California Here We Come!

Now that the Dance Competition season is over the fun is heading our way! We are going to California with the Dance Studio, the girls will be performing at Disneyland and at Catalina Island. We will also be going to Universal Studios, California Adventure park and tons of eating out! We are very excited to be riding on the tour bus (like Devin when he went on his Violin tour.)

This is a cute top that Mckenna bought for the trip....


California--- HERE WE COME!
See you when we come back....


*no internet connection, now that we are home, it get's posted!

Final Dance Competition for Kenna

Wow, do I have a lot of pictures from all the competitions that Mckenna has been in the last two months! So in the side bar I have included a slideshow of all her pictures.


But, here is a video of her Jazz and her Lyrical solo.
I hope you enjoy them!



Mckenna's jazz solo for Provo was very fast so I am including a copy of the parowan solo so that you can see the difference.

Friends, Friends and more Friends

I have taken some fun pictures of the kids and their friends lately and thought that I would share them with ya'all.

Let's start with Devin: (like his whole life he has all the firsts:>) Devin has had a lot of buddies come over and play badmitten in our backyard, it has been fun, some of them have been kyler's age, but hang around with Devin because the more the merrier according to Devin (yes, Kyler is involved also!)

Now, we have a foosball table and they play that too, but no pictures yet (i got it at a garage sale last week.)
Kyler and Devin had a fun challenge with Kyler's school security officer (who also lives in our neighborhood and is friendly with Matt,) and they beat Mark very strongly in their foosball match! Kyler thought that was an awesome thing, Mark has challenged them to a rematch sometime at our house...



Kyler has had friends over (which I think I put up on the blog before, but Kyler just had a choir concert and Mckenna took fun pictures there. The other day in the car we were giving Brayden and Gabe a ride home and Gabe says, "Kyler if you hadn't of transfered into 4th period I would have never met you, I am glad you did." I thought that was a really nice comment. 4th period is all year Choir, Kyler originally was only 1/2 year and then going to be in Drama, but his Choir teacher asked him to transfer into her all year class since she loved his singing. (more on that to come...)

Mckenna: I snapped a few pictures of coming to the crosswalk at school after school. Usually she walks home but Andrea called me very sick and asked if I could give Kyleigh and Katheryn a ride home and I said ofcourse. Mckenna just looked so cute in her outfit that I had to have a picture and luckily I had my camera (i seem to carry it everywhere now adays. I think it has to do with the realization that the kids are getting older and will be becoming butterflies and flying away sooner than I would like, plus I like to snap for this blog!) She is walking with Katheryn (kyleigh and Christee are behind them.)
Katheryn

Kyler and Baseball

Kyler's baseball team for little league is called the Dodgers, last year it was Devin's best friend's Eric's team and so they built it for eric and the older kids. The younger kids never played last year! This year matt had to draft 9 kids (this includes Kyler,) to the team there are 12 kids on the team total. Most of the kids are not use to playing competitively because they played in the minor league where as Kyler and three other kids played in the majors and it was very competitve. So, Kyler is going a little crazy with the losing of games that have happened in the last little while. They won their games last Saturday which I did not get to watch since I was in Parowan with Mckenna for a dance competition where the studio was name best Studio of this season- which is a great honor but back to baseball. The game before that I was there and they were beat by many, many points and Kyler was furious because not one of the outfielders could field the ball, they either watched it go over their heads or let it fall at their feet and took their time throwing it back in field after the other team scored 4 runs at a time (this would be the batter, and the loaded bases group.)

Kyler's team won their game today though and it was very exciting because they won by one point!! Kyler did an awesome job pitching. Most of these games are late games- 8:15 p.m. to 10:15. It is really fun to go to night games maybe that is why I love going to kyler's games when I can not only to watch kyler play but because one of the boys on his team family is really good friends with our family and his family is so fun to be around. Devin is really good friends with their daughter Natalie and neice Brooke, Kyler is friends with Dallin and Kristy one of their older daughters use to be Mckenna's ballet teacher last year. Patrice their mom is awesome, we have gone skim boarding together, she took me horseback riding last friday (boy was I sore, but a different blog for that one!)

The other thing that is great about Patrice is that she can calm me down when one of the very loud complaining parents talks about the coach to all the other parents and just continues to complain about how her son doesn't get to pitch all the time. 2 weeks ago her complaint was that we don't have the practices that they had last year (her kid never played because he was a 13 year old.) and this last game she tried to get Lance (matt's friend who is helping him coach since no parent will) to change pitchers, "are we going to make a pitching change soon, or is he going to pitch the whole game, he is really cute, but I am tired of my son crying each night of a game because we loose and he could have pitched." Lance told her that he was not the manager and she needed to talk to the manager (matt) she said "she wasn't going to talk to anyone"- whom, seems that she was talking to lance and everyone else that would listen!! Her son plays every inning of every game in a key position- so she shouldn't complain.

