Is it Really Possible for me to have a 15 year old?

That means that in 6 months we'll be looking at a Learner's Permit and she could legally drive around this city! Aughhhh!

I've gotta say though, I am so lucky to have Shelby as my daughter. She is such a wonderful girl. She's got a lot of common sense (most of the time) and a really sweet disposition. She's also very motivated to succeed in school and on her viola. She's so responsible that I usually wonder where it all comes from. I am so glad she has great friends she hangs around with. I know that makes a huge difference in her attitude and behavior.

Saturday night Shelby and her friend Alex Adair (far right) had a combined birthday party with their friends. The played Dance Dance Revolution in the basement, ate Pizza and cake and icecream, sat around the fire pit on the back porch and played Capture the Flag on our street. They seemed to have a great time. Like I said we're so lucky she hangs out with such a great group of girls.

Shelby and Cooper sat nicely with Dicey. Notice Shelby holding her much anticipated gift for this birthday. She's had a countdown on her school binder for around 3 1/2 months now.

She didn't even have to look at the instruction manual on her cell phone. She knew right what to do. She felt like we were the last parents in the world to allow their teenager to have a phone. We're being a bit mean though and making her pay for her texting time. Jeff and I both thought (and still kind of do) that it was ridiculous for her to think she needs a phone. We still don't think she needs it, but I guess we gave in. Now at least we have a great external motivator for following all the rules.

Tonight after dinner our Dana cousins came over to help her celebrate. She got to blow out the candles again with the little ones looking on excitedly.

Happy Birthday Shelby. We love you!!!

Marathon Week

I'm sure that lots a people are busier than I am every week, but this week seemed especially busy for me. As I said before, Jeff and I are starting a new business and things are definitely busy there. We've been trying to nail down a location for our office in North Scottsdale. We've now narrowed it down to 2 and are waiting to see which one give us the best deal. We also started advertising for a NMD to work in our office and spent time looking at resumes and interviewing. We opened up a bank account for the business as well, so we've got the ball rolling on a lot of the stuff. We need to pick our Doctor and our location so we can get moving and be up and running (if a little slowly) in December.

On Monday night we went out with Jeff's siblings for Sandy's birthday dinner. We had a great time. I'm so lucky that I really enjoy being with my in-laws. It's great to have people I love on both sides of our family. We brought Jackson home afterwards to spend the night since there was no school for Veteran's Day on Tuesday. Tuesday morning I still had Notations as we are trying to get our Christmas show ready. I left the kids with house cleaning assignments and instructions to gather everything they wanted to sell at our Garage Sale (am I crazy? - I think so) on Saturday. Shelby had a Viola lesson (during which I wisely used the time in my car for a catnap), then Jeff and I ran around North Scottsdale. The day had been set aside for cleaning and getting ready for the garage sale, but that was put on hold.

Wednesday night I attended Harris Park's Young Women in Excellence Program, then on Thursday I spent the day preparing for our Stake YW Leadership meeting that night. I must give huge thanks to my Heavenly Father for the inspiration for that meeting. It's been so amazing for me to see how clearly I've been directed in this calling. I was talking about it with my mother this evening. I wish that in all aspects of my life I could sense the direction of the Lord as much as I've been able to in this calling. I'm writing this down because Jeff gave a Sunday School lesson that talked about the importance of recording our spiritual promptings and answers. I've found that my best inspiration for this calling comes as I'm on my treadmill with the mp3 of General Conference addresses playing in my headphones. I have ideas come to me that just seem to develop easily and I'm always amazed that I get to be the instrument for those ideas. One of the ideas that came for the leadership meeting was to ask a young woman from each ward to share an experience they've had in Young Womens that has strengthened their faith. I felt that this was the highlight of our leadership meeting. Those girls brought the Spirit with them as they let the young women leaders see that the little things they do can make such a big impact on the testimony of a young woman.

I got to speak at the end about making sure that all of the interactions with these young women are experiences that can be counted as building blocks of their faith. I fully believe that the youth today are going to have to be rock solid in their convictions and willing to stand strong for their beliefs in the gospel. I was able to talk about how surprising it is that in the state next to ours we have protestors marching against our temples and missionaries and members of church being threatened because we stood up for our beliefs regarding the marriage amendment. I don't think that youth who are waivering in faith will be able to make it. Anyway, the Spirit was great at the whole meeting. We finished in exactly an hour (which is always my goal because YW leaders are so busy). We had most members of the presidencies from every ward attending. What a great night!!!

Friday was our next big business day, but I spent the morning in the playroom going through all of the toys and deciding which ones were junk (a couple of big garbage bags proved that there were many), which ones were still playable, and which ones we should sell. What a great feeling to get that done!!! We were up late that night after all the business stuff was done finishing up with garage sale prep.

Early Saturday morning came fast, but we were ready for our first customers, unfortunately our profit wasn't as big as I would have liked it to be, but the kids made some Christmas spending money and now I've de-junked my house -so it was worth it in the end. Cooper had a football game that I had to miss because of the Garage sale. I had the truck loaded and dropped off at DI before Jeff and Cooper got home. I had a good nap that afternoon before heading off to another YW in Excellence program for Hillside ward. Jeff and Cooper watched the Sun Devils win their game and Shelby had a nap over at Leslie's house. I came home and wrote my talk for Harris Park Ward's sacrament meeting today. I spoke on the importances of being fully committed to the Standards found in the For the Strength of Youth Pamphlet.

