Week ending 1-13-19

Last Sunday: We went to my brother's baby's blessing in Spanish Fork. It's fun to live here to do things like this. 

Kait wants her picture taken almost every Sunday. :) 

My sister holding her nephew. 

Before we went to Spanish Fork Spencer was ordained a priest and Thomas was ordained a deacon. So exciting! Today Spencer blessed and Thomas passed the sacrament. Yesterday half of my kids went to the temple together. If Kylie hadn't graduated from high school a year early I'd have 5 kids in mutual. We're excited that Thomas can start YM now because Madalyn is also graduating a year early and will hopefully be off to college next August when Thomas turns 12 and would have normally been starting YM. Now they have 6 months to go to things together.

Today I had one child in RS, 4 in YM/YW (2 in each), 4 in primary, and 1 in nursery (if she would go:)) 

Kylie's last Sunday with us. It was wonderful having her home for Christmas for 2 weeks. After the blessing she went back to BYU to start winter semester. She is working really hard and getting to do things she's always wanted to do but we didn't have money for like violin lessons, harp lessons, and a beginning ballet class. She's also taking lots of GE's and major classes (Family life) and minor classes (music). I'm so proud of her!!

Fun picture time with fun Aunt Lori 

Talea isn't totally convinced that Lori is fun yet, but by Lori's next visit she will. :) 

Monday: Talea doing school. (Where are the real students?:)) 

Running to the store with Talea and Andy. They were so good and so cute. 

I hardly wanted to go home. 

Tuesday: Doing a science experiment. 

A bowl of red blood cells with 2 white blood cells. Really the proportion is approx 700 to 1, but this was a model of it. 

Friends came over and they all played together the whole afternoon right here. 

Lori and her best friend. 

Reading a letter from D. Todd Christofferson. We had a birthday party for him and made him awesome cards last January and were thrilled that he finally wrote back. He's always been Andy's favorite and since he was 20 months old he's called him "Todd."  

Andy was super excited to get a personal letter from Todd! 

Wednesday: Talea playing the lap harp. Maybe she'll grow up to play the harp like Kylie. Kylie got this when she was 3 years old because she had a love of the harp and this was the best we could afford. I'm so glad she's getting real harp lessons after all these years. 

Thursday: Talea asked to wear this when she got dressed this morning. Coincidentally Kylie was putting on her ballet suit at the same time. 

Here's the picture Kylie sent me. 

She's been waiting 16 years to take ballet!! 

Friday: playing a board game Thomas created himself. 

We ended the week with several kids getting fevers.

I was pretty burnt out Friday night, wishing I could move to the country in NC, and feeling lonely with the older kids gone. So I decided to make nobakes with these 3 (the ones who weren't sick) and to make them as healthy as we could. We used organic everything: butter, sugar, cocoa, and sprouted oats. Plus threw in some flax and hemp seeds. They turned out delicious and we ended up having a great bonding night. 

Saturday was a cold, meloncholy sort of day with the older kids still gone, Nathan working from 9am-midnight like usual, and sick little kids. It was a long, tiresome day. Here Andy crashes on the living room floor and Talea goes over to see what he's up to. It was so funny. 

Here he crashed on the brown couch. He had a slight fever but only slept for 20 minutes. Then he was up and going again, happy as can be. 

By next week it was determined that Talea and Samuel only got cold symptoms; Alexis, Kait and Makenna got fevers; and Madalyn, Spencer, Thomas and I didn't get a thing. Kaitlyn had the fever for 5 days, poor girl. Alexis had it for 3. All in all, it wasn't very bad, just boring.