Luke on his long board!

Friday, February 13, 2015

I got a shot of Luke trying out his long board that he got for his birthday (although it is a little blurry!):

More beautiful skies!

Monday, February 9, 2015
Sunrise

Friday, February 13, 2015
Sunset

MJ talk

My parents have a lot of bird feeders at their house that they keep in their backyard. One morning in the spring the birds were being really noisy outside and I said to MJ, "Do you hear the birds?"  She paused for a moment to listen to them and then she said, "Yes, should I tell them the food is at Grandma's house?"  (It was the funniest thing!)

One night MJ was having a hard time actually going to bed and going to sleep. This is the conversation that we had:
MJ: I can't go to sleep.

Me: Why not?

MJ: Because my arm is too exhausted to pull my blankets up.


One evening we had french toast for dinner and while tucking her into bed MJ said, "I wish I could have french toast everyday... because I love french toast."

Luke is 14!

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Luke turned 14 today and was ordained to the office of Teacher in the Aaronic Priesthood. Afterwards we had family over to celebrate with dinner and cake and ice cream.

We have a new driver!!

Friday, January 23, 2015

We have a rule in our family that the girls need to earn their YW Personal Progress medallion before they can get their driver's license. So M&M hasn't been terribly motivated lately to get her license but we have gradually been pushing her more and more and told her that if she earned it before her senior year of high school we would try and get a 3rd car for the family so that she can drive it to school and not have to be driven to and from school every day.

So on January 23 - almost 6 months after she turned 16 - she finally finished everything up and since there was no school that day because it was the end of the semester, I took her to the DMV to get her license.

Here are a couple of pictures of her on Saturday, driving solo for the first time! Unfortunately she has not figured out how to drive a stick shift yet so the van is the only car she can drive right now...

Christmas Decorations

Here are some of the Christmas decorations I had around the house this past year:

These are the gifts I made for my primary class.

The kids and I made these snowflakes for our window out of coffee filters from the dollar store. They turned out really cute and the girls loved hanging them in the window!

School Spelling Bee

Friday, January 23, 2015

Kitty was one of the students chosen from her class to participate in the school spelling bee. She did a good job of studying for it on her own at home. She was one of the younger students in the spelling bee and I could tell she was pretty nervous! She ended up missing her first word but was saved because the student after her missed it as well so she was able to get a new word which she spelled correctly. She ended up being one of he final 10 but then got out on the first round as a final 10. I'm not quite sure that they did all of the procedures correctly for the spelling bee... There were a lot of misspelled words and for a while they kept going back and forth between 2 students at a time because they were both misspelling the words. I think it was a good experience for Kitty and she enjoyed being up there representing her class.

Winter Klondike Scout Camp

January 16-17, 2015

A lot of the presents that DH got for Christmas this year were warm weather gear so that he could go with the scouts on their winter Klondike camp out in January. He was not super excited about it but I knew that if he had the right gear it would make the experience a little less painful for him! :)

They left on Friday afternoon and setup camp and then there were some activities that the boys participated in on Saturday morning before they left for home. Both DH and Luke survived the experience and no one froze. DH ended up sleeping in our van because they had more boys than they had anticipated and were short a tent. (And if I have any of these details incorrect, hopefully DH or Luke will correct me!)

Here are a few pictures that DH took:

New Year's Eve 2014

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

My parents came over to ring in the new year with us. My sister and her family were invited as well but they had some sick family members so they decided not to come. We worked on some puzzles and played some games.

I bought some noise makers for the kids and when I went to open up the package to hand them out, I noticed that apparently they are only for ages 14 and up! Sorry kids I guess those things are just too dangerous for you to use - maybe when you are a little older! ;D

Christmas Snow!

Friday, December 26

We got some snow on Christmas Day so the kids went sledding the next day. We have a little bit of a hill on the side of the house so the girls went sledding there and then I took them to the neighborhood park a little later in the day for some more sledding. These pictures are all from our yard because I went sledding with them at the park and I didn't want to bring the camera with me.

Christmas Eve 2014

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Since we didn't have my family over for our Christmas Eve celebration, we ended up decorating our Christmas cookies and reading the nativity story from the scriptures. Then the kids opened up their Christmas pajamas.

M&M is trying to be a good sport and participate but she really wasn't feeling well!