Cheerleader Aubrey

Aubrey joined Ace All Star Cheer team back in September. Today was her 2nd big competition. Cheerleading has been an interesting experience for us. First of all, Aubrey loves it!! She loves going to practice, working on stunts, improving her tumbling skills, and she loves to perform. She is one of the 'fliers" on her team, meaning just that, she gets tossed (or thrown) and flies through the air. This is where we sometimes squirm in our seats. Though the girls have been taught proper form and we have a lot of confidence in her bases (the girls who throw and catch her) it is still sometimes hard to watch, especially at practices when they are learning new stunts. I don't have any pictures from the competitions because I can't take pictures and watch at the same time. I think Aubrey has a video from her most recent competition somewhere on her Facebook account. It's been fun to see her perform and we're very proud of her. Go Ace!

Snowshoeing

After weeks of grey skies and wintry weather, I was ready for some outdoor fun. My friends Amy and Amy and I decided to go snowshoeing up Rose Canyon. We couldn't have picked a better afternoon. With all our children in school (or preschool in my case) we headed for the hills. I can not explain how wonderful it was to see the blue sky, puffy white clouds, and awesome rays of sunshine. We headed up on our journey. Oh, and we brought Odie along with us too. He loves the snow. If we are walking along the sidewalk and there are snow banks on the side, he'll dive in and try to walk through the snow instead of the cleared walk. I didn't get very good pictures of him in action, but he was in heaven. After awhile we let him off his leash and he blazed ahead a trail for us.

The snow was super deep. Amy tried to get up on top of this picnic table, but the bench was as far as she could go. Luckily we had snowshoes and good clothing. Snowshoeing is hard work. Amy wore her Garmin so we could know our distance and calorie burn. We went 5 miles total and I don't remember how many calories we burned, but it was alot. But oh, what a great day to be outside and enjoy nature. I love living in Utah.

Minnie Shoes

Brenna loves her yellow Minnie Mouse shoes. She inherited then from her cousin Megan, who I'm sure loved them just as much. She wears them to church, to school, to the store... and even on top of her jammies while doing puzzles in her room. She is obsessed with these shoes and I figure she'll only be a kids size 8 once, so she might as well enjoy them.

Produce Project

Today we spent the afternoon at Boondock's playing games. From there we decided to stop by the grocery store for a produce project. Each person had to choose something they weren't familiar with and try it when we got home. I may not get these right: but I think Aubrey got cumquat's (we're going with phonetic spelling here); Kayla got an artichoke; Lindsay got a Brussels sprout; Emi got a star fruit; and Brenna got a kiwi.

It was all fun and games until we had to start eating them. I think the cumquat's and kiwi were the best. Probably because I so prefer fruit or vegetables! It was a fun little experiment and a good way to expand our palette's.

Ice Rink

The time has come to clear away the ice rink on top of the pool cover. It has brought hours of fun and excitement to both the girls and the dog, and amazingly has not resulted in any trips to the emergency room. Depending on how much winter we have left this year, it may return one more time before Spring. But until then, farwell.

Author Fair

Do you recognize this famous author with Kayla? Do you recognize her from the Family section of the Deseret Morning News? Do you recognize her as a famous blue wearing football coaches daughter? Meet A. E. Cannon, famous author. Kayla was asked to escort Ann Cannon at this years Author Fair at Jordan Ridge Elementary. It was quite an honor for Kayla and she had a great time. The whole 'Author Fair' at the kids school this year was so well done. I can not say enough good things about it. They brought in 6 really great authors, with a wide array of backgrounds, book genres, publishing's, etc. Each author spent the morning with a particular grade teaching them about writing and then signed their books and visited with students in the afternoon. Kayla's author was working with 1st graders and here they are at a question and answer session. A. E. Cannon has a series of pirate books for that age level. Kayla was nice enough to purchase one for Emily and have it signed by her new found friend. By the end of the day, Ann wanted to take Kayla home with her, as she has 5 sons, but no daughters.

Each person in our family got a book from the Author Fair. Here's what everyone chose:

Jenna- A Sister-to-Sister series by Virginia Smith (3 book series) I read 75 pages the 1st night of Age Before Beauty-the oldest sister. The next day when I visited with the author, I realized I started with the wrong book in the series. I started with the oldest sister book thinking that made sense chronologically, but the author is the middle child of 3 sisters, so she wrote Stuck in the Middle first. Now I am well into that one. It's a good, clean, fun read.

Aubrey- The Maze Runner by James Dasher
Kayla- Green Dragon Codex by R.D. Henham (not the author's real name we learned) Don't know anything about, K will have to tell us.

Lindsay- Princess of the Midnight Ball (beautiful cover) It is a rendition of the 12 Dancing Princesses. I plan on reading this one as well.
Emily-On the Go with Pirate Pete and Pirate Joe by A.E. Cannon

Brenna-Minnie Mouse's Valentine...I don't know who write those books, but she sure loves them

Robert-Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. He had heard about the book on a local radio talk show as the author will be in town doing a lecture series next week.

I think we've got some pretty good reads to last us a little while. We'll let you know what we think.

AJ the Finisher

Aubrey recieved this shirt in the mail as a winner of the Sandy City "Catch Me if You Can" Running Series 2009. We didn't even know such a thing existed, but I guess it does. Aubrey completed 4 of the 5 races done by Sandy City this year, so she got this shirt. As you can guess, she will now be doing ALL of the races in this series for 2010, as will a few of her other family members. Nothing motivates you more than success. Catch us if you can, and yes, you can. I don't know what's up with this one. Maybe she'll explain what she's thinking about on her blog.

Here's just a funny one of she and one of her best friends. She has such great friends!! We love them.

Brenna as ...

Can you guess who I am, sitting by the cinders of the fire? Aubrey dressed me up today and put on make-up, so that I would look just like Cinderalla. She's my favorite.