Catch Up!

Mcky at her preschool program

After the first dance recital...she loved it!

Mcky entertaining herself in the car!

Well, we are all moved in and have some catching up to do! We sold our house and temporarily moved in with my parents where we celebrated Halloween. McKenzie had a few different halloween parties to go to and dressed different for each one. At Grandma Diane's party she was a cheerleader, at her school party she was a bunny, and at the dance party, country club party, and trick-or-treating she came up with her own costume and was a "tap girl"...a girl wearing a leotard and tap shoes. Sorry...no pictures right now those are on my old camera that is now broken!

Mid-November my sister and her family came in town for Thanksgiving...Bodie, Mckenzie and I moved into Leslie and Nate's house so Amanda could spend more time at my parents. Mckenzie was in heaven...she now has 2 sisters (Lily and Lucy) and 1 brother (Luke), 2 Mom's and Dad's! We had a sistee Thanksgiving at Leslie's house. It was so fun...and memorable. I have not laughed that hard in a very long time! It was great.

December came and with that a preschool program, a dance recital, and fun time with our families. McKenzie did great at her dance recital. The best part for her was all the makeup she got to wear. Now everytime I have the radio on she pretends she is on stage and makes me turn off the light when the song is over so she can run off stage. Bodie brought her flowers for doing such a great job and my brother also stopped to get flowers for the 4 girls in the recital. McKenzie is lucky enough to dance with Lucy, Lily, and Grace. It is amazing how much those little girls loved their flowers.

We are all settled into the house now and McKenzie finally has her blue bedroom she has been wanting for a long time. It was not fun to paint, but turned out much better than I thought. We are loving it here and loving the fact that we are all living together again.

Moving

In our house right now, we have two bathrooms upstairs. McKenzie has decided that the big one is hers (but she'll share with me) and the one in my bedroom is for Me and Bodie. We have had our house up for sale for about a year now and we are finally under contract. We are staying in Tooele and will be renting a much smaller house until we decide where we are going to live. We will stay in Tooele, but don't know what kind of house we want or where so we'll rent and save money until we can't stand it anymore! Anyway, I told McKenzie that we are moving to a smaller house. She said that was okay. She doesn't mind living in a small house. I came back with "even though you, me, and Dad will have to share a bathroom?" She got very serious and said that she doesn't want to move. Too bad for her she is not in charge!

McKenzie's First Day of School

McKenzie making up her own pose for her picture

Mckenzie started school last week. She is in the same preschool that she went to last year. She gets to go 3 days a week while in her words...the little kids only get to go two days a week. Oh and the only reason she is wearing pants is because they are new and sparkly, which you can't see in the picture. Last week I helped at the school and she made me walk in behind her...she wanted to go in herself. She is working on writing her whole name this year since last year, she got away with writing Mck. Can't say I blame her for not writing the whole thing! It is a long name for a 4 year old, but she has to learn sometime. We are both really excited for this year at preschool!

Happy 4th of July....A Little Late!

I am just now getting about 600 pictures off my camera....hence the 4th of July post! I just thought I would post this picture. It is of McKenzie at the 4th of July Parade in Tooele. Sure, most of you don't notice, but she is in the same dress that she wore the year before for the parade. My daughter grows very slowly! I keep telling her that one day she will like being little. She just gets mad and tells me she isn't little. Oh well! She sure is cute though.

McKy is 4!

Mcky and her dad playing with playdough that she got for her birthday

I know this is a little late, but whatever! McKenzie turned 4 on June 30th and is loving it. She woke up that morning hoping that she would be taller than her cousin Lucy is was still going to be 3 for another month. Now she just says yeah, Lucy is taller than me but I am still older. McKenzie hates to be called little, even though she is a small 4 year old....I just tell her that someday she will love it and she doesn't believe me(at her 4 year old appointment she was 29lbs and 38inches tall). Some things about my 4 year old:

• She is adorable and she loves to tell me that other things are adorable or darling
• She is very sweet but sometimes has attitude
• I think she is a pretty smart kid (I know I am biased!)
• She loves to wear skirts and dresses...I thought she would have grown out of that phase by now, but she has not.
• She loves her family
  
• She gives great hugs
• She is the best kid I could ever ask for and we love her very much!
• She is not a great athlete, but she loves to sing and dance.
  