But, I know that matt is being fair to everyone and so I couldn't care what she says, it is just that she is creating a very negative experience in the stands with her mouth! So, the kids and I try to make it a fun atmosphere and override her negativity.

I am going to be able to watch kyler's game tomorrow, but not Saturday since Mckenna will be at the Provo Competition. I asked Devin to record it for me, but then remembered I will have the camcorder with me since I have one more time to record Mckenna's solo performance. It is nice to record them all so that she can she her changes and how her performance are getting better.

I am excited for tomorrow! Go, Kyler!!!







Matt instructing one of his players

And so it starts! Dance Competition #1 ~ Champion Productions

So, we are off to another year of dance competions...
The competition was stiff, so many teams from the north that focus on only one type of dance style ex: jazz and not lyrical, lyrical and not hip hop etc... Mckenna learns all styles and can do all those dance styles well, but I think Jazz is her best, but it is still hard for her to understand that not all studios teach all things and when they do then the girls are put on competitive teams and only focus on that one style. I guess she is lucky to the extent that she will be able to do all styles for drill team or whatever else she decides to do with her dancing skills in her life whether it be teaching dance, dancing in plays or just teaching her children about what values she learned in her dancing days...

This competion though was unusual and shall I say very long, ( solo's from 3 to 10:30 p.m. then then next day from 10 a.m. til again 10:30 p.m.) was really good for Mckenna because it helped her to see what she needed to work on. With each routine they included a dvd with the performance and comments at the time of the mistake or awesome move. Mckenna's comments were basically smile and point toes.

Enjoy!

Some of the fun things that the girls do during down time: Elevate your body and Ride that pony game (anyone that has gone to girls camp knows these games.)

Happy Easter Everyone!

Have a Beautiful day!

Easter Eve and the Sound of Music

While Mckenna was waiting for our Easter Egg decorating time she decided that she wanted to watch an Easter show, This is what she picked The Sound Of Music. I thought it was mighty cute that she thought this was an Easter show. I guess compared to everything else that was on this was very spiritual. I mean, Nun's- Maria being afraid to not serve God and running from a very evil power (the Nazi's,) this was as Eastery as we could find. No Easter Parade, No, Peter Rabbit cartoons and absolutely NO movies about the Savior's Crucifixion or the Resurrection- nothing until later in the Evening say---- 9 p.m. too late for my kids.

But I really am not minding this at all since I love The Sound of Music and we got to record it since I have never owned a copy of this movie. So, I guess we are pretty lucky Mckenna didn't pick Spongbob Square pants or Drake and Josh! And we got to munch on some yummy carrots, broccoli and snap peas while we were waiting for our cheese raviolis- delicious!

Kyler's History Fair

Kyler's honors class had to do a history report.
Tavis Nelson and Kyler chose to do a report on the Mountain Meadow Massacre since their teacher had told them a little about it and they were intrigued.
After doing this report for school their teacher took a few of the students and enrolled them in the area history fair. There were 200 students that did a report and display, 150 that did presentations and i don't know how many that did a dramatization. Out of the 200 kids that did the report and display Kyler and Tavish's report came in 3rd place! I thought that was amazing. If they had come in 1st or 2nd they would have represented the area in the regional fair, but I think they did great on becoming 3rd in so many students ranging from elementary school to seniors in Highschool.

Enjoy the display...

Beauty Time- Here comes Dance Comp. season #4

ONCE AGAIN IT IS DIVA TREATMENT TIME!

Kenna has many competitions coming up in the next month and a half and so we are once again deciding what hairdo's to do for each solo she is doing.

For her jazz she is doing this hair style:

for Lyrical Mckennawill be having a headband and long curly hair, so the easiest way to do that was to have her get a perm so after her bun, we take it out, spray it and aways she goes on to the next dance like this next weekend she has like 3 numbers between both of the routines. She sure will be busy!

Devin & Brittney- Girl's Pref #2

So, I guess that since 2 weeks before Devin turned sixteen he has been bombarded with cute girls by the name of Brittney. First there was Brittney R. who took him on his first dance date and was a junior. Then on his birthday there was the cute Brittney who lived in our old ward and is married that helped him pick out clothes at Christensen's department store and then the darling Brittney a senior whom he had to get to kiss him during that nice little scavenger hunt for his party....

