Thanks to Groupon. We got a special deal for North Shore Aquatic Center in North Ogden. We were able to go with my sister and some of her kids. It was a fun day!
Ellyse has always been a little afraid of the diving board but this time, with her cousin B with her, she took the dive. Get it? hahaha. ;)
After they conquered that, it was toe-touch-time.
Here's Ellyse...
Here's B..
Allie stuck with the slides. Here she is coming out of the tunnel.
Having a fun time.
Cousin S and his friend thought it'd be fun to hang out and keep the frog company.
Oh Justin Beiber. If you only knew how you've affected the life of our little 8 year old.
Here's her friends party. We all made microphones out of used up toilet paper rolls and tinfoil. They got to decorate theirs just to their liking. I was truly impressed with the creativity of all the girls!! There wasn't a microphone I didn't like.
We played a "how well do you know Justin Beiber" game. They did alright. But, I'm glad they just did alright. They don't need to know that much about him. :)
We also played a "hot potato" type game but with the microphones. They had to pass the microphone around until the JB song stopped and then had to sing the next few lyrics if they were the ones caught with the microphone. We had a few party poopers but a lot of them came up with some creative lyrics. :) Or they just sang happy birthday to Ellyse.
Here are the favor bags. They each got two JB tattoos. Ellyse and Allie made off with several more than that somehow. They put them all up and down their arm. When we were at the grocery store some lady in line ahead of us commented on them. I was a little put off if she meant it derogatorily. I mean c'mon. They'll be gone in like 2 days. Take it easy.
Presents were a hit. As usual. She got a magic 8 ball and it was a hoot trying to get the girls to try and understand what all the answers meant! They all loved it, especially Ellyse. What a great gift idea for this age!!
And the cake. Must say it's the easiest one I've had to decorate up until now. We did cut into it before snapping a photo though. There's suppose to be 4 candles on each side. Oh well.
We had grandparents over the actual day of her birthday and gave her our gifts. She kept trying to fanagle them out of us the day of her friend party though. We kept them so she'd have something special to look forward to on her actual birthday. It was on a Sunday this year and so we really couldn't do a whole lot of special things that day. Presents and grandparents were it. And churh singing to her helped too!
Oh how we love you Ellyse! You bring such a calm into our lives. You have a loving and tender heart and are such a great big sister for Allie to look up to. Every time we're apart for a while, I long for you and your smell. I know that sounds crazy but to me, you've always smelled a certain way. Let me clarify, you smell good! :) And you have a smell that gets into things like your "mickey," and pillow that I crave smelling because it's unique to you. We're soo grateful that you are in our lives and love you with all our hearts!! Happy 8th to our getting-so-big Lesee Lou!
Me: Ellyse, would you like to take soccer lessons?
Ellyse: NO!
Me: Ellyse, would you like to try t-ball?
Ellyse: uh uh.
Me: How about tai-kwan-do? Your friend is in that. That might be fun.
E: Nope.
ME: Let's sign you up for tumbling.
E: No. There's a guy teacher.
Me: It's time to get ready for dance. Let's get going.
E: Can I stay home this week?
Me: *&#%.
We take the kids ice skating for fun one Saturday night and find out there are lessons available there. It's a very reasonable price so I ask and she happily agrees! :)
E: Mom, when do I start ice skating?
Me: Today at 5:45.
E: that's a long time to wait.
Ellyse is in all black against the wall because she finished earlier than some other students in her class. This is her 2nd time skating and she's soo good!
Yesterday was a very fun day! We did a little of all this....
When I put the camera up to take a photo Allie yelled out "happy movie!" :) It was indeed a happy movie! We saw "Brave."
We tried to go to Riverdale park for some carnival games afterwards but they were packing up. So, we went home and painted our faces.....and arms.....and legs. :)
That's suppose to be a butterfly but this is after they played in the water so it was the "leftover" paint.
The kids played on the water slide and played water balloon volleyball as well as this weird lunch-bag-throwing-with-water-in-it game that Mam's came up with???? They had a blast!
Here's some video of the 'game.' Mam's had to sit of the cooler of water balloons to guard them. She had to ration them out, otherwise the game would've lasted about 30 seconds. :) You'll see the blow up water slide in the video too.
BBQ time!
And what would the 4th be without fireworks? Our poor Allie wasn't having any of it though! She just cried and whined about them from the beginning to the end. I still made her watch them though. She's got to get over her fears somehow...right?!
I tell you, it felt like we were in the middle of a war zone! There were fireworks going off like crazy in all directions the whole time we were out watching them. We had some, the neighbors had some, the neighbors down the street had some, the people a street up from us had some going off, it was a bit crazy. This impeded Allie from enjoying ANY of it. But for the rest of us, it was pretty cool! I got some video footage of a part of it - for those out of the country at the moment.
Allie keeps talking about the thunderstorm firework. She also has a fear of thunderstorms too. I never actually got that one on video for fear that my footage was getting too long. It looked a lot like most of the other fireworks though. :)
Just ignore the whaling from our littlest. I'm so mean!
Last weekend I, along with all our young women, got to ride this bad boy down to Manti for the http://mormonmiracle.org/ Mormon miracle pageant.
We got a screaming deal on the bus and so we were able to all pile in there and head down together. What a great way to build relationships rather than be seperated for 3 hours in different cars! It was a lot of fun and the pageant was really neat! I was really impressed with so many different things in the show! It was my first time ever seeing it so everything was new and amazing.
They didn't allow photos of the pageant, but I snuck the one above in anyway...it was seconds before it ended. This is depicting Joseph Smith (lower left side) in the grove as well as the reunion we can look forward to in heaven (slightly off center to the right) with our families. I kept thinking how crazy good they have used all the surroundings during the show. They used the temple grounds and the actual temple as well as the surrounding grounds and stairs. It was like all of the temple grounds were constructed for this show.
There were fires surrounding the valley of Manti. The smoke from the SanPete fire is what you can see above. There were no clouds, just smoke is all. The smoke caused the sun to set about a 1/2 hour earlier than it should have normally set.
At the actual sunsetting, it was quite a dramatic looking scene!
Here are some of our cute girls! I'm totally blown away by how wonderful these girls are!!
We got a chance to go boating the next day after camping on the YW's president's sister's lawn. It was a blast!! I got whiplash from tubing. Twice. And may have cracked a rib. But all in the name of fun and boating!!!
