Family Picture May 2022

Family Picture May 2022

Friday, December 28, 2007

Great Christmas

What a great great Christmas!

It was your basic fun Christmas Eve dinner celebration and then open presents on Christmas morning. Savanna was a bit anxious to get the presents opened and then kept asking "what else?" (I think she got a little too many "how many days til Christmas Savanna?" asked of her, something bigger and better MUST be around the corner!) I on the other hand was expecting nothing and was thrilled all day because Jared got me my very own MP3 player! And lots of smelly sprays and perfumes, yum. Jared and I agreed the best part of Christmas was sitting down and watching "The Nativity" as a family. We feel very blessed this year and are grateful for our family and our Savior.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Giving

I have been looking for a way to concretely teach the kids that Christmas is about giving, not getting. So when I read in the Orem Newsletter about the Family Support and Treatment center accepting donations for the children they house because their home lives are dangerous, I got this brilliant idea to have the kids take one of their presents under the tree and give it to the children who don't get presents from their parents. Fiora was all for it, and picked the biggest, prettiest gift that had her name on it to give away. Savanna, bless her heart, was very much against the idea, unto tears of guilt and rage. I felt badly that she was upset, but still felt like I should encourage her to do it, so I kept suggesting it to her throughout the day. She did finally agree, and picked the smallest one. I told her she would really rather give away the bigger one (knowing she'd rather have the pretty stationery rather than the jacket I got her, and knowing the Center would need the jacket more than the stationery). But I left it up to her, and she finally did decide to give the bigger present away to the needy children. I was so proud of them as they deposited their gifts in the red sled at the Library. Without even knowing what they were giving up they freely gave their gifts. Weston was clueless about the whole thing, but I hope to make this a tradition every year, since I seem to always get presents under the tree early, to have them give one away to someone who needs it more.

Monday, December 17, 2007

Fiora the Explora

(Sing to Peter Peter Pumkin Eater)
Little Weston looks his best in
Shirts and ties that he gets dressed in
hes so handsome we're not jestin
We love little Weston boy!

I came up with that rhyme for Weston and the girls wanted a song too. Their names were so hard to rhyme! This was the best I could do:
My Fiora is Like Dora
Wants to go to Bora Bora
Where she'll be a great explora
Wow Fioras quite a gal!

My Savanna ate a canna
nice a squishy ripe bananas
said Savanna these bananas
taste like manna Moses ate!

Savanna was reading me one of her books for home readers and when she does that she always stops and asks me what words mean when she doesn't know. Like "Skating Whiz," what is whiz? It means a pro, really good at it. But then the next page says "*whiz*, I just missed the lady!" so savanna says, "Pro, I just missed the lady." I say no, that means whiz by, or passed by really fast. But mom, you just said Whiz means Pro. Yeah well it has two meanings I guess. That just didn't make sense to her, so she continued to say "pro" everytime it said "whiz." Last week she was reading and asked me if gallop was the same as skipping. I was about to answer when Fiora jumped up and did the most beautiful gallop you'd ever seen across the living room. Wow! Where did you learn that? Gymnastics! Really? She can't do a cartwheel yet but that gallop is awesome. She even demonstated a skip for us too.

We took the kids to Aaron and Amy's cabin Saturday so they could go sledding. Fiora was last kid standing, over two hours out on the sled hill with Justin Jared and Aaron. Savanna surprisingly didn't like it much, even though she was the last kid standing last year. Weston surprised us too, by outsledding Savanna! Once he found his groove, there was a certain sled he preferred and a certain style, face first on his belly with his legs up in back. It was super cute! Aaron put chains on his four wheeler and pulled us up the hill so we could get more sledding time in, and Amy fed us soup for lunch! It was a fun day.


Monday, December 10, 2007

Tooth #6

Savanna's 6th tooth fell out last night. She was wiggling it with her tongue all day Saturday and Sunday, so no surprise when Sunday night she got it out. She put it under her pillow, and when she came to me at 7:00 AM Monday morning with the tooth she said, "tooth still here, and no money!" I suggested maybe the tooth fairy doesn't work on Sundays. But the truth was we plum forgot! Sunday was super busy, besides being my sister Holly's birthday it was the day I organized and played for the Young Women to sing a musical number in church, taught the Relief Society Lesson, led a choir practice and the choir to sing at Stake Music Night, and performed in the Stake Choir. The home teachers also snuck in a visit somewhere in there. By the time my head hit the pillow I was out and forgot about the tooth fairy. I told Savanna to tell Jared about the slacker fairy, and a few minutes later he told her to check in her pillow case because sometimes the tooth fairy accidentally gets it in there. She shouted a "Hooray!" because sure enough there was a dollar from the tooth fairy.




Weston got a shooting lesson down in Gunnison this weekend. Jared assisted him in shooting his first 22. I was a bit nervous about that, but when I saw the pictures he sure looked cute! Jared's determined to make a shooting and fishing buddy out of Weston no matter how small he is.


Monday, December 3, 2007

FHE and Trees

Weston's head has managed to remain unopened this week. He's pretty careful with it, except the time he was pulling the sound box out of the rocking horse's belly and it smacked into his head like a sling-shot. We told Fiora to put the guts back into the horse as we comforted Weston and she said, "Oh yeah, I can do that. I'm seriously brave." Meanwhile we were waiting for Savanna to finish up the lesson she volunteered to prepare for Family Home Evening, Jared kept lovingly encouraging her to hurry it up, "Don't rush me Dad. This is going to be a great lesson. I'm just putting the finishing touches on it!" She had a lesson complete with activity on the Nativity. We were impressed! The best part was the musical ending, the kids took turns singing us a song. Fiora sang "the North Star" and Weston sang "I am a Child of God" and Savanna sang Christmas song she learned at school. Then we ended with Fiora saying the Family prayer and mocking Weston's prayer method by blessing every tiny object in the room and Savanna defending Weston's honor by smacking her while she prayed.
We went to the Festival of Trees on Saturday and saw an exquisitely beautiful tree that our ward made. Underneath the tree was a picture of Lillian and Sophia Mousques, the other baby in our ward born with Downs Syndrome and a heart defect. A lady standing by the tree asked us if we wanted to hear the story behind it. We said, "That's our daughter." She was so thrilled to see us and said so many people have been touched by Lillian's story. That brought tears to my eyes! I'm very grateful to the ward for creating that tree and allowing Lillian to touch others once again. We were also impressed with the tree Heidi Weight made in Lillian's honor, that was a surprise to me! It was covered with little angels and again Lillian's picture underneath. Thank you Heidi for your time and talents put into that tree, we loved it! We took pictures of the trees but are having technical difficulties downloading them, so I'll post them tomorrow.

In Memory of Lillian

In Memory of Lillian
Our Family