February 2018--week 4

Matthew and his preschool buddy-Lauren Didlake were both Marvelous Mavericks today in the morning assembly!  WOW!

The sign of things to come.  A patient father tutoring his child over math homework.  What a good dad!

The packing for the Grand Canyon backpacking trip over Spring Break has begun

We thank thee o god for a prophet!

President/Dr. Russell M. Nelson was ordained President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Mom enjoyed a weekend of crafting and blog updating!

February 2018--week 3

Super proud of my Lindsey girl!  She had to read 10 TEN of the Bluebonnet books to be invited to a special breakfast with the librarian at school--and she did it.  Her favorite one she read?  Soar.

Sam sings in the 6th grade choir.  Here is the district wide concert.

Stephen conditioning for the Grand Canyon

I get new floors!  Not real hardwoods, but luxury vinyl!  Cheaper, more durable, just as pretty!

This is how Kaitlyn feels about her conditioning--but she can do hard things!

Lindsey's grade did a music and dance show for the parents, Lindsey even choreographed one of the songs--where did she get that talent?  What the what?!?

February 2018--week 1

We enjoyed a nice visit from Uncle Joey who was in town for business.  So he came for dinner and a few rounds of "cover your assets".  So glad he made time for us!

Matthew's basketball team is improving, they lost but just barely this time.  Matthew is catching on really quickly!

January 2018--week 4

For awhile we've been trying to find a time to go with the kids FAVORITE PE Coach from school, Luis Perez to go shooting, well that day came and we had a lot of fun.  We shot lots of different guns.  So glad to let our kids do this in a save environment.

Happy Birthday mom in heaven!  Miss you every day!

After going to her grave we went to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory to celebrate Stephen's promotion and raise!  YAY!  So well deserved.

Matthew is the funniest kid!

On our way home we had to drive through the shopping center of the restaurant, and we have to drive by a Victoria's Secret.  Because I feel the displays are basically soft porn, for years we've instructed our children to close their eyes.  They did this time too, only Matthew chimes in declaring that he knows why we do this, "Because the signs show off their STOMACHS!"  Oh dear!

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I present to you Yoda Yogurt!

Lindsey is on the "Fuel up to Play 60" team at school which is a leadership group that comes up with ideas for how to inspire kids to be more healthy.  There is a milk campaign and Lindsey came up with a persona named "Yoda Yogurt" to be on morning announcements, and we even borrowed a costume.  It was AWESOME!  Love this clever girl!

January 2018--week 3

A sweet photo of Matthew with his friend Summer.  They've been buddies even before they were born.  Her mom came to see me in the hospital after he was born and she was still pregnant with Summer, they're only 6 days apart in age!  And they'll be baptized together in a couple months!

What a treat!  25 years ago I met this gal at EFY in Idaho.  We've kept in contact over the years and she had a quick stop in Dallas so we met for lunch.  Mari is successful, adorable, and it was so fun to catch up with her!

Kaitlyn was invited to play the piano at New Beginnings for Young Women's this week, so glad she gets to use her talent in this way.  And Matthew was home sick one day this week.  He had a cough and wasn't feeling well enough to go to school.  He stayed down and read, and watched videos, and then built a blanket fort! 

Lindsey got to go on a really great field trip--Austin!  We had to have her up at at the school at like 6:15 for the buses to leave and they were gone all day.  She had a wonderful time!

January 2018--week 2

It's so nice to have a handy husband.  And even better when he's a good father who allows his children to help him.  Our back door had been drafty and been a project that Stephen had always wanted to tackle.  Over the break from work during the holiday was the time.  He discovered a horrible installation job with literally no insulation around our back door and that it wasn't anchored well to the doorframe.  Filling it with insulation took about 3 trips to the store for more because it was hard to anticipate how much the stuff would grow.  But the job got done and it's been much less drafty, shockingly.

