Sweet sixteen!

 This week Kierra turned 16.  I can't believe my kids are growing up so fast and how each year seems to go by faster than the last one.  Kierra is growing up and I am really proud of the person she is becoming.  She is very independent and if she wants to do something, she does it.  She is very artistically talented.  It is amazing how she can draw anything and how fast she does it.   She has recently discovered acrylic paints and is painting anything she can get her hands on.  Phone cases, scissors, staplers.  She is getting her own room as soon as Jadon leaves on his mission so she's painting everything to match the colors of her new room.

 Kierra has a lot of great friends.  She loves doing things with them.  She is frequently found walking to Subway with friends.  That's what she did on her birthday.  The friends in the picture above walked to Subway together and then came back to our house to play games.

 Kierra is always willing to try new things.  She doesn't seem to have many fears of things.  We recently went on a cruise to Mexico.  She did paddle boards, power snorkeling and boogie boards.  She had a great time spending time with her cousins and always looked super cute on our trip.

Kierra is a great student.  She has almost consistently had a 4.0 through highschool with the exception of one A-.  She is very independent in school too.  I never have to remind her about homework.  If she needs help, she always goes to school early to get help from  her teacher.  She has found a love for sign language.  She recently participated in a state wide ASL competition and she took 1st place in her category.  We were so proud of her!  I love that she knows what she wants to do after highschool.  She wants to be a teacher to deaf children.
I am so happy with Kierra and the decisions she is making in her life.  She has a strong testimony of the gospel and is a great example to those around her.  I feel very blessed to have her for my daughter.  I love you Kierra!

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!

sledding 2015

Katie making a snow fort

We love it when we are able to go to the cabin to celebrate New Year's.  This year Lisa's family, Paul's family and Dad were there with us.  We had such a great time!  I think the kids spent most of their time sledding.  Even though it was very cold outside, they spent hours and hours out there each day.  They even went night sledding.  It is great that they plow all the way down to the power plant because it makes such a great sledding path.  All of the cousins had such a fun time together!

Kyson going down head first

Taking a break from sledding to build a fort

Jadon trying snowboarding.  He got pretty good at it!

Jaxon was also pretty good at the snowboard thing

Kierra, Jake and Kyson having fun throwing each other in the snow

Kierra, snow angel

 



 This is one of my favorite pictures because it shows how much fun Katie is having.  She loves this little sled.  She spins around and around the whole time she goes down the path.  She goes pretty fast too.  She's quite a trooper.  She never says she wants to go in.  She will stay out for hours!

Jaxon liked to wait at the bottom and jump over whoever was coming down

 

The kids somehow came up with the idea of riding down the sledding trail hooked together in a circle.  They would hold onto each other's feet and spin in a circle while going down the hill.  It was really fun!


What a wonderful time!

Christmas 2014

 We had a fun Christmas season.  We started out by going to Airborne with the Byers family on Christmas Adam (the day before Christmas Eve)  Unfortunately, I was having so much fun jumping that I didn't take any pictures.  On Christmas Eve, we did our annual tradition of going out to dinner and to a movie.  We went to Francessco's for dinner and then to big hero 6 for the movie.  It was good!

 After we got home from the movie, we set up the sugar town.  Dale and the kids gave me two sets that I didn't have so that was fun to add to it this year.

 After that we opened our Christmas eve jammies and then watched "It's a wonderful life".  This was the first time for all of the kids, except Jadon, to watch it.  They watched the whole thing but I'm not sure they loved it as much as I do.

Chrismas morning before all the madness began!

Kyson with his new crazy cart that Santa brought him and Jake.  Too bad it snowed on Christmas day so he couldn't use it

 The siblings drew names, like always, to give gifts to each other.  Katie was very excited to give Jadon his gift.  It was a Utah hoodie.

Kyson and Jake had each other this year.  Best buddies!

 Kierra got a picture of Gladys coming up to our door on Christmas morning.  My kids are always so excited to see their grandma. They love her so much!

 Jake got a ton of pokemon cards for Christmas.  As soon as he opened them, he found a spot to sit on the floor and organize them.  He stayed there for a really long time.

 My kids and Dale gave me a toilet for Christmas because we have plans to redo our main bathroom this year.  I was really excited.  I love my family!

Katie with her elastics that go to the loom she got

 Christmas night we all went to my Dad's for dinner.  This year, instead of giving cousin gifts, we did a service project.  We made blankets and bags for the Ronald McDonald house.  It was fun!

All the cousins that were there

It was a fun Christmas but there was definitely a huge void without my mom there.  She has always been such a big part of Christmas.  Her house is always decorated for Christmas and she always made Christmas special.  Lisa made her bread and gave us all a loaf.  I love that bread and it will always make me think of mom because she always made us that at Christmas.  I had a hard time getting into the spirit this year and I think it was because I really miss my mom.  But Christmas time always makes me grateful for my family.  It is so much fun to do fun things together.  There is magic in the air that I just love.  I'm happy to have shelter and the things we need.  It's weird to think that next Christmas Jadon won't be with us.  I'm also having a hard time dealing with that.  At the same time, I'm so excited to have a missionary in our family.  Merry Christmas!