May I ran 17 miles trying to prepare for a marathon. The next day my knee (IT band) hurt. UGH! No marathon for me until it heals up.

Here are some highlights in pictures:

Kent and Lindsay had patriotic programs at the beginning of the month. I almost missed Kent's because I didn't write it down correctly on my all powerful calendar!

Mother's day was heavenly!

Dave did this amazing Mother's day card for me. It was the BEST!!!

Samantha at her Choir concert (winning several awards).

This is one intense ball player. Amber really loved playing softball and her coaches named her the "Most Teachable Player". What a great compliment!

I tell you what...WOW! Check out these batting stances :)!

I just had to include this picture! It cracked me up!!

Paige "Graduates from Elementary School", it is onto JUNIOR HIGH!!!

Somewhere on my computer are the pictures of Lindsay "graduating" from Kindergarten and Samantha's "Promotion" from 8th grade, but for some reason I can't get them onto my blog. However it was a very "productive" month!!