working again...

So before I moved to Vegas I worked for my good friend Stacy...  She was the editor in chief of a scrapbooking magazine called Simple Scrapbooks. I was her Editorial Assistant... the magazine was headquartered in Utah and Stacy lived in Spokane... so she had a little office in her basement that we worked in. I would come over a few times a week to help her stay organized... Scrapbooking manufacturers would send her tons of product in hopes that she would like it and use it in the magazine. So I spent many hours filing cute papers, organizing stickers and tons of other products. I organized different products that would be in the magazine and talk to scrapbook designers about their deadlines and sending their layouts in... I also got to travel with Stacy. She is an amazing speaker and speaks at all kinds of scrapbooking conventions around the world. I would go along and help her get her classroom set up and make sure her computer worked for her power point presentations and helped her design her presentations... so fun. We went to some fun places like; Orlando, Vancouver BC, San Antonio, Austin, Houston, Dallas, Minneapolis, Stamford Ct, Anaheim, Seattle, Provo... I am sure I am forgetting a few. 

Anyway, Stacy called me a few weeks ago and asked me to rescue her and help her get her blog organized and help her with a few other projects. I am so excited to work a few hours a week with her again! I have missed it and her! Maybe it will help me get motivated to start scrapbooking again. Check out her blog... she wrote a fun story on how we met and how I started working for her. Simple Scrapbooks was killed in the economy... this months issue is the last one ever! So sad!! So she is writing about some of her "Simple Memories" on her blog this week. Stacy now has her own company that does online scrapbooking classes called Big Picture Scrapbooking. I've done a few classes and they are so fun! Check out her website, she has some great free classes too.

These pictures are from the last trip I went on with her.... Houston Texas.... we found the coolest candy store in the mall. We rarely had time to explore the cities we went too, but this hotel was connected to the mall! Lucky us. 

Prom update...

Sorry to leave ya hanging like that... life got busy.  So, Ashley came home and read the note and took all the "flour" in and ....

Started sifting through it to find out who it was....

No luck!

An hour later the real "flowers" were delivered....

With this note....

Ashley needs a creative way to answer him (Eddie De la Vega) ... any ideas??

Prom...

Ashley is getting asked to prom today... come back later to see her reaction and find out who it is...

Great support

So I had Stake Council Meeting this morning and I walk in the room and the entire Stake Presidency and High Council members were wearing gold ties... I was like "wow, what's with the ties?" And President Hyer said, "We wanted to show our support of the new Young Women's value Virtue." It was SO cool. It means so much to me and my presidency. At the overnighter (which I will post more about later...) President Worthen invited the rest of my presidency to Stake Council and he wouldn't tell us why.... we were a little nervous, we even joked that maybe we might be getting released... SO we were extremely happy with the surprise being that they support the YW program!! Thank you!!! We have the best Stake Presidency and High Council ever!

Nathell took a picture with her iPhone...

Slumber Party Tonight

I am off to a YCL overnighter tonight with about 30 16-17 year olds! I hope I get some sleep! It should be fun. I love hanging out with the girls! We are going to help them get prepared for camp....  I will post some pictures tomorrow... If I'm not sleeping...

Spring Break...

We had a great time at the beach last week. We were able to spend a few days with 3 of Johns sisters and his mom. Debbie came from the bay area with her two boys (we missed you Steve!) and Cathi came from Mesa with her hubby and their 4 boys and a friend (we missed Candace & Richard) and Edie came from Hisperia with her hubby and 3 kids under the age of 3! and Grandma came from Idaho Falls. We had a very full house! But it was a blast. The kids got along great, it was so fun to see them having a good time with their cousins. We just wish Annette and Barbara could have made it with their families. 

Here are some highlights from the trip in no particular order... I'm not in the mood to sort them out... i'm not a master of posting pictures yet... they always come up in a weird order...

grandkids trying to make a pyramid...

Mitch bought some new shorts...

When there are kites, there is kite string to be untangled! Mitchell gave it a shot. (I seriously spent HOURS trying to untangle this mess... not sure why i didn't just run to costco to buy a new kite! it became like a puzzle to me and i couldn't put it down.... 

I finally got out the scissors)

Max was covered in sand! But had a great time!

Luke with his 2 little boys... I love this shot.

the kites...

