Welcome to Bikini Bottom

Grace being goofy with Sponge Bob and Katja
Happy 8th Birthday Grace

Tristan took a turn throwing up a pizza pie

Loved the cake!

Grace had a delayed birthday party this year. She basically celebrated a solid week. Spoiled girl! Here are a few pictures from her pizza chef party. The kids got to learn how to make pizza and then run around high on sugar playing in the arcade. As a parent, I've learned it's sooooo worth the money to have it somewhere other than you're own house. Much more relaxed and I don't have a worry in the world. Fun was had by all...plus did I mention that Stevi B's Pizza has some pretty "exotic" pizza....I had a really good macaroni and cheese pizza and Dale loved the loaded baked potato pizza. Too fun!

Utah Ski Trip

Dale on the ski lift at Sundance
Mount Timpanogoos, UT

Dawna & Dale on the ski lift

Thought you might enjoy a few pictures of the ski trip Dale and I took a couple of weeks ago. I only have what we took with our phone while on the lift at Sundance as we didn't really take too many pictures.

We went to Utah for 6 days...without kids. It was so fun and definitely refreshing to have some time alone together. We also spent some time with Dale's brother's (Chad, Elvan, & Freddy)who live there in Utah. We ate a ton at all our favorite restaurants (Rumbi's, Tepanyaki, Bajios, Zuppa and of course, Cafe Rio. (3 times!) We were able to go to the SLC temple and stocked up on Utah stuff galore. We skiied at Snowbird and Sundance during our visit. Besides the blizzard conditions on arrival, the week turned out great. I miss Utah, but definitely don't miss the cold.

Grace's 8th Birthday

Happy Birthday Grace!

Pop Pop & Mimi at dinner with us

Dawna, Tristan, & Grace having a great time at dinner

Tristan, Dale, Grace, Aunt Libby, & Addison at Wasabi!

We celebrated Grace's birthday with dinner out. Every year I love going to a Japanese steak house (the one where they cook the food in front of you) and this last June we took Grace with us. She was in love! She adored the show and the food and proclaimed, for everyone to hear, that she was going to go there for her birthday next year. Well, sure enough, she made it known that she wanted to go out to eat to the Japanese steak house like Mom. So we were able to take both her and our family as well as her Mimi and Pop Pop and Aunt Libby and cousin Addison to dinner. The chef was hilarious and kept us laughing most the night and Grace's favorite parts were the little toy man that squirt water on the fire (it looked like it was peeing...bathroom humor is big with eight year olds as you know) and the smoking volcano/train. It was quite entertaining. She loved that they sang "Happy Birthday" with the drum and gave her fancy chopsticks to take home. She kept a smile of her face all night.

"Eight is Great!" Grace's Baptism

Getting ready to get baptised...

Grace and Dale on her special day

Today Grace made the decision to be baptised. We are so proud of her and she positively glowed all day. We know she'll never forget her special day since it was on her actual birthday. About 80 people attended and we asked each person to write a small message on a 3x5 card as a keepsake for her and hope she will always remember her special day.

Queen for a Day

We celebrated our YW in Excellence last night and had a pagent theme. Ms. Faith, Ms. Divine Nature...you get the idea. It turned out really cute. The girls did their pagent wave at the end and to ham it up it little more, I wore a ball gown. Yeah...it didn't quite go over as well as I liked. I thought being so over the top would get some laughs...instead I got a lot of stares and "no comments"...oh well. I think overall the girls did fantastic and were able to showcase a lot of the projects they've been working on throughout the year.

Thanksgiving

We had a quiet little Thanksgiving holiday this year. We stayed in SC and had dinner at our new house with my Mom and stepdad Lonnie. It was very relaxing and included no holiday driving marathons...ahhhhh. My brother went up to VA for the holiday break and it took him 11 hours to get home rather than the normal 7 hours. Ick. Yes...a quiet Thanksgiving was so nice. We threw our traditional pie party that evening. We had a few families over and enjoyed a great variety of yummy pies. I made homemade apple and pumpkin pie as well as a chocoate mousse. We also were graced with a peanut butter mousse pie as well as a delicious apple praline cheesecake...YUM! It was all worth it...and yes...even the extra few pounds.

Arrrgh Matey!

Almost forgot to include a photo of us together on Halloween night. Our entire family dressed up as pirates. Dale's "tattoos" were courtesy of Grace and a sharpie. My personal favorite is the hangman on his forearm. I'll take an "a" please. And that's a real goatie he grew in just for the occassion. Only thing is his beard is naturally blond and he of course wanted it darker. So he asked to use my mascara...ha...I don't think so. So he used the next best thing...black shoe polish. It was definitely dark...for a very long time.