Happy Happy Birthday Abby Dear

Little Miss Abby has finally turned five and she's happy about it! After saying for the last few months that she was going to be four forever and never going to kindergarten, she finally aged! You know it really made me think about how my childhood was at that age and why she wouldn't want to age. I can't remember that much of my fifth year but I do remember how excited I was to go to kindergarten, remembering the little school bus that would take me home afterwards. I remember Tara and Shauntel (and i think Carla too) from primary and how they told us later in life that as sunbeams (at 4) we would argue over who got to set by Wayne Morch in primary (because he was so cute at that age). We spent so much time at my Grandmas with Gammie and my aunt Debbie, it was definitely the time of our lives, no wonder she wanted to stay 4 forever!
Now, time must go on, but we must help her learn, grow and enjoy it to the fullest. To Abby, being a princess, is as close to perfect as she can be. She loves to dress up, dance and twirl, and act as if she were royalty. She had never had a princess party and so I decided if it was going to happen, this was the year. Jennifer and I made the cake, thanks to Julie for the great cake idea. It was actually quite easy and decorating only took about 1 1/2 hours.
We had lots of friends over and played some awesome super fun games that I found on a few others blogs and Facebook.

Kiss the prince while blindfolded (like pin the tail on the donkey but with lips instead of a tail) We used the beast because he needed to be kissed to turn into a prince, needless to say none of those little girls turned him into a prince.

Princess Aurora's freeze dance, when the music stopped they had to practice freezing

Find Snow White's poisionous apple

Pass Cindarella's shoe around the circle until midnight when it turned into an old dirty tennis shoe

Before any of the games though, we started out with a tea party on my nice china. It was right after school for those friends that are kindergarteners and so I thought they might need a little snack. It was lemonaide or chocolate milk with tea sandwiches and grapes, perfect for a little princess. Then the girls each got to make a crown for themselves, thank goodness for glue dots and my large collection of bling. We also had a fashion show where each princess was presented at court as she made her way down the stairs.

I think the party was a big success and the girls were all so happy to get a feather boa, big flower for their hair, and little satin gloves to complete their princess attire.

White at last!!!

This morning we woke up to snow at last!!! Of coarse John was the most excited for the snow, but our little girls all shared a little bit of the excitement with him. Up until today we have had no snow and I mean zero, zilch, nothing as far as snow goes. John was going to take Hailey skiing over Christmas vacation but there was only 15" of man-made snow at sundance ski resort. Hailey still went skiing with her 4th grade class this week, but there wasn't much to work with (and she didn't know what to do on ski's)

So as soon as John saw the snow he got the girls a hopping around the house preparing to go sledding on the Timp View hill. As you can see there isn't a lot here, but it was something. They wern't the only kids out early trying to have a little sledding fun either, lots of kids from the neighborhood were there to join them. Hailey even tried to "surf" down the hill on the sled (she doesn't know it's called snow boarding). Of coarse me and snow don't really mix and so Macey and I stayed home to take some fun pictures in the snow in our yard.

Her favorite thing to do was throw snow up into the air and let it fall back on her head.

She did try to make a snow angel, but I didn't get the picture before it was time to get up and throw some more snow up in the air.What a fun morning, too bad the snow will be melted and gone in a few hours. Lets just pray that the mountains around here can get a little more snow. It looks like Mt Timpanogas had more snow in July than it had this week.

Make it count!!!

Happy New Year everyone! With a new year coming in, many of us tend to create resolutions of what we want to accomplish during this new year. Last year's resolutions, I can honestly say, that I have no clue what they even were. I do remember that our stake president in Kauai, Pres. Gonzalves, made a resolution for every member of the stake to read the Book of Mormon. Well we tried as a family, but didn't quite make it, hopefully together that can be done this year. Hailey and Alyssa are really good at reading in the scriptures and Abby is a great reader also.
It makes me a little sad that I didn't finish my goals from last year, but how many people really do? I guess I'm just normal.

Last year went by so quickly as does every year, things happen, children grow and time seems to just slip by. This year my goal is to Make it Count. I want my children to remember the fun we had together. Abby starts school in a few months and so this is the last time we can spend all this quality time together when I'm her mom, friend, and teacher. I'll still be that later, but not so much in her eyes. Hailey is almost 10 years old, I don't know where her childhood has gone, but it's important to treasure each moment and Alyssa isn't that far behind. Macey is my last baby and well, she's not so much a baby anymore..... You get the picture. This Make it Count isn't just for time with my children though, it's all my time. It's a time to ask myself, am I studying the scriptures in the right frame of mind, reading worthwhile books and watching TV that is worth watching?

Each week I teach primary and so I see children from all over and from all different age groups. As I said before, Hailey is almost 10 and well she's getting a little sassy with an attitude. I see with all these children, and a lot with my own, the lack of respect they show others today. So, my second resolution is to teach my children to love others and respect others as the Savior would.

These two resolutions:
1. Make it Count and
2. Teach my children to love others and respect others as the Savior would
are enough, they entail a lot and will help me become a better person. I'll try to check back in with these and give updates once in a while to show the progress.

Once again Happy New Year and best wishes this year with all you try and wish to achieve!

Ice climbers

Today we had a fun day out and about here in Utah county.