Welll, that darling Brittney took Devin on his second dance date also! Brittney Griffin is a great friend of Devin's, so is her brother Tyler (he was the camera man on Devin's birthday and his dad Jim is one of Matt's great friends who was the chauffer for devin's b-day.) Brittney is just adorable.

Brittney came and got him and they went out for their day date. Then she dropped him off later to get ready for the pictures before they had dinner and went on to the dance. I tried to tell Devin that he needed a white shirt and nice dress pants but he said that he was fine wearing what he had on; a pair of tan pants and a polo. Well after Brit picked Devin up for pictures, he came tearing into the house looking for nicer clothes, but since he wasn't prepared none of his clothes were ironed. I had tried to tell him that he needed them before this day but he didn't believe me since the last dance was casual, so he ended up changing into a white shirt that we sprayed with water and dried with a hair dryer and kept the pants on that he had been wearing, too bad no one had pictures of that outfit or that he wasn't wearing it in their pictures because Brittney looks beautiful and Devin looks very underdressed! The group picture is even worse when they are all dressed up and there is casual Devin.

Even though he is very casual compared to everyone else Devin really had a fun time. He told Brittney that he was going to ask her out for another date and she said she was holding it to him.

I still can not believe that Matt and I are old enough to have a mid-teenager and that he is old enough to be asked out by so many darling, adorable girls. I am glad that he is being asked out though since he could feel like a (what is the male version of a wall flower?) nerd- which he totally isn't!

GOODBYE DIAL-UP! HELLO, HIGH SPEED WIRELESS AT LAST!

So, I bet that everyone has been wondering- Where in the World is Sandi and her blog entries?!! Well as my blog has gotten longer it has been harder to view my blog with the dial-up. I finally convinced Matt that for $9 more a month we won't have to have the phone busy all day and have me sitting here for so long which will help me be more productive during the day.

Well, I was suppose to get high speed on Monday, but i don't have an extra cable connection since the satellite is using the only line we have. So, I had to buy a wireless card which is okay since then Matt can use it on his laptop too. Plus the company that had the only high speed connection option to our house was giving a free router with a year contract so that was an added bonus- sweet!!!!

So, here is to wonderful blogs, updates on the Family and more keeping up with all the fun things going on in the other family members blogs!

YE HA!!

Sweet Kind Hearted Kyler and So. Utah Performance Arts Festival- Choir Style!

My Sweet Kyler.

Yesterday, I had the honor of chaperoning Kyler's choir class to SUPAF (see title description.) Kyler volunteered to help this boy named Blaze. He is special ed and is very amazing to me. He has a stump for an upper arm, no other arm on his left side and stumps for legs, but he does so much. SUPAF was held at Dixie High school, but because of the sound barrier there was no access to the stage for a wheelchair, so Kyler followed Blaze while Blaze walked up the stairs and then walked to the bleachers. Officer Simpson (one of the safetly officers for the school,) picked Blaze up put him on the bleachers and then they all started singing there hearts out!

Kyler has talked to me about Blaze before but I didn't realize how much of a handicap Blaze had...

But I am so amazed at his personality. I got to help him with put on a choir shirt and he was such a fun kid. I always think that Heavenly Father gives kids with handicaps great humor, because he had me cracking up with his jokes! I can see why Kyler likes to be with him. Since they both has such crazy humorous personalities.

I love watching the kids when they are away from home and they don't realize that I am watching I get a totally different perspective on their values and what their life might be like for them. I see bits of those life journeys by how they interact with others, in the most mundane activities.

I hope that Kyler continues being kind and sweet to others throughout his life, because it is such a great quality to have when dealing with others!

Busy Times for Matt

Poor Matt has been pulling some really grueling hours for the last couple of months, last night he didn't get home until 11:30 p.m. because that is when City Council ended. He has been going to work at 6 and 7 in the morning and then working his complete day and it will be awhile longer until his schedule lightens up!



Streetscape is coming along great (see the title link for all projects.) The city just put in new generators (and boy are they impressive- huge, I got a one on one tour, ) and renamed the power station in honor of the Fort that was in Santa Clara during Jacob Hamblin's time.

They are also building a 2 million gallon water tower in the south hills which is providing great rock for Matt's weekend projects.

The City Council just appointed a new mayor as of January 7th, since Mayor Drake is now a County Commissioner. We really like Mayor Rosenburg. He and Matt are good fishing buddies (well, they went to New Mexico on a fly fishing trip with Kyler and some other guys.) And so there really wasn't any stress with the new Mayor coming in. They also appointed a new council member since Rick was a councilman, Jerry Amundson is in our ward, is a member of the Bishopric and was on the Planning Commission so he is very familiar with Matt and Matt is very familiar with him- so no stress there either.

