California 2010 - BEST VACATION EVER!!!

I'm proud (and sad) to say that the Pew's have officially taken their first REAL vacation! All of our vacations so far have been weekend trips (3-4 days MAX) with family and just hanging out. Not to say that is a bad thing because we love spending time with family at their houses and just relaxing. But this year we had something bigger in mind. When my sister's and I took our beach trip in 2009, we decided then and there that our family needed an annual vacation together. So we started planning out a beach house trip from then on. It finally happened and it was AWESOME!

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With David's schedule, he only had to request 4 days off of work and ended up having 10 days off in total. So we took full advantage of those 10 days and headed to California. We stayed with his parents in El Centro for the first 3 days. No El Centro trip is complete without playing hours and hours of card games until our fingers bleed. We LOVE it!

David and I took in a movie and saw "Knight and Day" while we were there. Cute movie!

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Then we were off to Newport Beach for 7 days in a beach house right off the sand! It was awesome! Right across from our house on the bay side was a few rides. Here is Kylee, David and Kyrstin riding the ferris wheel.

*Also on the bay side was a ferry boat tour of the bay. Kylee, Kyrstin and Dylan!

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BEACH TIME! Yes everyone......this is my lovely husband for all time and eternity. Aren't I lucky?!!!!

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My little beach babe!


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Dylan, Kyrstin and Kylee catching sand crabs...

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The first day we were there, Kylee got demolished by a huge wave! Needless to say, our little fragile princess refused to go back in. But David tried and tried to pep talk her into going back in........as you can see in this picture below. It didn't work though! She refused to step foot in the water for the rest of the week!

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My beach babes!

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Beautiful Princess Tiana dresses that Kylee and Kyrstin got at Disneyland. They never took these dresses off!

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Waiting outside the Crab Cooker. Natalie and me!

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All the girls waiting outside the Crab Cooker. Most of our other family members had left by this time.

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The WHOLE MONTEZ GANG hanging out at the beach house. We are a crazy bunch! Love them all!!!

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The Montez and Pew family taking a bike ride. Fun times!

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Olivia and I before a refreshing and AMAZING run on the beach. I lived for that each morning I was there. So awesome!!!

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Kylee and her cousins Libby and Maddie. They live in Newport Beach. Lucky girls!

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Tera and me getting tan! I love my sisters!

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DISNEYLAND!!!!!!!!

This was the first time Kylee had been to Disneyland. We were so excited to take her and to see her reactions to everything there for the first time. Here is Kylee and Kyrstin eating a churro! Can't go to Disneyland and not eat one of these! Mmmm!

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Splash Mountain! Kylee was a trooper and rode all the rides!

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Kyrstin and Kylee on the merry-g0-round!

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She missed out on the Matterhorn because this is what happened as we were waiting in line!

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Our "navigating" boys! Yes....we needed a map! Haha!

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The PRINCESSES!!!!! Not gonna lie.....Kylee was terrified of all the characters walking around the park, including the princesses! I thought she'd LOVE them and want to stare at them and talk to them all day long. But she was terrified! This picture took some convincing!

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Kyrstin and Kylee on "It's a Small World After All". This was the first ride of the day!

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Taking a rest on Daddy's head! Sweet girl!

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Typical Disneyland family picture at the front of the park. I think David is a LITTLE excited to be there! Hahaha!

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After the first picture with Princess Tiana, the only way Kylee would take pictures with the rest of the princesses is if I went with her. But I'm glad she made me because I got to take a picture with my favorite Disney Princess (Jasmine)!

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One happy family at Disneyland!

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I'm so glad we had the opportunity to go on this vacation. It was amazing and just what our little family needed! We will hopefully be doing this every summer now with my family. Next year will be Sea World! We can't wait! Gotta start saving now! :)

Summer stuff

W-O-W!!!! Summer is here and my June was already JAM PACKED, and my July is looking about the same so far. Where oh where do I start? I just have to start out by saying that I have been amazingly blessed when it comes to volleyball. I've had some of the BEST coaches, I had the once in a life-time opportunity to win a state title as a player and as a coach, I had an undefeated season as a Sophmore on my JV High School team, my team won the 16's division in club, and the list goes on and on. But I never thought I'd be loving and blesssed on the flip side of volleyball........OFFICIATING! I have been officiating off and on over the past 5 years but this past year I took the year off of coaching and dedicated my time to officiating. And I'm LOVING it! I'm getting more opportunities in my first REAL year of officiating than most officials get in their lifetime. I ranked up this year from a level 1 official to a level 2. I was then asked to line judge the open adult nationals in Phoenix. That was HUGE! I worked matches with TEAM USA! The speed and tempo of those matches were unreal! Here is a picture of me working one of the matches. This was actually the final championship match. This picture was taken by a professional and it was on the USAV website for all to see. I'm famous! Hahaha!

