14 years old

Blakely is 14 this year. She has been awaiting this birthday for months, even though she has tried to have a calm demeanor on the outside. She got to have a friend's birthday party this year and so even though it was two weeks early she had her friends come over. (Every weekend was booked before and after her birthday.) Her friends came over and got to experiment with make-up. They made their own pizzas,ate cake balls, played Wii, and just hung out. I wanted to play more games but Blakely wanted just to hang out. She has good friends and it was fun to have them at out house.
Fast forward two weeks, on her birthday she received a Bobbi Brown make-up book. She studied that book and experimented with make-up. She has been waiting for the day to be able to offically put on make-up. She would practice when she had to put make-up for clogging. She has learned pretty well, much better than me. Her reading teacher even noticed that she wore make-up on her birthday. For the first week I wondered if buying that book was such a great idea with her telling me what I was not doing right. I am glad she is enjoying this new stage in her life. I hope that she continues to make good choices and have a love for everyone around her.

Sister's Weekend

Mother's Day weekend was my sister's weekend. It all started when my sister Beth and I decided to run a 5K together. She lives in Arizona. So started the process of finding a race and then deciding that if we did it in Utah we could try and involve more sisters. We started training at the end of February. I ran in rain, snow, wind, and sleet. Beth ran in sun, hot sun, and even hotter sun. I ran three times a week and by the end of March I was pretty much running it the whole way. By the time the race came around I was running it in 35 minutes. I was happy when I finished every run, but I still don't love to run.
Anyway, back to the sister's weekend, Beth and I triple dog dared my other sister's Vicki and Kim to be in the race also. They did accept. So, I took Friday off of work and headed down to pick up Kim. Then we picked Vicki and Beth at the airport. What fun it was to see them. I shouted and waved as they approached the baggage area. We headed out for a nice lunch at Winger's. We laughed and had just a wonderful time. We headed to Provo to check in at our hotel and race. We then headed to the mall to shop a little. We headed to the movies for a girls night out. The next morning, we headed out to the race. We lined up and waited nervously for the race to start. As we headed out we all kept our eyes on someone ahead of us to beat. Mine was a lady in pink. Vicki and Kim's was a pregnant lady and her 4 year old daughter. We completed the race without any mishaps. I was so proud of everyone for enduring well.
We had some breakfast and headed to the hotel to get ready for the day. We had lunch and dinner dates planned with aunts and cousins from both sides of our family. We had lunch with Aunt LaNay, Michelle, Antinonne at P.F. Chang's. I think we totally annoyed the waitress with how long we stayed and talked. We left a good tip. More shopping and then off to dinner with my mom's sister Aunt Janelle, Ginger, Jenny, and Jackie at Olive Garden. It was so fun to take the time to visit with our extended family, because we don't get to see them very often.
It was so sad that the weekend was coming to a close, but we all needed to get back to our own families. What fun to be with these good ladies and share of our love for each other. I hope this can happen next year. Love you.

Easter Fun

Easter weekend fell right before Brady's birthday this year. My family decided to get together, so my sister Kim and her family came down to stay with us. We had been able to see Brad and Chelsea's family that week also. It was a rip roaring time of cousins, cousins, cousins all week long.
We had stake conference that weekend. We decided we would go down to Twin Falls and watch stake conference from my brother's building and then have dinner afterwards. We got up to the Easter bunny visiting us. Our Easter bunny brings church related items. The funniest was Garret's expression telling us the new church pants that he got was not his idea of a good Easter bunny present. Thanks goodness for Aunt Kim's Easter bunny who helped our kids out.
Dinner, of course was wonderful. We enjoyed the scrumptious meal. The men went and hid the eggs between rain showers. The kids then took off trying to find the eggs. As the older kids ran around the smaller kids would pick up the eggs as they dropped out of thier baskets. It is always fun to be hyped up on sugar.

Brady turning four is more fun than we can handle!

