Carter turned 11 in January (yup, still catching up!). She is a talented, creative, fun, smart, and loving girl and we are lucky she's part of our family. She likes to dance, draw, sing, act, and play with friends. She plays the piano and violin. Here are some of her favorites:

Food:Chicken Italiano

Book: Ever After High

Color: Bubble Gum Pink

Place to visit: California

TV Show: Liv and Maddie

Dessert: Ice Cream Cake

Subject in School: Spelling and Art

Animal: Pigs, Manatees, Ducks, Otters and Skunks

Song: Froyo Yolo

When I grow up I want to be: A Chef

Here she is opening and riding her new spark scooter. It is harder to get a picture of the sparks than you would think, but trust us, they are pretty cool!

For Carter's 11th birthday, she wanted a glow-in-the-dark party. We had a lot of fun with it! The house was totally dark except for black lights and everyone wore glow stick necklaces.

Here the girls tried out glow tic-tac-toe before everyone arrived. There was also glow bowling, light up poi balls, glow ring toss, and glow treasure hunting with glow-in-the-dark lip gloss and silly putty. Anything that would glow! 

After New Years, we got to spend a few days with Grandpa Bill and Grandma Diane in Show Low. The first day we got there, we tried to go ice skating on the new outdoor rink but it was absolutely freezing. The weather and other circumstances made for a parenting fail in the ice skating department. The next day though, the weather was perfect and we got to go sledding. This little hill is just down the road from Grandpa and Grandma's house and we even built a snowman and threw some snowballs. It was a fun day!

We bought some little fireworks for the kids and they were all too scared to try them, ha ha! Jack was brave and was the first to hold a sparkler.

Before long, they all gave them a try and had a fun 5 minutes of ringing in the New Year.

Gotta love Nate's jammies, a borrowed t-shirt from Grandad.

On Christmas Eve we got to act out the Nativity with these cute hand puppets, made by Aunt Chelsea. While Robert read from the scriptures about the birth of Christ, the kids followed along with the puppets. We loved it! Then the kids took turns opening their gifts from eachother. 

Christmas morning was fun and full of surprises...see Gabby's face below :) 

After we opened presents, we drove to Mesa to visit family. It's not always the most fun to travel Christmas Day but then we get to have Christmas morning at home and don't have to pack up Christmas and get to see Cousins, Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents who we love!

Carter was honored at a District meeting for recieving a perfect reading score on the SAT 10 test. There were only a handful of students from each grade who recieved awards and fewer who got a perfect score. She is a smarty pants! Here she is with her awesome 4th grade teacher, Ms. Ryan.

Gabby as a "Spa Girl"

Nate as a Jack-in-the-box

Carter as Madeline Hatter

Nate getting an award for best Kindergarten poem in the Pumpkins and Poems contest

Gabby looked so pretty and happy on her baptism day. She was very excited to have lots of family make the trip up to be with her on her special day. Her baptism was combined with Torin, and all the brothers and sisters got to sing "Baptism" with them. We were so proud of her choice to become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints.