The Jr Miss Experience

Okay, time to talk about Junior Miss (now called Distinguished Young Women)!  Lets just say that I absolutely love this program, and that may be an understatement :)  It is a scholarship program (yes, I know that sounds cliche) for girls going into their Senior year of High School.  My mom has been involved in the program for over 15 years, most of those years she was the judges chairman for Highland.  I have been around it FOREVER and always dreamed of when I would get to do the pageant.  My year finally came and I LOVED it!  I won my local pageant, along with two other girls, and we moved on to the State program. I seriously can't say how much I learned about myself while participating in Junior Miss.  I made so many amazing friends, one of them became one of my best friends ever and we roomed together at Utah State (Hi, Kaylee!), and I gained so much more confidence and poise than I ever had before.

Since the year I was a contestant I have been involved every single year but one.  I was the choreographer for the Highland program four times.  I choreographed the opening number, the fitness routine, and the poise segment.  I loved working with the girls and using my talents.  The year I was pregnant I was a judge and really enjoyed seeing it from the other side.  This year, since I live in Naperville I haven't been participating and I really missed it!

I have been trying to talk Sophie into doing Junior Miss since her Freshman year :)  I just knew she would do so well in it.  The scoring breaks down like this: Interview 25%, Scholastic 20%, Talent 25%, Fitness 15%, Poise 15%.  Sophie has great grades, an AMAZING interview and a beautiful talent.  I am so glad she decided to do it!  I feel like I was living vicariously through her the last few weeks :)  I even planned my Utah trip around the pageant so I could be there!  I got to be her backstage mom and help her with her hair and makeup but we also did TONS more in the days leading up to the actual dress rehearsal and pageant.  We went shoe, jewelry and make up shopping, we had a mock interview, we had my mom come out and teach us the best way to apply stage makeup, we worked on her Be Your Best Self Board, worked on her on stage question, and we practiced her fitness routine and poise walk multiple times. Now don't get me wrong, Sophie was already ready for this pageant, but we still wanted to practice, practice, practice!

She was so prepared by the time we hit the dress rehearsal day and it was so fun to just sit back and relax and enjoy her.  These first few pictures are of her during dress rehearsal.  I'm so glad we did a dress rehearsal, Sophie did great and didn't need to fix anything, but luckily I was able to see things I needed to change on my end (like add more lipstick, make her hair curlier, etc).

This is the Opening Number where they introduce themselves to the judges and audience. Sophie is contestant #1.

This is her practicing her fitness during dress rehearsal

Practicing her harp piece during dress rehearsal. Don't you just love her dress?!

Poise

Then came the big night!  I don't think we could have been more prepared!

Poise dress, I'm so in love with this dress too! Oh, and look at those amazing shoes!

Something that made the night even more fun was that my good friend Gabe, who is a past Highland's Junior Miss winner and the current Director of the Highland pageant, was the backstage mom for another girl!  I was so excited to spend that time with her.  The best part is that both of our girls ended up winning!  I don't think we could have been more proud.  We felt like their mommies in that moment!

Sophie and I after the competing part was over and we were waiting for the results

The girls waiting backstage for the results

Then, the moment came!  They called all the girls back on stage and Gabe and I went to hide in the wings and watch. Alpine's program is very fortunate and gets a lot of financial backing from sponsors so they were able to give out awards for the top 3 girls in EVERY SINGLE category!  Thats unheard of!  When I was in Highland's program they gave a scholarship to the one top winner in each category and then to the top 3 girls overall and we went to State.  Anyway,  Sophie won a smaller cash scholarship as one of the top 3 in 3 of the 5 categories!  She won Talent, Interview, and Poise.  Seriously Gabe and I were hyperventilating backstage!  Her cute girl, Rosie, also won in 3 of the 5 categories!  Then, the big moment came, Sophie was named a winner!  AH!  Gabe and I were SCREAMING backstage and got shushed by the Director :)  Whoops!  We ran on stage and gave our girls hugs and we were all bawling.  I am SO proud of Sophie! She worked so hard and is such a talented girl!  All in all, she won $1850 in scholarship money to the school of her choice!  I am DYING that I can't go to the State program.  The twins will have just been born when she goes :(  Congrats Soph!