We have had a great summer but now McKenzie is looking forward to her second year of preschool and dance. She is especially excited because this year at dance she gets a costume and gets to dance on stage!

Easter, Memorial day, Birthday....

We have been pretty busy the last few months...here are a few highlights...

Easter in St. George with the family dying easter eggs, playing in the park, and hanging out with the cousins

McKy finished her first year of preschool at the Busy Bee preschool in Erda. It was a great experience for her...she made lots of new friends, decided she is not shy anymore, and can now write her name. Thanks to her wonderful teachers Reinee, Shilo, and Grandma Janice!

This is at her preschool end of the year program. They sang some songs and showed off some of the stuff they learned this year. It was nice outside while we were setting up for the program, then it go so windy and a little chilly. Grandma Janice was cute to get jackets and blankets for the kids.

Memorial day in St. George with the family again...sorry no pictures, we were too busy swimming all weekend!

Lagoon day with the family...thanks to Tyler and Janice for getting us in for so cheap and for taking Mckenzie on the kid rides so Bodie and I could ride the big rides....the ones that I am not scared of!

This is Brooklyn and Mckenzie on the airplane ride. Despite the look on Brooklyn's face, she really did like it!

Amanda and the kids came in town for about a month and we had a good time going to the zoo, having sleepovers, gong to movies and hanging out at Grandma's. We always love when they come in town.

We ended June with a trip to Steamboat Springs with my family. I have been there before, but have never realized how much there is to do...especially with a kid! We took our bikes and rode them everywhere...to the store, the fishing pond, and the alpine slide. The kids all got excited to have a turn in McKenzie's trailer. Bodie got very tired! We went to Casey's pond and all the kids (little and big) caught fish. Each of the kids had a character fishing pole, McKy picked out a Dora one, and they worked great! We also had McKenzie's family birthday party there. My sisters and Mom are so cute because even though their kids were coming to her friend birthday party they wanted her to open presents at her party that night, so they all headed down to the dollar store to get her something. She is still enjoying those presents!

That's all for now. More about her birthday later!!!

Poor Puppy!

McKenzie loves Conan so much, sometimes I feel ad for him! She was convinced that he was cold so she put a blanket on him. Then she was concerned about his ears getting cold, so she put a towel on his head to keep them warm. She is so sweet to her puppy!

Fashionista!

This is one of McKenzie's favorite outfits. She loves to wear it and dance to Taylor Swift in my bedroom while watching herself in the mirror !

So this is where we start in the morning when I ask McKenzie to get dressed. She has started pulling out her outfits and putting them together on the floor to make sure they "look cute and match". Her bedroom floor was quite the sight to see when we were packing for St. George. We were going to be gone for 5 days and she had each of her outfits on the floor complete with her underwear inside the skirts. She tried to pack 5 different pairs of shoes because her outfits weren't complete without shoes. I did talk her into only taking 2 pairs of shoes because they matched all of the outfits. She cracks me up. Bodie was so determined to not have a girly girl, but, somehow she became one and we love it! 

This is the finished product. Pretty cute! 

Pooch on the Pond

A few weekends ago the Grizzlies hockey was doing a promotional night called Pooch on the Pond. They do it every year and it is a night that you can take your dog to the hockey game. So, knowing that Mere was going (for those who don't know, she is a huge hockey fan and a season ticket holder) we decided to go and take Conan. What you do is they let you in a separate door, you go up the stairs where there is a ticket table and a section is blocked off only for those with dogs. It was fun. The sirens when we scored scared Conan a bit and he tried to hide under the seat, but by the end of the game he was really into it and would try to follow the puck. Mere's dog Kia was doing that from the start. It was so funny to watch the dogs watch the game. It was fun to be there with other dog lovers....at one point, the guy behind us let Kia lick his ice cream bowl clean! Before the game started, they played how much is that doggy in the window and a dog barked in the song, yeah, that set all the dogs off, they all started barking. It was so funny. Anyway, it was a great night. Thanks for the tickets Mere, you are an awesome sistee!

