Family Home Evening

For a few weeks now we have been discussing The Family Proclamation. We felt with the way the world is going with legalizing gay marriage, the push for abortions and other such worldliness we needed to focus on what our family believes. We took each paragraph at a time and discussed it over several weeks. We read scriptures that correlated with what we were talking about. We discussed talks and testimonies born by our prophets and leaders about how important families are. We wanted to share our testimonies with our kids about our love for them and how important families are. It was also important to us that they know that not everyone is going to believe the same as we/they do. That's the greatness of free agency. Just because we dis agree with someone it doesn't mean that we treat that other person unfairly or mean. We can still be friends, we can still be respectful to one another. 

One of our first activities was building a sugar cube temple.

After all that's how families become a forever family!

The world is going to continue to demoralize the value of families. The world is trying to break families apart. To cause contention and rife between loved ones. I hope over these few weeks as we have discussed the importance and love of families that my children will remember our testimonies of our love for families. I hope they will use their agency to stand up for what is right even if it's not the popular thing.

Emily turns 9

 Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday dear Emily. Happy Birthday to you!

She's 9!

She's is our enthusiastic, silly drama queen.

She gets excited about the smallest pleasures in life. I hope she keeps that trait!

She loves animals. Real and pretend! I wouldn't be surprised if she grew up to be a Vet or work in a Vet's office.

As Fall has found us every girl needs a pair of fun boots.

Emily asked for an ice cream cake. 

Yummy!

Happy Birthday Love!

So glad you are apart of our family.

Favorite tv show....Chuck

Favorite movie...H2O

Favorite book....Fairy books

Favorite dinner...Lasagna

Favorite Color...Purple

Fall Sports

Tis the season for Fall sports.

This was Emily's 1st year playing volleyball! Her team consisted of 3rd-5th graders. 

 She loved it!

At practice she was able to serve the volleyball over the net. 

During games she got pretty close but never did get it over the net.

 They won a few games, they lost a few games but she had fun doing it.

This is Madelyn's 4th year playing volleyball. 

Last year was a joke and I was really hoping with her on an older league we would have more of a success. I guess success can be measured in many ways. Last year she was the oldest on her team and had the most experience. Her coach used her as an assistant. She didn't care for playing with kids who were several years younger with no experience. 

This year she played on the 6th-8th grade team. Her being in 6th grade made her one of the youngest. Her and two other players were the only ones with experience. Her coach this year had never played volleyball, had never coached volleyball and her 3 girls on the team had never played either. Needless to say they didn't win a single game. At the tournament they lost the 1st round.

 Although I don't think she learned anything skills wise she did make new friends. She was the best server on the team. During one game she served 5 serves in a row and then had to rotate because a player can't serve more than 5 serves in a row. She was pretty pumped she had done that.

As if 2 practices on different nights a week and 3-4 games each Wednesday night wasn't enough for our family Brayden also played Soccer.

He loves soccer and won't play anything else now.

It's kind of funny being this kid rarely runs and when he does he complains about it.

I guess all the running in soccer is different in his little mind. 

His favorite position to play is goalie.

He too won a few games and lost a few. He's a little sad that soccer is over and is anxiously waiting for it to start back up again. 

I on the other hand am glad that 4 afternoon/evenings have freed up with the Fall sports 

coming to an end. Next up will be basketball. 

A New School Year

Can't believe our oldest is in the 7th grade. 

Where did the time go???

This is Hunter's last year at the intermediate school. 

He doesn't know what he wants to be at the moment but he knows he wants to make lots of money!

He loves all sports, being outside and of course playing on his ipod and other electronics.  

Madelyn has left elementary school...sniff..sniff.

She is in 6th grade now.

She is going to be playing the flute and is quite excited to learn it.

She too loves to be outside riding her bike, playing night games with the neighborhood kids or reading a good book. She wants to be a dentist when she grows up.

Emily is in 3rd grade!

She is excited to know that 2 of her good friends are in her class again this year.

These kids have recently discovered the TV show called Chuck. They watch an episode or two every day on Netflix. Thanks to Chuck she wants to be a Spy when she grows up.

Brayden is in the 1st grade.

I have been told that his teacher this year is the best of the best. So happy we have a good teacher this year. This little guy has lost his 2 front teeth! 

My little Kylie.

She's 3 now and tries to be such a big girl like her older siblings.

Now that Brayden is in school all day I'm looking forward to spending some one on one time with this sweetie!

Peach Day's

This was our 1st year participating in Peach Day's this year. Both girls decided to enter their latest art projects. 

Madelyn drew and colored with charcoal the owl canvas picture to hang in her room. 

A few weeks ago for Activity Day's she made a 3D hand art. She was given a blue ribbon for her canvas picture and a red ribbon for her hand art.

Emily also drew a picture for her room.

She received a red ribbon for her canvas picture.

When her cousin Rachel Cox spent a few day's with us during the summer the girls made their own 3D hand art. She was awarded another red ribbon!

We had a good time wandering around and seeing what awesome artists we have in our area.

We stumbled across a booth passing out free popsicles! Found us a little bench to get out of the sun and enjoy are cool treat!

