It's official....We have a TWEEN!

This past weekend, Keiley officially became a middle schooler (YIKES right)
Think back people, I know it was a loooonnnggg time ago for most of us, but middle school...yuck!
I pray Keiley enjoys it ALOT more than I did!

We decided (okay, I caved) to getting her a cell phone for this big event. Much to my dismay, my husband thought that our little girl was responsible enough for one.
She is a good girl, so we thought we would reward her.

I snuck it in her purse and asked my inlaws to call her while we were at dinner to surprise her and boy was she surprised!
The picture doesn't do it justice, as my hand was shaking with excitement that the surprise was really going to be just that, but she acutally screamed with delight.

And here she is, her first phone call from her Grammy in Montana.

In the celebration, we were joined by some of our friends, whom we have started a little tradition with of going to dinner when a milestone is reached.

Here is the whole bunch of them:
Drake, Luke, Rebekah, Ella and behind them: Logan, Keiley, and Anna.

"Girl Just Wanna Have Fun!"

As most of you know, Keiley is in dance a couple times a week. Well, with that comes a yearly dance revue. Of that, there is also pictures for that dance revue, a photo shoot of sorts. By that I mean, multiple wardrobe changes, different hairstyles per wardrobe change and makeup....yes makeup!

Keiley dances with a fews of her little besties so we the moms get together and form the assembly line of hair, makeup and costume altering duties.

This is how HOURS of our past Saturday was spent. What we wouldn't do for our little princesses right???


Here is Rebekah with her mom (and my friend Renee) applying makeup for the first set of pics. The "hip hop" dance pictures.


I was in charge of hair for the day, and for this particular dance picture, the hairstyle was funky. The instruction was "to have fun with it"....so I did!

The girls are checkin themselves out to give me approval or a redo look.

Thankfully, I got the approval ;)

The next photo op was that of the girls jazz routine. Special assignments: makeup touch up and the hair differed for the girls because this little princess Ella is in a different jazz class than Keiley and Rebekah.

Here she is with her mom (and my friend Leigh) touching up.

And our girls almost completed! A little more lipstick and again...I got the approval on the hair! YAY!

Oh how beautiful they are....

Finally, the last photo was the tap picture. Assignments: MORE makeup, costume change and another different hair style.

They had to have a "high pony tail curled"....my the details huh?

Drum roll please.......

The final and finished princesses!

Rebekah, Keiley, Ella, and Anna.

Can you even stand it!!!

Just wait my friends out there that just now have your little baby darlings, this happens sooooo fast!

Drake and Dad weekend!

They can't wait to go back!!!
Drake and Rick are part of this sort of "dudes and dads" group that get together once a month for some, yes, you guessed it "dude and dad" adventure.
This particular month they got to go to Catalina and it was the first time for both of them and boy did they have fun!
For those of you who know Drake real well, know he is not super adventurous, but these camp outs definitely bring him out of his comfort zone. He is loving the outdoors!

Here he is getting ready for his first kayak ride...(as I said, he is becoming more adventurous)


As part of their kayak adventure, he captured this picture of a sea lion on the shore.

Drake in mid concentration preparing for the competition of "bongo ball". Their team placed third out of ten teams. (at least they placed right...)

Finally, the village where they stayed.

The turquoise structures were their cabins/tents. They slept 6 boys. (wow, can you imaging the smell of that after a long outdoorsey day...eeeewwww)