Happy Birthday America, Let's Party!

In true character for the past I don't know how many years, the Partridge's made the journey to Utah for the 4th of July celebrations. Now that we live in Arizona and we get to make the trek up North, I see the wisdom in this tradition. It's a little relief from the hot summer in AZ! We flew to Utah on Friday, July 2nd and got settled in. Then Saturday we got to relax in the morning and then had our famous BBQ at Bicentennial Park. Yummm...the kids played at the playground while the burgers and dogs cooked.

Adam loved helping push Megan on the swings. He would just laugh and laugh when we would push her.

Here's the traditional family shot at the BBQ. We were sadly missing Brett and Stephanie's family, but they were at a different family reunion.
After the BBQ we went to the Stadium of Fire to see the show and fireworks. It was wisely decided this year to not invite the smallest kids because it's just too long to sit and be stuck at something that they don't understand. Chris was very kind to let me go and he stayed back at the hotel with Adam. Katelyn, Megan, and I went on this fun adventure! This year is the Centennial Celebration for the Boy Scouts of America, so as part of the pre-show we got to be a part of the largest Eagle Scout Court of Honor ever. This was one of my favorite parts because we got to see all the Eagle Scouts in the audience stand. What an accomplishment for all those men out there. The main show was Carrie Underwood. I'm not really a country music fan, so I didn't know most of her songs. I'm not opposed to country music, I just don't get much beyond the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse credits these days. But, she puts on a really great show and the music was amazing. Megan was sitting next to me, and for a lot of it, on top of my lap. She is very fun to have at a concert! She was dancing on my lap through most of the show. Then to top it all off, the fireworks were spectacular. When the concert was done, we walked back to the shuttle stop for the hotel. Megan had fallen asleep in Uncle Chase's arms during the walk. She was tired after the wild dance party! When we got to the shuttle stop, one shuttle was full and about to pull out; they told us the next one was on the way. Well, after waiting for 10 minutes, we noticed that the shuttle that had just loaded up to leave had still not made it out of the parking lot! We then took a vote and decided we could just walk to the hotel faster than waiting for the next shuttle. It was so fun! For those who know Provo, we walked from the Stadium to Provo High School, where the shuttle was. Then we walked from Provo High School to the Marriott hotel on 1st North. It turned out being quite the walk, and the kids were all great sports even though it was so late, and a long walk for their short legs. We don't know the end result, but we like to think that we made it back before we would have if we had waited. :)

Sunday, we enjoyed church at Ryan and Jennifer's ward. Then after sacrament meeting, we went up to visit Chris' Grandma Partridge in Layton. It's always good to see her. Then we traveled back down to Provo for dinner at Ryan and Jennifer's house. It was of course amazing food and Jennifer even had everything "4th of July" themed. Everything was decked out in All-American Red, White and Blue. There was pasta with 2 choices for sauce: one red and one white. Then on the side we had a strawberry and blueberry fruit salad, watermelon, and blue jello in a star mold. But, if you thought it just couldn't get any better, we had the dessert. A full sized flag cake. Words cannot even describe it. It was layer and layers of yummy gooy-ness. Wow!

Then Monday, the "working crew" (Chris, Scott Grover, Kaley, and Chase) all flew back to AZ. Amy's oldest, Bradley, got to be in soccer camp at BYU for the week. Since they were staying longer I decided to stay too, and I took the opportunity to spend time with my family in SLC. We had a great week. We spent most of our days in SLC and the evenings back in Provo. I have no pictures of these days. I'm not great at remembering to take pictures! I spent one day with Missy and her kids, one day with my Grandma McFarlane and one day with Grandma Basta. All of the days were great, but in the end kinda felt mushed into one really long day! The week went really fast. I was a little worried staying without Chris, but his parents stayed and helped pick up the slack! Thank you! I feel so blessed for all the family around me, both Chris' and mine. It had been a while since I had been able to visit with just my sister and it was so nice to just be together with our kids. Then I feel any time I get to spend with Grandma McFarlane is a blessing because her health is not great these days. And of course, I can't go long without my special Grandma Basta. What wonderful people!

Rockband!

I just love this picture of the kids playing Rockband together. We don't play the Wii everyday, so when the kids want to get it out and rock...We Rock!

Swimmers, Take your mark. Go!

I don't have pictures or video to include here yet, but that will come soon.  Last night we had our first Swim Meet.  I can't say how much I wanted to step up to the blocks and race myself.  It's a good thing, this Great White might have scared everyone out of the water. :)  Swimming was as big a part of growing up as just about anything else.  I took lessons and competed starting at age 3 until I was 17 and too old for the city league anymore.  Good times!

