Daddy Daughter Dance

 Every year, the youth group for 8-11 year olds has a daddy daughter dance around Valentine's day.  This year Emery got to have Rob all to herself because Sadie is now too old to attend.  I'm pretty sure she really enjoyed the one on one time.  :)  These two had pasta for dinner and danced the night away together. 

Happy birthday to Sadie!

 Sadie is such a delight to have around.  She is pretty much always willing to help when I need her.  (I try not to abuse this!) She loves hanging out with her friends and she loves trying to help Finley even though a lot of times she refuses help from anyone but me.  She is going to start middle school in the fall.  I can't even believe that.  She tested high enough to be in the accelerated learning program that our school district has, but she wants to go to the school we are zoned for to be with her friends.  She is excited and nervous to start 7th grade but I know she will do great even though her best friend will be moving away this summer.  :( 

She is a wonderful daughter and we love her!

 She requested french toast for breakfast.  Rob is the french toast maker in our family so he made it for her.  And I cut some strawberries.

 I also made some chocolate strawberries just for fun while she was at school.  Yum.

I had to go to the school to drop Sadie's cookies off since she ended up riding her bike to school that day.  I decided to make this awesome sign and wear it to her class to deliver the cookies.  She was embarrassed a bit...so I made sure to leave the sign with her so her teacher could hang it up on their white board all day.  When she got home she was like "Mom, that was so embarrassing."  Score!

We love you Sadie.  Happy 12th birthday!

New Year's Eve Fondue

Our spread for fondue this year was impressive.  I didn't even take a picture, I had Crys send me these.  I was too busy eating all the yummy food.  It was so so good.  Crys and Alan provided the cheese fondue and all that went with it and I did the chocolate.  The meat was so good that they made with the cheese fondue.  And the bread is always a big hit.  I'm getting hungry looking at these pictures.   I ate so much I didn't really have any room left for the chocolate, but I ate some anyway.  :)  Thanks Crys and Alan for hosting.  I think next time we should do cheese fondue on Christmas, and then Chocolate on New year's eve.  That way I can eat lots of both! 

Grandma and Grandpa come visit!

 Everyone always loves it when grandma and grandpa come to visit.  My parent's came just before Christmas.  It was fun having them around.  And a big thanks to my dad for always helping with little projects around the house.  This time he fixed our fridge that hadn't been working right for a few weeks.  Luckily we had a second fridge downstairs to save our food, but it was an inconvenience walking up and down the stairs every time we wanted something from the fridge.  My snacking was at an all time low!  ha ha.  He replaced a part that didn't seem to be working and it worked...for a few weeks.  Then it started getting really cold (like 20 degrees) and then it would get warm (around 50 degrees).  You never knew what the temperature would be.  We moved the food up and down a few times until we decided to bite the bullet and just get a new one.  So now we have a new fridge.  Thanks for the temporary fix dad! He also fixed Sadie's bike brakes, and filled in some holes in the drywall in the basement.  :)  And Finley just loves grandpa.

 She is so silly.  

 The classic picture with grandma and grandpa.  Finley wasn't really in the mood.  

 One day Riley said she wanted to make a parachute out of her blanket.  Grandpa spent a while working on it with her.  They got it all tied and set up.  Then they went outside to see if it worked.

Here it goes!  I don't think it worked.  But it was a fun experiment.  She tied her unicorn to the bottom. 

Grandma always brings a fun little craft or project for the kids to do.  Here they are working on it.  I had to be sneaky about how I took the picture because Zac kept ducking out.  

Playing Sorry.

Great visit!  See you guys next time!

Emery's Baptism

Last Saturday, Emery chose to be baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  She was a little bit nervous so she and Rob practiced the night before how things would go.  There were 10 kids being baptized that day, 4 from our ward.  It was pretty neat that she got to share her special day with a few of her friends.  She just barely missed the other stake baptism day because her birthday was the next day.  So she had to wait until January. There were so many people there that they had to open the gym and set up more chairs so people could sit down.

