This is getting ridiculous. I love this blog! I love being able to look back on the things that our family has done, and the cute pictures of my children before they grew up so much, and the record that I kept of our family, once upon a time....
But things got crazy, I got behind, and every time I thought about catching up, it just seemed overwhelming. So I'm not going to catch up, at least for now. Maybe sometime in the future I'll feel motivated to go and catch up the two years or so that are missing. We'll see.
In the meantime, I'm just going to start over, record what we're doing, and at least I won't be three years behind a year from now!
Here are some highlights from the last couple of months-
The annual Imagine Learning tubing party at Soldier Hollow was awesome this year! It was cold, but not frigid, and we decided to check the girls out of school half an hour early so that we would have the maximum tubing time. It worked great! Eliza even went down with me. She was pretty excited on the way up, and stayed happy until we started down the hill, at which point she had a look of abject terror on her face. She was pretty traumatized! This picture was taken after she recovered a little. We stood and watched the other kids for a while, and eventually I convinced her to try it one more time, on the condition that I hold her hand. I did, but she didn't like it any better that time. We retired to the lodge for dinner. :)
On January 14th, Emma graduated from the NOVA program at school. She has really enjoyed the program this year, and was always excited when Officer Cannavo came to their class. These aren't quality pictures of the event- they are just a record of how I had to entertain Eliza through the 45 minutes that we were there...
Our big accomplishment so far this year is the work we've done on the playroom! We started with a large, hard-to-organize closet under the stairs, and are progressing to a normal size closet with a good size playroom for little kids! This picture is when everything was cut/drywalled/taped, etc., but before the finish carpentry and paint were done.
This is a shot of the inside with the paint and flooring done. I don't have a better picture of the outside yet, since it's on Tim's phone. We still need to finish touching up the trim, and painting a mural on the outside, and then I have some decoration and furnishing to do inside, but we have come a long way!
January 24th was a crazy Saturday! Price and Josh had an indoor track meet at BYU (where they did awesome!), Emma had the Alpine ballroom competition (that's what I got pictures of, since that's where I went!), Peter and Mary were moving to a townhome in Pleasant Grove, so the boys went to help them move in, and it was stake conference. Marathon day!
Here's Emma dancing with her partner- she is fun to watch. very elegant and sure of herself. Her partner is great, too! Their team received a gold medal, and so got to advance to the UVU competition.
The next day was the general session of stake conference. I realize we shouldn't be taking pictures in the chapel, but two hours of sitting with Eliza makes me desperate.
The feed from the stake center was spotty- a couple of times, they had someone get up to lead us in some songs, since the transmission had been lost. It was good, though, and we didn't miss too much!
The last few days of February were busy again- both with a boys' track meet at the Kearns Ice Oval (where Price ran 4:51;51 and Josh 4:53:53 in the miles- awesome!), and with Ethan's play at the jr. high- "Bye Bye Birdie". Ethan was a teen, a parent, a reporter, and maybe something else.... He was awesome! The junior high does a good job, and the kids were fun to watch!
Ethan is the reporter kneeling right in the front of this picture:
Here he's a parent, in pajamas, on the far right. Ethan had to grow his hair out for the play- it got pretty long on top so he could comb it back, and by the time he was done with the play, I was so ready to get it cut! He weights a little less now than he did then.
This has been a really mild winter- these were coming up in my front flower bed on February 4th. Crazy!
I somehow managed to take only one picture of the twins on their 17th birthday. Here it is:
Aren't they handsome? :) We got them a Wii U, in the hopes that they will invite friends over here once in a while instead of always hanging out at the houses that have the cool games!
These guys are amazing and wonderful, and I'm already anticipating missing them when they leave next year.
Valentine's day! Emma made a panda box. She was kind of in love with it- I found about 10 pictures on my phone.
Eliza at Smith's. This is her favorite place in town, and I have to think carefully before I take her there, because it's going to take a few minutes longer than I think while she sits in the zoo jeep.
Eliza's favorite part of every week: music and movement class with Meredith!
Annie's Utah pageant. Again, this is the only picture I took. Now that I am blogging again, I'll have to make sure I actually get good pictures once in awhile!
Just a random photo of the Battle Creek trail parking lot- on a Saturday in February! It was beautiful and warm, and I have never seen that many cars there, even in the summer!
Emma had her second ballroom competition yesterday, and Price and Josh spent the weekend in Pocatello at the Simplot meet. No pictures of that, I'm afraid.
Was that disjointed and rambling enough for you? But at least it's a start- I'll try to keep things up to date a little better so things stay organized. Wish me luck!
