One of the Pew

Hope of America

Last night Nathan’s school class joined 3000 other kids from the school district to participate in “Hope of America” at the Marriott center. They have so many kids that they actually split it over 2 nights for a total of more than 6000 kids participating. It was AMAZING. They had all of the kids in Red, White, Blue and Yellow shirts and were in the shape of the American Flag. The kids sang and performed about a dozen patriotic songs. I have to admit it made me thankful that we are so blessed to be in this wonderful country!! And it brought tears to my eyes several times. Nathan really enjoyed the experience, I can’t wait until next year when Jocelyn will have the opportunity!!

Here are some pictures and from the evening.

Nathan was in the 2nd row of the bottom white strip about 4 or 5 kids in from the right side.

Pew Kids

So it has been far to long since I posted pictures. Here is just a quick post with how cute my kids are!!

Logan decided to make a hammock out of his blanket. He actually slept in it, but ended up falling out halfway through the night.

Jocelyn on her birthday. I can not believe she is ten!

I decided to include this one of Madison because it actually shows her wearing her glasses. She wont be for much longer we found out today that she will be going in for her eye surgery on April 30th.

Nathan is so much fun. He is a wonderful big brother. He made sure that Madison and Olivia found just as many eggs as everyone else.

So Kendall has passed me up, she is about 1/2 and inch taller than me and she loves that she is taller than her mother!!

What can I say I just can’t get enough of this girl. Olivia on her birthday (we spent the day at the new aquarium).

Olivia and Kendall. They adore one another. I am pretty sure that Kendall is Olivia’s favorite person.

Jocelyn and Nathan on the train at the zoo.

Madison loves to pose. I think I too 3 times more pictures of her at the zoo, because she kept saying “Mommy take a picture of me.” She loves to have pictures taken and then like most kids she has to see what they look like.

Logan and Jocelyn at the zoo.

Olivia is a grandpa’s girl. She absolutely adores him.

Olivia, Nathan and Logan making fishy faces with grandma.

We had a great day at the zoo with Grandma and Grandpa over spring break.

Halloween 2014

So here are some pictures from Halloween this year. My kids had a great time. The only hiccup was Madison got sick Halloween morning and spent most of the day throwing up and then was sick for the next 3 days. We did let her go trick or treating at Grandma and Grandpa's house, but that was it.

We had so many trick or treaters, it was great. We almost ran out of candy because we had so many kids. If we hadn't left to take the kids up to see my mom and dad, we would not have had enough candy. We live in a wonderful neighborhood with a TON of kids. We were very brave this year or at least I was (Kyle had a much easier time with it). We let Kendall and Nathan go trick or treating around the neighborhood with their friends. They had a blast, but boy is it hard to start letting them do stuff like that!!

Nathan, Logan, and Jocelyn were able to wear their costumes to school. Olivia felt like she needed to get in on the action. She LOVES taking pictures.

My mom made this Elsa costume for Jocelyn for her birthday.

I can't believe how big she is getting!

Logan couldn't wear his mask to school so Kyle painted it on instead. He liked this even more and didn't want to wear the mask for trick or treating.

Logan was very excited when he heard that his cousin Nelson was also Captain America. Okay so all the other pictures turned on their own when I downloaded them and I can't get this to rotate? Still very cute!!

Nathan did a book report on the Hobbit and had to dress up as Bilbo Baggins last month. He was excited to reuse the costume for Halloween. On a side note my mom is amazing. She made 2 different capes for Nathan. As she was sewing the first one she found material in her closet that she liked better and proceeded to sew a 2nd cape.

Jocelyn and Olivia

All of our kids have dressed up as Winnie the Pooh (dressed up as a bee) when the were 1.

Kendall is Maleficent. She and Kyle made here horns. I think she looks great. She took 2nd place at the school costume contest. She also had several people give her full sized candy bars as she was trick or treating because they liked her costume so much.

Madison was Anna from Frozen. She wasn't feeling well so we didn't do her hair and I feel bad that we didn't get a picture of her and Jocelyn together! We will just have to have them put their costumes back on in a couple of days.

Too Cute! She has the most infectious smile.

We carved pumpkins for FHE on the Monday night before Halloween.

My Dad and Michaela carved pumpkins with us. We had a blast.

Madison Keeps Me in Stitches

So Madison is hilarious. She keeps me laughing all day. Today just as we were pulling up to her friends house for preschool she says "I have just 2 things to say mom. I love ya, annnnnnnd.... (I don't know if the pause was for dramatic affect or if she wasn't sure what the second thing was going to be) ...I love dad too."

She so funny I feel lucky to be her mom.

