Ethan is Eleven!!!

My wonderful step-son, Ethan, turned 11 last week! I'm a crappy step-mom so I'm not blogging about it til now but.....things have been crappy. Anyhoo, Ethan is the coolest kid I know. He is:

1. funny
2. fun to play games with
3. good looking
4. the best big brother my girls could ask for
5. helpful
6. kind
7. caring
8. smart
9. ambitious
10. willing to do the boring stuff
11. counting down the days til he gets the priesthood and can do baptisms!!

I love this kid!!

He'd never been to Wing Stop and he loves chicken wings so that's where we ate for his b-day.

Hungry growing boy
I know, boring cake Becca. I had no time. At least it's a confetti cake!

Girls Night(s)

Lately I've had a few much needed girls nights. The only one I took pics at was this one with my long time great friends, Jeannette, Miranda, Sylvia, Jessica and Ashle. We had yummy costco pizza and played games and laughed lots. I love these girls!!

Then, my girls camp buddies got together for some serious Cheesecake Factory action!!! It was AWESOME!!! I loved seeing my buds, almost all of them, altogether again. We had sooo many laughs and ate some delish cheesecake!! I even got told off by our server, "Don't juuuudge her! You don't knoooow her!" So funny! You had to be there. And thanks to Kathy Johnson I now know some places to avoid and some certain blue drinks to stay away from. :)

Summer Swimming

This summer has been full of swimming. Bailey has learned so many new things: plugging her nose, holding her breath while swimming with her face in the water, doing all sorts of flips into the pool, and she's almost ready to swim without her floaties! Maddison has also learned many things: how to swim with floaties, kick her feet, bravery to jump in the pool or be thrown in from the side, and how to NOT get water in her nose and mouth when her head goes under water. I am so impressed with my girls. It's been sooo nice being able to take them swimming all the time and not have to hold either of them the entire time. We're loving swimming right now since school is back in cause we pretty much have the pools to ourselves!

Pumpin it Up!

The girls and I went with our awesome friends, Julie, Caylee and Cambree to Pump it Up this week. It was so much fun!! Especially since I only had to pay for 1 kid. I'm really bummed I didn't get any pics of all of us together but I only had my phone to take pictures with and there were about 60 kids running around in the way...

The Book of Mormon

Anyone who knows me knows that I don't read. Aside from the Twilight series-which was a fluke-the only other book I have ever read all the way through is the Book of Mormon. And the one time I did that was in high school. So last night I finally finished it again!!! I am really excited about it and it's a pretty big deal for me. It's strange how all the same feelings I felt back in high school and the same testimony I gained then all came back to me. Immediately after finishing I felt and heard the Holy Ghost telling me that this book is true and that I was doing what my Heavenly Father wanted me to do. I am so grateful for this book and my testimony of it!

Potty time!!

So the past month or so I've been thinking a lot about potty training Maddi. She'd gone poo a handful of times and pee a few times but I never really felt like taking the time to actually train her. So about a week and a half ago I decided Ok, let's just give it a try. So I gave her a bunch of water to drink and then sat her on the potty expecting to wait a while before she actually peed....but No! She went right away! She was so excited and I was pretty much jumping all over the bathroom. After that, she got her own panties and I said next time you need to go you just come tell Mommy-not really expecting her to do that. That's what I get for underestimating her cause she did like 10 minutes later!! And ever since then we've only had 2 accidents and she's been AWESOME!!! She's doing pull-ups during her naps and at night cause she can't seem to wake up when she needs to go. But I'm ok with that!! After the almost year and a half it took Bailey it's almost too good to be true that Maddi is doing so well. I'm so proud of our sweet Maddi and I can't believe what a big girl she is already. And, I can't believe I'm out of diapers!!!! WAHOO!!!!

The past few months' little things...

It's been a long time since I've updated so here's a few little things that have been going on...

A friend of mine got married so we had a little bachelorette party for her and had TONS of FUN!

My beautiful niece, Jordynn, had her 8th birthday and got baptized!!! So proud of her!!!


The waterpark opened over Memorial weekend and we have gone lots of times since then. Believe it or not, we even got Stephen to go with us on Memorial Day!!!

The softball team that My brother, sister and I play on, Players Pub, won our 10th season victory!!! --- but we just lost our most recent season :(

I had to throw this one in cause, well, look at my huge muscles!!

My nieces, Alexis and Jordynn, played softball and just barely missed coming in 1st place! They played so great!!! And Alexis is playing all stars this summer and her team is in 1st place so far!! Yeah Alex!! (Jordynn isn't old enough to play all stars or she'd be playing too)


Ethan FINALLY cut his funky long hair off!!! He wanted to grow it out and do the cool whip to the side thing but his hair just isn't the type for it and it just ended up looking odd. Some hair stylist cut a flippin bowl cut and made it even worse so Stephen was finally able to convince him to chop it. He actually wanted to and was excited to do it. Check out the before and after.

BEFORE

AFTER

I went to girls camp!! I was the Stake Service Leader and I had no idea how much fun I would have. It was really hard being away from my girls for an entire week - especially since Maddi got pretty sick while I was gone. But I learned a lot, had my testimony strengthened, made some GREAT friends, and perfected my skills at Spoons!! We were even lucky enough to have a member of the Quorum of the Seventy come to girls camp for Bishops' Night! Elder Sitati was inspirational and each of the wards and each of the girls got to have him over to talk with them and mingle at their ward testimony meetings. It was amazing.

Bailey finished her first t-ball season! We were so proud of her and how much she improved throughout the season. She is really bummed that it's over but we're looking forward to trying out soccer in the fall!

Bailey had her very first trip to the dentist. It was largely motivated by the chipped tooth she got when she and Maddi collided jumping on the bed. She did so great and even let the dentist shave down the chipped tooth that was a bit sharp.

And maybe the lamest thing that's been going on, ok definitely the lamest thing, is I finished a 1000 piece puzzle on my own. Stephen thought it would be fun to get a puzzle for us to do together...Ethan said hey, you should get a really hard one like 1000 pieces...so I get the puzzle, challenging us with the 1000 pieces, and I end up doing it all by myself because Stephen and Ethan are both too busy playing WOW to do it with me!!! Punks! It was addicting and took a long time over 3 days.