Celebrating Sammie

We had a wonderful evening celebrating Samantha. Her birthday was a few days ago but it was hard for all of us to get together on a week night, so we all got together on Sunday instead. We first wrote notes to Samantha and hooked them to all the balloons. Rachelle read a few of the memories that were written down at her funeral. Then we got to send our notes to Sammie. We do this every year on her birthday and it was neat to share our tradition with everyone. It was special for everyone to release the balloons and watch them float to heaven. Very symbolic and touched a lot of us. Then we got out the watermelon and Rachelle released the butterflies. We spent quite a bit of time chasing the butterflies and catching them. Afterwards we headed to our house for dinner and cupcakes. A very special evening for a very special girl.

 

Brooklyn's Birthday

Happy birthday Brooklyn! She's been SO excited to hit the double digits! She had hip hop tryouts  all morning on her birthday, so I came at the end with 150 twinkies for her to share with her studio. She had requested a pedicure with mom so I took her in the afternoon for that. For the evening we headed out to FatCats to take advantage of their dollar days. The Ericsons joined us and we played mini-golf, bowled, and ate pizza. Then we made it back home to open presents! She loved all the attention and all her gifts!

Giant Chalkboard

Even though it's a pain when the city repaves our street, we always love it. Our circle becomes one giant chalkboard for the girls to draw on. Today we shoved chalk pieces in spare pvc pipes I found and they used those to draw all over. So much fun!

Joseph

We have been waiting for this night for months! Josh's good work buddy was cast as Joseph at the Sandy Amphitheater's production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. We have taken the family for the past 2 summers to shows here...first the Little Mermaid (Josh's buddy was Prince Eric) and then Beauty and the Beast (his buddy was Gaston.) We were thrilled he was in another production and I knew the kids would all love the play if they knew the music. So I've kind of forced them to listen to the soundtrack for the past few months and they have absolutely loved it. They know all the songs and sing them word for word. So finally the night came! My parents, Josh's parents, and Rachael came along. We headed to La Costa for dinner then over to the amphitheater. We had the perfect seats and the kids LOVED it! We all were in awe with how good of a production it was. The kids hardly blinked as they watched and sang along with the music. Thanks Russ for being so talented!

Salt Lake County Fair

Josh's mom sent out a text hoping that we would all join her at the county fair. We haven't been in years and had the evening free so we headed over there. Alexa and Whitney were with us to spend the night for dance early tomorrow morning. The fair has gotten SO small over the years it was a bit disappointing. But we were able to see some animals, play some games, and walk around. We were all hungry but didn't really want to go to a restaurant with 10 kids so we picked up pizzas and took them all to a park. The kids all had a lot of fun playing and running around so it worked out great!