Christmas

Christmas was perfect.  We spent the week in Utah with my family.

See it here:
Christmas Video

 (just please excuse my holiday muffin top:)

Baptism Weekend

What a great weekend, Maclaren turned 8 on Sunday and got baptized that evening.

 It all went well, I gave a little talk and I'd asked one of the young women to sing "I'm Trying to be like Jesus" and it was so beautiful.   Maclaren was so happy and cute, I just love him!

My parents and 3 sibling came into town and we had such a good time with each other.  I love my family!

 Oh, and I kinda like this little girl too.

 And him.  Ok, I'll stop now.

 At the Museum of Natural History.

Mac opening his gifts.  It was all about lego mini-figures this year.

Funny little side story about my brother, Trevor who is 23 (below)--  At church we were heading to Sunday School and I dared him to go to the 17 year old class and tell them he was 17... So he did.  And as he was walking in, one kid goes, "Man, you look like 23 or something"  Ha.  Anyway, some of the young ladies in the class took a liking to him and planned to come to the baptism that night to see him again.  So he comes out to the car after church and was like, Shoot.  Then they come to the baptism and start glaring at him.  Turns out they facebooked him right after church and found out his age and were heartbroken.  One messaged him several times asking "how could he?"  Poor girls.

 

 I guess I was a little stressed with the weekend plans and giving a talk.  The way my body deals with stress is to grow giant disgusting cold sores.  So today I looked like a botox-gone-bad freak.

8

I really don't feel old enough or mature enough to have an 8 year old, but somehow it's happening.  Maclaren is such a fun, easy-going, curious, bright child and he makes me smile.  I'm looking forward to seeing him get baptized this weekend and to have my family in town!

Birthday Weekend

Rowan turned 6 last week! 

  We had a few of his school friends over for a birthday playdate and cake.

Rowan trying out his new slip n slide.

And then we headed to San Diego for the weekend!!  We'd been wanting to go to Legoland for a long time and thanks to the free kids tickets on specially marked boxes of Life cereal, we went!

Star Wars Miniland was awesome.

Avery had a great time too:)  

Having lunch:)

Diet starts Monday.  He he.

And then we went to the beach.  

It was overcast and cool, but the boys didn't mind a bit- they played all day!

One little tantrum.

And heading back home.  Poor Avery gets carsick easily and threw up on the way there and back:(

Good books

I love reading good books- I love that exciting escape to another world if only for a few hours...  I never thought I would love science-fiction/fantasy books so much either but man, there are some really good ones out there.  Like Divergent.  And it's sequel, Insurgent.  I highly recommend them.  

The only bad part is that now I have to wait a year for 

the third book in this trilogy to come out.  Aghhh!

Bryce Canyon Half Marathon

On Saturday Ryan, the kids and I headed up to Bryce Canyon for this race.  

It was very rainy but beautiful and a good run overall.

At the finish line... happy to be done!  And I decree that the next race I do will be in warm sunny California!  Who's with me?

Then we stopped at a wildlife museum and the kids got to feed some "exotic" deer.  They looked like average deer to me.

Then lunch in Cedar City and a lovely drive home:)

Texas!

My sister Melanie and I drove with our kids to visit our parents in Texas.  We had tons of fun!

 Sea World!

San Antonio Riverwalk.  We took a boat tour around the river and learned about the history of San Antonio.  Such a cool place.

We also took a glass bottom boat tour of Spring Lake, which feeds into the San Marcos River, near where my parents live.  It was so cool.  This lake has several natural springs which fill the lake, which is the head waters of the San Marcos River.  Every 7 hours it's all new water.  It was so cool to look down and see the actual spring shooting water up from deep underground.

Swimming at my parents' place.

Driving to San Antonio we tried to all cram in my van and my mom got quite stuck:)

The Alamo.

San Antonio Zoo.

Avery's 2nd Birthday!

She kept trying to sit on her new little potty:)

Then we went tubing down the river, so fun and refreshing!

Until Mac went down this little waterfall and overturned, got swept away in the current and almost died.  My dad went down after him and saved him but it was a very scary couple of minutes!

We checked out the house my parents are building.  It's in such a lovely, quiet area.  It's going to be so nice!  I can't wait til they get to enjoy it this Fall.

We had such a good time!  The end.