VACATION/ ARKANSAS PICS

We are here in Arkansas! It's been so much fun spending time with family and soaking up the sun. It's super hot here, one day it got up to 103! It's really nice though. Here are some pictures that we've taken so far:

Visting at Grannie Faye & Grandpa Slim's

My Paw Paw

My Nana & her EVIL bird, Zazz

My cousin, Wyatt

My Mom & her Uncle Dockey

My Paw Paw's band playing! :) (He's in the white) Check out their new blog at: http://luckydrawband.blogspot.com/

That's all I have time for right now. But I'm sure when I get home, we'll have lots more to post! :)

HAPPY B-DAY MOM!

This is just a little shout-out to my wonderful mom! Her birthday was yesterday (June 4th). We celebrated the day by going to dinner at Tucano's (which for anyone who hasn't been there, it was pretty good...their brown sugar glazed pineapple...aaahhhh DELICIOUS!) and then going to a movie.

Thanks mom for everything you do for me and our family. You are so kind and have such a big heart. You always know how to put a smile on my face. Thanks for sacrificing your sleep to stay up and wait for me when I decide to stay out until morning! Thanks for letting me eat ice cream and popsicle's for breakfast! :) Thanks for all of our chats about boys, friends, school,and life in general. I couldn't have asked for a better mom who has always been there for me. I hope your birthday was great! We love you lots.

An Update on Life

Well for starters, I am so happy that summer is finally here! :) I love the warm weather and the freedom that summer brings. I finished up my Junior year with all A's and B's. I was pretty excited about that. It was a good year that seemed to go by fast and slow at the same time. I can't believe that in 3 months, I'll be in my last year of high school. I'll be glad when it's finally over. (I'll never want to go back to high school!) and then it's off to years and years of college. I'm still debating what I want do, either business (marketing & advertising/ management) or a prosecuting attorney. My parents think I should be an attorney...apparently I argue alot. I don't know why they would ever think such a thing! (Just for clarification, I'm a good kid and I only argue when I know I'm right or if I have really strong feelings about something.)

Danielle is gone on a cruise with Kent and some of his family. They went to the Bahamas!! She's so lucky. She called us from the ship last night and they had just left Jamaica. I wish I was there. She's having a good time. While they are gone, Kent is having me run his store in Caldwell. He owns The Office Solution. I'm the only one working for a whole week from 9am-6pm and I get the lovely task of shipping packages with fed-ex and UPS, making copies, laminating, enlarging things, copying construction blue-prints and binding them, and selling things that he has in the store. It was really scary at first, but I"m slowly getting the hang of it. I spend alot of time just playing on the computer or reading a book while I wait for customers, so it gets kind of boring. But after this week, I never want to touch another box, bubble wrap or labels ever again! But I guess it's not all bad because I'm getting paid. Yeah, my first summer job!! (even if it is only for a week! lol)

I'm taking my first session of senior pictures in 2 weeks! It should be fun and I hope they turn out good. I got accepted to be a spokesmodel for the photography business I'm getting them done with. They'll use my pictures for advertisment and I get 2 free sessions and some other stuff. So I end up only having to pay for my prints. The lady that's taking them does a fabulous job! I had some friends that just graduated and she took their senior pics. I really liked them.

Some other exciting news, my parents and I are going to Arkansas this summer! We all can't wait to go spend time with family and for a little vacation. We are staying for a week together, then my parents will fly home and I will stay another week by myself. I went there last summer for 2 weeks and it was great! I hadn't seen the family there since I was about 3. I know my mom is soooo stoked to be seeing her parents and other family that she or my dad have seen in about 15 years! And to make everything even more exciting, my grandpa is in a band called "The Lucky Draw" and they have a gig the first night we are there. It will be a great way to start off our vacation there!

Other than that, we don't have plans for this summer. My parents will be working and I'll be helping around the house and the yard. In my free time (which I have alot of) I'll be wakeboarding, boating, and just having fun with friends. I went on my first boating trip of this summer last week. There were 13 of us on the boat taking turns wakeboarding, skiing and getting thrown off! :) It was such a blast and it was great to be on the water again. It's my favorite summer hobby.