Leslie, Kyron and their family returned to Richfield last night after a busy few days. Let me first give you a small picture of our day yesterday. All of you parents know how fun it is traveleing an hour or more with children crammed in a car. Yesterday, we drove up to the copper mine just west of Herriman. It's not really that far (only about 45 minutes each way), but there was 11 children when you count mine, Leslie's, and Brandon's (he and Michelle arrived with their children yesterday to visit for a few days). Cousins were squealing with excitement to see eachother and wanted to ride together in this car or that, but this child was to tired and needed a nap, and this child needed that..... You get the picture. Well we drove up to the mine, which John had just been to a few weeks earlier, only to find it was closed because of ice for the next few months. I think the adults were all more disappointed than the children.
So we had to figure out what to do, quick, without disappointing to many people. Brandon was trying to count all the temples in Utah and how many he could see right there in Salt Lake county, so we decided to drive over to the Oquirrh Mtn temple so they could see it up close. Then we could also make up our minds on what to do and where to go. I had fun there trying out my new camera lens.

This is Leslie's baby Maggie looking up at Angel Moroni.

Abby is always wonderful to pose for a pretty picture

But, she isn't always wonderful about walking around, John had to carry both Abby and Macey around.

We finally settled on a trip to Cabellas!!! I mean who is crazy enough to take that many kids to a hunting store! We did, and yet we ended up having lots of fun shooting the target guns, looking at the stuffed animals and watching the fish. Alyssa was quite disgusted someone would kill an animal to have it's head put on a wall, but other than that it turned out to be a great outing.

Today we tried to keep a little more low key without all the traffic driving, Brandon didn't really like how fast everyone has to drive here in Utah, and so we went up provo canyon. My parents and Brandon and never seen the ice climbers before and so we had some fun by bridal veil falls taking pictures and watching the ice climbers. I know a few of my friends from Kauai that would really enjoy the ice climbing, but personally they all seemed a little more than crazy to even try that. Climbing up a sheet of ice does is definately not on my bucket list! Maybe that's why Hailey is afraid of heights, an inheritance from her mother.

There was a little bit of snow on the trail to the falls, but this was it! It was mainly ice.

Here is a picture of my parents at the falls

Brandon, Michelle and their 3 childrent, Parker, Emily and Payson.

We drove on up to Sundance ski resort to see if there was any snow. All I can say is wow there is no snow in the mountains yet!

After this, we took the kids to Alvin and the chipmunks, they loved it, I loved it and John fell asleep in it!! He's a great dad to even come with is! My dad stayed home with Macey so they could both nap during the movie :)

The kids had a super fun day and they loved having their cousins here for the last few days.

A Beautiful Christmas

Today is Christmas and we have had a wonderful day! I can't say that about this morning though, well it was wonderful but .... Last night when the girls were tucked into bed their clocks were checked and we discussed that no one would be coming downstairs before 6:45. Let me explain, Hailey won a $50 gift card to toys r us from John's company for a calendar drawing she drew, and so she had her new walkie talkie's ready to page dad before coming down the stairs. Abby slept upstairs on the futon so that all three of the big girls could come downstairs and enter the living room together, it was all planned out perfect. At 5:50, 3 little girls entered our bedroom to see why we wouldn't answer the walkie-talkie pagings that they had been sending, someone had changed all there clocks in the night to be an hour ahead of time... and who could that be? Don't ask me, parents would never do that sort of thing, maybe our dear elf Jewel returned with Santa and decided to do a little more mischief in our home.

We did have a wonderful Christmas morning and our girls all loved their gifts from everyone. Hailey got a new cruiser bicycle, a pottery wheel and a new outfit for her American girl doll.

Alyssa just wanted the Hawaiian American girl doll they had this year, Kanani, and she did get her. She came with a paddle board and she also got two other outfits. She asked for this doll because she thinks that she'll give this doll to Macey when Macey is old enough, it's the Hawaiian 2011 doll and since Macey was born in Hawaii Alyssa thinks she needs the Hawaiian doll, sweet thinking sister.

Abby was so excited to get her a little leap frog pad to play games on, it looks a lot like my iPhone. Thank you Santa, for now maybe she'll leave the games on my iphone alone. She also receive a little car type thing for outside.

Macey didn't join our family until a little later this morning, 6 am isn't when she gets up! She got a pink tricycle, a cute outfit, her daddy made her a rocking horse and last of all she got a really cute build a bear monkey that my sweet neice Ashley helped me make a couple weeks ago.

This year, my dad and mom came to visit us for Christmas, they got here on Friday and will be here until next Friday. I'm so happy they could be here, it's not often you can pull my dad away from the San Luis valley for more than a few days. Our girls love having their grandparents here and it's really nice to be in our new home and have an extra bedroom.
Alyssa has been in our Primary's childrens choir and so she sang a beautiful song in church. John went over early to make sure we would get good seats and when I got there about 5 minutes early, there was nothing left. It even went back into the gym. It was a wonderful way to splend our Christmas day, remembering our Savior. The choir and the Kohlers did a wonderful job and made this a perfect Christmas Sunday.

I didn't want to spend lots of time cooking on Christmas day and so we prepared most of our dinner the day before, it was very nice because all we had to cook on Sunday was the ham and then put a few casserole dishes into the oven for cooking. Having my mom here was wonderful, not having to do it all. I just remember last Christmas, living in Kauai we didn't have family near, but we did. We had Dale an Genevieve Keep and their family over for dinner, they were our family there and we miss them so much this year. It would be nice to be amoung all of our families at this time, we love and miss all of you that couldn't be here with us.

Leslie and Kyron drove their family up on Christmas day after their sacrament services and will spend the next two nights here. John thought it would be fun to set up a tent in the basement for the kids to sleep in, and they are excited! Our basement is quite warm and then Leslie can have Hailey and Alyssa's room with the futon and two twin beds for her little girls. Abby is the most excited to sleep in the tent, I don't think she'll ever want to come back to her bedroom again!