Tumbling...

Kenna had her first "practice" tumbling meet.

She was a little nervous.

We are new to the world of competitive tumbling...

Which is completely different than "Girls Gymnastics".

Tumbling has 3 events, a floor pass, double mini and trampoline.

She did fantastic and feels pretty confident in those tumbling skills of hers.

We were so happy for her... and o so proud of our little Kenna who works so long and hard!

She ROCKS!!

Sometimes it's hard being the middle child with 2 older sisters who excel in dance... and Kenna does fabulous too, but she just doesn't have as much experience.

So she LOVES that she has her own thing...

something she is better at than her older sisters... (which makes those older sisters happy for her but a tich bit jealous at the same time. :)

Her confidence and self-esteem has skyrocketed... we love that!!

Shane lost a little confidence after he tried a not so fab front handspring.  Trent (another tumbling dad and friend) made him do it... apparently peer-pressure never ends.:)

It wasn't quite as fabulous as it was back in his gymnastic days I'm sure!

 {circa 1980}

hehehehe

I knew the meet was important to Kenna but when she wrote in her "dear daughter diary"...

"thanks so much for letting me do tumbling... today was the best day of my life!"

I knew it was something we would be sticking with for a while!!

Curious about what the "dear daughter diary" is?  I found out about it... here.

Essentially it is a journal between mom and daughter... so I got 5 + one "sister journal".  The purpose being to write words of appreciation and love to each other...  We pass them back and forth and I truly think it is the best idea EVER!  I love seeing those books on my pillow and reading the sweet things my girls write to me... (and Shane... he decided he wanted to be involved in it too!  What a good daddy. :))

Obviously we just take turns writing stuff to Lydia, but soon she will be able to add her sweet little drawings in it... and then get like Jadyn with fun (sometimes hard to translate) words. :)

The sister journal is my favorite.  It warms my heart to read their sweet messages to each other...

A treasure forever!!

My guess is some of you run out to get journals tomorrow!

That's what I did...  Pretty sure it's something you won't regret!

A Great Weekend...

What a fabulous weekend...

It started out with the USU vs BYU Game...

It was a sellout  and a game not to miss!

Guess who we were cheering for!!

Yep you got it... the winning team...  :)

We love our Aggies!

(Mom, Dad, Andy, Missy I know you are off having fun tripping through the Greek Isles... but this game might have riveled your fun. :)  hahaha)

I tried filming {one} of my favorite cheers, but it didn't work great so I found it on you tube...

(And admittedly later in the game there was one totally inappropriate cheer that I hope I never hear again...  I have limits...)

After the game I hurried over to Lorinda's to meet up with my scrappin' buddies for a late night scrap...

We stayed till 2...

but took a break @ 11:11 PM to celebrate 11/11/11...

(That was my creative friend Jen's idea)

I did more chatting than scrapping, but I'm OK with that!

Last week I had another 104 pages printed so I was feeling a little burnt out anyway...

Here are some of my favorites. :)

(I won't bore you with all 104 :))

The rest of the weekend was pretty great too.

We took Shane's parents to Chuck-a-rama for lunch on Saturday...

personally NOT a favorite of Shane and I, but glad to have them with us as we know they love it.

Fun with friends that evenings...

and I was pleased that...

Together the girls and I bottled 28 quarts of applesauce...

(Thanks for the apples mom and dad)

Unfortunately after bottling 28 quarts of applesauce I found out that more than 1/2 of my children don't even like applesauce... bummer... I guess they'll be eating it at least 28 times anyway!

But at least I did my motherly duty...

Saige told me she kindof felt like a pioneer, cutting, boiling and squashing all those apples.

Something about that comment and all those bottles on my storage shelf  was pretty satisfing and made all the work worth it. :)

Our Little Princess...

 Ahhhhhhh....

She's growing up too fast...

(And I'm hoping she's content using the fake polish for a while,

pretty sure with all the polish around our house she's bound to find one left out and think she is quite clever...

I won't be ahhhhhing then. :))

But she's the baby and totally gets her way...

so maybe...

So you think you can dance...

Do you think that my two oldest were excited that I took them to the SYTYCD Concert a couple weeks ago??

Um....

YAH!!!!!

Maybe just a little...

The people around us might have wanted Saige to quit screaming at random intervals...

But there was no doubt they enjoyed it...

Seriously amazing talent!!

I was pretty excited about the whole thing myself. :)

(Kenna and Jadyn were not so excited that I didn't get them tickets...)

One of the benefits of having A girl is getting to do fun girlie stuff like this...

One of the downfalls of having 5 girls is that they are ALL going to want to go!!
(Shane's hearing this... Kaching, Kaching, Kaching $$$$)

Halloween Fun...

Our Halloween Fun looked a little like this...

We had one stinkin' cute little duck...

A Beautiful Fairy...

A "Vampiress"...

An Indian...

And a M&M Girl...

There was fun to be had at the Ward's Trunk-or-Treat

(Tayler and her "candy bar buddies."

And a little more trick-or-treating after...

but not much...

we love that trunk or treat. :)

And we also Love, Love, Love the Pumpkin Walk that was the week before...

amazing creativity!

Even Kenna got in on the creativity!!

She helped paint snowballs with her Activity Days class...

She was pretty excited to have her name in the credits. :)

Every year these cute little cutouts are the same...

but every year the girls want their pictures in them. :)

Lydia caught on fast too...

It was another fabulous Halloween Season filled with our traditional Dinner in a Pumpkin meal, and "mummy dogs", there was the Corn Maze (and a couple of nights for Shane "scaring" with his buddies there.)  There was the school Carnival and trick-or-treating @ local grocery stores... and Halloween Parties with friends for the older girls.

And of course what would Halloween be without some pumpkin' carving of our own.

Hope your Halloween was just as "Spooktactular"!