High 5 Grandma!!

On Monday, Jake and the kiddos and I drove to Provo to be at my Mother-in-Law's place of work. She is a teacher at an elementary school and she works with Special Education.
One of the mother's of the students nominated Lori (mom-in-law) for the KSL High 5 Award and she won.
We were able to be there with other family members to witness the surprise and KSL 5 news camera crew was there.
She had no idea she won this award so it was neat to see her reaction. She got 3 hours at a certain day spa as her gift. She is a neat woman who raised 12 children of her own and now is helping many special children at her school.
Good Job Lori!!
By the way, we will be on the news on Friday AM at around 6:30am. I should expect you all to be up and watching it. :)
Okay, I'm totally recording it and watching it later.

Chippity Chop Chop

Yep, I wanted different............whoops! I went way shorter than planned!
I'm glad hair grows back:) I like it though.


Back view.

This one is for my sister.

Jake posing with my new purse. I was sick of carrying a diaper bag as my purse so I got a large purse.

Bored.

I'm getting bored and I don't want to get rusty with my picture taking................so, anyone with a little baby I can photograph for fun? Breck is getting tired of me in her face.
You will get the cd of pics too:)
I'll take the first two comments of who might want to come over soon! So soon, I mean tomorrow morning around 10:30am or 11. Then Monday or Tuesday too. If you have any cute hats or bows or whatever for the baby, bring them too.
Not that I'm a professional or anything, but I love to keep on shooting my camera.
Okay, that is all for now:) I'll probably do it again though. It is winter........

Warning: Post for Laker Fans, Kobe Fans, or anyone with a sense of humor

This is a funny commercial by Nike.
Kobe is an actor. hahahaha. I laughed when i saw this. Note: funny lines throughout, not-real horse, bubble man, dummy.....

Click Here

Most mornings.....

I get to see this out my car window when I drive my boys to school. This was today. :)

Wow! A lot of pictures.

We drove down to CA the day after Christmas. I think I will need a long break before doing that drive again. We went twice within about 30 days. That is a lot of driving. While we were down, we also did a lot of driving too. My brother lives about an hour away from my Mom's and we went out there 3 times. Then we drove to my grandparents home in San Luis Obispo, 4.5 hours away from Mom's. It was worth it though.

Here's a run down of our trip:

We went to a paddle out for our good friend who passed away a few months ago. If you are not familiar with a paddle out, let me explain. Tyler wanted his ashes to be spread over the ocean, he grew up surfing a ton so this was his wish. The paddle out was a short memorial and then many people(friends and family) paddled out into the ocean with the family to spread the ashes.

I had never been to one but it was quite neat to watch. I did not paddle out because I had a cold, and I do not own a wet suit or a surf board. I wish I did though.



Here is a cool pic of some of the group paddling out. They probably went about 200 yds. out.

Here are all of those whole paddled out. They sat on their boards in a circle. It looked cool from the shore.

These are the hands of our friends' sweet mother. She is a fabulous lady.

The boards were set up like this before the paddle out. These were a few.

It was a nice memorial. I'm glad I was able to be there for it.



It was fun to see my girls I grew up with. I love them!


It was great to see my little brother too. He is now up at BYU near yours truly! Finally!

Sea anenome. We love to go to the tide pools at Laguna Beach's Crescent Bay.

Some hot guy I saw at the beach:)

Pretty flower with blurry beach behind it:)

On New Year's Day, Jake, Me, the kids and my Mom all drove up the coast to visit my grandparents in San Luis Obispo (SLO). On the way, we stopped in Santa Barbara, one of the prettiest places I have ever seen. There was a super cool park we stopped at to let the kids play.

My Grandparents. Going on 64 years of marriage!

My kids Great Grandparents:) It was so fun to see them.

We went to Cal Poly SLO to see the animals. (used to do this as a kid). P.U.!!

Jake got flattened by a tumbleweed there. It was a little scary. He is ok though.

We drove out to Morro Bay and saw otters swimming in the bay.

Jake fed a wild squirrel some Taco Bell. He really liked the 7 layer burrito:)

Pretty but stormy Morro Bay.

The seagulls wanted a taste of Taco Bell too. They were all over our car and almost flew in the window.

It was a fun trip.

Wow, that is a lot of pictures I just put on. Haha.

Family Picture's

While in CA, we got the whole fam damily together for a picture.  It has been a long time since we have done this.  Kelly, a friend of ours, is a fabulous photographer and was so kind to put up with us.   Here are some pics below:

The guys.  Jake, Jay(bro), Jon, Andy(bro), Jeff(bro) and Dave.

My family.

The girls.  Shawna, Me, Mom, Robyn(sis) and Melinda(sis).

Breck wouldn't smile for a single picture.  At least she didn't cry, she just stared in the right direction.  hahahaha.

This is my Mom and all of my brother's and sister's and their families.  

I am the oldest of 6 kids in my family.  It was fun to finally get a picture of all of us now that my little brother is home from the mission.

For those of you who know my family..........you know about the famous "lean" my brother's like to do.  This is Jeff and Andy performing it well.

I love my family!

And we're off...............

again. I know, we just went to CA. I can't stay away.
It is dumping snow outside and I hope we make it out of here:) Hahaha!
It could be interesting...........
I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!!
We did. I'm excited to visit some of you over this next week.
I'll post picture's when we come back.

