Our Little Swimmer's First Swim Meet

This past Saturday Cameron had his very first swim meet. It was very exciting to see his ribbons and hear all about his day. He competed in three races and here are the results:

Race 1-50 yards Breast Stroke (Cam's first swim meet, first race, first favorite stroke, 1st place!!!) Cameron won first place in his heat by 1/2 a second!! Way to GO Cameron!
Race 2-50 yards front crawl There was a bit of a confusion when the coach registered Cameron for the race and he was put in the all ages division instead of the 12 and under division. So he was versing 2 other swimmers, a 14 year old and a 16 year old who were much taller and more experienced than Cameron. So as you can guess he got 3rd place in that race.
Race 3-100 yard Individual Medley Cameron got 1st Place in that race too!! Yeahoo! for Cameron!

Here is Cameron with his great Dad who he is following in his footsteps. His Dad was there to see all his races and record them for the rest of us to see. I was at Dallyn's Basketball game so I wasn't able to go to the swim meet so we had to divide and conquer but seeing the videos was so fun! Cam is a great swimmer and we are really proud of him.

More Catching Up

Cameron made this really great Haunted House as part of his 4th grade project. Mom didn't want him to keep it forever so we took a photo to save for posterity and said goodbye to the house.

I had the opportunity to go on a field trip with Cameron this week. I have not gone on a field trip with Cam's class since the pumpkin patch in Kindergarten. Wondering why?? I got sick his first month into 1st grade and my health has been downhill from there. I have been able to go on trips with Dallyn but the timing of Cam's trips just didn't work out for me. So I was excited to go to the museum with Cam's class this week.

Here's Cameron being silly with some of his friends...

Dallyn also played basketball this fall and I finally got to go to one of his games on Saturday. It was fun to watch him play. He is in an instructional league which is all they do here if you are under 3rd grade. So he is just learning the ropes right now, he sure runs hard and tries hard!

6th Grade Holiday Concert

Kaylie's class along with the other 6th grades put on a fabulous Holiday program last week. I've never been to a school concert that had such fun and original Christmas numbers. There were some fun dances mixed in and they involved all the kids in small group numbers so it was really fun to watch!

The kids wore concert dress and looked really sharp! Kaylie had fun since she loves singing!

Kyler got to come to Kaylie's concert too so he got a picture with sister. =)

Christmas Choir

Happy Holidays, finally I'm catching up on the photos I've taken lately. Kaylie and Dallyn were a part of Christmas Choir at their Elementary School. They practiced for over a month a couple times a week.

Here they are at the performance at Founders Park with a couple of their friends that were in the choir too.

The concert was super crowded and rainy so it was hard for us to see the kids perform so we had our own private concert that afternoon at home. The kids were really cute! It's really fun to enjoy all these fun holiday events.

Regular Medicine

Today something occurred to me and I just found it amusing so I decided I should blog about it. I have been fighting a bad cold the past few days. Today it got to the point that I decided to take some medication since my nose was being rubbed raw from all tissues!!

I went through my medicine boxes and it was such an experience to actually look for REGULAR medicine that normal people take for ailments!! I'm so used to my box of big, bad, powerful drugs that looking for some cold medicine was quite refreshing!

I think I could get used to this normalcy, it would really be a refreshing change I think! =) Just had to share because it was so strange, I can't remember the last time I actually had a normal illness/ailment not connected in some way to my tumor challenges!

Dec Tidbits

Here are some photos from the past week or so....first is a photo of Kaylie and Cameron doing a commercial on our doorstep for Orabrush, which is Scott's new company he'll be working for next year. If you have seen any of the utube videos you'd understand why Cameron has these silly goggles on!! =)

I also have been working on stamping my Christmas cards. I am about halfway through them but my goal is to do most of my 90 cards hand stamped this year, so I'm working on that! Here is a photo I took the other day when I had a few of my cards done!! It's SO fun to be stamping again! =)

Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it snow! It started snowing and boy did it snow! It's incredible!! =) It is beautiful but not fun to drive in it!

This is my darling little Abby girl and I just had to take a photo of her in these pajamas! The story behind these snowman pajamas is so fun! So Amy bought two pairs of these from Gap when Cameron and Kaylie were young. Kaylie was 3 and Cam was 1 1/2 years old. The jammies went through all my kids and then I passed them back on Amy. Bella wore them and now Abby is. Kyler wore the larger size the jammies the other night and it was so fun to see him wearing jammies that had been passed down through the family! Abby's toes were sticking out of her jammies and Kyler's toes were sticking out of his too!! So Gap jammies can last through a bunch of kids, but the toes will eventually go!!

Friends from CA!

Our wonderful friends from CA visited last weekend and it was so fun to be together with them! Here are some photos of our short time together. Dallyn and Julia exchanged gifts, they are excited to open them on Christmas!

Kyle and Kyler...how cute are these two buddies? They were just inseparable and loved playing together! Since then Kyler has been asking me when Kyle is going to come visit again!!! Not for a long time I keep telling him!! =(

Best friends Kaylie and Sarah in front of the tree...we had just put it up but hadn't decorated it yet!!

This is so cute, Kyler wrote his and Kyle's names on post it notes and put them at their place at the table to mark their spots. It was really cute so here they are showing me how similar their names are! Kyler kept saying, "Is Kyler without the R coming to visit again?" Can you tell he is starting to spell? Very cute boy?

Would You Cry your Eyes Out?

So last Thanksgiving I had my 2nd radiosurgery which made my hair fall out in this lovely patch in the back of my head. That was really unpleasant for me, especially since I felt like I was finally getting my hair back to a cute length!! So I thought that was bad last year.....

Fast forward to this year, this is what my head of hair looks like one year later! Chemo wafers made my hair thin and tons of it fell out in the past 1 1/2 months. Then the radiation kicked in on Sunday and the past 4 days I have lost huge handfuls (from the roots!!) each morning before/during/after my shower. Sooo very sad! Look how HUGE of an area they radiated compared to last year! It's so very sad!! =( You can shed a few tears , seriously it is not an easy thing for me! =(

Contrast that to this photo of Kaylie and I from one year ago! Look at how much hair I had! I'm in mourning...at least for a few more days! Broke out my wig today and believe me, while I am grateful to have one, I really hoped I would never have to use it again!

Finally a kitchen update!

So its been about a month but this was what we were living with in our kitchen for several months!

Now our kitchen looks like this and we LOVE it! Having the extra counter space is fabulous! We feel like it was always meant to be this way and it looks great!

This was Cameron's reaction when he came home from school! He couldn't believe it!! Here is his "Look at this!" expression!

Dallyn thought it was great too! We are just so glad that we found this countertop piece and that it matches so well! Yeah! Now we just need to finish our cabinets!!

Happy Baby News!

Because Amy was due to have her baby the day before Thanksgiving we decided to have Thanksgiving at our home the Sunday before. Here is a photo of Amy and I. I think she looks ready to have her baby and she is just darling!!! So here is the before photo....

The after photo is my favorite of course...this is my niece Hayley. She is so precious!

I was telling my kids that since Kyler's birth almost 4 1/2 year ago, going to the hospital last week was the happiest trip I have had to a hospital. It was the first time since then that I have had something to smile about going to the hospital!! I tend to frequent them for the wrong reasons! Being there with Amy and Austin for a happy celebration was weird! I LOVED it!! It was also fun to be in Utah to see Hayley. I have lived in CA for Amy's other babies so this was super fun that I could just drive up and visit her!

Here's Cam and I enjoying meeting darling baby Hayley!