The winners of Alpine's Distinguished Young Women: Rosie,  Sophie and McKenna

The best part was that these three were really close throughout the whole process. I'm so glad she will have great girls to go to State with!

The proud mommy ;)

Sophie and Rosie with their real moms and stage moms :)

The girls with their moms

All 3 winners with their moms

Penny, Sophie and Fred

Me, Sophie and Rick

Sophie with her parents and Rick and I

My mom came out for the pageant and she was equally proud of her!

The cute winner!

So hot! :)

And just to wander down memory lane....Here is my Junior Miss experience.  This is when I won locals with Katie Millar and Melissa Elmer

And this is me competing at State:

I loved Jr Miss!  I am so grateful for the friends I made, the growth that happened personally, and the awesome scholarship money I got for college!

Good Luck at State Soph!

The First Few Days of Our Utah Trip

We are back from Utah and trying to get re-settled back into normal life!  I took so many pictures while we were there that I am going to have to break it into a few posts :)  The first week Rick was there with me and we stayed at his parents house in Alpine.  Rick's sister, Sophie, was getting ready for the Alpine's Distinguished Young Women Program (formerly known as Junior Miss). I won my local Junior Miss program back in the day and I absolutely love everything about the program.  I had so much fun helping Sophie get ready for it and I had the fun opportunity of being her backstage mom!  I did her hair and make-up and played cheerleader.  It was such a blast!  Most of the week was spent working on Junior Miss stuff (which I will do in another post) but we were able to squeeze a few other things in there :)

This is Daci at 4am the morning we flew out.  She was so excited to go to "hootah!"

We got to the Roberts house and Daci was READY for a nap.  Unfortunately, she figured out how to climb out of crib at their house.  One second Daci was in the crib, and the next we heard some strange noises coming from the neighboring room.  She had climbed out and gone in the next room over and was playing all by herself.  I was kind of upset about this because I knew I was going to move her to a big girl bed soon, but I really didn't want to do it while I was on vacation where she wasn't in her own house and learning the rules on her own bed.  Luckily, she did fairly well the first day.  She just stayed in the bed and put herself to sleep.  As the week went on though, she realized she could climb out of the bed and we had a few little problems :)  Hopefully I can train her now that we are home and she won't do that anymore!

Daci asleep on the big girl bed. Of course, she had to have all of her animals next to her!

The day we got to Utah Daci started acting sick.  By that evening she had a 101 degree fever.  The next day it went to 102 and the next 103!  After four days of a bad fever we took her to the doctor.  The doctor was so confused as to why she had this horrible fever when her ears and throat looked perfectly clear.  He thought that she might have a UTI.  He said we needed to do a catheter on her and it about broke my heart.  It was such a hard thing to watch.  The worst part was that it came back clean so we did it all for nothing.  Well I guess not nothing, we did rule it out.  He put her on antibiotics in case it was bacterial and within a few days it started to clear up.  Phew!

Even though she was miserable and extremely sick, she wouldn't let that keep her from playing and exploring.  She wanted to live up her vacation!  The Roberts' neighbor has a fun playground in their yard and she called it that "barn park".  She must have thought it looked like a barn or something.  She would always say, "I wanna go barn park!"  Fred and Penny were such troopers to take her over there all the time. These pics were taken after she went to the doctor with 103 degree fever and she got a catheter.  She just wouldn't sit still, even though she was feeling awful!

Then, on Monday we finally got to see my family!  They came out for a BBQ at the Roberts house.  Grandma came bearing gifts from her recent trip to Disney Land.  A whole set of Little Mermaid figurines!  Daci loved them!  Unfortunately I didn't take any more pics of that evening :(  Darn!