Anyway, the point of this post is not about me, it's about Katelyn, Bryson, and Bradley.  Last night was the Freestyle meet at Stapley Pool (vs. Carson and Poston, nostalgically both the pools I swam at growing up).  Everyone swam hard and did a really good job.  Katelyn came in 2nd place in both her individual race and her relay.  I got everyone on video as much as I could (trying to help Cassi with Adam and Megan too).  I clocked Katelyn at 35.8s for her individual and 37.1s for her relay leg (she was the 3rd leg).

Bryson came in 2nd in his individual race, but I missed his time.  His relay got 7th, and he swam his (I think 2nd) leg in 29.5s.  Bradley's individual zoomed by in 18.1s and he got first place!  He helped his relay with a 20.4s 3rd leg, and they came in 5th.

TTFN!

Schools out! Hooray!

School is officially done for the summer. Here's what we plan to do to stay cool.....

Sorry, we'll work on convincing the video to turn. Until then, tilt your head and enjoy! :)

A "Cinemagical" dance recital

This year's dance recital was themed Cinemagic. Wow, was it magic! I think I saw Amy (sister-in-law and director of the Company) magically divide into 10 people and do way more than her one body could do to pull of this amazing show. Kaley (other sister-in-law and dance teacher) also was amazing making the show run smoothly. All in all, the show came off great. The road to get to the end was a little bit (ahhh, a lot bit) messy. I know all of that sounds cryptic for those who were not there, but I don't know if I have words yet to say how long of a day it was for my family. Because of situations beyond anyone's control, the dress rehearsal ran wayyy too long, so the girls and I had 30 minutes to eat a late lunch, change into costumes, do stage makeup, and dance hair to be ready for the first show. Somewhere in the first show I finally sat down and watched a little bit, until I knew I needed to help backstage. Then we pretty much ran from there and into the second show. The girls both did a GREAT job on their dances. I'm so proud of them. It was fun for me to see the change and improvement in their skills from the beginning of the year, and especially Katelyn from first starting dance just 2 years ago. We of course brought our video camera with us, but Chris was needed to help the stage crew, so we don't have much video of the night. We opted for the outrageously priced professional videographer's DVD which doesn't come to us for another few weeks. We'll post their dances once we get them. Until then...here's the only evidence that the day even existed....

A HUGE thank you to my mom and grandma for coming into town and helping out with making the day a little less crazy (hope you still want to come back again!) and for being the official audience crew, thank you to Grandma-ma Long for coming to the show, a thank you to Chris for getting only 2 hours of sleep to finish up the great intro "movie previews" before the opening number, a thank you to Cheryl and Kaley for helping with stage makeup and back stage costume changes, and thank you to Scott who provided the perfect shoulder for Adam to sleep on because his mommy was MIA.

Life ...

... is good.

Easter time

We had a great Easter this year at home and enjoying General Conference. Chris took the girls to the Easter Pageant on the Mesa Temple grounds Friday night. They all enjoyed it, although the report was that everyone was cold and that they wished they could see better (gotta fix that for next year!). I decided it was too late of a night for Adam, so he went to bed while I prepared for the weekend. Saturday morning we introduced the girls to the General Conference "quiet zone." We declared the family room the quiet zone where they could do quiet activities and listen to

Conference. Otherwise they were invited to leave to go to the play room; however, they were required to be in the quiet zone for President Monson. Overall, I think we enjoyed Conference.

Saturday, after the second session of Conference, we went to Chris' grandparent's house for an Easter egg hunt.

There were sections in the backyard for different age groups, so that the big kids didn't take all the eggs from the little kids. Brock and Adam loved finding the eggs (over and over again...we would take some out of their baskets and re-hide them to keep the game going while the big kids finished).

(Note the cute bunny on Adam's back...thanks Amy for sharing!)

After the hunt, the kids had to unscramble word strips found inside their eggs to receive the final hunt prize. The kids loved it! And the best part....no worries about possibly missing an egg in the yard full of candy that had to be found!

Sunday morning, the Easter bunny felt that the kids had already had an Easter egg hunt, so the Easter bunny put all the presents and candy into each child's basket. The Easter bunny thought it was a good idea...the kids thought they needed another Easter egg hunt. Oh well, you don't win them all! Although the sadness over the Easter bunny being lazy was lost when presents were opened. All was well again.

I think Adam's favorite part about Easter this year is that he thinks Easter eggs are balls, which are his favorite thing. In fact, he would see one and call it a ball. Gotta love boys!

Sunday's General Conference was great. The quiet zone was a little hard to enforce after 8 hours on Conference....As you will see, Megan is under the table with her legs in the air, and as I'm sure we all know our cute little Megan, there was probably no sense of quiet about that!Adam was his usual cuteness.

After Conference was finished, we went to Chris' grandparent's again for a wonderful Easter feast! All in all, a great weekend filled with fun and thoughts on our Savior.