Awards

Amelia recieved lots of awards at the end of 7th grade.  She got a teachers choice award, academic achievement, and a citizenship award. She's such a hard worker I'm so proud of her.

First day of school

Brock's 8th grade graduation

June 10th Brock graduated the 8th grade.  Which is code for your done with middle school and now you get to go to high school (big deal but good job).  I am very proud of this kid! He struggled with school for years but something totally switched for him this year and he started to excel in almost all his classes! He's grown so much physically, emotionally, and educationaly. He has such a big heart. I love this boy. I know he's excited for high school but I'd like a little slow down....

President's choice award!

Today at school Amelia earned the president's award for educational excellence,  academic excellence award and teachers choice award!  That means she exceeded in all her classes all year! She works so hard and I'm so proud of her!

Feild trip

Brock's 8th grade class went to the Jewish history and Haulocaust education museum and the Holocaust memorial for a field trip. It was really interesting. I didn't even know there was one in Portland.  I do think that middle school teachers should get some kind of an award though. I'm very sure I couldn't do their job.

End of semester breakfast

This year we started a new tradition.  At the end of each semester my kids get a day off school for grading. So I told my kids to celebrate I'd cook breakfast and they could invite any friends they wanted over. So today I served 10 kids crepes!  Afterwards they stayed for some ping pong, and board games. Good ending to finals.

Guilt....

So many things have happened in the last year and a half that are now undocumented for my family. The longer I went with out posting the harder it got for me to want to post again because I felt like I needed to "catch the whole thing up". Which got more and more overwhelming of course. But after this month of events I decided I was going to attempt to just pick up and start from here and not feel like I had to post about everything that has happened. I might touch on a few things that have happened because they are big but mostly I just need to start again. Not because anyone ever reads this but because I need to to document our life as the Davis family.
#1 Event worth Posting about was in December of 2014 Hayden was baptized. It was a very special day and I can't actually find any pictures of it right now... (this is WHY I need to do this so things don't get lost!) After her baptism we went and cut down our Christmas tree and went to the carousel to see Santa with all our family.
#2 Everyone had birthdays, Ethan got his divers permit, I've gone to girls camp, was released from Young Women's (after almost 6 years of serving with these amazing girls). Larry was put into the young men's presidency and now is the Young Men's president. Ruth started kindergarten which is ALL DAY! Funny thing is after 3 days of that at dinner she asked, "is tomorrow a school day?" I said yes everyday is school except weekends now. She said, "this is really cutting into my playtime." Just this week she has turned a corner and hopefully it will stay that way but she is enjoying school now and not saying she hates school. So that is exciting!

This is a picture of her on her first day!

But the thing that has inspired me to get back into this is the passing of my mother in law. After she passed away I was gathering picture of her to put together for a slide show at her funeral. As I looked and looked through all our photos I was seeing my children grow and change so quickly that I hardly believed they were who they are now because in my mind they are still these sweet little kids but yet they are not at the same time. I realized I was missing out on a lot of what I use to capture on my blog of memories. I post very little on Facebook and what I do post there is not very informative. I don't share overly personal things but maybe a few funny stories here and there. Not that I over share here by any stretch of the imagination but I do tend to journal a lot more when I do post on the blog (which I am sure part of why I stopped... it was more time consuming AND I can't figure out how to do it with my phone and I don't love sitting in front of the computer.) But now that all my babies are in school maybe I can sacrifice a few minutes a week to just update! That is my hope! So on to the passing of my mother in law.

We found out in July that she was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer that stemmed from the breast cancer she had had in 2000. They didn't give us a timeline but we knew this was going to be terminal. We spent some time with family and they all came out to see her in the last few months. 

Very close to Christmas things started to get much worse for her and the doctors told her probably 3 to 6 months. Christmas Eve was a bit scary we thought we might loose her then, but she really wanted to spend Christmas with her grand kids and family. So we all prayed she would get to do that and she did. She was strong enough to come out to our house Christmas morning, and spend some time with our kids. That was the last time our kids saw her and the last time she really left her house. After that she was on hospice care. Scott and Brenda (Larry's brother and sister) had come to be with her during the holiday. After they left I would go and spend days helping care for her and Larry spent several nights there to help his dad as well. It was a very emotional time but also very special. I felt heaven very close each time I was with her and felt the veil was thin for her as well. On Jan 10th I spent the day helping her and it was the most painful day ever. For her and everyone involved. I cried and cried as I helped care for her (as did the hospice nurse). I cried the whole way home with my heart breaking that she was in so much pain. Jan 12th Larry called to let me know that she had passed away about noon. There are many aspects of my relationship with her I won't go into a lot of detail but I will say this. Even though some times we may not have always seen eye to eye and had disagreements I grew to love and respect my mother in law. I saw her many attributes and how she blessed me and my family. Our last afternoon together we hugged and cried and I told her I loved her and she said to me "I love you so so so so so so much." This still makes me teary but I know that the Lord has blessed us, healed our relationship and has left me knowing that I do love her and will try to keep her memory alive for my children. 

I had the privilege of writing her obituary, and dressing her after she passed. These blessed me more then I can really say as they were the last way I got to serve this woman who served me in so many ways.