With a ne year comes a new start time for church.  We'd been going at 1:00 and with the new year we moved to 9:00, which makes the mornings a bit more frantic but on our first Sunday we found time to take a nap, have a devotional, have a nice family dinner and play games.  It was lovely.  I am so happy for family time and real Sabbath Day activities.

January 2018--week 1

This kid may look like our 7 year old son Matthew, but we discovered over the holiday that he is also a middle aged man with a Hispanic name living in Santa Ana, CA.  See, Stephen had his identity possibly compromised through a breach at work and so his company paid to have his SS# monitored.  Stephen entered the numbers of our children as well and made this discovery.  Time to do some research to see how bad this is...

In other events this week, President Thomas S Monson, president of our church passed away.  Our local newspaper, the Dallas Morning News re-printed an awful obituary that was sourced from the New York Times.  It was a fulfillment of the prophecy where good was called evil, and evil good.  It then became my responsibility to reach out to the DMN and ask for a retraction or a more appropriate article to be written.  It was a good experience from which I learned a lot.  Kim Farrah said she took it as my personal ministry to make sure Pres Monson was given the respect that he deserved.

New Years Eve 2017

McKneely cousins are in town!

They arrived on Thursday afternoon and that evening the big 3 girls joined Grandpa Pete's youth group at the temple to do baptisms!  YAY.  And the world is so small, I guess my cousin Allan Jones who recently moved into the area lives in their ward, so he was there and met Kaitlyn.  He recognized Stephen from social media of all places. Strange, small world.  Part of their reason was to attend the temple since their temple in Houston was flooded and is currently closed.  

Friday was cold.  We did get the kids out of the house to go to the park and play a crazy game of baseball.  Then we went ice skating--a bucket item for all the kids of something they wanted to do over the break.

Mom and Dad McKneely arrive later this afternoon.  It was a memorable visit because they forgot many things including church clothes--they hadn't planned to go to church with us but had forgotten about our plans to do temple sealings and so they had to borrow and shop for new stuff.

That evening after dinner we went for a cold excursion to go see the lights at the Dallas Zoo.

Saturday the adults had an appointment to go do an endowment session and then some family sealings.  That evening we had a fun BBQ with the Bennion's and the "Dougs".

Sunday morning (New Years Eve) we watched Sound of Music, and watched some icing and snow flurries fall.  We went to church and came home to make pizzas with our pizza ovens--it was QUITE the ORDEAL and was probably more fun of an idea than it was executed.  And we enjoyed puff pastries, cheese dip and chocolate fondue.  The younger kids got to stay up pretty late but not until midnight.  We sent the older kids up just before midnight--unbeknownst to us they stayed up and listened to music until midnight and celebrated the new year!

End of December 2017--visits and outings

What a TREAT!!!  My Young Women's President growing up, who was like a second mom to me, who helped to shape me into who I am today, was in town to watch her son play football in a bowl game and so Pearl and I went to breakfast with her--it was WONDERFUL!

We enjoyed a fun outing with the Torpy's and Furness' to go bowling at Main Event and then pizza at Cane Russo--YUM!

Dear friend Alyson Johnson was in town for Christmas, and my scrapbook group met up at La Finca Chiquita

Keelers are in town--game night--Super fun!!

Merry Christmas 2017

We felt so fortunate to have Grandma and Grandpa McKneely with us this year--what a treat!

Before a lot of present action got underway, we had another incident that would require another fanciful character--the Tooth Fairy!

Just a couple weeks ago, Matthew wiggled one of his big front teeth loose.  We commented that if he could lose the other one, he'd be the perfect candidate for the song, "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth."  But we didn't think it was likely because that sucker wasn't very loose at all.  That didn't matter.  Christmas morning this kid got to work on it and got it out.  Who knows how long he'll have that gap--but it's adorable, and a fun memory.

We sorted the presents into piles for each person (a McKneely tradition) and enjoyed opening them.

Then spent a lot of time being lazy and enjoying our new gifts: 

And as with any holiday tradition, there is the food.  The obligatory Cinnamon Rolls AND our Christmas Day Feast!