11 1/2 inches

Our dear Grandma Joy is fighting her 3rd battle with cancer. This go round she is going through chemo and another type of drug that specifically fights breast cancer. Within the 1st 2 weeks of chemo treatments she lost her hair and began wearing wigs. 

Madelyn for some time has been considering cutting her hair and donating it to someone like Locks of Love, a company that makes wigs for children who have lost their hair due to treatments that fight their disease. Grandma loosing her hair and wanting a wig was the final push this little gal needed. 

Madelyn does not like short hair! So she wanted to make sure that when it was time to donate her long locks she would still have hair to play with.  

Look how long!

 Our beautician said the minimal to cut and donate was 7-8 inches but they prefer 10. 

 Madelyn donated 11 1/2 inches.

That's a lot of hair! 

She was a bit nervous seeing what was no longer attached.

It's still past her shoulders and she can pull it into a pony tail. 

There are times we like the shortness and how quickly it can be done.   

We also miss the long locks and all the hair do's we use to do. She's glad she donated her hair to someone who needs it. Since her hair cut she has mentioned a couple of times that she's never going to cut her hair again!

Sheri

Several weeks ago my sister, Sheri, asked me to take her family pictures. 

 Taking them on bleachers was a cool idea but I'm still not sure I love it for a background. I feel like in each picture the bleachers are a different shade of blue and it kind of bugs me. Oh well.....

 

When we were done with bleacher shots we went out on the football field to play with the tires. 

 This was the best of the three kids together. Babies are so hard!

Grandpa's Work Party

A few weeks ago my dad's work threw a extended family work party at our Washington Rec Center. We got to so swimming, rock climbing and were fed dinner. 

Hunter was the first to climb to the top and ring the bell. 

Madelyn was the second!

Brayden was not the 3rd to reach the top and he almost didn't make it. But with Dad telling him what color to put his hand/foot on next he did it! He was the youngest by far that reached the top and rang the bell.  

He was fantastic! And oh so proud of himself when he came back down. 

He was awesome to watch!

After the rock climbing we played in the water.

When Daddy and Kylie got comfortable with the smaller slide they made their way 

to the biggest one.

She loved it!

They went over and over and over.

Brayden eventually went down by himself but he had Aunt Hanna, Daddy and Uncle Jonathan go with him at the beginning. 

Hunter's favorite way was to go head first.

Emily loved the slide too.

I missed taking pictures of Madelyn in the pool. She was too busy playing with her cousin Carlaya. 

Thanks Grandpa for a fun evening. 

Summer Carnival Cruise

In Nov. 2014 Kory and I decided that we were going to do something big for our anniversary during the upcoming Spring to celebrate our 13 years together. Near Thanksgiving our friends, the Schultz Family came for a visit. They mentioned that they were planning their first ever cruise and invited us along. We decided we could post pone our spring celebration and do it that summer instead.

We booked with Carnival and could hardly contain our excitement for our 4 day/3 night cruise to Catalina Island and Ensenada Mexico. 

Here we are waiting to pull out of the dock on our 1st day. 

Every night we tried something we wouldn't normally eat.

We tried alligator fritters, tasted like a meat ball.  

This was a real thin, thin slice of tuna. Kory does not like fish. When this was brought out he wasn't to keen on trying it. It looked raw but in the end he ate it all. Wasn't too bad he said. 

Our 1st real day we spent in Catalina.

Along with the Schults, Kevins brother and his wife came too. 

It was fun having the 6 of us together.

What our ship looked like while we were on the island.

Kory and I decided to try parasailing. Something we had never done before. After seeing many failed attempts and mostly face crashing on you tube I wasn't too sure about this. 

It was so much fun! So glad we did it. It was so peaceful. There was no jerking and no swerving. We were let up into the air very slowly and the same when we brought back down. Would definitely do that again.  

Formal Night. 

I took advantage and ordered the lobster tail. So tasty! I loved it!

Tried to take a picture at sunset. It was a little breezy out on the dock that night. 

Our 2nd full day we took a buss out to the blow-hole in Ensenada.

Love that I captured the rainbow after a "blow".

Next to the blow hole was a market that we were able to walk around. Most shops carried the same items but was presented in a different way. It was a little disappointing that most items were no longer made in Mexico, they weren't authentic. It was like the shops had all ordered from an Oriental Trading like place and then tried to sell to the tourists. We did eat some fresh carne asada tacos. Everything was fresh! They cooked the meat in front of  you while watching. Even the tortilla's were fresh. They tasted so good!  

Our 3rd day was spent at Sea. We spent the day wandering around. We spent a little time watching an art auction. Some of those paintings looked like Brayden had drawn them. The starting bids were over $10,000. Some of the other paintings looked nice but I still wouldn't pay hundreds of dollars for them. There was a Harry Potter trivia game that we tried to play but I failed miserably at. We watched the Star Wars trivia and only knew one of the answers. It was a good relaxing day. 

The next morning we got up and started packing our bags. We were off the ship by 9 am and began our trip home. We had a wonderful time with friends and being able to spend time with just the two of us. Can't wait to do it again.