But the most exciting project (for Matt,) is the new city hall that they broke ground on and are excavation now for the basement and foundation. I am so excited for him to have an office that is his, decorated by me (and him,) and to have all the directors in one place (Jack right now is in the power station.)

When he is home on the weekends he has been building his own project in the backyard; a really nice firepit and patio in the back of our yard. It is going to be really great. I hope it is done soon because even though it is warming up, it is still chilly in the evenings and I am really looking forward to our nightimes outside!


Matt also has one project waiting for him in the house - painting the kitchen. I was going to do this, but he said that I was doing the primer wrong and so he has taken over. The only problem is that it is going to be a while longer before he gets to this one since he wants to get the firepit done first- since that one was his idea. Which will help him to relax when he is at home- so I don't blame him for wanting to get that one done before the kitchen...

Reading Holes

Mckenna has spent the last 2 weeks reading Holes for school homework. Each kid is in a group. Mckenna's group's name is CAMELS (which stands for all the girls first initials. Cam, Addie, Mckenna, Erin, Lea and Sadie. Cute huh?) then each kid is assigned a homework sheet that they do and they are in charge of that part of the group discussion: for example; The Artful Artist (draws a picture of what they read,) The Summarizer (obvious), Discussion Director (gets to be the one in charge!), Connector (mckenna didn't tell me about this one- sorry,) Word master (picks out great words in the section they are reading) and Literature Luminary (picks out an interesting passage and has someone read it).

This has been a really good homework assignement for Mckenna it is fun because of the group of girls she is with, she loves the Disney movie AND best of all it makes her read, which she doesn't really care to do so much. Which of course really drives me bonkers because I love to read more than anything and have past that down to the boys. I am actually rubbing off on Matt, he has been reading alot too (which he never did before- would rather watch it in a movie instead... wonder where Mckenna gets it from? Humm???)

After finishing reading this book she is planning to read THE LITTLE PRINCESS, which is a book that I gave her for Christmas. I am so excited to talk to her about this book, since it is one of my favorites! Next maybe she will read EMILY OF NEW MOON. Well, I can hope can't I?

Taquitos, Chicken and Dumplings and Food Storage with the Ritchies!

Saturday night Jenny and Walley came over after the Adult session of Stake conference. They mentioned that Megan ( there 12 year old,) had been upset on Friday because they usually have Donut Friday at home and since they couldn't go to the store, because they were living on Food Storage. I was really curious about that. She told me that she would tell me later about it. The funny thing is that I had just bough donuts some 2 hours before so I sent donuts home with them for Megan and the other kids.


They invited us over for dinner for the next night. I was looking forward to having dinner with them because Jenny had told me about these yummy Taquitos that she had made a week before (which was weird, since I don't usually like mexican food- unless it is taco's made mommy style,) and because I had been sick for 2 weeks, hadn't been out and since their family had been sick with the same thing and Wally was still feeling it we all decided to feel miserable together!


What we didn't know is that the Ritchies were just finishing 2 weeks of having to eat from there food storage! What nice people to share the only food they had left.

Their Bishop had told them in December what his plan was about having a disaster happening and challenged them to go for 2 weeks with just their food stores already in their house. So in February, the Bishop told them that there was a emergency and they were off for 14 days of no shopping. The Ritchies only had 3 gallons of milk starting that Sunday so they drank evaporated milk for a while and then dry milk (ughhhh.) They were almost down to nothing when we got there, but we had yummy chicken and dumplings, the taquitos, home made rolls, and yummy home made chocolate chip cookies! I guess they saved enough to feed us. They were able to shop the next morning. They were really appreciative of the lessons and trials that they went through and learned from.

And, wow, was the food yummy! I am not sure how we would have made out if our Bishop told us about the same challenge, but It really made me think about our plan for an emergency and how we would handle it. That has started our quest for a better food storage system.

I told Jenny about how my mom use to go to the cannery and bring home canned pork, and we would have yummy fried rice with it. How she also made grape juice, canned fruits and canned chicken. I have talked Lisa and Jenny into going to the cannery and doing more to help and to bring home. Lisa is always talking about the potato pearls at the cannery, we had those at Jenny's and they were better than the betty crocker flakes. The funny thing is that Lisa is not a member of the LDS church, but she wants to help out at the cannery and bring home those potato pearls. I love my friends!

Mckenna On Stage! (or should we say- gym floor?)

Yeah! It finally worked!

