Home Sweet Home

Adaira is finally out of primary and where her mature spirit belongs, in Young Womens! We took her to the temple to do baptisms about a week after her birthday. She had a water party after Brighton's and thoroughly enjoyed all of her friends. This girl has SO many friends. It's normal on any given weekend for more than one friend to invite her over. She is super social and has definitely passed into the realm of wanting to hang out with friends over family. It bums us out but she has great friends. Adaira loves to play volleyball and holds her own even with adults. We try to take her to play sand volleyball and to morning volleyball with me when she isn't in school. She has really come a long way and is growing taller and taller, which is to her advantage for sure. She has been working so hard at Accelerated Middle School this year. She is incredibly disciplined and responsible, to the point that I worry she sets a standard too high for herself. We are working on her to lea...

 Okay so this kid is old enough to go to dances now but something tells me that will NOT be happening, lol. Brighton, our oldest and self proclaimed (All the time) "favorite child" turned 14. Where has the time gone? I'm not just saying this, but I 100% mean it when I say we couldn't be more proud of Brighton. We are so lucky that he is the awesome and inwardly good kid that he is. He just has a desire to be righteous, honest, and good. He still changes the channel or screen if something remotely inappropriate comes up. He opens up to us (not with ease, but yet it still happens) about things that bother him or make him feel ashamed, and we feel like we can trust him to choose the right. So far he has chosen fantastic friends who help him live the gospel and enjoy teenage life. Brighton is musically gifted and recently has really begun to excel in piano, after realizing he had gotten to the point where he can learn new hymns easily now. This means he will sit down for ...

 March and April are busy birthday months for our family! Brighton's is discussed in a different post. Polly, being only two years old and the youngest of 5, didn't get a birthday party. That doesn't mean we don't love this little girl! She is adored by everyone in the family, except for maybe Dale, lol. He's kind of ambivalent at this point. She is so so cute. She only has about 3-4 words (Ma, Da, NO! sometimes she says "shoes") but she speaks excellent Minionese. She chatters away with lots of animated facial and nonverbal gestures. She gives us kisses when she is in the mood to do so. She loves her blankets and would happily carry 4 of them everywhere. Whenever I finish getting her clothes on in the morning, she jumps up and walks over the shelves and points to her shoes, wanting me to complete her outfit. She enjoys wandering in the backyard and can spend hours out there. As her mom I have to acknowledge the exhausting work it is to have five children,...

Grandma and Grandpa gave all of us a family trip to southern Arizona for Christmas, which we took the first weekend of Spring break. We left Friday and drove straight to Karchtner Caverns and the kids were amazed by that cave. It's just too bad we couldn't take any pictures. After our two separate tours at Kartchner Caverns (we all couldn't fit in one tour) we headed to Sierra Vista for the night. Justin and I met up with my cousin Tammy and her husband Mark for dinner while the kids hung out at the hotel. We found out pretty quickly that the most fun things the kids enjoyed was just sleeping in a "cool" hotel room where they had access to cable channels, and being together at the hotel pool with their cousins. The next day we headed to Bisbee for a tour of the Queen Mine. This was probably our coolest stop for the kids since they were allowed to touch everything (that definitely wasn't an option at Kartchner). Kids under 6 weren't allowed on the to...