March 2011

This month we had the privlege of being invited to the Young Women's New Beginnings. As Taylor is turning 12 this year she was spotlighted and introduced to the group as well as 5 other girls. Their theme was "Princesses". I can't believe that she is growing up so quickly, where have the last 12 years of my life gone? For New Beginnings the girls spotlighted the wonderful work of Miranda Layton. She is a seamstress in our ward and I have the priviledge of visiting teaching her! She created a Young Women's fashion line with formal dresses in the colors of the values. Each of the Young Women wore one of her dresses as they described what each Value represented. It was a beautiful evening. March seemed like an insanely busy month! It was Leprechan time and Davin's class made Leprechan traps at school. It is a tradition in the first grade. They make these traps with the hopes of catching a Leprechan and getting it to tell them where his pot of Gold is. If the trap is worthy of the Leprachan's notice the Leprechan will leave a suprise behind to reward the child's efforts...what an interesting tradition, but one that Davin got rather creative with this year!March is our Gymnastics wrap up month, which usually means insane extra hours at the gym and not much else in our household but gymnastics! Needless to say it drives Nathan insane!!! This year I had the opportunity to take over Juliann's Preschool class as she got a full time day job. Let me tell you, these girl's were the cutest bundles of energy! I took this picture after we practiced log rolls on the mats. (which was loaded with static electricity) Where would I rather be than sharing a laugh with these little angels?!?
Here is a picture of Davin stretching in prep for his finale number.
This is Brennan preping for his walk across the balance beam!

Here Taylor is the one in the handstand closest to the left at the end of her finale number!
This is one of our finale night pictures. We had 3 nights of Finale's in order to spotlight every class. This night was a lot of our older gymnasts. Coaches Todd Griffiths, Juliann Sommerfeldt, Myself, Kris Olsen, Judy, and Jenni MacDonnell are all pictured here. Taylor is in this one as well, next to Jenni MacDonnell. She has a black leo with colored stars and such on it.

And last but not least, this month is also the Rotary Music Festival, which means extra choir practices and running to see preformances 2 days in a row. One day the school classes preform, the next the choir groups preform. They do an amazing job under the direction of Linda Burwell(with Mrs. Williams on the piano and Mrs. Drew managing all the behind the scene issues). I don't know how she gets them to preform as they do, but her choirs are amazing!
Here is Annie Soper, Taylor and Haylie Holland all sporting their wonderful choir attire!

February 2011

Along with February came Valentine's day! We had our usual Valentine's Breakfast and posed for our personal Valnetine greeting we sent out to Family this year.


I also attempted a mini photo shoot of Briley. Attempted being the key word! Brennan loved his sis so much it was hard to get any pics of just her without him mauling her. Ah...sibling love....I hope it doesn't turn to sibling rivalry too quickly!


Davin has been constantly building with the Trio sets that he recieved for Christmas. This is an example of one of Batman's hideouts.

February also brings the Sciene Fair at theCardston Elementary School. This year Taylor coupled with her friend Micha to find out which cereal gets soggy the fastest. It was quite a cereal fest at our house for a while!

I also did a little experimenting with douvet covers to match the Camo theme in the boy's room. The douvets the boys have are a child's size, so I got a sheet and folded it in half, sewed up the sides, added buttons and a fold over top, and viola....The end result:
The boys were quite excited with the finished product!

Here is a Picture of Briley (on the right)at 6 months with her best friend Allie Atwood. They were born 2 & 1/2 weeks apart and have been too cute together!! We caught what looked like them holding hands...BFF's already!

To end February off we attended the Winter Festival in Waterton. We took the kids swimming at the Waterton Lakes Lodge and had dinner at Vimmy's Grill afterwards. An incredibly fun day!

We also attended the Remington Carriage Fair that is held every Family Day. The boys learned how to make their own ropes and have been working on their roping skills ever since they got home. If I can figure out how to post it I'll get a video clip of them trying to rope a stool turned upside down, they could pass for real rodeo ropers!!

January 2011

January found us, during most of our free moments, doing home reno's on the kids rooms and family room downstairs.


I love this picture of Brennan and his two friends Kam and Rex.It captured them so well in the environment I usually found them in. Because the family room was under Reno's, the only place left to play the Wii was on my bed as the TV had been put temporarily in my room.

Briley did a lot of "Hangin' out" in her Jumper as it was her favorite place, and somewhere to keep her away from the paint & dust!

Nathan just couldn't seem to get away from the painting as he was helping with the set for the Jr. High's play "Annie jr." this year. He was also asked to step in and help with the photography and videography as well.

A look at 2011

I know a lot of people like to take a look at the past year in January, but this year has been a little cray. So I am now finding a little (okay a lot more) time on my hands to do some updating and fill you in on what 2011 looked like for our family. So I am going to try and sum each month into a post and see if that gives a good enough picture of what our adventures have been! So here goes nothing.....!