1st Day of School

The kids are getting so big. Katelyn is in 7th Grade now which is Middle School! Emma is in 4th, Mason is in 2nd and Riley in her second year of Pre-School. They are all a bunch of smarty-pants and make their mom so proud.

What the kids are up to....

Emma enrolled in an art class many months ago and has absolutely loved it! She may not our sporty child in any way, but can run circles around any one of us when it comes to artsy stuff. It's just totally her thing and I'm so glad she has found something she loves. In fact, a couple of her art pieces were chosen to be on display at the Eastern Idaho State Fair. She got a ribbon for each which were "Honorable Mentions". We were so proud of her!

Katelyn has been enjoying her cheer leading. She is a flier, which depending on the day she can either really like or really hate that. All the cheerleaders were given jerseys to wear to games (that they are not cheering at) or wherever they want. They don't start actual cheering at games until basketball season.

Mason and Riley of course loved their swim lessons the past summer. Their cousins Parker and Joshua went too and that is always fun. They both passed their classes and get to move up to the next class next year.

Bradshaw Family Stay-cation

This past summer Josh's family had a little family reunion, or as I would like to call it, a Stay-cation. It was like a little vacation but we stayed here in town.  Cheap, convenient, easy and fun.  We went horse back riding, then to Bear World then went to Grandma and Grandpa's for a dip in the hot tub and slip in slides. And you can't forget the ride behind the 4-wheeler from Uncle Josh. Those kids could do that all day long.  It was a fun FULL day!

Emma turns 10!

My sweet little Emma Dilema has turned 10. We celebrated by having a movie themed birthday party. I have to say it was one of the funner birthday parties we've had. She passed out invitations that looked like movie tickets and watched Soul Surfer on the big screen (a sheet in the backyard). It so happened it came out on DVD the day before, so it worked out perfectly.

As the girls arrived at the party they were given tickets they could redeem at the concession stands. Complete with nachos, popcorn, pop and candy. And the birthday cake came together amazingly! It was a cake shaped as bucket of popcorn. The girls LOVED it!

However, the highlight of the night for Emma is when she got a ticket to the Selena Gomez concert in September. She was over the moon!!!

I love my Emma to pieces and am so grateful to have her in our family!

Our Not-So-Fun 4th of July

If there is anything I look forward to every year it is the 4th of July! I love it! And I loved that my sister Lauren and her boyfriend decided to come up share in the fun festivities with us this year. Made me look forward to it even more!

Well, the night before the 4th we all went to bed, everyone feeling just fine...(can you guess where I'm going with this?) and all of the sudden Riley wakes up throwing up. Great. Well, it's probably just something she ate and she'll probably feel better by morning.  Well, I was wrong. WAY wrong. That was the first of 10 TIMES for just her. Then began the domino effect.  Then Landon, then Mason, then my sister Lauren and even her boyfriend. What is going on?? We all felt fine before we went to bed. It must be some sort of food poisoning from dinner we all thought.

But the parade was first thing in the morning! You just don't miss the parade! Not in our house. But thank heavens Katelyn wasn't sick because she was in the parade.  She made the Sandcreek Middle School cheer team (Woo Hoo!) and was cheering on the float. So Josh and I and the kids, minus Riley and Lauren, the sickest ones, went to the parade to cheer on Katelyn.  Even though Landon was still very sick. Not our finest parenting moment. Maybe if we just carry on as planned this will just all go away? After the parade we went to the park with the Bradshaw clan for lunch.  About that time me and Josh felt something coming on.  We left early, came home and went to bed, in a short time the rest of the house was throwing up.  By now, the entire house has been hit by some sort of plague.  It was horrible.  Of all the days for us to be sick.  And my sister and her boyfriend came all this way from Utah for this?? We spent the rest of the day in bed and the bathroom moaning and groaning.  My dad says some day we'll look back at this and laugh. I'm not there yet.

(Here's a couple pictures of Katelyn on her float. She's in the row facing the camera on the far left.)

Katelyn's 12!

I am officially a mother of a Young Woman. How did that happen? I'm not old enough for this. Turning 12 in our house brings new adventures....make-up, Young Women's at church, Girl's Camp, MIDDLE SCHOOL, and many other things she thinks she needs because all of her friends do.  For example, a cell phone.  Not happening. We'll hold off on that one for as long as I can. Not ready to go down that road of no return.

Katelyn did have a big swim party with all of her friends up at Green Canyon. This is the only picture I got before my camera went dead. Ugh!

One of the main things that Katelyn has been most excited about now that she is 12 is doing baptisms for the dead. Our Stake doesn't haven't any scheduled for awhile and she didn't want to wait. So she and her cousin Savannah went and got their recommends and Josh and I took them the week she turned 12. Josh's mom got them little baptism bags to take with them to the temple. They are so cute. The girls got to do some family names so it made the experience that much more special.

(Katelyn & Savannah with their recommends.)

The other fun thing she got to be a part of now that she is 12 is she got to participate in our Stake Pioneer Handcart Trek. A lot Stakes require you to be 14 so we felt pretty lucky that she could go. There were over 600 youth from our Stake on the Trek so it was a very large crowd. We bought the material for her skirt, apron and bonnet and helped make it. They were all asked to walk in honor of a pioneer, preferably a ancestor if you had one. She walked in honor of a pioneer ancestor on my side named Sarah Goode Marshall. She is known as "The First Lady of all the Handcarts" because she was the first person from the very first handcart company to cross over into the Salt Lake Valley. And she did it as a single mother with 6 children. She has an amazing story and it was neat for Katelyn to get to know her and have that opportunity.

So I guess this is my last year before I officially have a TEENAGER! Wow, where has time gone??

The Dirty Dash 2011

This past weekend we went to Utah for a mini vacation. We went to the zoo, hiked to the "Y", went swimming, but the main event was....THE DIRTY DASH! We registered for this months ago with Josh's family including aunts, uncles and cousins.  The adults run a 5K which includes obstacles and slides all of which is in the mud.  The kids race, The Piglet Plunge, is only a mile but still in the mud! I opted to sit this one out.  Someone had to take the pictures and watch Landon. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it! His whole family is already planning on next year's race.  But as for our family, still not so sure.  We feel like it is more like an every few years thing, not so much an EVERY year kinda thing.  But we shall see.

Josh before the race...

Josh and his cousins and sister AFTER the race...

Josh ran the race with the kids too. Believe it or not, this is BEFORE the race...

Mason running in the race. He came in 2nd place of all of his cousins...

Josh and the kids AFTER the race...

Now, there is a really great reason why Emma and her cousin Jordyn (sitting up in front) in the above picture, aren't muddy. They had already showered from a race they ran hours before. When we first got to the race we had a scheduled time for the adult race for 9:40.  We got there early and the kids were playing on the jumpy toys and messing around in the mud beforehand.  Well, somehow Emma and Jordyn got separated from all of us and heard them announcing the next round of races.  (There were different heats running all throughout the day. I think every 20 minutes.) Well, Emma and Jordyn panicked and thought that was the race they were suppose to be in and quickly ran to get in it! Yes, they ran in one of the adult 5K runs!  We couldn't find them for a very long time and knew that they had to be in one of the adult races.  I was panicked because I didn't know how she was going to handle it. After a long time of searching for them, we finally found them running in the race about 3/4 of the way through.  We asked them if they wanted to stop and come out and they said that wanted to finish the race.  I was so proud!  

This is Emma when we finally found her 3/4 done with the race...

This is Emma and Jordyn after they finished their race!! Yes, Jordyn lost her shoes in the race. 

It made for fun memories and great pictures, but we'll have to see about next year. The jury is still out.