Love Letter...From a Big Sister

The following is a text I received from Cori this past weekend. A love letter to her little sisters.
We were in Anchorage for a cheer competition while she had to stay home to prepare for a big volleyball weekend.

"Hey my beautiful sisters. <3
I just want you to know that I am SO proud of both of you!
No matter what place you get.
I wish I could be there, but I know you guys will be great, you always are!
You guys are always #1 to me!
Love you guys!
GOOD LUCK YOU LITTLE ROCKSTARS!"

Every now and then, you just know you're doing it right! It was definitely a proud-parent moment!
And you know what, she was right, They rocked it!

Random Acts of Kindness~Lets Do it Together!

I have been planning something similar to this for my upcoming birthday. In the meantime, I am going to practice with this project! I found the project HERE.

Here are the details, pulled from Toddler Approved.

1. Accept the challenge to accomplish 100 acts of kindness with your families or students over the next four weeks (Jan 16-Feb 14).  Use the link for the project above.

2. Let us know in the comments that you are joining us! Again, use think link above.

3. Create a way to record your acts of kindness. (Ideas from last year are here and here. We'll share some other ones soon too. You can simply make an X on the calendar or come up with something super creative. The sky is the limit.) I think we can use facebook as well.

4. Participate in each weekly challenge. We will give you one each Monday for four weeks. They will be simple.  

5. Join us in celebrating your success with a Kindness Celebration on Valentine's Day, Feb 14th!

For all of my friends who had so much fun participating in Secret Santa, you should love this equally!

Let's do it!

Happy New Year

Can you believe it's 2012? Did you ever think about this year, where you would be? I'm not sure I ever did. Life seems to be going so much faster than I ever expected it would. That said, I'm in for the long ride.
Loving (mostly) every minute of it. I wish I could hang on to my girls a little longer but they are pulling, testing their boundaries and growing so quickly. So me, I'm hanging on, to each moment, each memory, each tradition for as long as I can in hopes they don't abandon them all and we can continue to make great memories.

Just like we do every year since Cori and Cassi were tiny, we took a first family picture of the New Year.  There aren't really any rules but I try not to use a tripod. (As far as I know, we only did that one time- when Andrew was visiting.) I always hold out the camera, at arms length and snap. Because it always happens sometime after our annual New Year's Eve party, I've usually had a few drinks, so you could end up viewing the tunnels of my nose or see a lovely double chin. The kids are loopy and very tired so with them you never know what you will get. And Scott, he's usually just trying to get it done without casualties.

As the girls grow older, we seem to often have 'extras' visiting and because they are usually close friends, we include them. This year is our biggest grouping yet. In addition to the 6 of us (I say 6 because Wren has been in almost EVERY one- love that boy!) there is Cassi's friend, Abbi, Cori's friend, Whitney and Cori's boyfriend, Brodi. There weren't really any great shots, in fact there is something ridiculous about every one. I'm not including all of them but I will show some of the better ones.

These pictures are really special to me and hopefully I will one day be able to compile all of them in one space. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. Here is wishing you a wonderfully silly and fun year, that it's a great ride and that you are hanging one!

Happy 2012!

It's Cheer Time

It's that time of year...The first of our cheer competitions.  We are in crunch mode. Practicing nearly every day of the week and counting out routines, all.the.time!

Cassi with her team including a little mini mascot and one of her coaches- Jaimee.

   Cali's Mini Team and one of her coaches- Terryn.

It's all been worth it though because this past weekend they did AWESOME!

Cali had a lot of timing issues in the last week but somehow it all began to make sense to her and she worked out the problems on her own. Her routine is built around Justin Beiber music so I had a blingy bow made for her that says I <3 JB and she wore (his favorite color) sparkly purple spankies.

Cassi is a pro of course and rarely has those kind of issues.  Her concentrations revolve more around perfecting technical things. As for showmanship, she OWNS that. She came up with her own routine theme last year and stuck to the idea for quite some time. She did a shop-o-holic routine.  She walked out on the floor with Coach and Juicy bags, had a VERY blingy Paris Hilton pink bow and super sparkly pink spankies. I will be blinging their shoes before the next competition.

Neither of my girls received trophies or ribbons. Oddly, this competition didn't give any recognition to the girls except for first place, so we really don't know where they placed. We are anxiously looking forward to getting their score sheets which we always go over together and look for ways to improve.

As for their teams, the both took FIRST Place.  We are a fairly small gym so this is no small accomplishment.  As parents we were in the stands going crazy. I will have to load the team videos in a separate post

We had a great time while we were in Anchorage. There were a lot of the girls staying at our same hotel.  They were also able to get together outside the competition which is a whole lot of fun.

On top of all this cheering, Cori also had ODP soccer tryouts this weekend. She was nervous and wouldn't let me take pictures. We don't know if she made the team yet, we will find out on Halloween. I am really proud of her for tryingout though. She is an awesome soccer player and I'm looking forward to the day, she realizes what a great player she is.

A few cheerleaders and a spirited sister!

                                                                             Cali waiting for the awards to begin.     

   Cassi and Cali with 2 of their coaches- Jaimee and Jen.

  Cali and her beloved YaYa.        

                                

                                                                                        My Cassi Raye Raye

Cassi and 3 cheer-sisters.

Cali and Cassi with one of the team trophies.       

Cassi with one of her coaches, Jessica.

                                                    Cori was so supportive her sisters! I that!

                                  We took this proud Momma photo at the end of a very long day at the hotel.

Daddy is HOME! And all is right with our world!

It's a Family Affair

My Dad recently made a rather big decision to start working on an addition to his house. No one is really certain why since all of his kids are grown and moved out or getting close to doing so but regardless he is doing it and so it is.

I decided to head out to take a few pictures.  He'd worked hard to prepare for the concrete pouring.  I'd hear it in his tired voice each night when I called. I did have an official job too, I was bringing the donuts!

I arrived right behind the cement truck.

Not a good sign since I was supposed to bribe the workers to do great work with the donuts. Fortunately,there was a little time to much while waiting for the cement to swirl around a bit, thank goodness.

There were two concrete guys and my brother, my sister's boyfriend Aaron and Ben, a friend of his. I took a few before pictures then  holy buckets, the concrete started flowing.

 It's a funny thing, concrete. At first it seemed like it was flowing so fast and wheelbarrows were spilling everywhere. Then all of a sudden, we were filling things up and we were creating ways to slow things down.

I never intended to stay all day but when you're family you just throw everything else aside and do what you have to do. don't you? That's kind of what happened to me that day.

I ended up moving re-bar, keeping the ply-wood in all the right places for the wheelbarrows. I ran to the store for more parts, grabbed lunch for everyone, took more pictures and ended up a whole lot of dirty! And I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

I got to see my brother pushing concrete down the shoot like a little boy on the playground slide.

I saw Aaron  laughing with my Dad and brother becoming more a part of the family everyday.

 I saw my Dad, relishing in the moment of working alongside his youngest son, beaming with pride. And I saw my youngest brother relishing in the moment of working alongside his Dad, sharing the strengths and skills that he'd spent his lifetime learning from him.

I saw, what we already know but can use a reminder of every now and then- a good foundation, is a beautiful thing.

And I saw my Dad, proud of the creation he started that I was lucky enough to have helped with!

My Girls

I haven't posted here in so long, I just thought you might be interested in what they look like these days. :)