Meet Forever Family Man

One of our primary presidency's responsibilities is to do sharing time for each ward conference in the stake. Our first one for the new year is this Sunday, so we are meeting to plan it around our theme Families and Forever. We will be sharing our ideas and making it cohesive. I am planning on bringing this police puppet I transformed into Forever Family Man who uses his prayer and scripture powers to protect families from attacks on the home and keeps families forever. I'm excited to see how our presidency will make the idea come together. In the meantime I am, excuse me, the kids are having fun playing with him.

Getting back into the swing of things

No more lazy mornings, the vacation has officially ended and I feel a little mixed with emotion. I love getting back to a normal routine, but I miss the kids being home. I took Nikki to a play date and Cameron didn't want to return home. So we did a couple of errands before we picked up Noah and Nicole. The missionaries came over for dinner and shared a message, we counted it as our family night lesson. When they left we sang some songs, performed some talents, and played a game of charades. I love Nicole's music directing in this picture. She learned how to conduct from her Aunt Sarah; I think it's pretty darling.

All Four in Primary

Mary started her first Sunday in senior primary and loved every minute of it, especially her teachers Brother and Sister Dean. Mary loved being in the same room with all her big cousins and sitting in the baby chairs. Noah had a great time in CTR 6 with Sister Crowe and Sister Stone. He won the super singer award today and was so excited for his starburst treat. Nicole had me go to class with her. She has Sister Anna Rietmann, the 18 year old granddaughter of the Robinsons who is in college. She was absolutely darling in there and I enjoyed watching her in her first calling ever. Cameron had his nursery graduation and then the six 3 year old boys left for their class. When Andrew returns there will be seven boys in Sunbeams...no girls. Cameron loved being in singing time and watching all the big kids. He dragged Grandma with him to class, literally, which he loved as well.

Home Depot Rocks!

The first Saturday of every month Home Depot has a kids workshop for free. The kids get aprons and supplies to build a project. This month Home Depot had them build little boxes for a calendar box. They were a little time consuming to put together, but they had a great time building and painting it.

Human Pyramid

Mary and Noah are starting to get ready for bed on their own now. We still monitor teeth and the bedtime checklist, but they're doing a lot more by themselves. Aaron doesn't seem to be looking as often for someone he can pay to get them ready. This is awesome because it leaves us all more time to construct human family pyramids before bed. All I know is that there is definitely something great getting built around here.

Happy Birthday E Lo

We have another teenage cousin today! We all love Eliza so much. She is fun, sporty, helpful, and an amazing cousin. Tonight we celebrated with the family...Hawaiian haystacks and big game of Idiart basketball at the church gym. It was such a clever idea, fitting for our clever birthday girl.

I love Josh, our crazy photo bomber!

Eliza scored the winning shot! She was amazing on the court!

Resolutions

I made a few resolutions last year, some were met (like this blog everyday) and some were not realized (like getting back to my old size). So, I'll keep some and hopefully improve upon last year's changes. I spent the majority of the day cleaning out our bedroom. We are preparing for our new king bed, our 10 year wedding anniversary present. That's one of my major goals to clean and organize everything...even those old teaching boxes up in the attic.

The other day we had the sister missionaries over and they shared a beautiful message about New Year's resolutions. They spoke about the atonement and because of the Savior's great gift it is possible for us to change, it was a sweet message of hope. They also invited us to think of ways that we can change that will improve our discipleship. I thought this was a nice perspective. If I draw on the help of the Savior I know more of my resoltuions can be realized.

Aaron took some of the kids on a bike ride today after hours of playing with cousins. I thought this was a cute picture he shot of my bookends.

Happy New Year!