Valentines cards

I know. I am a copy cat. I figure why not reinvent the wheel if it works so well? I saw a few different valentines card ideas that I thought were so darling and morphed them together to make these this year. McKay is pretty excited about passing them out to his friends tomorrow. It's so cute to see him get so into it. I remember how much I loved going to school on holidays like this and it makes me excited for him. I just can't believe how much he is growing up and how much I love watching him have his own experiences like this.  And with Joy School on the schedule too for Lyla tomorrow we are in for a fun day.

Hope you have a happy Valentine's Day! 

Thank you Santa

I think my next favorite gift this year that Santa brought the kids is a trampoline.They are on it all of the time. They use it for jumping.

Exploring.

Pretending.

Sight seeing.

Eating popsicles with friends.


Leaf crafting.

Bonding. Getting static crazy hair!


Picnic-ing.


And camping.

They easily convinced Noah to camp out there one night and have been begging to to do it again ever since.

Thank you Santa. May the list keep growing. We love the trampoline!

NY reunion

Over MLK day weekend we got together with some good friends we knew in NY. As much as we LOVE California, there are a lot of things we miss about living in NY. The thing we miss most is/are (could use a few english lessons) all the outstanding people we knew there. It was so fun to catch up and see these guys again. What a great group! Thank you Sines for putting this together. 

My Mom

 I am so grateful for my mom. For so many reasons but today because she has jumped on a plane so many times to come help us lately. She was here for 2 weeks when Bennett was born, which saved me, and now she is coming back 2 short months later to take care of our kids (with her sister, my awesome aunt Laurie) for a week. They are going to have a blast together! But she just got done taking care of my brother's kids, spent a night in the ER with a kidney stone attack one of those nights, that happened right after she got home from a trip to see my Dad in Dubai and is going to my sister's a couple week after she gets home to help her with her new baby. Wonder. Woman! I really don't know what we would do with out her. They say it takes a village to raise a child. Well, she is playing her part for sure!

Power of Moms Retreat

I have recently been taking better advantage of the Power of Moms. What took me so long? I have no idea but my amazing sister-in-law Saren along with the amazing April Perry started Power of Moms a while ago. Check the link button on the side bar of the blog. I can remember Saren talking about the idea when McKay was a baby and having a few retreats to kick it off back then but man she has turned it into an incredible resource for moms to be better moms. So why not jump on? I could use all the help I can get. They have had 11 retreats now. The retreats are similar to business trips for professionals to sharpen their skills and awareness so this is for moms to sharpen their mothering skills and become better "deliberate mothers." I got to go to their last retreat in LA last weekend and man do I ever feel like a new woman! It was just me and baby Bennett last weekend with 65 other outstanding moms.

This picture shows only about half of the group. We took it after it was over and a lot of them had already left.


As part of Saren's introduction she said that there were 65 mothers and about 400 children represented. That is HUGE! It ranged from moms with 1 child to a mom with a whoppin' 11 kids. I couldn't help but think about those ~400 children and think that they are so blessed to have moms who care so much about their role as mothers. It was an honor to be with them.

Here is Saren doing her thing. I was so proud of her.


And again. I didn't get the other presenters but they were all FANTASTIC! I actually didn't get many pictures at all because I was holding Bennett most of the time. Again, it was amazing!

But I did snap this picture while my friend Andrea got some smiles out of my little guy. Oh I love him!

Oh boy I've got Joy!

I've been teaching this adorable Joy School class! They are a riot. Poor little boy is out numbered but he can hold his own (and it's nice for Lyla to have some girls around!).

Bringing in the New Year

We started the day right with a game of bowling to celebrate uncle Jared's birthday. How would it be to have your birthday on New Years Eve? 

While we all bowled, Cubby was watering the floor. We eventually had to take all the water away after cleaning up spill after spill. They had to bring us several towels multiple times.

The kids paired up and bowled in teams. I think they all did better than most of the adults but we had fun!

Back at the house we started to get ready to bring in the new year. Charity had us write down our top 10 memories/blessings from 2011 and write down 10 goals we want to do in 2012. We each spent some time on this then we sat down and shared them with each other. 

McKay took it very seriously. We let him stay up with us and I am so glad that he did. He was the first one to share his list. Notice that he taped two pages together in order to fit everything on there. 

He had quite the list. He had us all rolling in our seats on a few of them. They were hilarious!



This is how he sits a lot of the time with his legs crossed. I think it is so cute!

The count down...and confetti! I foresee this to be a great year. Maybe the best one yet!

This is actually before the younger kids went to bed. I came downstairs and saw Linda in the play closet with the kids. We love that Grammie!

Then the next morning we were heading out. But before we did the kids went on a Grandfather date out to breakfast while we helped Linda get ready for the Carvers to come over. No picture but we got to see them and spend  a little time with them before we hit the road. What a blast!