My dad also has a new hobby...he bought a 75 gallon saltwater fish tank! It was so heavy to carry into the house but now that he has it all set up, it was worth it. It looks awesome! We have a Dory fish, a Nemo fish, little crabs, snails, a sand eater, shrimp, anemoney's and a starfish and lots of coral. It's really cool!

Hope everyone is doing great. We love you all!

Worst day EVER!!

So Friday morning I went to school and was just enjoying my day like it was any other day. Then during 2nd period, I got called to the office. When I walked in, there were 3 of my friends and my BPA advisor standing there. My advisor told us to sit down and then she gave us the worst news ever. BPA Nationals had been CANCELLED!! All because of this stinkin' Swine Flu! There is about 5,000 people that go to Nationals in Texas and the National Board of Associations took a vote and decided to cancel Nationals because they didn't want to put that many people at risk being in an infected area and having to travel and stuff. It was the worst day ever. We were all looking forward to going and then 4 days before we were supposed to leave, they had to go and cancel our trip. We were all sooo bummed. Us four girls ended up just leaving school because we were so mad about it. We ended up just going to lunch and then getting ice cream. That was fun but we were still mad.
We also decided that since the trip got cancelled, us four girls and my teacher were going to skip school one day this week and spend the day eating, shopping, going to the movies, playing laser tag and other fun things. It definitely won't make up for the trip being cancelled but at least we won't have to go to school that day. It should be fun.

30 Days Until Texas!

In one month from tomorrow, I'll be off to the land of the Cowboys! Yee-Haa!! :) I'm in a student organization at school called Business Professionals of America (BPA) and our National Conference is in Dallas, Texas this year. I compete on a Parlimentary Procedure team and we studied and practiced like crazy and in January we placed 2nd at regionals. Then at the beginning of March, we competed at a State Competition at BSU and we placed 4th out of 10 teams. Unfortunately for us only the top 2 teams make it to Nationals.

Well, there is this thing called "Torch Awards" and you do a certain amount of community service and a whole bunch of other things and you get points for each of them. After you have all your points, you can submit them to the National office to be reveiwed. If your awards are accepted, you can go to Nationals as a National Ambassador. And that's exactly what I'm going to be! My advisor and 3 other girls(2 of them are my best friends) from my chapter are going!! We stay for 8 days and basically just have fun. We go to a bunch of conferences with other people in high school from around the Nation and we listen to speakers and attend workshops and learn more about business protocol. We also get to go to Six Flags one day. It's going to be awesome! :)

Spring Break Trip

Well family, I'm sad to say that Spring Break has come and gone. But while it was here, I had the most fun! My parents and I decided to take a trip to the great state of California and we decided to drive. 14 hours in the car was.....not so wonderful. But once we got there it got a whole lot better.

During our week long stay, we packed in everything we could. We spent 3 days at Disneyland and California Adventure, 1 day at the San Diego Zoo, 1 day at Sea World and one day at Universal Studios. We also got to enjoy walking along the beach and watching the sunset. Unfortunetly for us, it wasn't very warm while we were there. The dang wind would not stop blowing. It even rained one day, but that didn't stop us. We threw on some rain ponchos and were ready to go! :D

It was fun to get away for the week and to spend some bonding time with my parents.

I thought I would share just a few of our fun photos from our trip so here they are:

Here we are with the famous Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

Fred (my dad) and Wilma (my mom) at Universal Studios!

My Mom and Matt Damon (what a babe!)

The performing Killer Whales at Sea World. (They were awesome.)

The Newest Member

Here is the first picture we have of Jesse and Ellen's new baby. He is soo cute!

NEW BABY!

Sorry we haven't written in forever, we're not that busy but for some reason we just seem to not have anytime. But I am writting today to spread the good news.

Jesse and Ellen had their baby! Mark Gabriel Yomen-Milich was born on Wednesday, February 11 at 6:15pm. He was 7lbs 14.5 oz. 19 1/2 inches long! He also has lots of black hair. This makes 2 kids for them and now they are done. Adria thinks her new baby brother is wonderful. :) Just thought we would share this wonderful news and we will get pictures posted as soon as we can. Love you all.