 Sadie got to give a talk on baptism.  Her very first talk and she wrote it all on her own.  She did a great job and I told her she's ready to speak in stake conference now because there were more people there that day than come to our regular Sunday meetings!  I was sitting with the kids by myself because Rob sat up front with Emery.  They got to demonstrate what it was going to look like to get baptized.  Finley was a little bit of a handful during the meeting but we managed.  Then we moved to the room where the baptism would take place.

It was a smaller room and I knew there weren't enough chairs in there to accommodate everyone that was walking toward it.  So I just pulled my kids along to make sure we would at least get a place to sit.  We scored some 2nd row seats, but then I realized I was going to have to go help Emery get dressed after her baptism. Oh well.  I would just have to step across everyone else in my row.  No big deal.  Zac and Sadie got to be the witnesses for Emery and I walked over so I could see as well.  I left the bag of dry clothes over at my chair.  Doh!  So I walked back across to grab it and went in the door next to the baptismal font.  Finley wouldn't stay there with my friend so she was in my arms and thought that she was going to get to go in the "pool"  she sat right down and started yelling "I want to go swimming!! I want to take a bathers!!! (That's what we call a bath) while trying to take her shoes off.  I was so flustered because someone was in there about to be baptized, so I rushed her and Emery into the bathroom while she started crying because she wasn't getting to go swimming.  HA ha.  It was crazy!

But we got in and got Emery dressed and went in to the next room so she could be confirmed a member of the church and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.  We were sitting there and they were about to call the first person up to be confirmed and I asked Rob if he had asked anyone to be in the circle to bless Emery with him.  Usually we ask family and friends to help, but we didn't really have any family or friends there specifically with us, so we totally spaced asking anyone to help.  Rob quickly ran around the room to ask a few people who were there to stand with him so crisis averted.

Overall, it was an excellent experience.  We felt the spirit as those 10 cute 8 year olds were so excited to be baptized.  I think Heavenly Father is just so happy when children are so excited to become members of His church. We ended up going out to Red Robin after for lunch and then we relaxed a bit at home.  Here are some pictures

The day before her baptism I ran over to the temple with her to take a picture of her with the Book of Mormon.  There were so many kids getting baptized that there weren't going to be enough of the white jumpsuits for all the men.  So Rob got to bring his own white clothes.  

My friend Rosalyn, who is also a photographer, and whose daughter also got baptized that day, brought her good camera and got this photo of us.  Thanks so much!  She always makes us look great.  :)

And the standard family picture in front of the picture of Christ.  

At Red Robin.  So yummy.

Zac wore shorts and short sleeves.  IT was so cold outside.  Crazy kid!  Also, those chairs look like hamburgers.  I thought that was so clever!

One more of dad and Emery.

And we had to get the classic family in front of the garage picture, which is actually pretty hard to do with my phone.  We had to park the car in the driveway, and balance my phone on my backpack, then put the timer on and run into place.  But we only took one picture and everyone was looking and smiling!  Yes!!

Remember my friend Rosalyn?  She offered to take pictures of Emery when she brought Stella out for hers.  We went way back in November so it was super freezing.  She got some great pictures that show Emery's true personality and beauty.  I love them all!

The Salt Lake temple and temple grounds will be closed for 4 years for renovations.  The grounds will be really different too when it opens again.  So I'm so grateful for these pictures that we got before that all happened.

Our Anniversary- and temple lights

 We decided to spend our anniversary playing in the gym at the church.  It was so cold outside, and the kids needed to get some energy out.  We brought a bunch of balls and the kids brought their walkie talkies and played with them.  It was a fun time and we loved that our friends came to play with us for a bit.  We have been married for 13 years and I've been alive for 2 years now after finding out about my brain tumor.  :)

 We went to see temple lights before they closed the temple for 4 years.  They were beautiful as always.  And it was not crowded at all.  Note to self-always wait until after Christmas to go to the temple lights. 

 Sadie nailed the picture of Rob and I.  :)  And a kind couple offered to take our family picture which was so nice. 

Library fun

We love going to the library!  And they got new blocks there.  They are really light weight so we can build really tall towers.  Riley built this one all by herself.