Brady has been looking forward to his birthday for a few months. It has been sneaking up on us. I can't believe that April is pretty much over. Brady wanted 10 motorcycles for his birthday. Brady's birthday fell over Easter weekend this year. We were lucky enough to have spend time with both sides of the family this year. On Saturday afternoon we went to Grandma Peterson's house to celebrate cousin Ayva's birthday and Brady's. We had a yummy dinner and played with our cousins. Sunday we had Easter dinner at Blake and Josie's. Between rain storms they had an Easter egg hunt. We then opened presents for Brady and cousin Eva. He received 4 motorcycles and 4 wheeler this year. Grandma Ginny made a wonderful motorcycle cake and beautiful cupcakes. The only letdown was Brady's real birthday was Monday. He was served breakfast in bed like a king. In true king fashion, he told me didn't want french toast, but pancakes. I happened to have a frozen one in the freezer so I hurried and zapped it. He wanted to know where is presents were, I then reminded him he had opened them Sunday. What a letdown! He wanted to have hot dogs for dinner, so we thought we would have a weiner roast, but as the weather went about during the day, it didn't cooperate. At the last minute we invited our friends the Bronsons over to eat hot dogs and fries potatoes with us. We anticapate that special day once a year and quick enough it has come and gone. I wish he would stay little for a little bit longer. Brady has a strong spirit. I hope I have the strength to bend his spirit in the right direction. He reminds me so much of Katelyn at this age. Scary sometimes. He is my best helper. He loves to help in the kitchen and He LOVES to clean. He loves being with his Dad. He will pull out every tool and scatter them around when he is with his dad. We love you Brady

Carl Bloch Exhibit

Over Spring Break, I decided we would enhance our children's lives with cultural. We drove to BYU and went to the Museum of Art to see the Carl Bloch Exhibit. Our ward was going to go but was snow out. When I had made the reservations, I thought we would have lots of time to get there, but in perfect Becky fashion I over booked us. We zoomed down to Utah finally arriving 15 min. late. They thankfully let us in after I told the hostess we had driven all the way from Idaho to see the exhibit. We wandered around looking at the pictures. Brady found a baby to follow around. Shawn finally told me it was my turn because he thought the parents would think he was a stalker. I wish we would have gotten a chance to use the IPad presentation, but oh well. All the different paintings were wonderful to see. Katelyn was affected by one painting called the Murder of the Innocence. Which was when King Herod declared to kill all the boy babies. The boys were less interested in the paintings, but sure loved the ducks in the pond. We left and checked into the hotel and went out to eat. We swam and then actually enjoyed sleeping at a hotel with children. THe next day we were able to attend our cousin's Braxton priesthood ordinance and be able to see some of my family. We then headed home to start our Spring Break.

Pocatello Clogging Competition

Blakely started her lifetime dream of clogging this year. She has always wanted to clog, but her mom put piano lessons before clogging lessons. I finally decided to let her do both this year. She competed in Pocatello this weekend. I hurried home from school and braided her hair and put on her stage makeup. We loaded up the kids and headed to Poky. We arrived at the Performance Center in the heart of ISU. It was fun to show the kids where Shawn and I went to school. There were clogging kids everywhere. Her group practiced. I went into the auditorium and sat down. I have never been to a competition before, so it was weird to see people walking in and out of the auditorium while groups were performing. Blakely's group performed and then we were done. I made them stay and watch for alittle bit. It would have been fun to see the more advanced teams but they were not until Saturday. I took the kids out to Golden Corral all by myself. They did pretty good until we went into Fred Meyer's. I decided it was time to load up and head for home. Next competition is Lagoon in May. Great job Blakely!

President's Day weekend fun

Shawn has been wanting to go down to Hagerman to ride all winter. It has been just too cold to go. I asked if he wanted to take the family trail riding with him. He decided that would be an okay plan. We thought over President's Day weekend would be perfect. We would go down and spend the night at Grandpa Manwaring's house. We would go swimming at 1000 springs and go trail riding. Aaahh, what a wonderful weekend it would be. Well, Blakely had skiing so out went the spending the night. We said it will still be okay we'll just go down for the day. We headed down and unloaded. Dad didn't know what he was in for with taking his family that had never trail ridden before. His son crashed and would not get back on. His wife and daughter kept stalling and he would have to come back and rescue us. His other daughter would only ride in first gear. By the time we got half way down the trail he was ready to give up. We headed back to truck. I told him to go and ride while we stayed by the truck. I then encouraged Blakely and Katelyn to practice going up and down hills. We watched other riders zooming up and down monster hills. Garret climbed the monster hill. Shawn came back and taught Blakely and Mom how to go up and down hills. We rode on a few trails until Brady was shivering. It finally turned out okay. We loaded up and headed to 1000 springs. After spending $37 the kids were hungry and ready to go within the hour. Shawn and I tried to decide if 1 hour was worth the $37 spent. Probably not, so we stayed 30 more min.(much better)We headed to Grandpa's to quickly clean out his fridge and have a snack. We headed home as fast as we could because there were no tail lights on the trailer. All in all a good day, just maybe we will do better next time.