Shoot me an email.

If you didn't know, I'm taking picture's! I'm keeping somewhat busy with it. I love it!
I'm not very expensive because I'm still starting out. If anyone is interested in having their pics taken of them, babies, kids, families, etc....(not sure what else there is) email me at danawillis@gmail.com

Tell me what your needing and I will tell you the price. You will get a cd of picture's. I know it is winter and it is hard to get the kiddos to be happy in the freezing cold, but I can take picture's of babies most days up in my room where the light is good.

Just keep me in mind:)
If you haven't seen my photoblog, go check it out.
There is a link to the right underneath "All About Me".
Happy Holiday's!!

Is it worth $7 ???

No, but I had a $2 off coupon to present and that made it worth it.


We have a family tradition to go to Thanksgiving Point to see the lights. We get to drive around the route they make and look at lights. Is it super exciting? Not really, but it's tradition gosh darn it! We could have gotten out at the end and seen two of Santa's LIVE reindeer, but it was really cold last night.

Now you don't have to go because you just saw the whole thing.........just kidding. This is most of it:)

I like poinsetta plants so I added this one for fun.

Simply Bliss Boutique

If you have any Christmas shopping left, you should swing by this boutique that one of my friends is putting on.


Here it is:




It is pretty close too. Trolley Square. Then you can go eat at the Old Spaghetti Factory because it is yummy. :)
Also, Saturday is open until 7pm now, not 4.

Whoops-a-Daisy.

Okay, I wanted to change my dumb blog background/template for the holiday's and it was not working. I don't know what to do. I did everything according to instruction on those stupid websites and it still would not work. So then I have Jake work on it for a minute last night and the page came that said, "All your widgets will be deleted.....blah blah blah" and I said it's ok because it won't delete them. Well, it did. I clicked on the same button earlier and it did not delete but now it is all deleted. SO! I have been trying to get all of my friends blog addresses updated again so if you are missing from my list and are offended, please give me your address as a comment so I can add it. Eventually, I will remember and update, but for now......I'm drawing a blank!
Thanks! Is there anyone out there who is really good at changing backgrounds and stuff because I still don't really like the one I have now. It was a guinea pig template that happened to work.
Do you like the snow? heehee. Jake put that on.

Fun in CA.

Okay. We are road trip happy! We just did the whole drive for Thanksgiving and we are going again in about 22 days or so. We are nuts, I know. I hope I'm more used to the idea of driving the twelve hours each way again then. HA! I can't get enough of my family though. We love to go and just hang out with eveyone. We don't have to do the Disneyland thing every time. The beach is FREE and we can go to the tide pools or whatever. The kids love to play in the sand and get their feet wet, even if the water is a cool 55 degrees in December.

It is nice to just be away from "life", not that it is bad or anything but, well, you know!

I saw "TWILIGHT" the day before we left for CA too. I loved it! I'm not die hard into the series but I have read them. I went into the theatre expecting an awesome, teen romance, cheezy stunts, vampire movie and I got it! I loved it! I could totally see it again too:)

Edward has grown on me too. He is cute! I like his car too.

Anyway, I just wanted to change my post........finally. Sorry about the Halloween pictures that sat there forever.

I also got to see my little brother who just came home from the mish! He looks great! It was fun to hang out with him. He is pictured below.

Breck at a lake near my sister's house.

My brother Jay.

Jonah and Gavin.

My Mom and Breck.

Me and Jake.

Halloween....better late than never!

Well, Halloween came and went quickly. As you can see, we thought long and hard about the boys costume's. I'm just glad they didn't care about it all that much. haha.
Breck was a kitty.
The best part about it was that she would put it on and walk around the house howling like a ghost and say,"Ooooooooo....I'm a halloween costroom!" She thought she was pretty scary:)
I didn't take too many pics of the costumes, surprisingly!

Jeffrey-Strong and True

Well, my brother Jeff is quite the guy. He is 30, tall and quite muscular. He has his opinion's and is always ready to share them with others. Although many of us supported Prop 8 in CA, we did not go to the lengths my brother did.
After Prop 8 passed, there still were many protesters on different corners of CA. My brother felt like he should go protest against the protesters in Huntington Beach.
There was a reporter there and he asked my brother a few questions about what he was doing.
Here is the video:

This one goes out to the one I love...

A very Happy Birthday to the most important person in my life and the center of my universe.

You are beautiful. You are sexy. You are an amazing wife. You are a wonderful mother. You are so fun. You make life so much better for me and the kids. We are very blessed to have you in our lives.

Well now you are 29 (wink wink). Crazy, huh?

Happy Birthday, babe.

I love you forever.

- Jake

Crummy outside........

........but in my mind, this will be the weather today:)


If anybody knows me well, they would know that one of my favorite things in the world are palm trees. I love the tall slender palms, or the short stubby palms, all of them! (This is why I have a plam tree sticker on my car:)
This is San Clemente, CA. The beach I grew up going to every week. It is free and it is therapy for everyone. The smells, the sounds, the breeze, the temperatures..................you get it!

Is that Michael Phelps on the bass guitar?

Hahahaha! I saw this and laughed a little.
I wonder if these guys really do play it all of the time. I never have........yet.
Check out this brief commercial.




Kind of cheesy but I love Kobe. I know most of YOU do. heehee.