BizTown Fieldtrip!!!

This past Weds I went back to Biz Town, but this time I got to go with Jacob! We had a blast! Jacob ran to be the town Mayor a few weeks ago and did an awesome job on his speech!! His second choice for his "job" was to be the CPA for the Mall!! Boy did he have his work cut out for him!! The Mall consisted of 11 businesses, all of which had employees. Some of Jacob's responsibilities were to cut checks for all the employees, make bank deposits and pay bills. He worked hard and did a great job! Here is my independent little man setting up himself a bank account...

...and here he is setting up a savings account. He's so responsible!

BOINK!! Here he is with a GREAT IDEA!! Only great business men can think fast on their feet....Jacob...you're a stellar business man!!

I just had to photograph him concentrating and working hard :)
...and that didn't last long. Just Kidding:)
Here is one of his friends giving a speech at one of the Town Meetings
He wrote a friend a letter, so had to go purchase a stamp and here he's sending it off with a smile

Ethan working hard at the Surf Shop (in the Mall). He's getting all of his merchandise (that UPS delivered) ready for business! He has some really cool stuff for sale we loved the key chains!

Olivia was the Graphic Designer in the Mall. She custom made graphic designs for personal use or you could have one made for advertisement for your business.

Brian was the DJ at the radio station! We had fun listening to all of his groovy music!! The town was glad that he has good taste in music...although many people paid for him to play their request too!

Go DBacks!!! Here's Jacob taking a break at the Stadium

~~When the Kids go away...the Mommy's will Play!!~~
Jenny in the UPS store

Melanie and Allyson interviewing each other on the town tv station that is shown in tv's throughout the town.

We volunteers had to be at BizTown 1.5 hours before the kids arrived, which meant we had to be there at 7:30am...which meant we had to leave by about 6:45am! A bunch of us all rode together and that made being up and gone so early more enjoyable, lol!

The goal for all of the businesses in town was to pay off the loan that your business owed. At the end of the day, the Mall paid off our loan and made a profit of $198.00. The only problem that we had was that in the very end, we didn't get all of it deposited in the bank bc we had so much money coming in, it took the kids forever to get it all entered into the system.

TawneyG Dancewear

My cousin, Tawney, has a dance wear clothing line ! She's an awesome designer and I'm so excited to have one of her pieces for Marissa to wear to dance!! Marissa is in love with it and quite honestly, Tawney has been the talk of the house as far as Marissa is concerned! She talks to her dolls about Tawney ("Does Tawney need to make you some cute clothes", I overheard her say to her Cinderella doll just yesterday!) and now I'm adding Tawney to our bedtime stories, where we make up fun little stories about all of her bff's...Sara, Regan, Haven, Janell, Bailey and now, Tawney:) Here are a few pictures that I took of Marissa and Sara just before leaving for dance:

Tickled pink...and blue...and green...and purple!

From the day that we learned Marissa was a baby girl, I just knew in my mind that she'd be Creative and Artsy! I imagined her coming home from preschool with these amazing works of art and possibly learning to crochet or throw pottery on the wheel before even hitting first grade! I never stopped to consider that she might choose a different path. While she is still, quite the artist, I didn't ever think she'd choose to be Tattoo Artist!! Here's a glance at her portfolio. If you see anything you like, we are currently accepting new clients. Will work for candy. Custom designs every time...it's guaranteed that no two tattoo's are the same!!!

Time to Dance!!!

It's late and I'm really tired, but I wanted to get some photos and the awesome video (thanks to Jenny:) posted. The photos are from my cell and so they aren't coming out big. I will try to jazz them up tomorrow by maybe making a collage with them or something cutesie! Marissa is Loving LOVING!! her Tap/Ballet class with her "best girl friends"!! She loves Sara and Olivia and then she made friends with the little girl dancing beside her too and has been asking about her. It's sooo stinkin cute and I'm loving this!!!!

Standards Night~YW in charge!!

So we had THE BEST Standards Night ever!! We decided our theme was going to be Happily Ever After, a theme that comes from Elder Utchdorf's address to the Yw in the last YW Conference. My mom was in town at the time, so I had her read the talk with me and when we were finished, our creative juices started flowing and she really helped me figure out a really fun way to present the talk. I was excited to to take the idea to our Presidency (but not sure if they would think it was over-kill:) and was so super excited that they liked it and wanted to do it! From there, we all collaborated together to fine tune everything and put our ideas into play and here is just a snippet of the final product:
The idea was that we had several Princesses, Princes & Fairy Tale characters to teach the youth about the Standards of the Church. So...

Beauty and the Beast...(by Dawn and Mike Taylor) The standards they taught were Bad Language & Anger. Beast has a horrible temper and does not treat Bell with respect. Bell developed a bad habit of swearing back at the Beast. They finally learned the importance of respecting one another and learning to love and control their tempers.

Rumpelstiltskin and the Miller's Daughter...(Joe and Stacy Smith)Tithing--- After spinning all of the straw to Gold, the Miller's Daughter wants to pay her tithing. She knows of the importance of it, however, Rumpel doesn't, and will not let her take any of the gold to pay it.

Aladdin...(Leon Crandell) Honesty--Aladdin learns the importance of being Honest and makes a commitment to change his ways to be a more honest person.

Cinderella & Prince Charming...(Heather & Cory Staheli) Service --Even though Cinderella was treated badly by her Step mother and sisters, she still served and loved them. She was blessed to meet and marry her Prince Charming, because of her faithfulness and acts of service. Her Fairy God Mother is with her in this photo:)
Shrek...(Ed Cunningham)-Word of Wisdom-- Shrek taught us about taking care of our bodies. He was such an Ogre'! :) We Loved having Shrek there with us!!
Rapunzel...(Shavonne Updike)--Modesty--she grew her hair as long as she could so that she could dress inappropriately and hide her clothing behind her hair so her mom wouldn't see.
Rapunzel's hair coming out of her door:) I loved this!



I was so excited to make a castle cake!! It was my first time and I had so much fun with it!!!

Laurie came up with these stinkin cute!! Frog Prince Cupcakes!! She did an awesome job on them, they looked so cute all around the castle!!!

Dawn and Maddy drew two huge Temple's for me!!! After visiting all the the Fairy Land Characters, we all met in the chapel and watched the video of the talk. We talked about our 'paths' here on earth and how our goal should be to return to live with our Heavenly Father. The only way we can do that is to live righteously and to go through the Temple and remain worthy to enter it at all times. Amy cut them out and mounted them and I just think they turned out Amazing!!

Shelly put all of this awesome take-home gifts together! I loved these and thought she did such a great job!! She even made sure the dresses had 'sleeves' on them to keep them modest:) She typed out a message on them, but I need to get from her exactly what they said, bc if I attempt to write it out now, I'm sure to butcher it up badly...so I'll have to add it to this post later.

Maureen took on a big job to get the projector screen and all set up and have the video of Elder Utchdorf's talk. Pres Smith came and spoke to the youth as closing remarks and it just really turned out to be fun for all of us! We have such an awesome ward with so many people willing to just jump in and help and we really feel blessed for that! Thanks to everyone who helped our Presidency with this big event!!!