More friends and more boating!

Sydney and her friends, Morgan & Bentley

 Amanda's favorite teacher sophomore year...Talley. He gave her a 'Gooder Grammar' award! ha ha ha!!

 Sydney learning to jump the wake!

 Hanging in Maddy's jeep with Kayleigh, Cami & Maddy

 And then getting Hawaiian Ice to start the summer!  Fire Dancer dude....He is related to our dance studio owner.I think his name is Bobby.

 I went on the field trip with Sydney to see The Outsiders on the big screen! I loved this book and movie as a 7th grader!

 More friends...Amanda and AK (Austin Keeler-wardie) making gatorade slushies

 Amanda at Pineview with friends...Slinds, ?, Ashley, Sarah

 Dance friends from 2 years ago..Amanda Britney Keller, Danika and Maddy and below add Kathryn in the middle. Kathryn spent this year at Walt Disney World playing Belle

 AK & Amanda

 Brandon & Amanda

 Can you tell these are downloads from Amanda's phone? Dance friends downtown adventure

 The summer sleepover at the Stephensons...Amanda, joey (in back) Sarah, Keslee, AK & Jeren

 The Mob! Davis's student cheering section...only seniors are supposed to be down front, but somehow Amanda is front row!  Chez (left) Amanda, AK & Liz

 And Amanda before she cute her hair and below after....

More friends and first boat trip of summer!

Amanda bought her favorite ballet teacher, Mr Jay, a selfie stick! He LOVES it!  He's Korean and is very hard to understand.....but he loves Amanda and likes to tease her back!  This is at the end of year dance party!

 Our peonies were AWESOME this year!  I took some to friends.  Including Ty's parents who invited Mike & me to dinner one evening even after Ty and Amanda broke up. They are lovely people and we had a good time! She loved the flowers!

 Amanda & Carson & Sarah....I like my ampersand....no one else gets it :)

 First boat trip of the season! To Willard. It was cold but both girls wake boarded and I think Brandon got in the lake for a minute...

We LOVE boating!!

Friends

Dance friends are the best! Sydney with Grace, Emma and below Julia

 Amanda below with her dance friends.....

 Amanda and Brandon!

 Amanda and Chezney getting their Hawaiian Ice on to start the summer!

K-town antics

Here's something that is a little endearing about Kaysville....redneck style.  There are several water retention ponds around town. These fill up when we have heavy rains and then slowly drain.  We had some serious rainstorms in May.  Serious enough that it flooded a neighbor's home!  It filled the water retention ponds.  There is one by the high school.  It turned into the K-town lake and TONS of people were swimming in it! They had canoes, etc.  Below is Amanda's friends (all seniors) after swimming and obviously getting muddy, too.  You can see the lake in the background.  It was so full it even spilled out onto Main Street. Crazy crazy!

Bailey, Ty, Joey, Amanda, I don't know the next girl, Sarah, Chad and someone else I don't know :)

 We celebrated Brandon's birthday with my parents! I can't remember where Mike's parent's were.  This is what happens when I'm behind on blogging by 6 months!  Trying to get family pictures...

 The grandparent picture went better :)

 Sydney had 2 fieldtrips to Antelope Island in 7th grade. This is the second trip. I didn't go on this one :)  When they stopped for lunch, she and some friends had a photo shoot with this cool old truck!

 And tractor....

 Sydney is in the teal blue sweatshirt

 And an old fence :)

 Below is the wardie friends and their advisor, Sharlee!  Sad thing about this picture is that Maddy (left) and Liz (in blue shirt) have moved or are moving in the next year.  Mike and I joke all the time that this is just a 'starter house' neighborhood anyway :)

Competition Showcase

 Can I tell you how much I love watching our girls dance?  They had a great dance season!  I am super frustrated with the end of year showcase though. They open the doors to a general admission auditorium and all the seats are already saved by the teachers.  So, I have decided to stop inviting grandparents to this show and have them come to competitions where they can sit close and see just our girls dance.  I don't know why I needed to document that decision...I just feel better writing it down ;)

 Here's our cute girls after the show on Mike's instagram!  Sydney had 2 dances this year and Amanda had 3.  Below are Amanda's group dance pictures....

