Tessa's B-day

So Tessa turned 8 in October. Crazy right I am so old!! She wanted to have a Halloween party so everyone dressed up and we had lots of fun. She was baptized in Heber on the 30th with 3 of her other cousins. It was a crazy day but very memorable. I will post pics of that when I get them.

My pics are never in order but oh well!

Tessa blowing out her candles on the pumpkin cake I made and was very impressed with myself!

Presents, presents and more presents!

We played pin the face on the pumkin for a game. The girls had lots of fun with that!

Our little 8 year old devil!

All the cute party goers.

Thank goodness for grandma and her ability to whip out crafts at the spur of the moment!

This is the awesome cake I made that for the first time ever actually looked like the picture. Dang I'm good!

Macie's B-day

I am a few months behind but that is my life right now! Macie turned 6 in Szeptember and she wanted a dance party! Aunt Becky happened to have a disco ball so that worked out well for a little extra excitement for the party!

In case you can't tell these are suppose to be microphones. They didn 't look exactly like the pic but it was close enough and Macie like them so that's all that matters I guess!

The happy b-day girl blowing out the candles.

Carter was quite the little dancer busting some break dancing moves out! It was pretty funny.

Aunt Cathy was there doing everyones hair so they would be so beautiful for the dance!

All the fun friends with the awesome glasses looking so fly!!

Brycen part 2 . . .

This is the program from the funeral. They turned out really cute! He was all smiles all the time!

Here is their latest family picture. Brycen was having a hard time sitting still as usual. He was known for his energy. Never stopped running and getting into everything.

They had a huge print of this one at the funeral. J and A said this was the perfect picture of him because it showed his personality. Such a mischievious smile!

The ward was so helpful after the accident. From the minute the accident happen there were people there helping. Wed. morning they had ladies over cleaning the house, someone came and cleaned their carpets, did their laundry, a plumber came to fix their toilet they had been having trouble with. They had enogh food and gifts for the other kids to last for weeks.

Friday when we got back to their house we had to answer the door every 15 minutes literally, because there were so many people bringing flowers, hugs, cards you name it. Even some of the police officers who were there came and brought cards. It was amazing to see that their are still good people in the community that are willing to do any kind of service needed.

One of their neighbors was amazed at all the support they had and their strength that he now wants to take the missionary discussions. I guess there is usually some good that comes from a tragedy. We will miss Brycen but we all know that this was Heavenly Fathers plan for him and that he will be waiting in heaven for others to come so we need to do what we can to live with our Father again.

Brycen Paul Burrell

(I have a picture but it is in a different format so I can't dowload it. I will get another one soon so everyone will be able to see what a cutie he was.)

Last Tuuesday the 17th I was in my kitchen getting the girls some dinner when my phone rang. It was my sister calling to tell me that my brother Johnathan had just called and said that his sweet little 2 1/2 yr old boy Brycen had been ran over by a car and killed. I was in shock and just kept asking if she was serious. I couldn't believe her, I didn't want to believe her!

After being in shock for a day and a half I finally was able to call my brother and see how he was doing. I was fine untill he started talking. He was crying and just kept telling me to hug my girls. At this point I completely lost it and was a mess for the rest of the night. Randy was so nice, he brought pizza home for dinner and got a funny movie and some ice cream to try to make me feel better. It was a very nice jesture because he didn't really know what to do with me sitting their crying uncontrollably.

We left to go to Mesa on Thursday and I went to the funeral home with Johnathan and Alicia Fri. morn which was the hardest thing I have ever witnessed. Alicia (as you could expect) was basically like a zombie and just sat there staring and crying for most of the time.

