Where oh where have the Mason's been????

Holy cow this past month has been crazy. I miss my weekly, sometimes daily blogging :-(
What on earth have we been doing???



***Warning-very LONG post***
*Jacey and I have been having so much fun visiting all of the different pools (including our own).
*Jacey's swimming skills are improving greatly. She is learning to swim on her back, use her "big arms" and absolutely LOVES jumping off of the diving board. Thanks for all of the great lessons Sarah!!!!
*Jacey’s babysitting skills are improving.
*Keely is still growing by leaps and bounds. At a recent ear check she weighed in at a whopping 26lbs. She is starting to walk and it is the cutest thing ever. She has been standing up by herself for over a month now but in the past week or so has been taking "baby" steps.
*Keely’s hair is growing longer and I can now fit two tiny piggy tails on top :-)

*Keely now has 8 teeth and is loving all the foods she can now chew up :-)
*I had girls camp (for church) this past weekend and have been crazy busy the past month getting ready for that. I was gone for five days and Thad was left to take care of the kids by himself, over Father's Day weekend no less!!! Camp was fun but boy are girls dramatic, especially teenagers!!! Thad was such a good sport for taking care of the girls while I was gone, even if they took baths in the sink and wore the same clothes the whole time (j/k) :-)
Here are about 100 (just kidding) of the 400+ pictures I've taken this month :-)(My apologies for some of the crappy pictures-some were taken with my Nikon and some were with my old pentax)

(Video of Keely learning to walk)

(My little dancing queens)

Jacey just loves to take care of her little sister :-)

Girls Camp-June 2009-The Amazing Race

Our Addy at girls camp, after we decorated :-)

(View from outside)

View from the inside
Our official changing station

The view of the mountain we/I repelled

The group I took repelling

Down I go

The end

Bishop Kerby on the flying squirrel

My girls doing their skit

Lori Bottomley (our Awesome camp director) and I

The official judges of Adobe Villa Idol

(from left to right: Paula, Randy, Cara & Simon)

Just a few of the many great performances :-)

Go Andrea

Eating lunch

Alana Parker (Another Awesome camp leader) and I

On Monday we competed in the Amazing Race. These are just a few of the events & water works. (We won the race, beating out all of the other wards-woo hoo!!!!!)

Water balloon toss

The human pretzel Relay race

Water works

My little walker :-)

Thad's idea of a bath

Keely and her cute little piggy tails

Falling asleep on her knees

Keno pool

My little swimmers

Mesquite Aquatics center

Memorial Day

Every Memorial Day the Skousen's get together and go to the Mesa Cemetery. The graves of loved ones are visited, cleaned & left with some silk flowers, courtesy of Grandma Mary. We have done this every year since we moved back to AZ in 1986. We all meet at the cemetery at 7am (okay, so some of us arrive a little later than that :-) ) and then head out to breakfast afterwards. The past 5 years have been even more meaningful because my Grandpa Skousen is buried there. It's one thing to visit relatives that I have no memory of whatsoever but I have soooo many great memories of my Grandpa and it makes me sad every time we are there that my girls never got the opportunity to know and love him. It makes me appreciate my relationship with the rest of my grandparents even more.

It used to be a tradition to go to Bob's big boy (Now known as JB's) for breakfast. Grandma Skousen would make reservations in advance and would pay for everyone. As the years progressed, the food got nastier and Grandma's pocket book got smaller we decided to move the breakfast festivities over to Max & Marilyn Arnett's house (my aunt & uncle) and have a home cooked breakfast. I'm so glad the we are still caring on this wonderful family tradition after 20 plus years.

After a nice nap we decided to go swim it up at Carson Pool. Gina, Jackson and their kids and Uncle Max and his kids all came. Everyone had such a fun time. A special thanks goes out to auntie Mara who brought the much coveted drinks from QT and played like crazy with the girls in the pool :-)

(The Wrights, Skousen's & Mason's @ my great grandma Huffaker's grave)

(Grandpa Skousen's grave)

(Most of the Skousen's, in front of Grandpa's grave)

(Breakfast at Max & Marilyn's)

(Enjoying all the excitement)

(Jacey having a blast on the slide at Carson)

(Yummy french fries)

(Boy what a long day)

Lot's of catching up

Holy cow these weeks have flown by. So much has been going on and I'm just now finding the time to catch up with my blogging. I had so much I wanted to post (for my book) but didn't quite know how I wanted to do it. I finally just decided to do a separate post for each event. So, the end result is a lot of posts :-)

Last night some of the Young Women from church spent the night at our house. We were supposed to stay up all night and read the Book of Mormon. It was a very great attempt but not a whole lot was accomplished :-) We had fun reading, snacking, reading and more snacking. To my surprise all of the girls fell asleep by 11:00 pm. What's wrong with this picture???? I slept on the couch which unfortunately didn't provide me with much sleep but that was okay because I wasn't expecting to get any anyway. When they woke up the first thing the girls wanted to do was go jump in the pool. Better them than me :-)

Thanks for a fun night girls!!!

From left to right:

Jana Ellsworth, Kylee Ambri, Mua, Brenna Hastings, Shana Stailey & Julia McLaws)