Catching up

I have determined that I am never going to catch up unless I forget about posting pictures and just catch up with writing and then start from scratch. I want to backtrack a little bit though because I forgot a few things in October:

October 17, 2009 - My little niece McKinzie was baptized. What a sweet moment. I know of know other child with a sweeter, more pure heart than McKinzie. It was extra sweet because of all that she has been through the past couple of years. We are so grateful and blessed to have McKinzie with us still this day. I love her so much and am constantly amazed by her.

October 28, 2009 - Another amazing girl was baptized. Her name is Briana. She is 18 years old and joined the church all on her own. She has no support from her family and is one amazing girl. She will graduate this year and recently told me that she wants to be a seminary teacher. Wow! She amazes me with her testimony and her strength.

Ok, now on to December - What a fun, crazy, exhausting month. Filled with friends and family and lots, and lots of food. The youth got to do baptisms this month and it was a great experience. We were able to go really early in the morning. I love early morning things. It seems like the spirit is so much stronger at that time. And it was amazing as we walked outside the sun was low in the sky and it was beautiful. The sky was some amazing colors. The whole experience was very sweet.

Christmas was good. We kept things really low-key this year and I loved it. We were able to spend more of our time with friends and family and with good neighbors. One night we had a little block party on our street and closed off our street and watched the Polar Express and drank hot chocolate and had cookies.

We were supposed to leave the day after Christmas for Tommy's family's cabin; but after some coaxing from the kids, they convinced me to leave Christmas Day. This will probably not happen again unless I am planning on it and ready to go beforehand. I didn't love trying to clean up and leave for the cabin on Christmas day, but once we were there it was so fun. Of course everything wasn't in tiptop shape when we left and while we were gone our fire alarm started going off and wouldn't shut off. So, firemen had to break into our house and make sure everything was okay. Yep, in case you didn't know if there is dust on your fire alarms it makes them go off. That was fun.

January 2010- Danner had his first pinewood derby in January. Took the Youth on a Snow trip, went sledding up by Sunrise and stayed in one of the leader's cabins. We had such a good time.

Bridon and Danner started taking guitar lessons on the guitars that they got for Christmas. They are already doing such a good job and seem to love it so much. I am excited to see them learn so much so quickly and its nice to have some music in our home. I love music.

February - The beginning of February we had New Beginnings. We had a pageant theme. One of my leaders made sashes for all of the girls and they all dressed up and were amazing. One of my leaders sisters used to do pageants and we had her come talk to the girls. She was amazing. They each represented a value. Their sashes that they wore were the color of the value that they represented. It was such a sweet night.

Over Valentine's weekend Tommy took the boys to the cabin and gave me a weekend to myself. Wow, what a sweetheart. I have no idea why he is so sweet to me.

February/March 2010 - We went quading several times. The weather was so nice and we would take a quick 15 minute drive out to Tommy's Grandmas land and go riding. It had rained quite a bit so it was muddy and we went mud bogging. I wish i could post pictures of how muddy all the kids (and myself) got while we were out there. It was a blast. Then me and the boys went again over spring break with Tommy's parents and his sister Shellee and her family. I really love and appreciate when they take me with them on the outings when Tommy can't come. I love Tommy's family and we always have such a good time with them.

April 2010 - I loved Easter this year. It happened to fall on the first Sunday of April which is when we have General Conference. It is my favorite to sit and listen to the prophet and apostles speak on Easter Sunday. Since my dad was put in as a patriarch last year, he and my mom had tickets to go to Conference. So they were gone this Easter. My kids were a little bummed about that, but thought it was cool that they got to go Conference. That evening we were able to go to Tommy's parents. Tommy's mom had everyone do an egg toss with real eggs (not hard boiled), Kyler was playing. He was doing pretty good, and then one time they were getting pretty far away from each other and his partner tossed it and it cracked open right on his eye. Kyler freaked. It was hilarious.

On the 17th, we had Kyler's birthday party. This is actually Coleson's birthday, but since he is so little we decided we would just celebrate his early so that we could have Kyler's on Saturday. It was so funny because everyone kept saying, "Coleson is it your birthday today?" and Coleson would say, "I already had my birthday!" This was Kyler's first year for a party. We set up slip and slides at my moms and let the kids play in the water. A little pizza and a pinata and oh what a party!

Then the weekend of the 24th was Tommy's birthday. Thanks to Shelli, my brothers wife, for watching my kids for the night so that we could go out. That Sunday we all went to church and it was fast and testimony meeting because our ward was going to have Stake Conference the next week. Bridon got up and bore the sweetest testimony I have ever heard. It was pretty sweet because once I asked him why he never bears his testimony and he told me, "Mom, when I bear my testimony I want to say something that really means something to me." And he did. I still have people come and say what a sweet testimony it was. He told how he had been reading in the scriptures about how to find out if something is true or not and knew that he needed to pray about it. So that night after reading his scriptures, he prayed to know whether it was true and he said, "I couldn't stop smiling for the rest of the night." Wow, what an example he is to me.

Our time in April and May has been filled with getting Bridon to Basketball and Danner to Football twice a week and weekends full of games. Tommy took them Turkey Hunting over the weekend the 17th and 18th of April, but Bridon got sick and was throwing up so they came home early. I was kind of grateful though because then Tommy was able to help me with Kyler's birthday party.

This past weekend was Mother's Day weekend. Tommy and the boys definitely spoiled me. They made me breakfast in bed, let me do whatever I wanted to all day, gave me sweet gifts, and let me go to bed early. It was wonderful. Bridon even wrote some pretty sweet things on my car with one of those car markers. He put, "We are lucky to have you", "We love you" "Happy Mother's Day" I have the best boys in the world.