Dayna's 6th birthday and a suprise visit!!!

Hello everyone, another week has flown by! We went into this week with big plans for Dayna's 6th birthday. I can't believe that it has been six years since her arrival. I remember I was taking a Zoology class at BYUH with a teacher that was notorious for being a jerk. He was one of those teachers that seemed like he wanted you to fail, his tests were impossible, especially his bird test. You had to memorize around 30-40 birds, you had to be able to recognize whether it was male or female, and you had to be able to spell their scientific names and common names correctly. All of the birds would be set out on benches and you had to I.D. them. Well Janelle's due date was dangerously close to the date of the test. I remember talking to the Dr. and Janelle about the whole situation. That was one of the determining factors for the scheduling of Janelle's appointment to be induced. She was induced the afternoon after my bird quiz. Anyway, I did get an A in that class. My study partner and I were the first A's for three semesters in that class. Good ole Dr. Bruner. Well anyway, 6 years have gone by so it was time for a celebration.

Janelle has been planning the party for some time, she does a great job at getting things together and making it a special time for the kids and their friends.

 My parents flew down with Diego to surprise Dayna on Wednesday night. She was running around playing with Dax when the doorbell rang, she ran to the door and there they were, she was surprised! But I think that in a kids mind, they think that even though people are hours away by plane and then a few more hours by car, they think that they can be there any moment. So it was a surprise but they were quick to get over the jaw dropping moment and get to the running and playing. Its fun to see the kids play together, even though they only see their cousins a couple times a year they pick up right where they left off. They play hard and have lots of fun. These last few days Dax and Diego have played A LOT of football, Diego says "who wants to play catch, raise your hand?" and of course Dax's little hand shoots up and they're off, tackle, fumble, I'm open, I'm on your team, gotcha, throw it to me! The air is flooded with excitement. Dax got a Matt Hasselback jersey and hasn't taken it off for three days now, but todays church so he'll have to change his clothes.



 Dayna at the spelling bee on her birthday. 

 Dayna opened presents from the family. She is so spoiled, thank you all for your gifts she really loves each one.

   

 The week has been packed with fun. Diego, Grandma and Grandpa showed up on Wednesday night, Dayna's B-day was Thursday, she started the day with the Spelling Bee. They had a practice round and Dayna was given the word Be to spell, but she spelled it Bee. So then when it was her turn for the real first round she was given the word His and she spelled it Hes. She had fun and got a gift certificate for free ice cream anyway, there were only three kids selected from her class to participate. So we are very proud of her. After the spelling bee, we took the kids to a local bounce house. They had a lot of fun, and got a lot of energy out

Friday was the party day. Dayna had invited a group of kids from her class along with other friends church and the Shepherd and King families. All in all I think it was about 20 kids. Janelle had lined up a person for balloon animals and another to paint faces. We had very sugary and sweet purple punch and of course DQ ice cream cake. I'm sure the parents loved us for pumping their kids full of sugar at 7:30 at night. The balloon guy was great, he made some pretty cool things,

 This is the game we played while we waited for everyone to get there.  post it notes and stickey hands equals tons of fun by all. 

I love how far Ketzibee got hers to go!!

 Dayna opened presents from the family. She is so spoiled, thank you all for your gifts she really loves each one. Friday was the party day. Dayna had invited a group of kids from her class along with other friends church and the Shepherd and King families. All in all I think it was about 20 kids. Janelle had lined up a person for balloon animals and another to paint faces. We had very sugary and sweet purple punch and of course DQ ice cream cake. I'm sure the parents loved us for pumping their kids full of sugar at 7:30 at night. The balloon guy was great, he made some pretty cool things,

 Dayna got a pink and purple horsey and a dolphin hat and Dax got a dinosaur and a helicopter.

                                                  Diego the Pirate!

 The face painter did a great job too. There were lots of pink and purple sparkly butterfly faces, Dax and his friend Xander had their faces painted like the incredible Hulk. They had a pretty good wrestling match afterwards with their meanest green faces

                                              Dayna and her friends!  Yes we are pretty crazy!

 It was a lot of fun, the kids had a great time and we were all exhausted at the end. It was the good exhaustion, you know the "Its finally over" type.

Saturday we talked my dad into coming into the office and having an implant placed for a missing tooth. It was my first one, so he was being pretty brave. I dropped enough hints to my friend Travis Shepherd so that he would volunteer to come in and help. He was very very nice to come in to the office for a couple hours on a Saturday morning and help me place my first implant. Everything went well, my dad is doing great. I asked him Saturday afternoon how bad his pain was on a scale of 1-10 and he said 1.5. So he was feeling pretty good, in fact we went golfing that afternoon. It has been very cold this week. We played two rounds of golf in the last few days, the first day it hailed on us and neither day got over 45 degrees, but when you factor in the wind chill it had to be in the 30's. My dad actually had the best round of his life yesterday in the freezing cold weather and with a freshly placed titanium screw in his jaw. So big thanks to Travis and my dad in helping me on my first implant experience, it was great! To top the day off yesterday the kids went with Janelle and Grandma to watch "Mastermind" in 3-D, they said it was really funny and my dad and I went to see "Unstoppable", it was good too. Well, now we're trying to get everybody ready for church this afternoon, Dayna has her primary program, she will be signing one of the primary songs all by herself in front of the whole congregation while the rest of the primary sings the song of course. Well thanks again for all your love and support, and for the gifts you have sent for Dayna's special day. We love and appreciate each one of you!