Her funeral was very nice and we got to see lots of family we haven't seen in a while. We spent that evening with Larry's brothers and sister and their family. We got to hear all the great stories of them growing up. We laughed so hard we cried and I just felt blessed to be surrounded by these people. 

So now my goal is to try to post something at least once a week (maybe every other if there isn't anything to exciting going on) But mostly I just don't want to loose all the memories that are to come like I have many of the past year and a half.  Some of what we have done in the past year and a half have been painful and private enough I probably wouldn't have blogged about them anyway but I should have at least documented some of what was happening. I will do better!

This is my favorite picture we found while I was putting together the slide show. This was Nadine with their daughter Brenda. I think she looks so beautiful in this picture.

This picture was taken in our back yard a year or two ago. She just looks peaceful and happy.

 This was the last camping and boating trip we took after her diagnosis in July. Scott and his family came out and we had a wonderful weekend just being together and having fun!

I took this picture of Nadine in 2000 Ethan is that baby. She use to come and help us work on our house that we had to totally gut. Here she was still going through Chemo, just barley healed from her mastectomy and she would come and help work on my house projects. On this day she needed to rest and often times would take that time to snuggle the baby and they both took a very deserved nap. It brings me to tears and humbles me to look at this photo and realize all the many ways she served and blessed my life. 

Missed a few things.... Catch up

So I am going to go backwards in time in this post. I haven't posted in WAAAAY to long and want to touch on a few of the things we have been up to. The problem is I just never sit down at my computer any more so I don't get to this much. But today I was working on some contracts for the bazaar and finished up and realized I hadn't done this yet so here we go....

 These pictures are from a performance my dance camp and past dancers did on the 5th of July. It was a lot of fun to do some old pieces and do some fun new group pieces. At summer camp we learned dances to "Dance With Me Tonight" "Roar" and "Feeling Good" We also performed some tap pieces from before and some Jazz from last year. It was lots of fun! And HOT!

 4th of July was a blast! I realized late in the day that I hadn't even touched my camera. This happens a lot lately! We started our day with flag raising at the church and cinnamon rolls, the Parade and then a huge BBQ at our house! We counted later and there had been around 75 people in and out that day. There were lots of Hamburgers, Hot Dogs, and chicken eaten that day! And LOTS of fun. The Pool needed about 100 gallons added to it afterwards too!

 Last weekend in June we wanted to go boating but the weather was going to be yucky so we decided to use our Wildlife Safari Tickets we bough on Groupon. We have been before but Ruth was tiny last time we went so it was all new to her.  Getting to drive right up to the animals is way cooler then walking all day to MAYBE see something in a cage!

 Yes that bear is eating what it looks like he is eating!

 This is the first time we have gone when they had feeding cups and since our Groupon tickets included it we did it. It was lots of fun getting the deer and emu to come eat out of our hands.

 First week in June my oldest "graduated" from 8th grade. He is now officially a High Schooler! I don't like that that makes me feel OLD! I'm proud of his hard work though.

 Also in the first week of June we had another dance recital. This one was a Lilo and Stitch theme. It was so much fun doing choreography to Elvis music. We even got to do a HULA for the grand finale.

 Brock turned 12 the end of May. May 22nd that is. He had a pretty quiet birthday since we were so busy. I felt really bad that the only time we could do a birthday party none of his friends could come. It was kind of sad but he was thrilled with the present he got. He had been asking for a telescope since Christmas. Larry had done a lot of shopping around and found the perfect one. They have got to spend a few nights looking at the moon and stars and he loves it. He is hoping to work on his Astronomy merit badge for Scouts too.

 We also did an over night trip to the beach in May. It was pretty stinky weather (shocker). So we went to the Marine Center. We love that place it is free and they have some pretty cool stuff.

 We spent about 15 minutes on the beach and were so covered in sand from the wind we moved on.

 Beverly Beach is one of our favorite places to camp at the beach. There is a fun nature trail, easy access to the beach and these awesome trees!

 Easter was way back in April. I made these skirts and ties for the kids. I was pretty excited . I had never done ties before and I got lots of practice with my zipper foot doing these skirts. I did some for my nieces and nephew too.

 Ruth Dancing of Course!!! I hardly ever get a still shot of that girl!

 Amelia did spring Volleyball and loved it of course. She has improved so much. They only lost one game all season.

 This is from Hayden's spring concert for school. What a cute Giraffe. My nephew Hyrum is the elephant above.

 Also in March I took a trip to Utah with a few of my Young Women. It was such a fun trip! We saw lots of fun things. Shopped, ate yummy things, laughed a LOT, and got to go to the Women's Broadcast. It was incredible!

 This was our March recital.We did music from Princess Diaries. The girls did a beautiful job and I am loving getting to do this with my girls!

 Ethan turned 14 in March!!!! Unbelievable! He asked for Lemon pie. YUMMM!!! He actually didn't ask for any presents. Not because he didn't want anything, but I think he wanted something he thought there was NO WAY we were going to get him. Man was he shocked when not only did he get the new movie he wanted but he got a CELL PHONE! The funny thing was he was opening it and I called it so it was ringing in the box he thought it was my phone ringing. He was pretty excited. He loves it and I am loving getting to give him a little freedom because he can call and check in. It helps when I am waiting for that BUS every time there is a track meet too. No more waiting just a call when they get close.

So we have been busy just not documenting as well as I should. maybe I can get some more of our summer in here soon....