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!