Here is the long awaited video, that I have been trying to upload for the last 2 months. This is her first performance during Half Time during the Snow Canyon High School Basketball game.

It was so exciting to see her perform this since I hadn't seen it before. She also performed with her team and the other teams performed too.

Part of the night was sad though, because Kyleigh didn't get to do her solo, she was suppose to be the last one to perform, because the sound guy thought the performances were over and started the music for the basketball teams to come out. (did I say that we were over time?)

After the game, Mckenna was approached by most of the cheerleaders and a few of the drill team girl and told that she was amazing. Jessie (a cheerleader and a daughter of a friend of ours,) told Mckenna that after her toe roll, the cheerleaders were talking about how they wished that they were dancing again or had learned to dance. Mckenna thought that was really cool to have older girls tell her she did good, especially Jessie since she is an idol to her (she is gorgeous!)

Well hope you enjoy the show!

New Blog!

Hello Everyone!
I thought it might be fun if I did a blog that was just for me, my thoughts and fun projects that did not include the whole Brower Production Staff.
So, if you would like to take a ride over to center stage with Sandi come on over! Come one, just click on my headshot and it will take you there!

Valentine Cards and the box to hold them

I love Valentines Day!

I don't like the "make a buck, make a buck" idea that Valentines Day has turned out ( or should we say all holiday's?) to be, but, when Mckenna came home and started making a shoe box decorated with tin foil and markers, I decided that my love of decorating Valentine's Day boxes had to be passed on to her. I really wanted her to have fun with it and become addicted to the idea of how much fun celebrating the holidays can be when you do it yourself!


So, I talked my friend Lisa & her daughter, Madison into doing a fun altered tin with us. Lisa and I went out the next day and gathered all the fun paper, glue, flowers, colored fibers and tins (which was quite the search since only one store carried the tins!) and the next day we were suppose to be off, but low and behold I got sick(again,- or should we say relapse,) and Mckenna and i ended up having to do it together ourselves.

Don't feel too bad though, Madison's school teacher told her that day that they were decorating boxes in class during their Valentine's party and so Mckenna is going to teach Madison to do the tin later on.

Mckenna's box turned out so cute! She also made cards for her classmate which had penquins on them. They turned out so cute too.













I got in to the joy of making a Valentine's day box too but it was for Matt. I filled it with fun candy; red hot cinnamon bears & twizzlers, which are his favorite candies. While Lisa and I were at Pebbles in my pocket ( a great store by the way!) they had make and take valentine cards. So I made it so it would match Matt's box. They turned out awesome! (red tin on the top of this entry.)

Bird Festival 2007

Madison's grandma is a huge bird watcher. So every year she gets involved in the Bird Festival that St. George holds at their nature center. This year since Madison is back in Utah we were able to go. The girls had a lot of fun. I of course had to help set the nails and didn't do that great of a job with the first nail, but we fixed the problem and then Mckenna was on her way to building a custom birdhouse. Those birds are going to have the best decorated house on the block! The next project was constructing a bird feeder out of a water bottle- what a great recycling project. Since Mckenna likes building things making the bird house and bird feeder was right up her alley.

Mckenna and Madison (or I call them Chocolate & Vanilla/ Salt and Pepper,) thought it was really cool to see the big hawk that they had on display. It really was a beautiful bird. The picture below is a little blurry, so you can't see it's complete beauty!

Did anyone know that Mckenna and Madison have the same initials?
MMB (Mckenna Marie Brower and Madison Marie Berger; they were destined to be best friends!)

Sanibel or Time to go back to North Redington Beach

So, Sharon and Dad made a plan to meet half way between Miami and No. Redington Beach. It was nice because we all (Utah Finlinson family and me and Sharon with the girls,) got to visit my dear old stomping grounds of Sanibel Island. Sadly, Rich had to work and didn't get to come with us, but it was still nice.

I love Sanibel, but boy is it changing. They are building a bigger bridge & toll booth, the island was more crowded than I have ever seen! We only went to the Lighthouse side of the Island and so I am really curious about what the main downtown area and the other end of the Island looks like. Maybe, in October all of the family can go when we are visiting.

It was really fun to watch Indigo gather shells and Kiara pick out the most beautiful shells while at the same time she was dealing with the pain from getting her cast off and her ankle swelling from the nonuse. I was so impressed with her handleing of it all and yet pushing through it because the shells were so pretty! Kiara- you are a brave soul and I am proud of you!

I had a lot of fun taking pictures here in Sanibel, but unfortunetly, none of the pictures that I took of Kiara turned out they were all blurry, I am so sorry, Kiara! :<

A view from Sanibel to Ft. Myers!