Easter 2019

We had a fun Easter weekend.  The kids had fun dying eggs on Saturday.

It was nice to have some family time.  It seems like we have been really busy lately. 

We used the eggs to make egg salad sandwiches for dinner.

Sunday morning Hallee and Wyatt were excited to find their Easter basket. Wyatt loved his duck socks!  

The Easter bunny brought some toys this year and not many treats.  The kids loved it.

We woke Catilyn and Jonah up and they found their baskets before we had to get ready for church. 

We had Stake Conference on Easter.

Hallee sure looked pretty.

Wyatt wore his new socks!

We sure have some cute kids!

We went to our own building for Stake Conference and the audio stopped working. After over thirty minutes we decided to just go home.  We came home and had an Easter lesson.  We watched some videos and read some scriptures and had a great discussion.  I love Easter.  I love my Savior and I'm so grateful for what He has done for me. He is the reason that I have hope.  Life seems so overwhelming and unfair sometimes and because of Him I know that it will all be worth it and that I can keep going.  I have a lot of questions, but I also have had a witness that Jesus Christ is my Savior and that my Heavenly Father has a plan for us.  

After our lesson the girls hid the money eggs for the boys.

Caitlyn and Jonah love any excuse to climb up here.

After that the boys hid the eggs for the girls.

The kids love to get quarters in their eggs.  

Later we went to my mom's for another Easter Egg hunt and dinner.

The kids loved spending time with their cousins. 

14-years-old

We finally took Caitlyn's pictures.  She looks so much older in these pictures compared to last year.  No more little girl here, she is looking more like a woman every day.  She is as tall as me and has the same size feet as I do.   She is so pretty!  I love her smile!

Caitlyn is still very empathetic and worried about everyone around her.  We are trying to help her see that she also needs to take care of herself, stick up for herself and not be so worried about pleasing other people.  It is a tough balance because I love that she is so loving and empathetic, but I worry about her being a people pleaser and not sticking up for herself.   I hope she will always love herself as much as she loves other people.

It's been an emotional few months for Caitlyn.  Being a teenage girl is tough!  She gets overwhelmed easily and her anxiety has been heightened lately.  She hates going to bed early, but she does so much better when she is getting enough sleep!  I admire how she tries to put a positive spin on things.  She is pretty good at taking time to feel sad or mad (which I also admire) and then she will try and find a positive way to look at things. 

She is definitely a teenager.  She likes to take selfies, listen to music and hang out with her friends. She also loves to bake.  She loves to put her own spin on recipes.  She loves to play card games, we have fun playing them together. 

She is getting more opinionated on clothes and shoes.  She also wants to straighten her hair a lot more.  She has naturally curly hair.  It's not super curly, so it's a little tricky to style it.  She loves her long hair.  She has beautiful hair.

Caitlyn is a great big sister.  She has a natural ability to help her younger siblings and encourage them.  She loves little kids and loves to babysit. 

Caitlyn loves school and works hard in all of her classes.  She has always been attached to her teachers and middle school hasn't been any different.  She is going to have a hard time saying goodbye to her teachers at the end of the year. Caitlyn takes responsibility in school and doesn't need us to remind her about assignments or anything else.  I'm so grateful for that!

Caitlyn loves animals, especially Jackson.  He calms her down when she is stressed and helps her feel better when she is upset.  Jackson is very protective of Caitlyn and will always go to her when she is upset.  

Caitlyn has been spending a lot of time on the trampoline lately.  She loves to do flips and back hand springs.  She loves being outside.

Caitlyn is thoughtful, kind, funny, smart, hard working, easy going, patient and understanding.  We are so grateful to have Caitlyn in our family.   I'm excited to see the wonderful things she will do with her life. 

Oboe Concert

Caitlyn has been taking oboe lessons through BYU partnership with the arts.  Tonight they had their Spring recital.  Caitlyn has a love/hate relationship with the oboe.  She loves to play for fun, but she hates to practice.  It is a tough instrument.  She has decided not to play the oboe next year so she has kind of checked out and debated about playing in the concert tonight.  She finally decided that the only reason she didn't want to play was because she was scared, so she decided to play in the concert.  I'm proud of her for choosing to play even though it was scary. 

