When We’re Helping, We’re Happy!

Our family had the opportunity to go clean the church on Saturday.

We talked to the kids about service and how happy you feel when

you work together and do service for others.

They were excited and great little helpers.

{K} was able to use this experience for one of his Faith in God requirements which was very exciting.

Everything is soooo much better and fun when next to my companion.

He kept me smiling and laughing all morning. Such a cutie!

looking good babe!

{K} is a great window cleaner. I'm going to have to keep that in mind for our home.

{B} was happy as can be an kept right up with us.

She LOVES to work and despite her independence she does quite well.

We did it!!! Now it's time for donuts. We went to Krispy Kreme after.

On the way we talked about how good we felt inside.

We are excited to go see our beautiful cleaned church tomorrow.

It was great for the kids to stop and think about how somebody always works hard

to keep the church clean and we need to make sure we do our part too.

I'm so glad for this opportunity we had to serve and teach. I loved the nice tone it set for our day too.

No eating cake!

So Becca has been telling me the last few days she wants cake. I haven’t had the chance to make any, but she keeps asking. Well today we were playing “kitchen” in her room and I started to eat my pretend food. I said it was so yummy and now I was going to eat cake. She got this horrified upset look, put her hands on her hips and said “NOOOO Mommy, we don’t eat cake” I was a little confused and said “I do…I love cake”. Becca more insistently said…”It’s not nice to eat my cousin...it hurts” ha ha ha ha ha…Oh do you mean Kate…Your cousin Kate! I asked. “Yes Mommy, we don’t eat “cake” she niiiiice”! Then she once again asked for “cake” so we went and pulled out the scrapbooks. We miss you cousin Kate!

smartie pants

I went to parent teacher conference for the boys today, and I couldn't be more proud of them.

{J}'s teacher said that he is doing great especially with spelling and reading. He is in the accelerated reading class and has got a better grasp on the vocabulary than any other student. She often has him tell the class the meanings of a word because he is the only one who knows it. Let me tell you I could not stop smiling while listening to her go on and on about our little guy. I'm very proud of {J} and the wonderful student that he is.

{K} too is in the advanced reading classs. When tested he is reading way above his grade level. His teacher told me she wants him to start reading more non-fiction books as he has a really strong comprehension level. He is also doing very well in math. She said he loved by all the kids and will not allow anyone to be picked on or left out. Again, I was very happy to hear all the good things about {K} and am so glad to have such good hard working little students in our home.

We took the kids to McDonalds to celebrate all of their hard work and because they have the chipmunk toys and they boys have been begging us to go. What better excuse right?!

Keep up the great work boys!

my girl

I thought this was pretty funny. I asked {B} to go pick 3 markers to draw her cousin a picture with for his birthday. After digging around in the bucket for a minute she came back with her 3 carefully picked markers...

All of which were purple. I guess maybe pink isn't her favorite color after all.

Now that the boys are back in school {B} and I have been doing "mommy school" again. I love this little time we set aside each day. This day I got out animal shaped sponges I found at the dollar store and let her dip the sponges in water.

then squish all the water out. She loved this and played with it FOREVER!!!

the next day she practiced scooping a pom pom out of a can with her spoon

and had to balance it on the spoon over to daddy and put it in his bucket.

you could tell she was very proud of herself and she beamed when Daddy would cheer excitedly for her.

p.s.when I went to do her hair she insisted on doing it herself.

This was so hard for me to let happen, but we didn't have anywhere to be so why not right?!

Happy New Year

Wow...where did 2009 go? I am excited for the new year and all that I hope to accomplish. One of our family goals is to memeorize the Family Proclamation. I am making a little scrapbook of each paragraph to help us along. If you'd like to take a peek click here

We had fun ringing the new year. All three kids were bound and determined to stay up all night. They started of strong...here is little {B} watching dora with her darling dora pillow Amy made and her for Christmas.

She loves it!!!

We ordered pizza and then the boys decided to build the awesome Erector set they got for Christmas from the Fonnesbeck side of the family.

can you believe it they even read the instructions. hee hee

I loved how they all worked together and had so much fun figuring it all out.

at this point 10:00 p.m. {B} zonked out.
I'm amazed at how late she was able to make it, that's waaaay past her bedtime.

Then we all enjoyed the new Wii game {K} bought with his birthday money from Grandma/pa Moody and Grandma Kiki. He was so sweet. He bought his game and had some left over. Guess what he bought...a lemonade for me. (In case you didn't know lemonade is my all time FAVORITE drink) I thought that was just so tender. He's is a very thoughtful little guy.