Look at me getting "low" to see every angle of the play! Oh yeah baby!!!!

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The next week was Girl's Camp at Camp LoMia. I love going to Camp LoMia! I secretly wish to have a cabin there one day just because being there makes me so happy. I went up on a stake level this year and it was an amazing experience! I met so many amazing women and had a blast staying up late and talking and laughing until I cried my eyes out. I went up with the Junior Staffers. My girls were amazing! I always have the best experiences up at camp and I'm so thankful that I get the opportunity to go every year somehow!

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While at Girl's Camp, I had to leave to drive back for my 10 year High School reunion. YES PEOPLE......I'm THAT old! Awwwww! I left for the night and went back to camp the next day. The turn out at the reunion was very poor but I still got to see some great friends of mine that I hadn't seen in a long time. Case in point below......HALEY STEWART!!! Love that girl! Hadn't seen her since High School. Tausha and Jodi I see all the time, but it was still fun to hang out with them there!

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Between my crazy schedule last month, I decided it was time to super clean and gut out our computer room closet! That thing is a DISASTER! As I was cleaning, I came across an old shoe box full of pictures from my childhood. It was awesome to see these pictures! Here are a few of them I found and can't help but post them...
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This one isn't from my childhood but it is our engagement picture. I can't believe how dark David's hair is! NO GRAYS! YAY!!!!! Hahahaha!

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And below is a LOVELY picture of me in one of my many many dance costumes. My Mom had all of us girls in dance for years! This was my "famous" Baby Face dance that my sisters used to tease me about. Gotta love that costume though!

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Here is an AWESOME picture of the Montez crew! We are dang good lookin!

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I had my first garage sale a couple weeks ago! It was interesting but a success! We didn't have that much to sell, but with what we had we ended up making $160!!! Vacation money baby! Woo hoo!

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Also between all the business of this past month, Kylee was able to have friends over and play play play! Here is a state-of-the-art fort made by Cole and herself. They did this all by themselves too! They are GENIOUSES! Hahaah!

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I was having blackberry issues so we took a family trip to T-Mobile a couple weeks ago. This was just a cute picture that I took of Kylee and decided it was "post-worthy"!

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Let's see......moving on.....2 weeks ago I helped run the Queen Creek Bulldog volleyball camp. I had 20 kids on my court from age 10 up to 14. They were cute as usual and they improved so much! So proud of them! They worked hard! I'm getting more and more excited to coach again after taking a year off.

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This past week (just ended yesterday) I was in Phoenix every day.....5 days in a row....for the Festival volleyball tournament. It's a huge tournament held at the end of the club season. I had a couple teams from my club enter and it was great to see them there, but I was there for officiating purposes. I worked 31 matches in all! My legs felt like they were going to fall off. I was gone from 6am until 9pm everyday. I now know what it feels like to be a working Mom and I am so thankful to have a hard-working husband who sacrifices so much so that I can stay at home with Kylee and our future children. I'm also so thankful to have a part-time job where I can help bring in some money!

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Here is a shot of the main playing area at the Pheonix Convention Center. There were over 65 courts in all with over 1,000 teams! It was crazy insane and such a cool experience!

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I got to work the 17's final at the US Airways Center. That was such an amazing experience. Out of the 200+ officials that were there this week, I got chosen to work one of the finals! That's huge and one of the many amazing opportunities that I was talking about that I'm getting. Coaching is my passion, but I just happen to be good at officiating (and the money is great) so I will keep on going with it! Anything that keeps me involved with the game makes me happy!

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So that was my June! CRAZY RIGHT?! My July is busy but it's all about the fun and not so much about the work work work. In two weeks we leave for our long-awaited beach house (10 day) vacation in New Port with my family. I can't wait!!! We are taking Kylee to Disneyland for an early birthday present! So excited for that! The last week of July, school starts and therefore so does volleyball! I'm coaching at Queen Creek and I am getting more and more excited for the girls! I have some great ones coming up and some fun ones returning. It should be a great season!

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And the BEST news of all...........WE ARE OFFICIALLY CERTIFIED TO BE ADOPTIVE PARENTS! Woo hoo! We just got our certificate today in the mail. We are so excited. I've been busy all day posting our information on a couple different websites. Please remember to keep us in mind if you hear of anyone that is looking to place or is considering adoption. We are praying that this process won't take as long as our infertility struggle. We are SO ready to have a sweet precious baby join our family at last. Keep us in your prayers please!

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LIFE IS GOOD......and busy!