Tatum goes to BYU Softball Camp:)

Tatum and her good friend, Chloe, have been softball teammates for 7 seasons!  They both just love the sport and love being together.  Chloe's mom and I have been wanting them to go to a softball camp for a couple of years now but we couldn't find any that took girls under 10.  Amber really wanted to have Chloe attend the BYU camp this summer and Chloe really wanted Tatum to be there.  So I figured I would call and ask for special permission for Tatum to attend--since she technically doesn't turn 10 until late September.  Worst thing they could say was "No" but they said "YES!!!"

The girls have been talking and planning this trip since April.  We weren't quite comfortable letting the girls stay in the dorms--even though they felt old enough.  Amber was willing to drive them up and stay with them all week.  They stayed a couple nights in a hotel and then spent the rest of the week with family.  SLUMBER PARTY ALL WEEK!!!

They left early in the morning on Sunday, June 11th--I got home from Europe late that night on the 11th.  So not only did I have to have her completely packed up before I left on June 1st, I didn't get to see my baby from June 1st-18th!!!  It's the longest we've ever been apart and I sure missed her like CRAZY!  But she had such a great time that it was all worth it:)

So excited to be in their hotel
after 10 hours in the car!

BYU Softball Camp 2017!  Bring it!!!

Tatum has been making the transition to a catcher this year in softball.  She still loves playing 1st base but definitely gets more playing time behind home plate.  So that big ol' bag she has is all her catchers gear:)  All the girls were separated into 6 teams.  Tatum's team "won" the entire softball camp mini-tournament so she was pretty excited to tell me that.

Tatum's main coach for the week:
Arrianna Poulsen--current BYU softball player

BYU Headcoach--Coach Eakin

They sure squeezed in a lot of softball and fun this week:

Swimming at the hotel

Seven Peaks Water Park!!!

Yum!

Hike up to Bride-Veil Falls

Tatum and Chloe had a BLAST to say the least!  They are already planning next year's trip to softball camp--staying IN the dorms of course:)  Can't wait for the fall softball season now!  

Max Gets An Agent/First job!

Spring was a little insane here so I didn't even blog about one of the biggest things we did!

Max has been asking for over a year to do more TV/commercial acting.  I drug my feet on it for about 6 months--mostly because I had NO idea where to even start.  But he was persistent so my research began. After reading a couple books and hours of online research I came up with a plan.

I began with online submissions to the most reputable talent agencies in AZ.  I narrowed it down to 4 agencies.  We then spent our spring break driving Max out to meet/audition with the different agencies.  He was called in to meet with all 4 agencies and he was offered contracts by 3 of them.  We were pretty torn between 2 of the agencies and after a lot of thought/consideration/prayer, we ended up signing with the Deborah Maddox Agency out in Scottsdale in April.

So Max is now officially an Actor/Model/Voice Over artist.

While I was in Europe, Max got his first official job!!!  It worked out perfectly with all our craziness of the beginning of June.  We were home from Europe and Max was home from Scout Camp.  

There is a movie coming out in a month that Max plays the younger version of the main character working in a wood shop along side his movie dad.  We headed over to the shoot location this past week for him to do his part.  It's a smaller role with no speaking lines but he was paid $175 for two hours of work so we were happy with that.  I still have lots to learn in this acting world but I'm excited to see where this road will take us.  Here we go Max!!!  Let's do this:)

I tried sneaking in some pics--I may or may not be allowed to do this:)  Rookie Mom here!

Europe 2017--England

We headed over to England using the train--excellent way to get to London in less than 2 hours.  We of course hit the ground running taking in all the major sites the first night.

Buckingham Palace & Parliament Square:

You can't NOT take a picture in one of these:)

London Day 2:  Tower of London

I had NEVER been here before despite being in London.  Seriously HOW did my tour not take us here!  Such a fun place with the craziest history!  Humans are insane!  

We enjoyed taking a tour with a "Beefeater."  They paint quite the picture of what life was like in the tower.  This tower was founded towards the end of 1066 so there has been LOTS of time for LOTS of crazy things to happen.  The Tower has served as an armoury, a treasury, and menagerie, and is home of the Crown Jewels of England--I had never seen a 560 karat diamond until I toured this place!  Many people lost their heads in this tower and no one really knows how many bodies are actually buried on the property.  There were also several women/children killed there as well--mostly royal families considered traitors.  

If you happen to be walking in the way of the soldiers
marching path, you would be yelled at--kinda funny.
We stayed WAY out of their way:)

This is a tribute to all the women who
were killed here at the Tower.

This just cracked me up.  "Collar of Torment"
was used for "argumentative" or "wandering" wives:)

Trafalger Square:

We also hit the British Museum this day.  Not sure why I didn't take any pictures here.  I could have spent days going through this place.  My personal favorite exhibit was the ancient Egypt room.  I was fascinated with the mummies and the things they were able to tell about them using a cat-scan.  The Rosetta Stone was pretty amazing to see as well.