Murder Mystery Weekend

We went to our annual murder mystery weekend the first part of Feb. There was a lot of the same old thing, but we also changed things up a bit. Usually we go up Ogden Canyon from a friday to a sunday, and usually, we feel like that is not enough time. So, this year, we went thursday night to sunday and we went up to Midway. It was awesome. The boys got in two days of snowboarding at the canyons, and the girls got in a day of shopping at the outlet malls (so fun and we found some great deals!!!) and saturday we had our hang out day. Saturday we got up, got the boys breakfast and sent them on their way. Then, we got to work....we did a 20 minute workout video that kicked our butts, then we headed down to the gym for an hour. After all that, we decided to reward ourselves and walk down into midway to the closest gas station for a fountain drink. Lucky for Les, Melissa, and me, Aly had to go to the store, so she drove to the store and then met us at the gas station so we had a ride home, which was really good because I don't think we would have made it back to the condo on our feet! The weekend was also filled with multiple trips to the hot tub, which of course, was awesome!!

Aly was in charge of our game and dinner and as always, it was great. We had burgers and fries and rootbeer floats, which went along with the theme of the game 1954 class reunion. We had a great weekend and I am already looking forward to next year's game!!!

The Girls

Me and Bodie

Aly and Damon
Troy and Melissa
Les and Nate

Mamma Mia Night, Pleather Pants....Optional

Yes, my sisters and I LOVE Mamma Mia, the movie. We all love to sing along, even though we sound horrible and we love to dance and eat. So, we thought why not put all of our favorite things together in one night. We had a Girls Night Out at my mom's house to watch Mamma Mia. My sisters who are so very thoughtful bought me a costume to wear for the party. Something possessed them to buy us matching gold dresses with black pleather leggings. Let me tell you, I have never worn pleather let alone pleather leggings that were a little too small. It was an experience. McKenzie, after being babysat by Leslie all day was all ready to go when I got done with work. Lily had done her makeup and we were off to Grandma's to get into dress ups. It was such a fun night. I have said it before, and I'll say it again, I love having a daughter I can do fun stuff like this with. Sometimes she is pretty mouthy, but most of the time she's pretty sweet and we have lots of fun together.

More pictures of our night!

Merry Christmas!

The Dangerfield Kids

Hitting the pinata at the Christmas Eve party Ice Sakting with Dad


Sitting with Santa after the Preschool Program

I love Christmas time! I love shopping and lots of people everywhere, and McKenzie seeing Santa, deciding if she is going to go sit on his lap or if she is going to have me sit on his lap and tell him what she wants for Christmas....it is all so much fun. As usual, we had a very busy december, starting with McKenie's Christmas preschool program...I have video, but we couldn't get it converted to the right format to put it on here, so if we figure it out, I'll post it. She memorized her parts and said them so well. After that, we had cousins dance recitals, work Christmas party, pictures in Ogden with all the Dangerfield grandkids followed by dinner at Chuck-a-grandma as Mck calls it, a sleep over at Grandma Diane's, ice skating on Christmas Eve and the annual Christmas Eve party at my parents house with Mexican food, a pinata, and presents. The best part is that Amanda and her kids came in town from Hawaii. It has been so fun to play with them. After Christmas we got to go down to see Grandma and Grandpa Topham for the weekend and play with her cousins down there. Then on New Year's day Joann held a surprise party for Gordon who celebrated his 60th birthday the other day. Everyone in the family was there. We had a blast!

McKenzie is getting so big, I can't believe she is 3 1/2. (She has started reminding me about the half part). She used to be so shy, but after a month of preschool, she informed me that she was not shy anymore and now she will talk to anyone, so to all those who have had their ears talked off by her, I apologize! She has loved to see Santa this Christmas and all she did last year, is cry when she saw him. She want to primary for the first time on sunday and her teacher told me that she was the leader of the group, which surprised me. She got after all the kids for not singing. She is quite mothering to the other kids at church and school. To her cousins, I am sorry, she doesn't feel the same need to take care of them!