Madison Playing Tennis Feb. 2014

Madison LOVES Olivia (2/5/2014)

Eternal Families

Our Stake Primary Presidency issued a family challenge a couple of months ago to help strengthen families. Each family in the stake was given a mason jar and different colored fuzz balls. There were big red fuzz balls that represented Family Home Evening, yellow fuzzballs that represented family scripture study and blue fuzzballs that represented family prayer. Every time your family did one of those things they put a corresponding fuzzball into the mason jar. The idea was to have your jar filled by the end of the challenge. The reward was free family pictures in front of the temple at Stake Conference. Below are our pictures.
My children loved this challenge. They were so excited to see our jar get fuller and fuller. It was an inspired challenge and I truly feel that it strengthened our family. I love the picture of the our children standing together in front of the temple. I love the sweet tenderness of Logan and Madison holding hands (which was not prompted, they did this on their own). I have such a strong testimony of the temple and Eternal Families. I am grateful that Kyle and I have been sealed in the temple and that we have the opportunity to be an Eternal Family. As I look a these pictures it makes me so grateful for each of my children and my wonderful husband.

A New School Year

So my kids started a new school year a week and a half ago and they are all loving being back in school. I love summer and being home with my kids, but it is nice to get Madison back on a nap schedule(at least we are trying to get her back on a schedule). Logan started Kindergarten. Up until about 3 months ago I was definitely not going to send him until next year. Then I went back and forth all summer long. A week and a half before school started Kyle and decided to send him. He is not as prepared as I would like him to be and he doesn't sit still as well as he should, but as we talked about it and prayed about it we both just felt like he needed to go. He has been doing great and he absolutely love school.

Because we decided so late to send him he got the late bird schedule so I am back and forth to the school 4 times every day. On Mondays and Wednesdays when Madison has preschool (I am doing a joy school type home preschool with 5 other moms) I drop Jocelyn and Nathan off at 7:30, Madison off at 8:30, Logan off at 9:30, pick Madison up at 10:30, pick Logan up at 12:50 and pick Jocelyn and Nathan up at 2:20 (wed. it is early day so 1:15). I feel like my entire day is spent in the car on those days or I am feeding Olivia!! Luckily Kendall can walk to and from school!

I am excited to be able to help in Logan's classroom this year. He is the first teacher since we moved back to California that is okay with me bringing the younger children with me when I volunteer in the classroom. I was always in the kids classrooms when we were living in Utah, but most of the teachers here feel it is too much of a distraction to have younger kids, especially when I have to bring 2 with me. But Logan's teacher was actually excited when I asked her about bringing the other kids. She said that she loves when younger siblings come in and help and she even has special toys that they can play with. How wonderful is that!!

The night before school started Kyle gave each of the kids father's blessings. I so appreciate having a husband that honors his priesthood and is able to bless out family with it!! So he started with Kendall and went from oldest to youngest. Madison didn't quite understand this and between each child jumped onto the chair and said it's my turn now! It was very cute and she was just as excited as the rest of our children to get a blessing from daddy.

Here are a couple of first day of school pictures.

Temple Lights

For Family Home Evening this week we went to the Oakland Temple to see the Christmas Lights. I always love being on the temple grounds, but there is something special about being there when the Christmas Lights are up.

The lights are beautiful and getting see the Nativity is wonderful. It is a chance to talk to the kids about the true reason that we celebrate!! Madison was fun this year she was so excited about getting to go to the Temple. Her favorite song to sing lately is "I Love to See the Temple".

I think part of it the reason I love it so much is that many of mine and Kyle's wedding pictures have the Christmas lights. We were married the day after Thanksgiving, that is the day they turn the Christmas lights on each year.

This year Kyle's brother, Bret, came with us. We had a wonderful time even though it rained on us for most of the time we were there!

Jocleyn and Nathan in the Nutcracker

Jocelyn and Nathan were in their school production of The Nutcracker this year. It was fun experience for them and they both did great. They started practicing in October 2 days a week after school. It has been a very fun activity for them both. Jocelyn was one of the Chinese Tea Dancers and Nathan was one of the soldiers. Here are a few pictures and video's of the performance.

So the video with Nathan's part is having a hard time loading so I will add it later but I wanted to publish this part at least!!

Hockey Game

For Christmas my parents gave Kyle tickets to a Grizzlies hockey game for the whole family. We were really excited about going, but the evening of the game was a really, really bad snow storm. It was so bad that we really considered not going to the game. We ended up braving the storm and it was definitely worth the effort. We had a great time. A big bonus was that the Grizzlies rewarded everyone that braved the storm with free tickets to another game two weeks later!!

These pictures are from the 2nd game that we went to.