Tonight we had our Stake Standards night. It was wonderful. We have a woman in our stake, April Price, who is an amazing speaker. She spoke on following the standards fully and being "tight like unto a dish" in our resolve ot follow them. The youth loved her and I wish I could speak like her. She followed three of our youth committee members who gave great personal examples of the importance of the standards, then President Ahlstrom spoke about the protection that comes with following the standards. It was a great evening!!

I got to come home and visit with my mom for awhile who came back from watching Doug's kids in Utah this past weekend. I don't think she's utilizing her nice Granny Flat near enough, she thinks she'll go home tomorrow to get her bills paid there.

Now I'm looking forward to a low key week, but I'm sure that won't happen. Next week is Shelby's 15th birthday, and we've still got a lot to do to get this business up and running. Wish me luck!

No Pics - Just Words

I thought I'd catch up a bit on what's been happening. The Dana household has been hopping lately, I guess so much so that I haven't had much time (or remembered well enough) to take pictures.

Halloween was pretty low key this year. Our week before Halloween was so busy we never even carved the pumpkins I bought. I promised Cooper we'd make a fun Thanksgiving display with them. Now I've got to get going on that. Cooper went as a Sun Devil's Football player (big surprise), Shelby was a witch. We went to our ward's Trunk or Treat and then Shelby and her friends took Cooper around the neighborhood (you have to do a lot of walking around here so you work off the candy quite well). Jeff and I held back some candy at the trunck or treat so that we'd have something for those who came to our house, but we didn't get one knock at our door until the kids came home.

Cooper counted his loot and fell asleep on our bed watching Ironman. Shelby and her friends watched a movie in the basement (I think they did more hanging out than watching the movie) and stayed up late. Friday night is a good night for Halloween I guess.

Cooper played some football the next day - I guess I did actually video some of his game, I'll have to post some of that later. Then he and Jeff went to the ASU game that night. They've been extrememely disappointed in their Sun Devils this year.

Sunday we had our Arizona wide Stake Conference broadcast from Salt Lake City. It was really nice, and we enjoyed hearing about Arizona's part in the early church history. My favorite talk was from Bruce C. Hafen about the need for us to be "Consecrated" to the church. Our stake president told us the night before that we can't be cafeteria Mormons anymore, we can't pick and choose which parts of the gospel to live, we need to dedicate ourselves to living it all. I really enjoyed the conference and all of the "warnings" to live faithfully through the perils that will come in the days and years ahead.

Speaking of perils, Jeff had his last day of work on Friday. He's quitting (maybe we could say that Real Estate quit him) and we're getting ready to start a new business partnering with some friends of ours, John and Jacqueline Olson, opening a Wellness clinic called "Vital Solutions MD". We'll focus on weight loss (our family is now 130lbs lighter) and Bio-identical hormone replacement. We're very excited. Jeff feels like what he's done has changed his whole outlook on weight and how he can feel. I think he'll be terrific at helping others. We've got a lot of things to do to open our doors (like finding an office with doors) in December so we'll be ready for a huge January push. It's a scary and exciting time in our family.

This was a busy week. Monday for FHE we hung some pictures in Grandma's Granny flat for her. Tuesday night Shelby and I had Mother Daughter enrichment night. Wednesday Shelby had dress rehearsal for her MYS concert and I had the Harvest Dance for our stake. Thursday night was Shelby's concert. She was the principal violist in the Division II. She'll get to move up to Division I for her next big concert. She's very excited about that because many of her friends are in that group. Friday we packed up our quads and our trailer and headed to the sand dunes for a much anticipated weekend at the dunes. We had a great time with the Hunsakers and the McClaws'. Cooper and Shelby rode so hard that they can barely move today. I only took one big ride and did the rest of my riding in the Rhino's with Katie and Stephanie, so I'm not too sore. A nice jacuzzi bath felt really good last night though.

We had our big election day for 2008 on Tuesday, November 4th. I was disappointed that John McCain didn't run a better campaign. I worry about many of the policies Barack Obama has in mind. I worry that he leans toward the socialist side in too many of his beliefs and I hate that the conservative party has leaned so far toward the center to placate people that they've lost site of their values.

I was so pleased that the marriage ammendments passed in Arizona, California and Florida. I think that speaks well for conservative values and the importance of family and the institution of marriage. I'm sad that so many people think the church should not have voiced it's opinion in this matter. The church always stands for moral issues and encourages it's members to do the same. I know that in Massachussettes the Catholic church stopped it's Catholic Social Services adoption program because they were being pushed to allow same sex couples to adopt through them because same sex marriage is legal in that state. I feel like that is a huge infringement on freedom of religion. It seems that the LDS people in California are really being persecuted for these beliefs even though they were only about 4% of those who voted in favor of this amendment. They had to close the LA temple for awhile because protestors were so disruptive and the members felt threatened as they tried to go to the temple. I sometimes feel that maybe the economy isn't the worst of what is going to happen to us as a people. I think we might have to have our mettle tested by those who disagree with our beliefs and want to make us reject them. I guess now is really the time to hold to the rod and stay on that path to eternal life.

Okay, enough of my soap box.

Today was our fast and testimony meeting. It was a nice meeting. We had our faithful home teachers come, Jeff and I took a much needed nap, then after dinner I went to a presidency meeting and then to our Youth Committee meeting. We've got another really busy week coming up.