C bball, Liz in Cali, Valentine's Day Love Letters

Charles played Jr Jazz basketball with a bunch of guys from our ward and neighborhood. Since we knew most of the boys on the team, and their families, it was so fun to watch.

Here's Elisabeth and Emma, excited for their upcoming trip to California for a cheer competition and more importantly, to go to Disneyland. This was Elisabeth's first time visiting Disneyland. I dropped them off at the high school and they took a bus to the airport.

We occasionally watch our neighbor and friend Saige; I was surprised when she started snacking on the cauliflower I'd roasted, and continued to snack on it! I wish more of my kids would do that.

Valentine's Day Scott and I gave each of the children a love letter, which is our favorite (and one of the only consistent) Valentine's tradtion; and we got the kids cereal for breakfast, which was a treat.

We did a combined 'birthday date' lunch with these two, as Annabelle was out of school for a Dr appointment(and it's her birthday date month), and Charles didn't have school that day, and he'd said we'd missed his date last month(for half birthday...they get 2 each year)...still not sure if that's true so we're trying to be better about taking photos on the day of the date as evidence.

For our Valentine's dinner we had heart shaped pizza from papa murphys, and we made a heart shaped rice krispie treat using what brow rice crisps we had left, and then filled in with a graham cereal.

Grandma Sugar made us some Valentine's treats as well which was super sweet of her, literally :).

Cheer State Champions and Preparing For Nationals. Snowshoeing. Temple Date Night.

 Elisabeth is the flyer in these stunts. Here they are preparing for nationals.

 She is on JV cheer this year and they had state competition in the end of January and they took first place in their division!

 Varsity took 2nd place in their division! So proud of all these girls and their coaches, and all the hard work they put into getting ready for these performances.

 I borrowed Shauna's (left) snowshoes once again, and we went snowshoeing (Shari on the right) in the beautiful Mill Creek Canyon. We'll be hiking together more this year in preparation for our Grand Canyon trip in September.

I learned a couple of lessons on our snowshoeing trip about what is appropriate and inappropriate gear while snowshoeing. I went in sweats and came back with the bottom half of my body completely soaked, including my socks and boots which were sopping wet.

 Scott and I attend the temple together twice a month for our date night; once with our ward members, and once with just the two of us. I love this tradition we've had over the years...though it's looked different over the years with not going as frequently together when we had little ones, to then going once a month together, and now twice.

Scott's 39th Birthday

Friday January 24th, Scott turned 39 years old. He took work off and we went snow shoeing nearby and then grabbed lunch at Costa Vida and ate it at home.

  Later that evening we watched Elisabeth perform at half time (cheer), then we came home for his traditional birthday dinner (stuffed pasta shells), 

 opened gifts,

 and had his traditional pizookie (pizza sized cookie, baked in a cast iron skillet) with ice cream for dessert. 

 This was my treat since I don't eat chocolate....my favorite: popcorn with gummy candies.

I am so grateful Scott was born! He is a continual blessing in my life and in the lives of our children. He is my greatest gift.

School Lunch Prep and Charles earned his Eagle!

Our three youngest girls elementary school starts at 8am, and it's in another city, and there's too many people at this school and so traffic is always horrendous. If I don't want to be gone for an hour driving them to school and back, we have to leave our house by about 710am, which will get me home just before 8am. 

The girls wake up at 630am so they can be ready on time, and because it's such an early morning, they also make their lunches the night before. We had Elisabeth making her lunches when she was pretty young, by around age 5, but we've babied these girls and we're just now asking Jane and Nora to help more with their lunches. Annabelle's been helping make lunches (and her sisters lunches) for awhile, bless her heart. 

 I make a sweet potato muffin that I love, but my kids usually leave it alone...until I got smart and added a 1/2 cup of chocolate chips to the batter. Now they're gone within a couple of days!

 Elisabeth is the flier; they were cheering at a JV basketball game.

 Charles recently had his board of review and earned his Eagle! Way to go Charles! He did his eagle project with Bear-O-Care, a local non-profit organization that provides a daycare for adults with severe disabilities.

