Huntington Beach Pier

Ruby's with the Wards

Book Club at Sarah's

Friends at the Christensens

Sams Baptism

Sam's Baptism Day

Car's Land

Bishop Christensen entertaining kids

The Kindy Gang

Grandma Ward

It has been a year almost since I blogged. But, for the sake of remembering people here in Cali, I want to capture the last little while in a post. It has been an amazing year. Not perfect, but amazing. We love the people that we have met in California. They are great people with so much substance and experience. Many aren't from California and only have a few family members here or none at all. Because of that friends are family in many ways. There are some in our ward that are originally from UT and others from Texas, Arizona, Washington, Connecticut. This gives us such a different view of the world. It keeps things interesting. We still miss our family tremendously, but we have been blessed with visitors over the year and have taken a few trips to UT. The pictures above are just a few from our last year. Friends we love, a few pics of family who have visited, Sam's baptism, the beach and Disneyland.

The things we do here: School is much more rigorous. We plan on a couple hours or more a night of homework. Church is busy...I have primary events, scouting events and other church related events weekly or more. Since most of our friends go to church with us
, we don't mind having a lot of church work and events. We love the beach. If I could go every day, I would. One thing we don't like is sand in our car. We have come up with many different processes to keep sand out of our black car. It is near impossible. Ruby's Diner has been a hit with family. We have been to the Balboa, Huntington, Yorba Linda and Laguna Ruby's. Our kids love the milk shakes and hamburgers and it reminds them of our celebrations when family come to visit. We love swimming at our friends pools and at the East Lake Village pools. There are many weeks in the summer where we swam every day. This weekend the kids swam at friends both nights while I had book club and Women's Conference. It has been a good way for them to learn. They all have had swimming lessons here as well. We put a lot of time into   Jack's swim team practices. It is almost every day, but he loves it. He is getting pretty good as well. I can't believe how fast he swims compared to when he started last fall. Sam has played soccer, baseball and basketball while here. Kate and Sophie have been in dance and soccer. Soph scored 4 goals at her last game.

We have grown closer as a family while we have been here. There is really nothing that keeps us away from each other. We are always together when not at work or school. When we get together with friends on the weekend, the whole family goes together. Jon has traveled quite a bit and that has been hard to navigate without family here, but not impossible. We are enjoying our time. We don't know how long we will be here, but we like it and hope to stay a while longer at least.

Happy Belated Halloween from the Ward Clan! As you can tell Jackson loves to take pictures;)

Sam at soccer...gotta love the tongue

80's at the ward party

Trick-or-Treating as fast as they could go

Lunds, Crofts, Christensen's at our house on Halloween

Sophie, Laney and Kate at the church party

Halloween Parade at our church-Jack Lego, his friend Austin (far right) Creeper from MineCraft.

Kylee and Sophie waiting for more popcorn

My family has been asking for Halloween pictures, so here they are (minus Sam who was too busy for pictures). But, I do have pictures of Sam at his soccer tournament working very hard. One more week of soccer for Sam. After soccer is over, he is excited for baseball to start in January.

Halloween was fun as usual. I love Halloween!! Sophie finally got to dress as Minnie Mouse. Kate chose to dress as Alice (in Wonderland, though she calls her Allyson Wonderland), Sam was Spiderman ( I will get a picture off my phone for you Dad) and Jack was a Lego (made by Jack and I). Fun times here is YL.  We had a Trunk or Treat at our church and a Halloween party at our house. There is no dressing up for school here.... what the heck?? Oh well, we enjoyed ourselves. More pics from the iPhone to come...

Our Fall has been much busier than usual. School is HARD here and that is an understatement. Jackson has had a difficult transition from 3rd grade to 4th grade. It is a big jump. Also, moving to a new school in an elite school district with 37 kids in his class has been challenging. Jack has a "special" learning style. In a structured class he will get straight A's minus handwriting (that will always be a B or even C depending on the teacher). Here in Cali his grades have been all over the map. His teacher seems to be a little more like the teachers I had in Junior High. He promotes a lot of independent learning and gives them a lot of work and homework. With Jack's cute little brain falling in some areas in the Aspergers (high functioning Autism) range, this change has made for a difficult year. He has done so well the last few years that we were taken by surprise. So, we have been working with him night after night for several hours to help him stay organized and help catch him up to where the kids in California are at. He is very smart, yet disorganized. We are working on organization every day. He now is getting A's on almost all of his tests and getting most of his homework turned in. Hopefully he will have a good grade point average despite the early difficulties. He has worked so hard!!

Jack is on the East Lake Village Swim team here in Yorba Linda. He just moved up to the next level (level 3 of 6 six being the best swimmers) and is really doing well. Swim has been a good outlet for him with all of the homework. He was thrilled for the weekend to come this week. His friend Austin invited he and Jon to go wave running down in Dana Point. Jack loves the Ocean. He is a good boogie boarder and would love to take surf lessons. I thought he might be nervous about being out there on a wave runner, but he was quite the dare devil, Jon says. I was so glad that he got to enjoy himself. Life is suppose to be fun when you are only in the 4th grade. :)

5k

Jack's first 1k....so proud of him

Swimming

Sophie loves the slide

 Another family in our ward, The Christensen's have a nice pool and were kind enough to invite us on the 4th. Clay Christensen is our bishop. He and his wife, Kami have been really nice to invite us to swim on a few occasions. They have three boys that are really cute, Matthew, Jay and Ethan.

Waiting for fireworks with friend, Keltie. Keltie's family lives fairly close to us and the girls have played with her a couple of times. Four yr olds are very adaptable. They seem like life-long friends! :)

Yorba Linda Community Center

Sam and Landry

Finally!!!

After swimming at The Christensen's, we went home for a much needed nap. Yorba Linda's main firework show is at the community center. People arrive and 6 am to stake out their space. I met Kami at the CC around 5:30pm. and hoped we could find a place. We brought blankets and laid them out to save places for other families. The Singletons also came early to help save places. Jon returned about 6:30pm. and the kids had fun playing until the fireworks started at 9pm. It was a really good firework show. We enjoyed our day, but of course missed our old Utah 4th of July festivities and all of the family that we usually see on holidays. We are glad that we stayed busy!!