Tanner and Kade flying the kites... (a funny side note... the people next door were having a big fancy party in the backyard and one of the kites went flying down in the middle of it... oops.)

We tried for a long time to get a jumping picture... this was the best one....

Cute daddy / daughter photo...

Not sure why i agreed to bringing guitar hero... i am not a big fan... 

but it kept the teenagers busy when it was cold outside.

We took some family pics...

dying easter eggs!

John always builds the biggest castle on the beach...

It was cold... but it didn't keep us out of the water... once you got numb it wasn't so bad! Notice i am the only girl that got in that day... i think ashley got in the first day with me...

Silly kids...

Ashley singing away!

Ashley and Aunt Debbie

Ashley and Cienna... she held her constantly.

The Anderson's

The Cenatiempo's

I missed getting a picture of Debbie and her boys and I haven't gotten the big group picture yet...

I love the ocean!! I have a whole blog post in my head about why i love it... but I will write it another day...

Conference Sunday...

I love General Conference weekend. I love that I can watch conference in my pajama's on my couch with my family. We always make a big breakfast and cinnamon rolls... then we munch the rest of the day. I was so proud of my kids this year. They watched all 8 hours without complaining. Ashley and Mitchell took notes for extra credit in seminary.... It really helped them pay attention. Ashley had 5 pages of notes!

My favorite talk was Elder Holland's... it was so amazing. It was such a powerful testimony of the Saviour. I can't wait to watch it again. I loved the little video they played while they sang "We Thank Thee Oh God For a Prophet".... it totally made me cry. I love our Prophet!

Youth Conference 2009

(not sure why this has taken me all week to post!) We had youth conference last weekend and it was a blast! Our committee did such a great job planning it! The theme was Hero's, "not all hero's wear capes" was the tag line. We had an amazing service project! Mack McKnight in our stake is on the board of directors for a community center in town called "The City Impact Center". It used to be a private church school and the Trinity church donated it to the city as an outreach place for teens. It has collected a lot of junk over the years and needed some good cleaning and fixing up. The couple that runs the place mentioned to Mack that they would love to find some people to help them and Mack said he knew who could do it.

A former NBA player named Jerome Williams does some basketball camps at the City Impact Center and he is the chairman of the NBA's community service group... so he got involved and he happens to go around to schools talk to kids about who their "hero's" should be! We chose our theme before we knew anything about him and the city impact center.... pretty cool.

So, Friday night we had Jerome come speak to the kids about hero's. He did a good job. They played a little video about his NBA career and talked about his nickname, "Junk yard dog". After he spoke, President Worthen talked for a little while. He did great as always. Then the kids played a few games and had a dance.

Saturday morning we all met down at the City Impact Center and got to work. It was a little crazy getting 200-300 kids to their working groups, but we did it. We had 25 different area's that needed work. In less than 4 hours, the kids had painted the front of the building, painted new parking lot lines, painted curbs and light posts, painted a stage, painted storage rooms, cleaned out about 5 classrooms of junk, organized clothing, cleaned a kids playroom, scrubbed lockers, bathrooms, showers and a kitchen. It was amazing!! The kids worked so hard. I never saw anyone complain or goof off. They filled a whole DI trailer and a huge dumpster with stuff. We fed them lunch and called it a day. The kids had fun getting autographs from a few NBA players that were there and Mayor Goodman even came by! We were a little worried that he would have a Martini in his had...hahha... luckily it was only 9:00am. Mack worked real hard getting donations for the project... we could not have done this without all his hard work!

Saturday night a guy came and sang a few songs and told a few jokes. I think the kids enjoyed that. Then we watched a slideshow of the weekend... And to top the weekend off we listened to our wonderful Stake President speak. He did a great job! We are so lucky to have such great leaders! President Schlauder and President Worthen were both working so hard with the kids at the service project. I know that meant a lot to the kids to work side by side with them. They are great examples of hard workers.

Sunday morning is always the highlight of the weekend... testimony meeting. The kids have amazing testimonies and it is so rewarding to hear them.

Getting started....

The Stake YM/YW Presidencies sang a silly song... (not my idea)

Can you tell I was really stressed out at this moment...

( that's a story for another day... i faked my anger pretty good!)

My cute Ashley...

JYD giving Mayor Goodman a tour...

