Candace's wedding...

Make a Smilebox slideshow

We spent Memorial Day weekend in Phoenix with most of the Barnes family at our niece's wedding. John's sister Cathi's daughter Candace got married. She married a real nice guy. Cathi did an amazing job with all the decorations! She is super creative!!!! She did almost everything herself! wow! Everything looked great. Unfortunately the weather wasn't the best. Who would have thought that the end of May would be rainy, windy and cold! It was a bummer! But still a great night!

We enjoyed seeing so many members of the Barnes family! The kids all got along great and it was fun to visit with the adults. Everyone played a big game of Mafia... (not my favorite game... a little too loud and crazy for me) But everyone else had a great time playing it. The kids look forward to playing it every time we head to Aunt Cathi's, it's become a tradition!

We stopped at the Mesa Temple on our way home and saw the "Reflections of Christ" exhibit. It was beautiful! (click on Refections of Christ to see their website)

Enjoy the slide show of our weekend! (I didn't like the font in the program so I didn't capitalize all the names, you couldn't read them!)

Congrats Mitchell!!!

Props to Mitchell! He won the "Walter D. Johnson Award" tonight!! This award was given out to 2 girls and 2 boys from the 8th grade. They had to be nominated by a teacher, then they had to fill out 3 pages of questions and then give a speach in front of a panel of judges. Mitchell worked hard on his questions and wrote a great speech. John made him practice it outloud a few times against his will... good thing dad's know something! We are so proud of him!! Way to go Mitchell! (if you notice in the picture he has 2 medalions, he won another one for having a 3.5 or higher grade point for all 3 years... yah!!)

sad sad day!!

Those of you who know me well, know that I have some issues with my apple laptop. I've had it for 4 years now and it lives on my lap or the kitchen counter most of the day... well, it died today. It's been acting up for the last few weeks and today it finally gave up. I took it down to the Apple store and they confirmed that it was dead. I am SO sad. I told the guy that it was my baby! The only good thing is that I had a feeling that it was on it's last leg, so I backed it up last week onto a portable hard drive. So, I only lost the pictures that I took this last week. So now I have to decide if I want to spend $300 to get it fixed or buy a new one. I really don't want to pay for either one, so I might have to use the Family PC for a while! YUCK!! What am I going to do! I'm having withdrawls already!!

Surprise!!

We had 2 surprises this weekend! It was so much fun. My brother Scott graduated from UNLV yesterday and his sweet wife through him a big surprise party last night. So that was surprise number one and the second one is that my Sister Cindy and her daughter Angela and son Spencer came for the party and they brought my MOM! It was so good to see them, especially my mom since we have been so worried about her. Cindy convinced her that she could recover from her surgery here just as well as she could at home. She already had a few days off from Temple Square so why not come?? She's actually not suppose to leave the mission, so don't tell anyone!

They came on Friday morning and we spent the afternoon sitting by the pool. It felt so good to relax and enjoy the sun! Scott and Jenn came over for a while and got a little sun and enjoyed visiting with everyone. We barbecued that night and then went down to Luv It's for dessert and met up with Scott and Jenn again. You've got to love "Luv It's"! I am sure the frozen custard is low fat right??? NOT! That's why it's so good. As we were driving home my mom said, "Do we have time to see the Bellagio fountains?" They are her favorite!! Every-time she comes to visit she want to go visit them. Last time she was here she asked if we could leave her there for a few hours! We weren't sure if it was appropriate to take a set apart missionary down to the strip, but we did. We saw 3 shows. It was beautiful as always!

Saturday morning Mitchell had a soccer game. We will say they tied because the ref's messed up on something that should have been a goal. Mitchell had to play goalie for half the game and he did a great job! Yah Mitchell! Mitchell's coach let Spencer play with them, it was fun.

We spent more time by the pool and then headed over for the big party!! Scott was very surprised! It was cute. Jenn had everything decorated in rebel red! She had UNLV t-shirts placed on the tables as decorations and then all the snacks were red and everyone was asked to wear red! She had all kinds of red fruits, red rice crispy treats, cupcakes, strawberry pie, red candy all over and i made chocolate covered strawberries! so much for the diet this weekend! weekends are so hard!!
Ashley found a new friend at the party! This is Tyson and he was full of energy!! so cute.


My mom is doing good. It was so nice to spend the weekend with her. We found out this week that her cancer is in stage one and she will do 6 weeks of radiation and then be on a pill for the next 5 years and that should be it. We are so grateful that she won't need the chemo! She is so blessed and we are so thankful to our Heavenly Father that she is healing well and that she caught it so early.

Happy Birthday Julie & Mark!

I almost forgot to wish Julie and Mark happy birthdays! Mark is one of my older brothers and his birthday was on Monday. He is in the process of moving his family up to Pocatello Idaho. He's a great Brother and I hope he had a great birthday! My older sister Julie turned 42 today. I am good at remembering birthday's but not ages. Not sure how much older Mark is, but I know Julie is only one year older than me! I think keeping track of all 9 birthdays is pretty good, don't think I am stupid that I don't know ages. I would bet that half of my siblings don't know all the kids birthdays, right Julie?? haha family joke... Julie and I were always close friends because we were so close in age! It was great growing up with a best friend at home!

Love my family!! Wish we all lived closer! Love you all!!!

You win some and loose some...