And I found about 10 copies of this picture on my phone...It appears Jane got a hold of my camera during a Sunday dinner. 

Charles 14th Birthday, Hurt Toe Nail from Handstands

January 6th, Charles turned 14. Some tidbits about Charles right now:

• He loves people and is probably our most social/talkative child...he even likes to carry on conversations with adults, and will talk to grandma on the phone longer than any of our other kids. 
• Charles played baseball and basketball this year and likes all sports. 
• Charles loves to listen to music and will even carry his Alex around the house to wherever he will be hanging out so that he has a 'good speaker' to listen to
• Charles enjoys hiking, camping, scouting and anything outdoors. 
• He is good friends with Elisabeth and Annabelle and will often stay up late talking with them.
• Charles can beat just about anyone at Mario Cart.
• Charles is officially taller than me. 

Other news: Elisabeth is working hard in cheer as they are getting ready for nationals in California in February. She's the flyer:

With the start of the New Year, Annabelle was interviewed at church and received her temple recommend so that she can do baptisms for the dead. She made a New Years goal to go to the temple every week. We are in the second week of February, and so far, she has gone every week! Amazing lady.

I hurt my toenail. And no, it was not from marathon training (Boston in coming up..April 20!). Rather, I was doing handstands in between writing, like I usually do, but this time I didn't catch  myself nicely when I started to fall, but my back arched and I fell, hitting a wall coming down. My toenail throbbed for days, and bled when I walked that first day. My knee also hit the wall and put a small blue dent (I was wearing blue jeans) in the wall.

This is what it looked like on day 2. See all the puss leaking out of the side. Ew. It leaked for a week. So I kept a bandaid on it during the day.

And my brother suggested burning a hole in the toenail with a paper clip to help it drain(remember it was throbbing for days). I didn't ask how many holes and just went ahead and polka dotted the toenail. Afterwards he told me I could've just made one hole. Whoops! It was about a week before I could wear normal, closed-toe shoes again without them giving me pain. Until then, I mostly stuck with sandals.

This is about what my toenail looks like now. It doesn't hurt at all, but it is discolored and seems to be getting darker in color. I will probably lose the toenail soon. I'm just grateful it's not hurting any more because I'm still training for my marathon.

January 2020 New Year Resolutions and Moving Bedrooms

I love the churches new youth program that has individuals choosing, planning and working on spiritual, physical and intellectual goals. It's based off a scripture in Luke where Christ grows in wisdom (intellectual), stature (physical), and with God (spiritual) and man (social). 

I am a very goal oriented person and I write down my goals daily so they're continually before me, so I was super excited when my kids were challenged to do something similar. So on January 1, we all wrote down our goals for each area, and then that night we each shared at least one of our goals with the family. We plan to have them review their goals weekly during our Sunday family council meeting. 

I took this picture and texted it to my sister Becca. She said I never sweat when I exercise, and I wanted to show her that I do in fact sweat. A lot. 

Scott and I enjoy playing games on occasion, and the younger kids recently joined us in a game of Bananagrams. Fun was had by all. 

Annabelle and Elisabeth have been asking to have their own room for quite some time, and we recently allowed them to do that. Annabelle moved to the bedroom on the main floor, and Elisabeth switched bedrooms with Jane and Nora (as theirs was smaller). It was a lot of work over a couple of days, but we worked on it while they were still on Christmas break and got it all done. This was a 'before' of the room Annabelle moved into.

And a 'before' of Jane and Nora's room.

'Before' of Elisabeth and Annabelle's room. Also, Annabelle's twin bed frame had broken a month before, so she'd been sleeping with her mattress on the ground, but when she moved, she was able to use the daybed we had down in that room.

'After'- Jane and Nora's room.

'After'- Elisabeth's room. 

'After' - Annabelle's room.

One of my roommate's from BYU, Jessie, was in town visiting from CA, so we met up, last minute, for half hour and chatted while we drank smoothies at Jamba Juice. I am so grateful for all the roommates I had while at BYU. I feel like God hand picked each and every one of them as they were all blessings in my life(and still are) .