Grandma came down early and took Caitlyn out to dinner.  Caitlyn was so excited.  She loves every chance she gets to spend time with grandma.

I met them at the school.  We were there early so she had some time to practice.  She sure is a beauty!

Jonah had a soccer game and Wyatt had soccer practice. Tiff took Wyatt to practice and Keith went to Jonah's game.  Hallee came with me and we made it a girls night!  She wanted to be in the picture with Caitlyn!  You can see how excited Caitlyn was about all of the pictures.

Caitlyn did amazing.  She sounded great.

She was happy with her performance.  I'm glad it was such a good experience for her.  It's always good to do hard things! 

It was fun to have Mel and her girls there too. We are a good looking group!

After the concert we all went to Yogurt Land. 

It was a fun evening.

Why are you here?

A few weeks ago Caitlyn's digital literacy teacher called me and told me that she won an award for an essay she wrote.  He asked me to come in and sign a paper so that they could release information about her and pictures of her (they took pictures during the award ceremony).  He asked me not to tell Caitlyn and said they would have an award ceremony soon.  Yesterday they had an award ceremony and pizza party during lunch.  Keith and I both went and Caitlyn saw us in the office when we were signing in.  She looked so confused and kept asking why we were there.  We walked with her over to the class room. 

The Utah State Treasurer came and presented Caitlyn with the award.  Caitlyn's teacher submitted her essay to an investment writing contest.  Her essay was advising someone how they should invest their money in the stock market.  Her teacher gave me a copy of her essay and it was great.  He said that they take the names off the essays and have a panel of financial/business men and women read the essays and chose the winners.

Caitlyn's essay took third in the state!  They presented her with a $25 visa gift card and a $50 savings bond.  She was so excited!

It was a nice, little ceremony and they did a good job of honoring Caitlyn and the other girl that won. 

Caitlyn was so excited with her prizes.  I asked her if she wanted me to take them home for her and she said she wanted to keep them with her to show off!

Another girl from Dixon took 1st place.  It's pretty neat that two of the winners were from our school.

Caitlyn was on cloud nine the rest of the day.  We are so proud of Caitlyn and her hard work and desire to do well in school.  Way to go Caitlyn!

First Grade Disney Style

Hallee had her first grade program on Friday and she was so excited. Wyatt did the same program last year and it was adorable!

Keith and I went to the morning performance that they did for the school. It was so cute to see Hallee waving to her brothers.

She was so cute trying to get their attention.

Hallee was excited that she got to be one of the Disney Princesses.

She likes to dress up as Anna because she has the same color of hair.

She had her part memorized and did a great job saying it.

Hallee has been counting down the days to her program.

She sure makes a cute Anna!

Hallee has been singing all of the songs every day at home. 

I love Hallee's dimple, it is the cutest!

I took a ton of pictures and I love them all.  I thought about narrowing them down for the post, but why, they are all so cute!

Hallee was smiling through the whole thing, you could tell she was enjoying it so much!

My kids all do the "Ham" pursed lips.

All of the songs they sing are adorable. They are all Disney songs, but they change the words to some of them. They changed the words to "When will my Life Begin" from Tangled.  The song talked about all of things they do every day in school, it was so cute!

Hallee loved all of the different actions in each song.

She had this big smile on her face the whole time.

"Whistle While You Work" was so cute.

At the end they sang "Celebration," but changed the words to "Celebrate First Grade, Come on."  It was adorable.

Hallee really got into this song and was dancing around.  She even started hip bumping with Cinderella next to her, it was adorable.

"Now, we're on to 2nd grade!"

I love that Keith always makes his family top priority.  I tell him that I can record things so he doesn't have to miss work, but he very rarely misses things.  He loves watching his kids!

They had an afternoon performance for the parents.  I went back for that one with my mom.

Hallee was so excited to have grandma there to watch her.

Hallee keeps saying, "I wish I could do my program again."  I'm glad she loved it so much.