About 10:45 he crashed.

but this kid on the other hand was wired. He kept saying "I'm definately staying up til "bednight" ha ha. It was just so cute I didn't have it in me to tell him it's actually said midnight. (I noticed later in the night that Ry corrected him though, oh well) He's such a silly little energizer bunny.

he made it and these two had fun being silly and making lots of noise.

We tried to wake up {K} but he didn't even budge.

{J} got covered pretty good with silly string. So did I for that matter.

Ry was just to fast for us, but we did get him a little bit. So fun!!!

It was a wonderful start to what I'm sure will end up being a wonderful year.

happy new year

Not so little anymore

I can not believe it, but it's true...Our little {K} is 9 years old.

here are some fun facts about you right now:
*you have an incredible imagination that just doesn't quit
*your siblings look up to you and you can make any situation exciting
*you love love LOVE to collect things
*you are quite the artist, and love to do anything artistic...plus you are quite good at it too!

*you love anything starwars.
*you are so sweet to your little sister, and she ADORES you.
*you are very compassionate and always try to make sure no one is leftout or mistreated.

*you already at such a young age have such a great grasp of the Gospel and you strengthen my tesimony.

*you are musically gifted. You picked up on the piano right away and I love to hear all of the songs that you have memorized randomly through out the day.

For every Birthday we hang up this banner that I made,

I always hang up random pictures of the childs life after they have gone to bed. The kids loves waking up to see their b-day wall.

Ry had to work on K's birthday so we got to celebrate for two days this year. {K} requested dads yummy eggs (scrambled eggs, they are devine)

after breakfast it was time to open presents.

I'm pretty sure his favorite present was the "AWESOME" sweatshirt from Aunt Christy. He as worn it for two days straight. Thanks Clements.

{K} has been asking me for quite some time to make him a blanket. So I made my first denim/flannel rag quilt. He LOVED it. He was so excited and I couldn't have asked for a better reaction. What a cutie!

All in all I think he had a great day. I let him pick one friend to spend the day with. He and his buddy had a blast using all of the new Christmas and Birthday toys. Thank you everyone for all the the gifts, cards money and phone calls. {he talked to Aunt Christy for over 30 minutes} I just love this picture of him on the phone. So cute!

The day after {K}'s birthday Ry was off so we did the cake and icecream thing. Ry baked the cake and the kids and I decorated it. Don't you love the part that {B} dumped the sprinkles? {K} picked taco's for dinner and he got a couple of more phone calls through out the day. All in all I think he had a great 9th birthday.

I really can't wait to see who you grow into. You are so special and I know you will do great things through out your life.

happy birthday son!

A Very Merry Christmas

Christmas this year was wonderful.

For the first time in 5 years Ry had both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off.

It was so nice to be all together in our own little family.

Just like in years past an elf left some new pj's at our door, rang the doorbell and ran away.

We all got in our jammies and enjoyed our traditional

Christmas Eve buffet style dinner and watched a new Christmas movie.

I just loved the excitement in our home.

The kids were darling and so much fun to watch.

After they finally fell asleep Santa did indeed find us.

I'd say all three kids were definately on the nice list.
{B}'s main gift was a set of princess shoes.
She also got a stocking full of anything princess you could think of.
She was adorable and so excited about it all.

{K}'s main gift was an ipod and wii games and controllers.

{J}'s main gift was his own digital camera.
The kids got talent in photography for sure.
He also got as many Ben 10 things as Santa could get a hold of.

I just loved watching their reactions. They were all SO cute!
Ry's main gift was an itouch and
I got the nikkon 3000D that I've been drooling over.

Next it was time to rip open all the presents.

We loved them all. Thanks to those who spoiled us. We appreciate your thoughtfulness.

I am definitely use to AZ weather. Although snow is fun at Christmas

I love the fact that we were able to go out and use some of our fun toys right away.

Santa brought Ry and the kids each their own glove and a bat and ball to share.

We enjoyed a fun game of baseball

and then had a blast using the 4 huge nerf guns my brother gave us.

After playing for a while I put the ham in the oven and we headed over to the theater to catch a movie.

Then we came home and had a yummy ham and potato dinner. We had so much fun. I am sad it's over already, but grateful we were able to have our daddy for the whole 2 days.

This year I tried extra hard to make sure we had a meaningful Christmas. Every day this month we have had an activity to help us remember the true spirit of love and service that Christmas is all about. We have had many tender moments and talks about how we felt when we did some of the things we did.

I just love this time of year!

Merry Christmas!!!