The funeral was Saturday and it was beautiful but sad of course. Brycen's little casket was hard to see and Johnathan had to basically pick Alicia up to follow the casket to the chapel because she didn't want to go. It was very sad. There were lots of fun stories told about Brycen and a beautiful song that had everyone in tears again. The most amazing thing was as we were leaving J and A stopped and gave a long hug to the girl who ran over Brycen. It was a very nice funeral. The gravesite dedication was on Monday and it was beautiful as well. The funeral home did a dove release for them and they gave Alicia the first dove to release and when she let it go it jumped onto Johnathan's shoulder. After that it jumped onto the canapy until the other doves flew off then that one followed the rest. The releif society brought balloons and everyone wrote messages on them and we let them all go at the same time. It was pretty cool.

Johnathan and Alicia have been very strong through this whole ordeal and I have learned a lot from seeing the faith they have in Heavenly Father. They were able to go to the temple several times for comfort and were assured that they are loved and that Brycen was happy. I was also touched by their incredible forgiving hearts towards their neighbor and very good family friend, Heather, who was the one who accidentally ran over him. She felt completely aweful and it will probably take her longer to cope with the accident than J and A. They showed an incredibble amount of Christ like love which I admire them for. They grew a lot in a very short amount of time.

I am so glad to know the Lord's plan and that we have the opportunity to have eternal families. This was the only thing that got them through their ordeal. J and A got up in chuch and bore their testimonies and thanked the ward for all their help and they helped a lot! It was amazing the way they were just like an extended family and jumped in and helped in every way possible. Anyway, Johnathan said he was reading a talk and they said that some of us while in the pre-existance chose to come back early and he knew that Brycen was one of those people. It was an awesome testimony that they gave. I am forever amazed at their strength.

This is really long and if you made it through the whole thing good job. I just wanted to write down my feelings and memories of the weekend before they faded. This was an experience I would never want to have to go through again but there have actually been lots of amazing things come out of it. I will write them when I download the picture.

Moral of the story, hug your kids because you never know how long you will have with them. Trust the Lord and know that Jesus knows your pain because he took upon himself all of our sins and pain because he loves us.

First Day of School. . . .

Well just like every other blogging mommy already or soon will have the infamous first day of school pics. This year was Macie's first day of kindergarten. I thought the 2nd child would be easier and I did fine till I had to leave her classroom but it wasn't easier!! I still wanted to cry but I held back the tears till I got in the car. I guess I am a weirdo! Oh well here are my cute girls. I only have Brylee home all day so we will have some good bonding time!

Tessa wanted to go with the peace out look!

Cutest little piggie tailed girl around!! They grow up way too fast!!

Vegas Vacation

Randy and I and his brother Ben and wife Tara and our friends Robert and Holly went to Vegas for the men to go to a dental hygiene convention. We had lots of fun! The guys did their classes on Thursday while us ladies went shopping. We were staying Ceasars Palace so we went to all the shops there which was a lot however there was only about 2 stores that we could atually afford. So we stocked up at Gap because they were having a huge sale.
Thursday night we got tickets to the show The Lion King and it was awesome! We sat in the third row back so we had awesome seat but Randy kept wanting to trip the actors coming down the isle he was sitting by.

Holly and I waiting for a table at Serendipity. It was a really cute place with huge plates. We were all so full!

Just to give you an idea of the food portions, this looks like a piece of garlic bread but it is actually the largest crouton known to mankind from Tara's salad.

Holly and Tara waiting. We were happy to sit down after so much walking around.

The night lights of Vegas!

Randy's Birthday

Once again I am late by a month and my pictures are backwards. Oh well! Randy turned the big 34 inn June. He is such an old man! He doesn't get too excited about birthdays so we just did a little swim party with the fam and had cake and ice cream. We had lots of fun!
And she hasn't even seen Karate Kid!

Randy couldn't decide whether he wanted cake or a pie so I just made both. What an awesome wife Randy has! :)

Jerryd was so interested in the party festivities!

Time to blow out the candles. And he didn't even have to drop the remote. Love you babe!

Not that you can tell but I made the shape of a 34 since I didn't have that many candles!

What a weekend!