The next day we went to see Rick's grandma and my Grandpa out in Salt Lake.  It was great to see them.  We were blessed with awesome grandparents.

Daci at Grandma Jean's piano

In Grandma Jean's backyard.  This is the exact same swing set that Penny grew up on!

As I mentioned before Daci was still pretty darn sick this day.  We got pictures with both his grandma and my grandpa and both times Daci had a meltdown.  She is bawling in both the grandparent pictures.  Darn!  She really does love them.  She just really didn't want to take a picture :)

Next we went to my Grandpa's house.  He has an INCREDIBLE garden that has been featured many times in the news, etc.  He also always wins a million ribbons and Best in Fair at Utah's State Fair.  Here he is trucking out of his garden to come see us.

And here Daci is, bawling her head off again :)

Even though I spent a TON of time with Penny and Sophie that first week, Rick and I did manage to slip away and have a few fun dates.  They were MUCH needed since we rarely go on dates out in Chicago.  Thank you for the babysitting Fred and Penny!

One night we went to the Sweet Tooth Fairy in Draper and got me a Gluten Free cupcake and Rick a regular one and then we went to see Harry Potter.  Such a fun date!

Another day we drove up to Park City and had lunch and walked around.  It was such a beautiful day and it was so fun to get away together.  We drove back and went to another movie (we love movies!).

So that is the first few days of the trip.  Stay tuned for more!

Pregnancy Update

I've had a few people request I update on my pregnancy.  If you don't want to hear all the details, stop here and scroll down to my other post from today :)  I am 11 weeks today and our cute babies are the size of figs! (Thank you Babycenter!  Seriously, I love that they compare their sizes to foods.  It makes it so much more relatable for me!)  I was only really nauseous from week 6-7, but never threw up.  Since then I haven't been sick at all.  I have had some pretty terrible headaches and migraines, however.  They have been no fun.  I also developed a pretty hideous mouth sore on my tongue (sorry if that is TMI!)  The last time I had one of these was right before my Lupus flared (mouth sores are symptoms of active Lupus) and it lasted 3 months.  I lost quite a bit of weight with that one, which was marvelous considering I was trying to lose baby weight, but this time I am a little nervous about it.  It hurts so bad to eat and I have lost two pounds this week.  I've already gained 8 lbs though, which I was mortified over, so maybe its a good thing that I've lost two :)  My doctors have done some blood tests to see if I am flaring and I should get the results back in a few days.  Everyone cross your fingers that all three of us are ok! :)  I feel really calm about it though and don't think it is anything to be too concerned about.  My tummy is continuing to grow but unfortunately it just looks like a fat blob, not a pregnant tummy :(  Needless to say, I have been wearing a lot of loose clothing :)  Can't wait til I start to show for real so I'm not so self-conscious :)  I'm really excited for when I get back from Utah (see post below) because I will have two appointments in one day.  A regular doctor appointment, and my first appointment with my Perinatologists (high-risk doctors).  I get an ultrasound and I'm so excited to see them!  Then, just four weeks later I will get to find out the genders.  I can't wait!

I had an appointment this week and had a little scare.  All they were going to do was listen for the hearts, not do an ultrasound.  The nurse found the first heartbeat (or so she says, all I heard was my loud heartbeat, but she assured me there was a little baby heart beat in the background) and then she went to find the second one.  She searched and searched for about five minutes (it felt much longer) and couldn't find it.  She told me she was going to get another nurse to look for it.  She left the room and my eyes filled with tears.  Rick just rubbed my feet and said, "Everything is going to be ok."  I'm so glad he was with me! Another nurse came in and found the second heartbeat right away and I heard it loud and clear!  Phew!  I was so relieved!  I told her I didn't hear the first heartbeat that clearly so she went to find the first one for me and couldn't find that one!  I was so frustrated. She said that they like to hide behind each other and that it can be difficult to get them both one right after the other.  I decided to trust her and not stress myself out, but it was a little hard :)  I wish I could have heard them one right after the other though.  Oh well, I have faith that everything is going to be okay.  I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father for blessing us with two sweet spirits.  I have spent a lot of the last few weeks worrying and I finally decided this week that I need to just have faith.  I wouldn't be sent two babies if He didn't want me to have them. I am so excited and feel so blessed!