Tanner had a playoff game for football tonight and they lost. So they are out of the tournament. He was pretty sad and so was John. I had to miss the game because I went to Ashley's award banquet for student council. John said the kids played pretty good, but missed some important passes. John had a fun time coaching them. Not sure he will do it again next season... we will see. Tanner thinks he wants to try basketball next. I don't think he has found "his sport" yet. Tanner has tried soccer and now football, so maybe it will be basketball?? Mitchell loves soccer! He did t-ball and coach pitch in Spokane, but it was a little slow for him and he's not the type of guy who wants to be center stage at bat.... he's more of a big group sport guy.

Ashley got the award for "best listener" at the student council dinner tonight. Not sure how she won that when she is talking all the time! Just kidding, she is a great listener. I hear her friends telling her all their problems all the time. Listening is a good skill to have! Way to go Ashley!!

Happy Mothers Day!!

Happy Mothers day to all the wonderful mothers out there! I love Mothers Day! It's 11:00 and I'm still in my pj's (one of the advantages of 2:00 church), I got breakfast in bed and some wonderful presents from John and the kids. (notice Mitchell's haircut! best present!!) I love being a mother!! When I was a little girl, people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I always said "a mother". I am so lucky to have such great kids and a wonderful husband!

I've been thinking a lot about my mother in the last few weeks.... she has a new trial in her life that she is handling so well and I am learning so much watching her. We found out about a month ago that she has breast cancer. Yup, that awful disease has hit our family. So depressing. She had surgery 2 weeks ago to take out the lump and that went good. But a few days after the surgery they were studying the tissues that they took out and they think that they didn't get all the cancer out, so tomorrow she has to go back in for more surgery. A big bummer that she has to go back in, but we are so grateful that the doctors are being careful and want to be 100% sure that they have it all. At this point we don't know what kind of treatment she will have to do after she heals from surgery, but it will be some sort of radiation or chemo. 

We feel so blessed that she and dad were called to the Temple Square mission, because if she was in Africa or something, she would have probably waited to have her lump tested when she got home and that could have been too late. She has had many cysts, so she thought that it was just another one. Unfortunately it wasn't. My mom is being so positive about everything, I am so thankful for her positive outlook on life. I am sure she has her down moments and scared times, but she doesn't let us see those. My mom is a very strong lady! I know it wasn't easy for her to raise 9 kids, but she did it so well! 

I thought I would share with you a few things that I have learned from my mom:

1. How to be positive and happy 

2. How support and love my husband. ( I never saw my parents argue... not once. The only thing they fought over (in public) was when my mom put an onion on the Sunday roast. My dad hated onions)

3. How to love unconditionally

4. How to be a good mom... 

5. How to serve others.

6. How to live the Gospel.

7. To understand the Plan of Salvation. When my 2 brothers died, my mom reassured us that Families are Forever!

8. To fulfill a calling, no matter what it is and to support a husband in his calling. (she had 9 kids with a husband sitting on the stand in the bishopric for Many of those years!)

9. How to play games with the kids. I remember playing Boggle and many other board games as a family.

10. How to love the outdoors. We took many trips to the beach and the mountains and i know that wasn't easy... road trips with 3 kids and a tv in the car are hard... she had 9 kids with only a tape player. I do remember listening to the dramatized church history tapes and learning a lot from them.

11. I learned how to cook

12. I learned too love cookie dough : ) Some of my friends mom's wouldn't let us touch the dough, but my mom would let us eat it and would even freeze it for us! YUMMY!! I remember running to the kitchen to be able to lick a beater... only 2 beaters and 9 kids, you had to run fast!

I could go on and on... I love my mom so much and appreciate all that she has taught me! Happy Mothers Day Mom!!

My "rocker" boy! (updated)

Mitchell has played the electric bass in jazz band for the last 3 years. He loves it and he has gotten really good! We are so lucky that we have the best band teacher in the state of Nevada at our Junior high! He truly is amazing. I won't go on about the teacher because i want to talk about Mitchell! Lucky for us, the jazz band has like 6 concerts this spring! I'm not being sarcastic... i really do enjoy going to his concerts. His teacher says that Mitchell is very talented and if he continued on playing through high school he could possibly get a college scholarship... but for some reason Mitch thinks that the band program at the high school stinks, so he doesn't want to play there! So we are trying to convince him otherwise, because a scholarship would sure be nice!!

edited: I figured out how to post the video. I think the file was too big, so I uploaded it to Youtube and linked it to this page! You can hear the bass in this song the best. I was sitting down and couldn't move my camera around very well... I will try to take better video at Wednesday nights concert!  enjoy...

Keep playing Mitchell, you are awesome!!

All I want for Mothers day is for him to get a hair cut!! 

One more YW event done!

When I wrote 2 weeks ago that I was going to cut back my time on the computer I didn't really think I would only read blogs once this week.... I just thought I would maybe only read them every other day instead of  every day. But this week has been crazy and I haven't even looked at them and I miss it so much! Thanks for your comments on that by the way... I do have to remember that blogging is a great family record for us and it's not just wasting time!! I went to bed at night this week wondering how my blog friends were doing and if anything exciting had happened to them. So tomorrow is going to be catch up day! This week was crazy getting ready for our YW recognition night tonight. My counselors and I spent hours making these really cute frames for the girls. I will take a picture tomorrow and post it. They turned out great. Then we covered the little Book of Mormons with the cutest fabric! I loved how they turned out! But it was a bit of a challenge getting them all done! But we did it...

We had a nice simple program tonight. We had each Bishop introduce their girls who had received their medallions this year and then the girls each told about one of their projects or bore their testimonies. They are amazing girls with strong testimonies. It was a great night!

So girls camp is next on the list! Good thing I have a great camp director!