I just LOVE her!

She gets so excited when she reads her scriptures, it's actually quite entertaining to watch with all the squealing, crying and excitement :). She tries so hard to do what's right and as her mother I appreciate that so much. What an example she is to me, I wish I had such a desire to be righteous. It is a joy to see her grow and mature on her path towards womanhood, which is getting shorter and shorter and I'm not sure I like that too much :( but it is amazing to be a part of her life. Love you Star!!

She is quite upset with me that I took this picture of her since she is wearing immodest shorts so I told her I would clarify. Sooo, for the record, Star is wearing her pajamas in this photo and does not have short shorts in her daily attire :).

Beach Vacation

Well, going to the beach was on our list of things we wanted to do this summer and I was beginning to wonder if we could pull it off but thanks to our great friends, the DeMille's (actually their aunt), we are here! They invited us to join them in Oceanside for a few days at a condo their aunt has some timeshare in. We were able to each get our own condo at a great price right on the beach, really right on the beach! Here's some pics of our first day here.....








On our way back from the beach we found out that all the power in southern CA is out so we would be without any power for the night and possibly the next day and night as well. Are You Kidding Me? Is every vacation we take going to turn into an episode of Survivor? We hadn't gone to the grocery store yet, of course :), so we are living off of what we brought. Thank goodness we have some things to get us by. You'd think from our last disaster vacation (the infamous cruise) we would have brought a flashlight and batteries with us, but NO, we did not. The staff here were wonderful and brought every room a flashlight.

UPDATE: we were told there was no way the power was coming on again until the next day, probably the next night. While Scott was sitting in the dark with the kids, he just felt an impression that he should say a little prayer. He listened and did, asking for the power to be turned on sooner, that our vacation would be enjoyable and we would be taken care of. Knowing that the odds of this actually happening was slim, he asked for his faith to be strengthend and that he would not doubt Heavenly Father's power. Within 5 minutes of ending his prayer the lights came on! It was only a little after 9pm! Some may say this was coincidence but we have learned to just say thank you! I have to just say how blessed I am to have him as a husband. Isn't he amazing? I never thought about praying for the power to be turned back on, I knew that was impossible so I just asked that we would be safe and cared for. I need to have a little more faith it seems....

MANTI

I've wanted to go to the Manti Pageant for a long time and we finally made it! We went with the wonderful Losee family and had a great time. Our campground was within walking distnace to the temple and had a pool (that was freezing), play area, bathroom/showers and millions of mosquitoes! I'm really not exagerating, MILLIONS! We had quite the experience just getting out of the car. The bug spray was of course on the bottom of all our baggage and poor Scott had to be eaten alive while he tried to find it. Then we jumped out as fast we could sprayed ourselves and put up our tent as fast as we could in the dark :). I didn't think at all while we were packing the bug spray that it had deet in it and so we could not put it on Jane. What was I thinking!? ( thats why we had to put the tent up so fast so that we could get Jane out of the car).Star stayed in the car with her and tried to keep the ones that had gotten in the car away from her. When we got home I looked in the back and saw all these black smudges on the ceiling and I asked the kids what they had done (ya know, in that tone that they love :]). They were like, "Mom, those are the mosquitoes Star killed when she was protecting Jane!" Star, the hero! Anyway, the next day Scott found the last bottle of bug spray without deet in the whole town :). Jane was so good and we all had so much fun. The pageant was really cool and the temple was absolutely gorgeous. We defintely want to go back and go inside.


Losee Children + Alexander Children= 12

One of the towns on the way had MATER out front of an old movie theater so we just had to stop and get a pic on the way home

Dylan begged to have his picture taken with George Washington

Ean and Tanner: Double Trouble but Super Cute!

Waiting for the pageant to start........




The kids were playing here most of the time

Ean refused to swim

The Freezing Pool