February 2016

Here are a few pictures and highlights from February.  

- We found a little Yorkie on our property.  Ella and Abby wanted to keep it but we just took it back to the owners.  Abby tells everyone that "Toby died and went to an angel".  She never knew Toby on this earth but she sure talks about him a lot

- Abby is still napping.  She tells me she is tried and brings me a book to read to her.  She crawled in my bed the other day for a nap and put on my cute eye covers.  

- Ella and Journey dress up Abby all the time.  Lipstick, hair and clothes.  Abby loves it.  

- I have the same picture of Ella wearing those boots when she was little.  One day I will find that pictures and put it here.  

- Ella is doing gymnastics.  Its amazing to see her soar.  She loves it so much. She pushes herself hard.  She is improving so fast.  ...well... she practices all day every day.  She is always doing a flip or cartwheel or something EVERYWHERE!

 

- Darren has still been riding a lot.  He runs, skies and bikes really early in the morning so he can be home with the family.

- Tyler and Ella started a rock climbing class.  They love it finally!  Abby climbs on the rock outside the store for her climbing practice.  It is one of those cool sports where they do hard things and they are surrounded by their peers.  That is some good peer pressure right there.

My friend Sarah and I have been to 3 or 4 temple open houses together.  This time at the Provo City Center temple we are asked at the end to come help with the booties they put on your feet.  In exchange we got a private tour of some of the rooms that they dont show on the tour.  It was neat.  Quiet peaceful and lots of neat details and stories he told us.  He also shared an amazing testimony at the end of the tour.  The next day I went back with Renee and Cousin Megan.  Lots of little kids but goo.

I still love where I live.  It brings a lot of peace to my life.  My backyard is wonderful and the mnts that are close by are priceless.  I took my kids up skiing a lot this year.  It is definitely my happy place up there on skis.

We had a great weekend with Corie and Nolans kids.  We have fun walks. We went to Schools to see the animals.  We played a lot.  And its really fun because all the kids are getting older and they play well and go to sleep well.

Jenny came down to do some house shopping.  We are all thrilled she is moving to Utah.  Darren is in the background (sleeping) supervising the boys games.  Tyler is a thinker.  He loves to read.  He loves games.  Teya and him have had a good friendship for years.  A bit of competition never hurts.  We also attended Beth and Ben's birthday bash.  The piñata was super fun.  Tyler asked me if we could slip away and go play the organ in the chapel.  Lots of fun to see him doing so well with music.  He has been playing prelude or postlude for several months in church.  I am so proud of him.

January is gone!

 (my backyard view)

 January was a rather long month.  Not in a bad way, just so busy and yet I am sure it will continue to get more busy as my kids get older.  We had the new year come in with some food and games at our house for new years.  We made our tree into a New Years Eve party tree.

And the next day we were on to working on the basement.  Darren is a finisher.  He gets going on a project and it consumes him until he finishes.  

We got some fun dress up costumes from cousins.  and had some fun phone visits with other cousins in Kentucky.  Corie and Nolan took our kids for 2 nights while Darren and I skied and worked on the basement.  Its a pretty sweet trade! We have been trying to ski once a week.  We took a Teya Snowder up and its amazing how fast she learned.  It was a whole lot easier teaching her then any 2 or 3 year old!  

 I am over the Webelos boys.  Tylers age.  Super fun.  I took the boys downtown to the Cathedral of the Madaline.  Besides seeing another church they listened to a beautiful organ concert.  Tyler keeps playing the organ.  I have started to be more serious about it too.  I have helped him play the prelude in church twice now.  Next week I told him I am playing all the way up the bishop standing up.  Which is hard because if he stands up to start the meeting in the middle of song, I have to skip down to the bottom and finish the song so he can start.  Lets see how it goes next week!

One cold weekend we had friends over.  The girls made me play dough fruit.  They also made a big fort.  Abby fell asleep in one day.  She still takes naps because she has been getting up at 6:00 AM when the kids get up and going to bed with them at 8:00 PM.

She thinks she is so big. She sat and "read" her scriptures the other day in the window.  We went to Airborne Trampoline place and she loved it.  But she thinks she's as big as the other kids.  She crashed the next day and didn't even make it to take the sacrament before she was fast asleep in my arms.  It was such a nice peaceful church meeting, holding my little sweetheart that is growing so big!