 Her close friend in this gropu are Kayleigh Lewis, Cami Graham and Maddy Lloyd on the front row, Cami Mendoza next to her and Erin Berry and Hayley Tenant on the back row.

 This is Amanda with Ali Lemua. Ali is an amazing dancer! It was her last year and now she teaches. She also gives our girls private lessons when we can get them scheduled. Everyone is busy!  She's a sweetheart and has danced in Amanda's hip hop dances I think every year!

 Add in Christian Parkinson who is also an amazing hip hop dancer and danced in all Amanda's hip hop dances and is now serving a mission in Ireland!

 Amanda with her friend, they met in soccer, Keslee Stephenson.  She used to dance, but is more of a soccer girl. Her mom and sisters dance/teach at this studio.

 Add in the sisters....Cali and Kambree

 And some cousins...I can't remember the little one's name, but the older girl is Jaicee Larsen.

 Chaylor Gunther...she left the studio this year...amazing dancer!

 Mylee Terry and Amanda have a special relationship.  Mylee is a great dancer!

 Cute girls!!! Love them!

 Below is Joey Giles...Amanda's friend.

 And this picture makes me laugh so hard!  The Amanda Show was a Nickelodeon show...

The Lunch

This has been a very interesting year. It's been full of learning. It's been full of growth. It's been full of perspective.

I know it's the last day of November 2015, but I am still catching up from the spring.  I believe this lunch I'm writing about today happened in May....

Cute Liz, Addy's mom, has been trying to adjust.  She finds so much joy in spending time with Addy's friends.  This isn't new. She was quite involved with Addy's friend group before she passed away. She's the fun mom. Always letting them come over to her house, eat all her food and stay as late as they want.  She always organized the night games and drove the car for 'fugitive' a night game where the kids hide around the neighborhood and try to sneak back to home base without being seen by the 'car'  If seen, then they are supposed to get in the car and help find the other kids.

Maybe this lunch happened in April....Addy's birthday is in April.  The Clingers had a party.  They invited neighbors and ward members for an open house and then later had the kids over to play fugitive and hang out in their newly finished basement.  The basement is what they focused on all these long months.  It gave them a goal and something to look forward to.  

The party went all well and good.  That morning they went to the temple to do Addy's initatory. That's when I took Sydney to go do baptisms for the dead.

Anyway!  Liz wanted to take the girls to lunch one day. This involved me and well as other moms putting  Liz on our 'emergency contact list' at the jr high so she could check the girls out.  She came and picked up the girls at their lunch hour.  I was still there talking to Mylissa, Maddie's mom, when the girls all came out and piled in Liz's truck.  I was still talking to Mylissa about a half hour later when we saw Liz and the girls drive by. I texted Sydney and asked what was going on...that they weren't going to make it back by the time lunch was over. Sydney said that Liz went to the high school and picked up her daughter Trinity, then back to the elementary to pick up her daughter Victoria (the elementary school and jr high are back to back).  This also made too many kids in her truck and not enough seat belts.  I wasn't happy.  Then, they went to Farmington for lunch.

Later, we found out that they were gone for 2 hours.  I also had Sydney text me and say Liz wanted to take the girls out for the rest of the school day and I said no way!  Later Liz told me the girls wanted her to. I'm not sure who to believe.  It's been a hard transition to being fully supportive of anything Liz wants to do and wanting to help her heal and helping Sydney start moving forward. Missing school is not ok.  I was back at the school that afternoon because the waffle trucks were there and I met Amanda and Ty to get waffles.  The principal, Mr Hogge, stopped me and talked to me about Liz taking the girls out of school.  He said it's been hard for them trying to be supportive and still run the school like a school.  We came to the conclusion that the girls won't leave for lunch again and that Liz is welcome to bring lunch to the school to a conference room if she wants to have lunch again.  It's been better, but it was hard.  There have to be some lines drawn and it feels mean when we know their whole family is suffering.  We have had to remember that Sydney, even though everyone feels like she is, is not part of their family.  We need to help her learn how to move forward.  More to come on this....but these pictures are cute and I wanted to post them :)