Kids working hard!

Mitchell scraping paint off... with lots of people watching him!

Molly Mormon I'm NOT!

I attempted to make some whole wheat bread today and totally ruined it! Not sure why I am admitting this to the world... I guess it's because I wrote a post once about needing to post the good and the bad... so here is the bad. I used my wheat grinder to grind some wheat today and made the dough and had it in the loaf pans rising and totally forgot about it! I was busy balancing my checkbook, which took way too long and I suddenly remembered my bread and it was flowing over in the pans!! Since I am not a bread expert I didn't know what to do. I decided to try to bake 2 loaves as is and that obviously didn't work... the other two loaves I smashed down and reformed them in the loaf pans and that didn't work either... Good thing i am planning on going to Great Harvest for lunch tomorrow after the temple. I will pick up a loaf there!

Happy Birthday Johnny!

My little brother John would be 38 years old today. I miss him so much. He died in a car accident when he was 25. Johnny was such a fun little brother. He was always the life of the party, always happy! My friends would come over and and up playing with him. He and my brother David were very close in age so they were always together, doing silly things. Dave always tried to keep him in line. John took a lot of pottery classes in high school and I think of him every time i use my gravy bowl he made me.

I found some fun pictures of him this morning...

I loved my little brothers!

I often wonder what Greg and John are up too in Heaven...

One of the last Westra family pictures taken before Greg and John passed away.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Johnny... We went to Santa Cruz, CA with my family the summer before John died and he had so much fun playing with Mitchell at the beach. He was a great uncle!

I love you and miss you Johnny!!

It's time to wake up!

My turtles woke up on Thursday! Wouldn't it be nice to sleep all winter long? Its funny to watch them... they are still very sluggish and have hardly eaten a thing.... I guess they need a few days to fully wake up. The big one has gone to his favorite hiding place... and I'm wondering if he went back to sleep... silly little creatures. I have missed watching them all winter. 

Baby girl is here!

My sister in law, Jenn had her baby early this morning! Her name is Afton Joy Westra, (Afton is her great grandma's name and Joy is my mom's name) she was 7 lbs 2 oz, 18 inches long. We are so happy for Scott and Jenn... they tried a long time to get pregnant, so she is our little miracle baby! 

She was a few weeks early, she was due on April 3rd. I had just talked to Scott yesterday and he said the baby was very low and doctor had told them it could be any day... sure enough I got a text from Scott at 12:48am last night saying they were at the hospital dialated to a 4. Then I got another text at 3:40am saying that the epidural was working and she was already pushing. Then at 5:15 I got a text saying she was here and all was well!! We are so happy to be living near them! Ashley and I headed over to the hospital as soon as visiting hours were open! Then we went back with the boys this evening. SHe is SOOOO cute. She has lots of dark hair and she's just adorable. Jenn looks great and Scott was all smiles. Hopefully they will get some rest tonight!

The nurse asked Scott if he had been around very many babies and being the youngest of 9 kids he said that he had like 21 or 22 nieces and nephews and the nurse was shocked! 





Tanner was pretty cute with her! He is very sensitive and wanted to learn all about her. Being the youngest child he knew nothing about nursing... it came up and he asked what it was... you have to be careful explaining things to Tanner in fear of him fainting, but he took it pretty well. And he asked all sorts of funny questions.... like "if Jenn gets thirsty can she just drink from them too?" Oh we love our Tanner.

Volleyball time

Mitchell made the freshman volleyball team!!! good job Mitch!! He worked really hard for this. He has been going to intramural practices for a few months getting ready for tryouts. He had his first game against Valley High School yesterday.... he started the game and played  great! He had a block in the last game that scored our winning point! Go Bengals! 

I need Linda to give me some volleyball mom lessons... I don't know all the rules and felt pretty stupid asking the guy next to me what all the calls were... I thought I knew volleyball pretty good... but it's been a long time since I played with rules.

My camera didn't like the gym... the pics are a little blurry.

Mitch and Bennett celebrating the win...

A funny side note to remember... Mitchell played the whole game against one of his former soccer teammates (Andrew) and didn't even notice him on the other side of the net. I saw his mom first thing and chatted with her, but the boys didn't recognize each other. I guess they were focusing on the game. Mitch was shocked when I pointed him out after the game!