Family Pictures

Here are our family pictures we took a few weeks ago. I would have put them on here sooner but our computer wouldn't upload them and then thankfully it decided to work today! :)

me, my dad and my mom

me, my mom, and Danielle

My amazing mom and dad

Danielle and I just being sisters! :D

Danielle and Kent

Amanda, Jason, Cameron, Makayla and JB (the dog)

A 3 year old's Philosophy

Amanda, Jason and the kids came over Sunday afternoon so we could hang out and so the "men" could play their new video games. Their family had just come from church and so my mom asked Cameron (he's 3) what he learned about. Here was their conversation,

My mom: "What did you learn about in church today?"
Cameron: "Jesus."
Mom: "What about him?"
Cameron: "He was born. Then he growed up."
Mom: "What else?"
Cameron: "Um...He put gel in his hair!!"

haha He is the funniest kid ever. Later that day, His Aunt Lulu (that's me!) asked him if Jesus lived in Heaven and he said, "I guess so." So then I asked him where Heaven was and Cameron said, "Over by McDonalds!" We definitely get some laughs out of the things he says. :D

CHRISTMAS

Once again, we had a wonderful Christmas day full of yummy food, family and laughter. I love the holidays and the chance we have to spend time with our amazing family and just eat non-stop! :D Christmas morning, I woke up to my mom jumping on my bed saying that Santa had been there! As I rolled out of bed and walked to the living room, my dad started saying the same thing in his all so famous little kid voice! We spent the morning opening presents and bonding. At about noon, Amanda, Jason and the kids and Jason's sister Jen showed up to open more presents. So did Danielle and Kent. It was a fun morning full of lots of laughs and smiles.
At 1pm, we had our family dinner at Uncle Jeff and Aunt Julies. It was nice to see all of the family. Later that day, we went to the movies to see Marley and Me. It was really cute and for those of you who have seen it, the ending was.....well you already know!! (I don't want to ruin it for those of you who haven't seen it yet!)
Then of course, all the boys came over and played video games. I was a party pooper and crashed at about 10pm...I know, I'm lame! But I heard the boys didn't leave until about 1 in the morning!! I guess they were having too much fun to worry about getting sleep. :)
Basically, Christmas turned out wonderful as usual. We love all of our family and the closeness that we share with them. Hope everyone else had a great day too.

Busy Life

I didn't think that we were so busy but I guess we are since I haven't had any time to update the blog. Let me do a quick update: Rachel, Brad and their kids were here for Thanksgiving! It was so much fun to be able to see them again. We only get to see them once every two years so we were happy they were here. We also loved seeing everyone else at the big Thanksgiving dinner at Grannie B and Grandpa's. The day after Thanksgiving, all my sisters and my mom left the dads and the kids at home and spent the day shopping. I am so blessed to have fun loving sisters and an amazing mom. We kept getting asked if it was a "sisters day out," needless to say, my mom was pretty happy to get referred to as a sister instead of the mom! :) It was great to be able to catch up.
Danielle is finally all moved into her house! She was pretty stoked about it. Her new house is super cute she loves it. She has been having so much fun furnishing it. The flower shop is also doing very well, she is staying busy. That's definitely a good thing.
I am officially on Christmas break!!! FINALLY! It was nice to be able to sleep in and not have to get up and get ready at the butt crack of dawn! I am leaving for McCall tomorrow to go snowmobiling for two days and I am so excited. The priests and Laurels from my ward in Melba are going and it should be a blast. The guy that owns the 2 cabins is awesome and he spoils us. We go up there for free and bascially get to hang out and play games like "Name That Tune" and snowmobile, go to the hot springs and get to enjoy a delicious dinner of prime rib and shrimp! I am way excited. Then in January, the guy is taking my friend and I and about 10 of our friends up there for 3 days. I am really looking forward to that.
SNOW, SNOW, SNOW, I love Snow! I was so excited to wake up this morning to find that it was still snowing. I'm so ready to bust out the tube tied to the 4-wheeler and have fun. :D
I am also excited for this wonderful Christmas season not only for the fun, food, family and my birthday (December 31!! I'll be 17!!) but also to celebrate the birth of our savior and to remember all that we have been so blessed with.
We miss and love you all. Hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!