How the triple threat do summer heat

Sleep In Heavenly Peace at Young Women’s Camp

3% of children in NWA do not have a bed to call their own. Kasey got our family involved with Sleep in Heavenly Peace, and we have been building and delivering beds with this amazing non profit for the last year.  Quincy and Corbin are pros now and serve as team captains on community delivery days. They’ve also have been getting the YM quorum and friends involved.

Quincy helped me run a service project up at young women’s camp last week. The Rogers Stake YW built 10 headboards for Sleep In Heavenly Peace. SHP has donated nearly 1,000 beds in NWA so far, and there are currently 150 kids on the waiting list. Excellent work, ladies! 💪🏼 “No kid sleeps on the floor in our town!”

Happy Holi!

I took Esme, Corbin, Quincy, and Zack S to the Holi Celebration at the Momentary on Easter weekend. It was an incredible experience! Holi is a festival celebrating color, springtime, new life, and unconditional love. We loved celebrating all these things on Easter weekend and were fascinated by the common themes it shares with our Christian holiday. The event was SO inclusive and full of live. The life and love and love was felt. There was food, music, and a lot of dancing. We will do this again, for sure. Unforgettable. Our favorite part was the unexpected contact. Everyone touches everyone. If you don’t have a certain color and someone passes you carrying some chalk of a hue you’re missing, they’ll touch your arms or face or back and spread the love with a “happy Holi!”  After being kind of touch deprived, my very touchy children were fascinated by how touchy a huge mass of strangers in a field could be. Everyone grabbed hands in huge circles and danced and ran and (it would absolutely be a super spreader COVID nightmare) just loved their best inclusive lives. This festival was so different and also so much the same for us and we loved it all! 

Corbin is 14!

Oh Corbin! Happy 14th birthday. To celebrate, he texted 10-12 pals and said “Party at my place. Nachos. Bring whoever.” 

And the masses came. There were only 3 kids he didn’t know there, and the rest were friends from church or school. A couple friends got him some Lakers swag, one in particular being a hat with Lebrons number, a championship pin and his name embroidered on it. It’s on his head all the time, now. The kids were crazy and laughed and sang and played the piano at the same time as jackbox up full blast and videos on their phones and the record player going and mini hoops in the kitchen. Ammon taught a bunch of them how to shotgun a soda. Several went outside and a pickup game of hoops began. A group of kids Quincy’s age came over and she wasn’t even home 🤣.  Corbin, you’re the life of a party and a good little host.  Life with you is never dull! I think we counted over 30 kids that came by throughout the night. I didn’t catch pics of many of them. It was loud and definitely unstructured/chaotic, but everyone seemed to be having a good time, so we’ll call it a win. 

 Happy 14th Birthday to this man child I love so much!! Corbin loves sports, friends, winning, gum, serving others, and creating music. His current pass times include having his phone (that is only a phone and nothing more) taken away, playing basketball with  the metfield boys and missionaries at the church or metfield park, bball with the lost boys in the Foust’s driveway, taking gum from my purse 4x/day, saying things like “cap” , “sus”, and “w”, getting rich mowing lawns, playing his cello, burrito wrapping himself in all the blankets and snuggling, swimming at Brody S’s, chilling on the lake with Finn H, asking for a puppy, and learning mission impossible theme on the piano. He was pretty snarky at 13 and was busted for sass a lot (hence no phone). He still takes very good care of his chickens. He’s a monster on long road trips (or any drive longer than 30 minutes, really) He checks on his height and his biceps daily. He remembers lyrics easily and is a great sing a long buddy for any genre of music. He is the language police for the family and we’re grateful for it. He is a good example to the boys at church in his quorum. He is really inclusive and happy to hang out with anyone who wants to hang out. He just LOVES friends so much. He gets excellent grades, he cracks the best jokes, gives the best back massages, and makes me laugh everyday.

Summer Nights

Few things are as exciting as having a house filled with teenagers. You never know what they’ll come up with for fun. MarioKart, Jackbox, treadmill toy/nascar races, variations of ping pong where some dude ends up with an owie, card games, scavenger hunt, baking adventures, trampoline, bonfires, movies, group games, basketball, foosball, all the music (I can tell you what every teen in NWA performed at their piano or voice recital bc I’ve heard it at my piano many times lol), tiktok videos, sour shots, …and this weekend, a haircut for Ammon, who decided (with the help encouragement from several girls he met at FSY who drove up from Springdale and Lowell to hang out at the Willy’s) he needed a new do. Quincy coaxed him into a chair and then he asked for a “sick fade” which (once I had permission from his mama) was happy to provide. 

Before 

After—you’re a cutie and a good sport Ammon man 

Quincy goes to Prom

Quincy went to the prom! Landan Shaw was such a cutie date and they went with Ruby Messick, Kate Keller, and Will Spears. 

A fun story about Quincy’s dress. She found a Teuta Matoshi pearl beaded gown online for $1200 that she fell in love with. Quincy being Quincy, refused to spend over $100 on prom. She wore the same shoes from homecoming, and we found this dress on Amazon for $80. It was strapless though, so we reached out to the dressmaker and used google translate and some photo suggestions to ask in Chinese if they could raise the bust line (no cleavage) and add some ruffled sleeves. They happily agreed and altered it for free!  I wouldn’t necessarily call the straps a “sleeve”, but I appreciate Quincy’s efforts to make her dress a little more modest. I think

It looks even better than the OG inspo dress. Added $12 of jewelry and I did her nails, hair and makeup (I did Ruby’s hair, too…isn’t she gorgeous?) and Quincy got her prom look for sub $100. 

Aren’t they the loveliest girls? 
I made all the corsages and boutonnières for their group. (Forgive the pink and green corsage, Kate had a last minute wardrobe change from teal to this beautiful red gown…but it was too late to buy red flowers) I sort of figured it out as I went, but I think they turned out really pretty!