5 year old prayers

Ryker at family prayer Sunday morning before church:  “We thank thee that Ami and Mia can record the new Phineas and Ferb movie for us since we don’t have TV for 10 more days.”
“We thank thee that I can get $20 somehow and that it will show up at my house.”
Ryker Sunday night when he and I were out on the back deck.  It started to rain and we have been praying for rain for the last couple of weeks.  Ryker shouted, “Thank you God for the rain!”
We love his prayers and how honest and sincere they are.
THANK YOU GOD FOR 5 YEAR OLD PRAYERS!!

Spring Break 2011-Friends

A trip to Utah isn't complete without a few visits to friends. One family we always try to catch up with is the Johnston Family. Shawn and I have known them since before we were dating. We love them and their 4 boys so much but we do have one problem with them....They are OHIO STATE FANS!! So when we planned this trip and we found out the Johnstons would be in Hawaii while we were in Utah we decided to pay them a visit anyway and let them know we had been there.

You will see our handiwork below. The flags I made the night before we left on our trip. Their house conveniently had nails already in place for us to hang the two flags. There are only two things I regret about this adventure: 1) Not taking pictures of all the neighbors who came out to see what we were doing while trying to look like they were doing something important. 2) Not being able to be there when they drove up to their house. One last thing....GO BLUE!!

The other friends we always visit are the Court Family. We also have known them from when we were all dating and engaged and then married. Lots of fun stories to share. We love seeing them and feel like it was just yesterday that we were on the softball field together. On this night be met them at a restaurant maybe in Alpine. It didn't really matter what we ate, we were just glad to see them.

Spring Break 2011-Utah County

BYU Bowling Alley-Shawn was the lucky winner that day	Justin with Jimmer outside of the BYU Library.
Cousin Time	Kennedy and Dezi

This part of our spring break took us to Utah County where we toured BYU for our upcoming college student, visited cousins, and took in some of the local attractions.  Kennedy loved having girl cousins to play with and of course the boys are always in heaven with their cousins!

Spring Break 2011- Skiing/Snowboarding

It's been a long time...since I last posted, so here it is. For spring break this year we went Skiing/Snowboarding at Beaver Mountain in Logan, Utah. We also stayed with our Short Cousins, Maughan Cousins and saw our Bibo cousins. We had so much fun. Skiing came naturally to everyone one of our kids. It took me a few times down the mountain before I felt comfortable but it came back faster than I thought. Shawn of course was a natural as well. The older 2 boys had so much fun that we didn't even see them until the end of the day (thus the reason for no pictures!) I was so impressed with Ryker and Kennedy who had no fear and just went for it. We will definitely do this again!

TIME

Where has all my time gone? It was months ago that I last posted. A new year has come and gone and we are already into February. I would like to say that one of my new years goals is to keep this updated but I am not sure that would be honest. You see as my oldest is almost 17 and going to be a senior in high school I am realizing that I don't have much more time with him in my home. So I am trying to choose how I spend my time and making sure that the time I do have with my kids is worthwhile and meaningful.

So instead of sitting on the computer writing on my blog you might find me at the high school helping out, watching basketball games and track meets. You might also find me sitting in front of the TV with my teenagers watching American Idol, ICarly, or Good Luck Charlie....maybe even Wizards of Waverly Place or quite possibly Spongebob. Some might challenge this time spent in front of the TV but when you get the chance to sit next to your teenage sons and have them cuddle with you tean in my opinion that is no waste of time.

I will be doing other things with my time like laundry, cooking, and cleaning so that when they are home with me we can go sledding, build snow forts, play backyard baseball or a game of uno.
Time is passing fast and I have to make good use of it. Wish me luck.

I'll be back....sometime!!!

Friends

Shawn served a mission in Peru. He spent some of his time serving in the mission office. In Peru the mission office was in a multi story building. Each mission (I think 4 at that time) had an office on a different floor in that building. At the same time Shawn was in the office for his mission there was a guy named Matt on a different floor serving in his mission office. They were aquaintances but not much more.

After the mission Shawn moved into an apartment complex in Provo (where we met) and after the first semester back Matt moved into the same apartment complex and into our same ward.

We all became good friends and hung out together. The next year Shawn and Matt became roommates and moved across the street to another apartment complex and I stayed in the orginal complex (more on that later). That is where Matt met his future wife Kim. That following summer Shawn and I got married and Matt and Kim got married. They stayed out West and we moved all over the country. When we had Brady we chose to give him a middle name that would remind us of our friends.

Fast Forward to a few weeks ago.

We received a phone call from Matt. When he called he said "hey yesterday I was driving from the airport to my conference and I saw a sign with your towns name on it." So he called his wife and got our phone number. He happened to be 30 minutes away. The next morning he came by around 7:30am and stayed for about 3 hours.

What I love about this guy and his family is that we rarely see them but everytime we do it's just like we saw them yesterday. All the memories come flooding back of the good times we had together for those several years of mission life, unmarried and married life. We have seen them a few times and it's always the same. We had some good discussions. We talked about the possibility of or boys being roommates at BYU. When I mentioned it later to Brady he thought that would be cool. Shawn and Matt are both serving as Bishops so they had fun bouncing ideas off each other. Our kids are the same ages, so we shared war stories about raising kids.

When he left (and even now as I am typing) I couldn't help tearing up at the idea of such great friends living so far away. Someday we will be together again and for that I am ever greatful.

Back to School

Well we are more than a month, well almost 2 months into school and I am just now getting around to it. Brady is a Junior this year, Justin is a freshman, Carter is in 6th grade, Kennedy is in 4th grade and Ryker is in preschool.

Brady began his Junior year with a drivers license and a new to him car to drive. He is competing in cross country (more on that later) during the fall.

Despite his fears Justin has successfully survived the first part of his freshman year. I am happy to report his head was not put in the toilet, he wasn't shoved inside a locker or any other crazy thing he thought was going to happen. He is playing football this fall (more on that later!)

Carter is a big 6th grader which means next year we are on to middle school. He has taken up the sport of cross country and he is still playing soccer. He has also chosen to play the trombone in band. Lucky us!

Kennedy is in 4th grade and is loving her teacher and class. She is still involved in the local theatre and has started tap dancing.

Ryker attends the same school as Kennedy in an awesome Early Childhood Program. He absolutely loves his class and his teachers.

Here are our first day of school pictures. The older two were mortified that I was going to take pictures of them so I had to resort to some drastic measures which I cannot divulge for my protection and theirs :)