You will read the next post about last night but today was amazing day #2. How amazing is the gospel that we get to have a prophet of the Lord with such an strong spirit. I don't think you can be in the presence of the Prophet and not be totally sure that he is called of God. I felt that way today while attending the dedication of The Gila Valley Temple. What an amazing thing to get to witness. I will never forget it because the spirit was so strong and I truly believe Pres. Eyring when he said that Pres. Kimball is on the other side rejoicing that the prophesy of this temple was finally fulfilled. What an amazing thing the temple does by making it possible for families to be sealed together forever!

Cultural Celebration . . . . . .AMAZING!

Last night I had one of the best experiences in my life. I was able to go to the cultural celebration (thanks to Randy being the YM Pres. and working at it) and be within 15 yrds of the prophet of the Lord. It was so amazing! Pres. Monson was hilarious! While we were waiting for him to pull up you could just feel the anticipation everyone had to get to see the prophet. It was an amazing experience just to be close to him and feel the love he had for everyone. You could just feel the spirit overflowing from him. It was such a great testimony builder to see him and KNOW that he was called of God. The first thing he said when he got off his golf cart was. "I like big crowds!" And a big crowd it was. Just the youth performing was about 2500 kids. I had to take three pictures just to get all the kids across the field. I am the worst photographer ever so all the pictures are kinda blurry or dark. Sorry I need to learn how to use my camera!

From the moment that the first song started to play I had tears in my eyes because it was so awesome to see all these youth doing such an awesome thing. It really gave me great hope for the future of the church knowing there were so many faithful youth willing to spend so many hours on such an uplifting activity.

This is Elder Holland and Elder Costas waiting for the Prophet to come in.

Pres. Eyring.

This is actually after the performance when all the kids came up to shake Pres. Monsons hand. The guy on his right was his security man and he started yelling at the kids to get back because I guess they started pushing. It kinda reminded me of the Savior when he told all the childre to come to him after his deciples told them to stay back. Pres. Monson just sat and shook hands and talked to the kids that came up.

This is blurry but before he sat in his seat he stopped to talk to the little boy in the red shirt ad wiggles his ears for him. It was so funny. I have never seen anyone wiggle their ears like he can!

We weren't allowed to take any pictures during the performance so this is after it was over. It took about 20 minutes or so for him to actually make it to his gold cart because he kept stopping and talking to little kids. Everyone softly started singing "God Be With You Till We Meet Again." It was so beautiful. No one wanted to leave we all just stood there and watched his every move.

I did finally get one good picture! I could write for hours about the amazig spirit that was there last night just because the Prophet was there but I won't do that to you. I keep saying it was amazing but I just can't think of any other word that describes it better. I was in tears for about 90% of the performance!

This video is of Pres. Monson and Eyring singing a little Mexican ditty. It was really funny! I hope I got the right one.

Cartwheeling Tessa . . . .

So I put the pictures backwards but oh well. Tessa had her gymnastics show last week and it was so cute. ( I seem to use that word a lot).
Tessa and one of her favorite cousins, Lucy so excited to see each other after the show.

Tessa and her first medal.

The pictures are all kind of blurry but she is in there right in the middle.

This was all the kids in the show. I had no idea there were so many kids in gymnastics.

This was before the show. Randy is very proud of her buff gymnastics legs. Hoping they will get her to the olympics some day.

This was her part inn the whole shindig. I have never done a video on here so hopefully this works. We had a lot of fun ad she did an awesome job!

Dancing Macie . . . .

I am a little behind as usual but Macie had her first dance performance last week in Pima. She was so excited and she looked sooooo cute!
Waiting, waiting, waiting, is it time to go yet, lets go, come on!

This was her awesome hair do I did that I was so proud of. I did two french braids from the top and two from the bottom and messy buns in the middle where they met. It was so cute!

All ready to go!

The grand entrance. She is in the youngest class so the teacher needed to help out a little with the starting position.

All ready and waiting for the music!

It was the cutest thing I have ever seen. Poor thing has such skinny chicken legs but oh well!

And we're done! SOOOOOOO cute!