Happy Valentines Day!

The kids had fun making their Valentines for their school class. Well, the girls did anyway. Bruce wasn't very into it this year. Guess he's growing up. This will be the last year he'll make Valentines for school because he will be going to middle school next year.

Claire was excited about all of the Valentines she received!

Jane's favorite Valentine was this cool mustache. :)

Bruce may not have been very in to making Valentines, but he loved all of the candy he got. :)

Linda's favorite Valentine was a BFF necklace from her friend. She's been wanting one of these forever.

When I got home from getting the kids from school I found roses and my favorite candy bar on the mantle. We were confused because Robert was supposed to be at work still. The kids searched and searched the house to find daddy hiding in the closet. He parked his car around  the corner from our house and surprised us!! :)

This Year, So Far

Had a fun, but very quick trip to Gilbert, Arizona for the temple open house. The kids were so excited. The temple is 4 stories high and larger than the San Diego. Very beautiful. Bruce rushed ahead of us so that he could be the first kid in our family to enter the temple. It was a great experience. Bruce said he had all of his questions answered. :) On the way home they all sang, "I love to see the temple, I went inside today!!" It made me look forward to when they're all 12 and we can be in the temple together again and makes me pray even harder that we can all make it to the celestial room together one day as a family when they're grown.

Our landlord is having someone come out to completely redo our backyard and also some of our front yard. We're really happy about that. He raised our rent a bit so that he can have a gardener come and take care of the yard. It's worth it to me to never have to worry about the yard again. We're signing on for another year here.
Robert just got called as 1st Counselor in Elders Quorum. His toilet cleaning days are over! Still an aspiring body builder.
I gave a talk a couple weeks ago. So happy that's behind me. New Beginnings is also over. It went really well. I'll get some pictures up one of these days. It was really cute. This past Friday was our camp fundraiser. We did a dinner, dance, babysitting and silent auction all in one. It was so much work!! But, we raised all of the money that we needed so I THINK it was worth it. :)


Bruce is a busy kid. He does a JAVA computer programming class before school on Mon. and different class before school on Wed. He also plays basketball and is learning all the rules. It's fun to watch.

Linda likes being Vice President and helping plan school activities. Her speech has improved so much this year. The R will be mastered my middle school. I know it. She has been playing tennis. She likes it and it's a good fit for her.

Jane plays for her school soccer team. Turns out she was the only girl from 2nd or 3rd to sign up. The first game went really well and she even got a goal. Jane wants to do every sport. Lately, Jane wants to be a ballerina. She talks about her baptism a lot, even though it's pretty far away. She always wants to look at the Pinterest board I made for it. :)

Claire is really doing well at reading. She loves school and holidays bum her out because she doesn't want to miss out. She started gymnastics and goes on Fridays. She is sad she can't go more than one day. It's a great sport for all of her endless energy and strong body. She continues to make Robert and I laugh. She has a big personality and is very confident in herself, wherever she is.

Christmas Morning

We had such a nice Christmas! We stayed home the entire day. We really needed one whole day at home together. Last year at Christmas we were in between houses so Christmas was nice, but a little hectic. This year was just what we needed. We even got Christmas lights up on the house this year.

Here's a few pictures from Christmas morning. I forgot to get names on the stockings so Santa put their pictures next to their toys so they would know which pile belonged to them.

Mission Accomplished

We had our family pictures taken a week ago. The next few posts are some of my favorites.

 

A very rare picture of Robert and I.

 

 

The Girls

 

 

The Boys

Family Pictures

The Children Dec. 2013

 10 years old

 9 years old

 7 years old

5 years old