London Day 3:

For our last full day in England, we headed out of town to see some of the English country side.  Our first stop was Bath.  Very cool little historic town who's claim to fame is Jane Austen.  Her family used to live there.  Beautiful architecture and gorgeous landscapes.

My family knows I have an "ivy obsession."  I LOVE LOVE LOVE this "weed."  I actually have English Ivy growing on my front porch and I have successfully kept it alive for 5+ years.  I wish this stuff would just grow wild all over my house!

The Roman Baths were fun to see.  I'm kinda glad that public bathing is not a thing anymore:)

A fake Jane Austen.  HAD to have a pic:)

Stonehenge: 

This is a place that I haven't wanted to see for as long as I can remember!  So the Paris Catacombs and Stonehenge were at the top of my list of things I HAD to do!  SOOO excited to finally make it out here!  

Incredible history and interesting history guess work--as no one really knows exactly what this place was used for.

The Sacrifice Stone can be seen here

So we crammed as much as we possibly could in the 9 full days we had here in Europe.  We did everything we set out to do and came home thoroughly exhausted and ready to get back into our normal day-to-day lives:)

Europe 2017--Paris

I could have honestly stayed in the Normandy area all week and been perfectly happy.  But off to the big city we went!

Upon arriving at our hotel, our room was not quite made up yet so we were "upgraded" to another room--the upgrade was the view from our window:

The view from our room--not too shabby:)

I had a piano student who told me about the Paris Catacombs a couple years ago and I had been dying to go ever since.  I was glad that I looked at the online website and pre-bought tickets because there is always about a 3+ hour wait to get in!

The city of Paris began collapsing after many years of un-supervised limestone mining.  So the city needed to "fill" the underground tunnels with something.  The did build supporting pillars in some areas which solved part of the problem.  Another major problem the city faced was its over-flowing graveyards.  One graveyard actually cracked and the bodies spilled into people's cellars nearby.  So they began to dig up the bodies that had been dead for several years (only skeletons by that point) and they threw them into the catacombs to make room for all the new dying people--lots of plague victims.  At some point, an artist was actually hired to come and arrange the bones into a work of art.  So the walls are literally made with human skulls and femur bones staked onto each other.  There is NO mortar or any type of glue holding them together.  You were able to touch the bones and everything!  There is an estimated 6 million people in the catacombs.  Not everyone's cup of tea but for my family, we're a bit morbid, we LOVED it!  (You can see in the pictures that skulls and femurs were used for the main wall and all the other bones were just thrown behind.)

Ahh, it's a heart!  How cute:)

We then headed over to the Paris Notre Dame Cathedral.  We spent a couple hours in this area before heading over to the Madaline Cathedral to watch the One Voice Children's Choir perform.  We left this area about 3 pm.  At 4 pm, there was a terrorist attack at the Notre Dame Cathedral where a man attacked a guard with a hammer--he also had kitchen knives on hand.  When he attacked he said, "This is for Syria!" so this is why it was considered terrorist.  The situation was quickly handled, he was immediately shot and injured by another guard and then taken into custody.  The people in the Notre Dame were on lock-down for about 2 hours and no Americans were being allowed back into the area!  CRAZINESS!!!  So grateful for a watchful eye being over us.  

One Voice Children's Choir
in the Madaline Cathedral

We then headed over to yet another Cathedral--Sacre Coeur.  Chris mostly wanted to see us to make the major hike up the hill to get here.  It was worth the climb.  We were able to hear a Nun Choir which was really cool.  And the view of the city from up here was AMAZING!

Because of the attack earlier in the day, this is what we saw at every tourist place thereafter.

We also hit up a Chocolate Museum.  Check out these cool chocolate sculptures:

The next day (Wednesday) we of course had to go to the Louve:

The "mini" Arch of Triumph

The Mona Lisa

Winged Victory

Venus de Milo

We're pretty sure this one was called:
"The First Ever Selfie"

After the Louve we headed out to the Palace of Versailles.  Incredible palace!  I sure would have been ticked too if I were a starving Paris peasant watching the royal family live like this:

The royal bed that the kings
NEVER slept in!  It was just for show!

And just in case we hadn't walked enough for the day...we hit the Eiffel Tower:)  Oh yeah...we climbed it!  

Views from the Tower:

Every night at 10 pm, the tower lights up and sparkles!!!  As you can tell from the pictures, it's not very dark at 10 at night.  People wait all around the area just to see this.  It's kinda like the fireworks show at Disneyland:)

We LOVED our time in the big city--we walked 9+ miles everyday but we had so much to see!!!  We mostly used the subway to get from place to place.  The subway is full of performers--some good, other not at all.  On our last day on our subway trip to the train station, we had the privilege of hearing this guy--he was legit.  We gave him all the Euros we had left:)