Sorry that was long winded and that there was no picture to go with it!

Off to "Hootah!"

with my two favorite people in the whole world to see the rest of our most favorite people in the whole world.....our families and a few of our besties!

With the twinners coming this will be our last trip to Utah for who knows how long?!  I get pretty sad when I think about that so I'm trying not to think about it :)  We are going to make the very most of our trip and enjoy every second of it!  As you can tell by the pic above (how cute is that by the way?) that Rick is completely exhausted from work and taking care of that little rug rat for me when he gets home that he is in desperate need of this vacation.  I am also exhausted and am missing our families so bad and can't wait to spend some quality time with them.  But I think the most excited of us all is Daci.  I seriously haven't gone 30 minutes over the last two weeks without her asking if it is "time to go Hootah yet, Mom?", "We go to airport and airplane for Hootah yet, Mom?", "We get smarties on the airplane yet, Mom?" (they save me on the plane!), "We go see Yia Yia, Papou, Soph, Papa, Grandma, Daws, Easton and Daysha yet, Mom?" She is seriously so excited she can't stand it!  Can't wait to see everyone!  There may not be any posts til after I get back so I hope everyone has a wonderful two weeks!

Fourth of July

For the 4th of July we got together with a few of the families from the ward.  We had a BBQ and then the boys threw the football and frisbees around and the girls chatted the day away.  It was so much fun!  Daci had a blast with all the little kids her age and as you can tell from the pictures below, she LOVED her watermelon!  So much for a clean red, white, and blue dress :)

She loved tossing the frisbee with Rick and then she would play with it like a hula hoop

The next three pictures were taken by my friend, Ashley Wright.  My camera died while we were there. I was so bummed because I was excited to take lots of pictures but it turns out that I'm kinda glad it died cuz then I got to have Ashley take cute pics of our family!

Daci had so much fun blowing bubbles with Jackson and Addy. She wouldn't drop that baby to save her life.  She is such a little mommy :)

I've been doing a lot of this lately.....

Man having two babies growing in my stomach is sure sucking the life out of me! I am SOOOOO much more tired with this pregnancy than I was with the last.....I'm sure having one more in there has something to do with it :)  Luckily I have a wonderful husband who has been such a BIG help since I got pregnant.  He's been cleaning and taking such good care of Daci.  He makes sure I get lots of rest and he takes Daci to the park so I can have breaks.  I'm so grateful for my amazing little girl and husband!  I have been very impatient the last few weeks.  I feel like I'm constantly on edge and getting annoyed by things that never would normally bug me.  I've been short with both Daci and Rick a number of times and I feel so guilty immediately after.  I'm so grateful they are still so good to me.  I love you both!

Visitors!

 This week we were lucky enough to get together with some old friends!

On Sunday we had Rick's second mission president and his wife, President and Sister Haines, over for dinner.  I was so stressed about my dinner!  I have cooked a bunch for people our age, but never for someone older, and more experienced in cooking than me!  I worried sick over it all day but it turned out pretty good!   I made pot roast, carrots, potatoes, salad, and cornbread. It wouldn't have mattered if it was gross anyway, they were so sweet and it was so much fun having them over!

Then, on Wednesday, my fifth grade teacher "Mr. A" was in town.  I loved him as a teacher and I feel like I remember more from that year than any other year that I was in school!  I babysat for him and his family for a few years after I was out of his class and he lives in the same area as my family and runs into them quite often.  He was out here for a convention so we met him downtown at Lou Malnati's.  It was so fun to catch up with him and hear what he has been up to all these years!