Jake is 12!

 Jake turned 12 on February 10th.  It was weird not to celebrate it with my mom.  This is the first year that I wasn't able to take a picture of Jake and Grandma together on their birthday.  Jake decided that he wanted to go swimming for his birthday so we went to Gene Fullmer rec center and went swimming.

 This year we continued the tradition of taking just the birthday kid out to dinner.  Jake chose La Luna.  We love spending one on one time with our kids.  It was so nice to be able to just talk to him and spend time with him

 With our other children, we have allowed them to get an electrical device for their birthday when they turned 12 as long as they paid for half of it.  We were really nervous to allow Jake to do this because he is pretty addicted to video games.  He had saved enough money for the Ipod and we decided to let him get one with the understanding that he will only be allowed to use it on the weekends and limited time during the week.  He was pretty excited to have his own device.

Jake is now 12 years old and holds the priesthood.  It was very exciting to watch him pass the sacrament for the first time.  I now have a deacon, a teacher and a priest.  I also have 4 children in the youth program.  It's hard to believe how fast they are growing up.  Jake is a very smart kid with a fabulous memory.  He does great in school.  His favorite subject is history.  He wants to be an inventor when he grows up.  He isn't really into sports, like his brothers.  He would much rather spend his time playing video games.  We don't like how much he likes video games but we haven't found something else that he is interested in...besides Pokémon.  That is his new hobby.  He loves it!   He has over 200 cards that he carries around with him in his binder.  He is constantly rearranging his cards in his binder and he has his binder with him all the time.  He has some friends at school that he plays Pokémon with and he even goes to a Pokémon club at school. We are working on finding an extracurricular activity that he is interested in.  Jake is a mellow kid and pretty easy to get along with.  If he's not being teased by his brothers, he's generally happy.  He and Kyson get along very well which I'm so thankful for.  We're grateful that he is part of our family.  We love you Jake!

Byers cabin trip

The kids in the back of the truck going up to get on the snowmobiles

In February we went to the cabin with the Byers Family.  Unfortunately most of Doyle and Kris's family couldn't come with us but Logan, Taeya and Porter came.  Those from their family that didn't come, came up on Sunday for a few hours.  We have always talked about renting snowmobiles to take to the cabin so we finally decided to do it. We had such a great time with the snowmobiles.  We only had them rented for one full day so we got up early and got out there so we could make the most of our day. 

Jake and Dale

Everyone had a great time with the snowmobiles.  We had 2 new machines that were really great and we had 2 machines that were quite a bit older so they needed a little tlc.  Dale got really good at starting them every time one of the kids flooded it trying to start it.  He spent a good portion of the day starting machines and getting kids out of the snow when they got stuck.

Kyson and Taeya had a great time together.  When they were waiting for their turn to ride, they played in the snow.  They decided to dig a hole into the snow to see if they could dig all the way down to the street.  They never made it to the street but they had a good time trying.

At the end of the day a few of us went on a little adventure and we found a really cool meadow to ride in.  Dale was finally able to just ride and have fun.  He and Darrell raced each other and had a great time!

a few of us playing 5 crowns

Kierra, Kamry, Annie, Shawna, Grandma and Kayla up front

Katie was so sad that Macey wasn't able to come up to the cabin the whole time but she had a great time with her the few hours that she came on Sunday.

 

The kids spent a few hours sledding together.  They had a great time and loved going down in all sorts of funny ways.  This is Macey, Kyson, Katie and Porter all going down on the same tube.

Kierra, Kamry, Annie and Shawna all going together

Cute cousins!  Annie, Shawna, Kamry, Kayla and Kierra.  Even though they range in age from 14-18, they all get along really well and have a great time together!

The Byers family, missing David's family.  I can't ever seem to get a picture taken of the whole Byers family.  This will have to do for now.

Kyson and Taeya racing each other

Macey and Katie loved to run and jump on top of Jaxon when he would go down the hill

Gladys and her boys

We played some games all together in the living room.  It was so much fun and we all laughed hard!

Kierra, Jadon and Kyson

Kierra

Kyson

This is a group of us that went on a little ride up Guardsman pass.  It was such a cool ride on a very beautiful day

It was a great weekend and we made lots of memories.  I hope we can do it again someday!