Grandpa Leonard McKneely

After a busy and stressful spring with Grandpa Leonard McKneely.  He started having dementia really bad.  He kept running away from home because he didn't think he was home.  One instance he ran away and ended up in Houston with a dead cell phone and completely lost.  We issued a silver alert for him and thankfully he was found alive.


The family put him in a home and he was determined to "break out".  But eventually he got sick and just stopped fighting and passed away peacefully.

The death was a wonderful time as a family.  We are grateful that families can be together forever.

As I am typing this post event, I am so grateful for this experience with our family as my children went through the whole process of a viewing, a funeral, and a burial all with someone with whom they didn't really have a relationship so that when my mother was killed, the whole process was fresh and recent to them.  It was a tender mercy for which I am grateful.

Sam turns 8 and is baptized

Sam's 8th birthday was especially wonderful!  In our faith we baptize children at age 8, and for Sam, his baptism date fell on his ACTUAL BIRTHDAY which he thought was super cool!

We are so proud of him for his decision to be baptized, and so grateful his father was able to perform the ordinance. 

Sam was baptized with 3 other boys from church, it's quite the year in our ward, there are 16 children turning 8 and getting baptized and 15 of them are BOYS.  So he was baptized along with Parker Bergeson, Luke Huang, and  Logan Rees.  We were fortunate to have our neighbors the Glasers come, along with Mrs. Kathy Keim, Sam's 1st grade teacher, the Sanchez Family (Diego) and our friends Penny and Bob Mione.  It was wonderful to have them here.  Along with our family, the McKneelys and the Lewis'.

Sam played a soccer game that day and had a great cheering section and even scored a couple goals!  Then we opened presents and had treats along with a fajita dinner to feed an army!

Part of the Birthday celebrations is having Stephen take the day off from work and spend the day with Sam (and the other kids) at school as a WATCH DOG!

Hoppy Easter!!!!

Kaitlyn with Grandma Lewis

Because it's September and I'm blogging to catch up, I now know what I couldn't have known on Kaitlyn's birthday.

On that day things were especially busy.  We had soccer practice that evening that Stephen had to coach for Sam's team and I had my monthly Public Affairs Meetings.  I had initially planned to skip my meetings but an unexpected change in Stake Presidency leadership made my attendance critical.

Kaitlyn has always been a bit resentful of the time my calling takes me away from the family even though I try to minimize it.  But especially on her actual Birthday, the fact that we were SO busy and wouldn't be able to celebrate it how she'd imagined was hard.

When she heard this, my mother, took time off from work, met her when she arrived at home from school and took her for a pedicure.  THEN she took her to James Avery to get her a new charm on her bracelet.  This was such a generous birthday for her from my parents, much more than is typical and I was a little concerned but didn't say anything.  These are some sweet photos from that afternoon that were taken on mom's phone.

The nail polish was still on Kaitlyn's toes about 7 weeks later when my mother was killed by a reckless driver in a head on collision.  Kaitlyn spent the rest of the summer refusing to take off the polish and letting her nails grow (and get trimmed).

On the 3 month anniversary of my mothers death, and to celebrate the end of summer and as a treat for the start of school, both my girls and I returned to the same pedicure place to get our toes done.  I'm sure mom was with us as Kaitlyn had the last of her previous pedicure's polished removed and replaced with something new.  I miss my mom....

 

Kaitlyn turns 10!

 

April 1st is this girl's special day!  I adore her and she had a good birthday.  

 

She got a jewelry box and a lot of new earnings.  She got her ears pierced for Christmas and we've finally gotten them good and healed and now she has quite a few pairs to change them often.  

Birthday parties for everyone each year gets a bit overwhelming so we do a fun outing with each birthday child and one friend.  This year I thought it would be fun to try a paint your own pottery type place.  Kaitlyn chose her good friend and neighbor across the street, Katie to come with us.  They made some sweet cupcake jewelery boxes and had a lovely time!

 

Happy Birthday to my creative, sweet, artistic, musical, helpful, and wonderful daughter!

Matthew turns 4!

Matthew and I have been participating in a preschool co-op this year at school.  Each week on Tuesday a different mom hosts a morning preschool and activity day at their home.  Our turn happened to fall on Matthew's birthday!  So it made it easy to have a birthday party with his friends for our class that day.

Matthew is a "bob the builder" kid of guy who loves all things construction so this was the easy theme for his party.

Each of the children got a hat and vest.  We played outside in the rice bin/water table with construction trucks.  And then we went for a tour of the city public works trucks.  These kids had a BLAST!  Climbing all around the trucks, honking the horns, they just played and played!

I LOVE this picture!

 

And then this was the cake I made for his family celebration later that day.  I can't take credit for the idea, I saw it on "pinterest" and am so happy how it turned out!  So was Matthew!

March 2014 happenings!

Here are some fun happenings in March,  

PIANO RECITAL

Sam and Kaitlyn participated in their Spring Piano Recital.  Kaitlyn played "The Entertainer" and "I Hope they Call me on a Mission", Sam played "Little Indian Lance" and "Ode to Joy".  They did so well!

 

DRESS UP

During Spring Break we spent some time in College Station with our cousins, the girls dressed up in all these boas.  We laughed and texted the pictures to Auntie Liz telling her we were working on their dresses for the wedding.

 

 

LUNCH AT SCHOOL

Each month I try to have lunch with the kiddos at school.  Matthew LOVES going with me.  He's gotten to know all the ladies in the office at the school, he'll often dress up in funny things.  This day it was "bob the builder" goggles.