FIRST RECITAL WITH DC2!

Man I am so grateful Emma has finally put on her big girl pants - of all the years I needed it, this was the year. Every recital I am there start to finish (not necessarily because Emma needs me, but because I have worked at SAS and so I help at recital), but not this year. Emma's recital took place over the twins birthday and also their big baptism weekend! So grateful that Andrea drove her out to Queen Creek every day, multiple times for me, and grateful Emma totally understood what was going on that weekend and fully supported us ditching her for her brothers. She handled the dress rehearsal on Thursday by herself, 2 recitals on Friday herself and then 3 recitals on Saturday alone, but Jared and I went out to the very last show, #6 that weekend to watch her do her thing! She was beautiful of course! Unfortunately, we only got to see her competition pieces and not her hip hop, tap or ballet, but lucky for us, DC2 has a professional photographer come out and take pictures so here they are...Thanks again Emma for handling your business this weekend!

FATHER AND SONS CAMPING!

We got awfully lucky this year and completely lucked out - Grove 2nd for whatever reason didn't do their camp out until June 24th - and I happen to be on facebook Thursday night and saw that they posted a reminder and Jared happen to have the next day off of work....all the stars aligned and he texted the ward to see if he could take the boys and they were very excited for him to do that so Friday morning the boys got up and packed and they headed off to go camping by lunch time! They played in the creek, widdled sticks a lot and shot their air riffle and BB guns. The boys had a great time being boys up there and hanging out with other boys. I love this special time they get to have together! Some day they will realize what a special daddy they have to take them to do all these things.

ELI'S FIRST PAYING JOB!

Stefney Crawford called and asked if Eli would want to earn $30 for 3 days to take her dog Percy on a walk, feed him, change his water, feed the chickens and water the plants! He was stoked! He pretty much thought he was a bad @$$ having this big boy job. The first night when we went over to have Stef show us everything the dog jumped up on Eli and knocked him down to the ground - we didn't start out that good, but luckily for Eli, Uncle Bryant was going to be with us that weekend so him and daddy went and helped him! Tyson played with the chickens the whole time while Eli would walk the dog. It was a great first job!

3rd YEAR GIRLS CAMP!

Emma had her 3rd year of girls camp - first year with the new ward. This ward doesn't have a photographer so sadly I didn't really get any pictures so this is all I have. Emma had another great time and became good friends with the new girls in our ward so that was a success. This year she got to paintball (and got shot in the butt by Mariah) and canoe - she loved both of them!  I heard from Jessica Braswell that Emma and Tatum ate together for meals and always somehow ended up by Jessica and being the crazy girls they are - drove her crazy - in a good funny way! She learned "enjoy the ride" motto from her friends which really means a lot to her. As parents we were supposed to write her a letter with out her knowing that she would get up there at camp - apparently we are some awesome parents because the letter really made her cry and she talked about it in her testimony - below are a couple of the texts messages we got about it, but that Sunday at church we heard even more about how sweet she is and what a beautiful testimony she has. We love our Emma and her love of this gospel and her Savior.