Monday a dear, wonderful woman, our friend Christy Bailey, came over to give Catelynn the best gift ever!

Christy is a hair stylist and has been for 32 years--she's very experienced and good at what she does. Her family has quite the legacy for doing hair; her mother, her sisters--one of whom owns and runs a beauty school, her daughters, AND her daughters-in-law...hair is what they know!

Catelynn doesn't have plain ol' average "Utah" hair because she's not a plain ol' white girl...she's beautiful and has amazing ethnic hair given to her through her Samoan bloodline. Blessedly for us, Christy is one of the few “white people” (as she puts it) who can do ethnic hair…boy did she spend a pretty penny in order to learn, too!

I couldn’t have had more confidence in a person touching her hair. Christy has the knowledge and she had the concern and desire to gift Catelynn with what she’s been wanting for a VERY long time—STRAIGHT HAIR.

One hour and a few minutes after Christy and her daughter started working on Catelynn’s hair we had an amazing change standing in my kitchen…it was heart-stopping. I took one look at our beautiful Catelynn and tears came to my eyes…there standing before me was one of the most alluringly beautiful young women I’ve seen…she was simply STUNNING!

Catelynn was in awe when she finally got to see herself…she gasped, her eyes brightened, and a smile spread across her face. She was satisfied and at awe with herself. She ran her fingers through her hair, she ran out to the trampoline so she could feel her hair move up and down, she liked the feel of a brush going over her scalp…it was a bunch of new and exciting experiences for her.

…And it was all a GIFT!!! …a gift just for Catelynn from love.

Later in the evening while in her room Catelynn said to me, “Now I look like I belong.” It was then that I realized more of the significance of this gift to her. How sad for her to feel like she doesn’t belong…how wonderful that she feels like she does now, but ultimately sad to know it took a hair treatment for her to do so…

Thank You Sister Bailey!!!

CAMPING!! :o)

This last weekend we went camping as a great big family. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to with Mykayela being so small and somewhat mobile. I was concerned she might be infatuated by the fire and want to get into it and several other possible traumas. In the end, we all went together anyway.

What a trial at first!! We loaded up the back of our vans and stuffed our children into them, half in each, and drove to Smith’s to pick up some fire wood and a few last minute items—everything was fine. We waited in our van—those of us in the van I was driving, and the boys went into the store with Mark—still fine. They all came out got into the van Mark was driving and then---NOTHING! Not a dang thing. The ridiculous contraption would not turn over, it just would not start. We were stuck in the grocery parking lot. Well, it wasn’t just warm out there, no, it was mind melting heat out there and out there we sat for EVER and a day waiting for something to happen with the van. Yeah, nothing happened with it and so we had to figure something else out.

We had to take two trips to the site; one trip to take half of the children and the things in the good van and then a second to get the rest of the children and things. It’s a good thing we have children old enough to legally babysit!

We got there and it was beautiful, peaceful, and quite simply wonderful.

Mykayela wondered around our area and never ventured toward the fire pit or even the area where we parked the van. It’s so nice to have angels helping!

I haven’t had real quiet peaceful time to do much of anything for a long time but while we were camping I was able to get into touch with my creative side. I painted a plaque for our family while we were up there…it was so nice, it felt good and it was quite fulfilling to hear all of our children tell me it was “really good”, “awesome” and “I can’t believe you did that”, and even “It doesn’t look like you painted it, it looks like a machine did it.”

OK, well, the cell phone pictures aren't that clear...what can I say?!!! lol

I brought body-art crayons, too. I painted little “tattoos” on the girls. It was so fun.

Take a look:

Baptisms

We had THREE baptisms this last weekend. At 4:00 pm Gabriel, Karlie, and Kaylee were baptized, and confirmed as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was a beautiful day.

I was so impressed with my husband. Nothing is as desirable to me than a man showing love for his children and/or a man using the Priesthood he's been give the authority to use and in this moment of time I was able to witness BOTH at once...it was wonderful.

Karlie was baptized by her grandfather, while Mark baptized Gabriel and Kaylee.

We had fantastic speakers on Baptism and on the Gift of the Holy Ghost. I'm grateful to each for their time and their beautiful talks.