And the YWIE award goes to......

Tonight was the YW evening of excellence. It was like a Hollywood awards show. The girls dressed up in their nice, formal dresses. The whole evening was fun. When they arrived on the "red carpet" there was a group of fans (achievement day girls) there to cheer them on, yelling and screaming in excitement. The girls started the show with a fabulous musical number. I was chosen to be a presenter. I had to stand up and do a little speech about my category, give the list of nominees, and then open the envelope to announce the winner. All of the presenters made it a lot of fun as we tried to channel our inner celebrities. Brianna was a winner in the category of Excellence in Temple Preparation. Chelsea was awarded a "Lifetime Achievement" since she already has her YW recognition award. It was a fun night.

fans

Time Out for Women

Chelsea and I just had a wonderful weekend in St. George with my mom and sister, Amber. We went to Time Out for Women. This is Chelsea and I's 3rd event. We love the speakers and the singers. It's fun to be together as women and to have our spirit renewed. This year we fell in love (again) with Hillary Weeks. Not only is she a beautiful singer, but super funny as well.

Friday night there were some boxes of "clickers" that people were buying up like they were going out of style. I sat and watched the frenzy but for the life of me, couldn't figure out why so many people HAD to have these clickers. I even asked a staff member what it was all about, she didn't know either. I decided it was a wierd UTAH thing. Later than night I was still so curious, that I googled TOFW and clickers. That's when I discovered it had to do with a "clicker experiement" that Hillary Weeks was going to talk about on saturday. But by the time we had it figured out, they were all gone. We kept looking for them on saturday but they never showed up. Bummer. Oh, well.

We also really enjoyed Jenny Oaks Baker who was the preformer friday night. She is amazing on the violin. I asked Chelsea if she ever regretted quitting the violin. She said no, because she really loves playing the guitar. She feels that her training on the violin and her piano experience, have all helped her as she works hard to prefect her preformances on the guitar. She's glad that she had that experience and where it has lead her now.

Chelsea loves the books that Jason Wright has written. We took a moment to meet and talk to him. He then autographed a copy of his new book to Chelsea. She was excited (but will have to wait til Christmas to read it).


I enjoy sharing this experience with my mom and my amazing sister, Amber. I also enjoy alone time with Chelsea. Our spirits were recharged and we laughed. It was a great "time out".



We had a lunch break at Pizza Factory. Couldn't resist taking this cute picture of Chelsea there.

11-11-11 Birthday wishes

What a lucky day to have a birthday 11-11-11. Brianna turned 15 today. WooHoo. She has quite a few things planned to celebrate. They are out of school today and yesterday so she had several friends for a sleepover last night. Woke up to a nice breakfast on the day of her birth. But she was most excited to go out to eat at her favorite place, Lucilles. Because I was leaving town, we went to a lunch instead. It was perfect because we didn't have to fight the weekend crowd. I did think it was funny that we were sitting inside the "bar" portion though.

Brianna's birthday bash

Brianna has been unsure of how she wanted to celebrate her 15th birthday. She has a TON of friends from school, dance, and church. Her friend Maddy also has a birthday next week so they've been thinking about a joint celebration. So Brianna finally decided to have a celebration with all her dance and school friends this weekend, then another celebration next weekend with church friends. She was totally in charge of planning it. Luckily they were out of school thursday and friday. The girls came over thursday night for a pasta dinner. Then they rocked the house with their Just Dance on the wii (of course dancers love to dance anytime). Mike took Mason out of the house to escape the raging estrogen and see a "manly" movie. Cord on the other hand loved being with the girls. He was really cute as a dancer. He even loved "cuddling with the ladies" the next morning. The girls are good about entertaining themselves and having fun just being together. I think it was about 2:00 AM when I finally asked the girls to go into her room and close the door so we could go to sleep. I'm not sure how much sleep they actually got. I do hope she had a great birthday though!

This amazing cake was made by Brianna's friend, Victoria's mom. It was super yummy. I didn't get why it said "are you jumping on the trees" until they told me it was a reference to "Kid History" which is all the rage right now on you tube. Then all the girls started quoting the episodes while we were lighting the candles, which were also sparklers. I hope Brianna got her birthday wish even though it took about 15 tries to get all the candles out (thanks to Lucy relighting one as soon as she blows another out :)

Homecoming football game

Thanks to our friends, Shelley and Neil, we had a great date on saturday night. They had some tickets to the UNLV game and invited us to tag along. Despite being a UNLV alumni, Mike was more excited to see Boise State because of their ranking. Their kids got to play at our house while we ventured out into the cold night. I almost didn't bring my coat which would have been a huge mistake. Shelley loaned me this cute headband to keep my ears warm. When we got to our seats, Mike greeted me with a huge hot chocolate (yummy). It gave me a good excuse to cuddle with my honey though. UNLV actually did pretty good for the first half, although it was hard to keep track because we couldn't see the scoreboard. We didn't really care because we were having so much fun. We did move to a different seat after the 3rd quarter so we could see better, and because most of the UNVL fans had already left.



I love this "blackmail" pic I took of Mike. His phone died. He wasn't to proud to use Shelley's blinged out phone to check the scores of the Notre Dame game. Love the goofy look on his face. hehe.

Directors Choice

The advanced guitar from Coronado got to participate in the Directors Choice festival. They have been working on these songs since the beginning of the year. Then they get together with 12 other high schools to preform them. There are 179 guitars on the stage. They practiced for 2 hours friday night and 2 hours saturday morning before the preformance. They sounded awesome together!! Good job Chelsea.

Leather Jacket day

Today at Coronado it was Leather Jacket Day. Thanks to a miracle kindness of sisters, Brianna loaned Chelsea her precious jacket to wear. Found this fun pic on facebook where she was tagged. I could see the look in her eye though, I'll bet she'll be hoping for a jacket of her own for Christmas.

LVA dance

Guitar concert

Wednesday night, right before we headed to St. George we were blessed to attend another guitar concert to see Chelsea preform. It's always exciting to see what they have put together. Next concert she has promised us a solo or preformance in a quartet. WooHoo!