Hangin' With The Bassetts

I spent the last several days visiting my newest grandbaby, Ava.

Ava likes to sit around looking cute.

I discovered Kailyn is an amazing reader. Here she is, reading The Boxcar Children, a series of books I read as a child. I helpfully told her all of my favorite books when I was younger.  She had already read most of them.  I figure she will have read every book known to modern man (or Grandmas) by the time she's 9.

 Jordan showed me about 3,389,302 of these while I was there.

I think she's related to Aunt Jessica, who was crowned "Queen of Cartwheels" several years in a row in her youth. I hope you've been practicing Jessica, because you have competition!

Chase and Caden were busy doing boy things.  Chase copies everything Caden does and says.  It's very cute, er, handsome.

Jordan and I had several knockdown fights about whether it was my turn or her turn to hold Ava.  This time I let her win.  She's pretty fabulous at making her siblings happy.

Is this another cute Bassett or what??

By the way, I know where robins come from.  Yup, Sioux Falls. I have never seen so many robins in my life.  Every time we were out and about, we passed houses with dozens and dozens of robins looking for worms on the front lawn. I started a count of Sioux Falls robins.  I gave up around a billion.
It was freaky. I started feel like I was in a Hitchcock movie.

Thank you, Bassetts, for letting me come.  It was so much fun to spend time with you. These Bassett kids are so helpful, so sweet, and so cute.  I was amazed by how well they played together, and how well-behaved they were. 

I can't wait to see you all again! Love you all!



Do You Recognize This Girl?

She's the newest member of the Skyview Varsity Tennis Team.

You have to wonder about anyone who would want to play outdoor spring sports in Montana....

I feel another last coming on-the last time Stan and I will shiver in the snow to watch our child do something athletic! Yippee! You have to wonder about parents who would willingly sit in the snow to watch spring sports....

Prom 2011--Why Chris Joyfully Retired From All That Stuff!

 Megan's prom was on March 19th.  As every mother knows, that means prom preparation begins sometime around April 19th of the previous year.  We started looking at prom dresses at the mall.  Silly us.  We found dresses that were actually shirts.

We found dresses with missing sides.

We found dresses that were marked "Prom" that looked like they belonged in the nightwear department, or perhaps the costuming department for questionable movies.

 There were plenty of dresses that showed off one's belly button. No thank you. Who wants to worry about belly button lint all night?

 We started to feel a bit desperate.  I thought about sewing one, but Megan doesn't love me that much. It was obvious we would not be finding a prom dress in Billings.  We turned to our Personal Shopper (PS) service.  We have two PS women who live in Idaho: Ashley and Jessica.  This time we picked on Jessica.  We gave PS Jessica instructions to take pictures of EVERY dress in Idaho Falls.

Dress one is too pink.  Megan doesn't like pink. Or sunshine. Or flowers. Besides, she wore pink to the last formal dance.  Even I know wearing the same color twice in one year is a major faux pas.

Too orange-y.

Um, no. Megan wants to show her face again at Skyview on Monday morning.

Purple princess. Not Megan's thing.

Dear dress: The eighties called, they want you back!

This one on the mannequin might work, with serious modesty modifications.

Oops, no it won't; it's PINK!

This dress says "40 year old lounge singer".

This dress says "I hate it so much it comes with a scarf to cover my eyes".

Remember, the assignment was for PS Jessica to take pictures of EVERY dress.

This shopping is exhausting

and horrifying.

Finally, PS Jessica emailed a picture of a strapless black and white number.  The next step is to have PS Jessica try on all of the possibilities, take pictures in the mirror, and email them. Megan settled on this one below.  PS Jess sent a better picture, but I edited it for blog modesty.

Store promised they could add straps, turtlenecks, sleeves, and anything else we wanted and mail it to us so it arrived March 11th.  They lied. March 11 came and no dress. PS Jessica kindly but firmly encouraged them to finish it and mail it right now. They gave runaround stories and promised it would be here by May.  PS Jessica angrily, but calmly insisted they finish it and mail it right now. They blamed it on us, sun rays, us, silkworms, and uhm, us and promised it would get here by April. PS Jessica camped on their doorstep, used words like "dang" and "heck" a lot and got red in the face.   They put it in the mail.

Finally on Wednesday "the dress" arrived.  That's Wednesday, before Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of Hearts and Hands. I was so happy we now had a dress I tried not to freak out about how they added skinny straps, no turtleneck, and certainly no sleeves and we had no time left to deal with it.  I spent Wednesday doing what I could to turn skinny little pleated straps into wide unpleated straps and generally improve upon their modifications and called it good. Thank you PS Jessica! Thank you for finding a cute dress and pulling out your impressive obnoxious girl skills to get it here in time for Prom!

While waiting for the dress, we took care of all the other stuff. 

Megan choose purple shoes--

one pair for pictures, dinner, and general looking-beautiful activities, one pair for dancing. I'll let you decide which pair is which.

Pretty cute! Actually, I found these online for $31 and free shipping. See Megan? I'm still good for something!

While I was at Hearts and Hands on Saturday, Megan got her hair fancified,

and painted her nails.  I guess she couldn't decide whether to go with purple or white...

I left Hearts and Hands right as clean up was kicking into high gear (I know! My timing is fabulous!) and ran home to help Megan lace up the back of her dress.

Then we took a few full length indoor pictures,

 a few close up indoor pictures,

 a few full length outdoor pictures (it was a lovely warm day)

 a few close-up outdoor picture

 and then, unable to think of any more delaying tactics, we allowed our adorable baby to climb into Conner's truck and drive away.



Next there were more pictures of the group Megan went with.

 If I weren't her mother, I'd say Megan's the cutest girl in the group.  Since I am her mother, let me just put my prejudices aside and say "MEGAN IS THE VERY CUTEST GIRL IN THE GROUP!"

So daughters: it's been fun, but I'M DONE!  Done with the prom hair, nails, and shoes, done with  wondering how the evening is going, and most of all, DONE with trying to figure out how to find, acquire, and pay for the perfect dress for a dance that is so important to you in the moment but so meaningless a few short months and years later!

YAHOO! 

A Day of Lasts

Our two Billings Stakes having been doing a community service project called "Hearts and Hands" for the past 11 years.

I have been pretty much living at the church since Thursday.

Today was the big day

We cut, sewed, pinned, packaged, separated, tied, and gave from 8 this morning until 5 tonight.

I am completely tuckered out.  It hurts to move. It helps to know this is our very last Hearts and Hands, EVER!

When I got home tonight it was time for Megan to go to prom.

Her very LAST prom.  I would be really excited about that

 if I weren't totally pooped. I might even have done a dance of happiness if it didn't hurt so much to move.

Tomorrow I get to sit in the car all day as we drive 150 miles to make a stake visit to Colstrip.  Then I get to sit in the car for 150 miles as we drive back.  Have I mentioned I'm driving?

However, sometime around Monday or Tuesday, when my old, tired body has recovered, I'll be posting a long-winded "Prom 2011-The Day Chris Retired From All That Stuff". 

You've been warned.