January 2016--week 3

 "Operation: Smile Makeover" is now underway.  

This cute girl got braces!  Kind of amazing that at not even age 12 she's ready for these, but she is.  Just on the top for now and has to wear a bite plate which makes her talk funny and takes some getting used to.  But she's being very responsible and taking good care of her new hardware, I'm so proud of her.  Of course we followed her appointment with an obligatory milkshake, AND to complete her "new look" we were able to stop by and get her new glasses.  She looks so grown up!

I signed up to come in as the "Mystery Reader" for Matthew's class.  I couldn't decide which book to read so I read two: "Make Way for Ducklings" and "A Bad Case of Stripes".  Both are adorable, and Matthew LOVED me reading to his class and then taking the opportunity to have lunch with him.

Kaitlyn is making good use of her new Christmas present to make baby blankets for her new cousins "McK" and "Ry" who are making an appearance in May to Auntie Liz and Uncle Joey in Boston.  These fabrics are so precious, and she did such a good job making them!  And we're grateful that dad knows something about sewing and can help her.

With an added focus on "Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy", this kid is following an idea given by a member of our stake presidency who shared that his son about Sam's age makes cookies each Sunday.  So we are enjoying this new found passion--YUM!

When my husband was growing up, his family had a three scoop rule at church. Each child started church services with three scoops of ice cream for dessert. Every infraction of irreverence or inappropriate behavior resulted in a scoop lost. In our family we've continued this tradition, only if you sing all the hymns AND don't lose any scoops, you get a topping! It was a good day at church today for all our kids, this girl chose a chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich!

January 2016--week 2

The second week of January singled out this boy at a school morning "Rise and Shine" assembly as a "Marvelous Maverick".  His teacher, Mrs. Kim Powers said, "Our character trait this past month has been “Citizenship,” and no one shows it better than Sam! He’s always helping others and me without being asked to do so. He’s a fine young man." We are so proud of him!

In my calling we had a pretty amazing event come our way, famed organist for the Mormon Tabernacle, Richard Elliot, came to town.  By virtue of my calling, I got to help promote the event, and Stephen took me on a FREE Valentines Day date.

Grandpa and his fiance Samantha came to town to take our kids to an indoor bounce house place called "Jump Street"--my girls were fearless at climbing, and Matthew loved swinging and falling into the foam pit.  Then we went to Braums for ice cream.  Fun times.

January 2016--week 1

Happy New Year! (It's really May 2016, but hey, at least I'm getting this documented)

In the spirit of catch up, I've decided to break up January 2016 by weeks.  Thanks to the advances of technology and my addiction to social media, I find that I take many photos to post, and those posts with a bit more back story can help become this blog.  Ta-Da!

New Years Day was spent with my dad and his finace Samantha.  Lindsey got a few watercolor sets for her birthday and so Grandpa was kind enough to spend some time with her teaching her how to use them and they painted this together.  It was fun!


Matthew always has more energy than we know what to do with.  This is one way we've handled it--we make him run.  At first he didn't like it at all but in time he's learned how good it is for him.  He's AMAZING--the kid can run 2 miles without stopping and not even seem winded.  Granted he's not going fast and we tell him he can go as slow as he wants but because he's always so anxious to get on to other things.  Our Bishop, Mark Atkinson describes Matthew as "Lightening in a bottle" and he's about right.


Sam has really been improving this season in basketball.  It's partly because we got him a basketball hoop for Christmas, and partly due to some great coaching but we've seen him "get it" this season and do so well.  Go Airbenders!

UILCompetition for Sam and Kaitlyn.  We're so proud of these two.  Kaitlyn did this last year and enjoyed it, so she tried it again this year.  She really wanted to make a team so she tried out for more than one and made 2!  Sam wasn't going to try out, but his teacher from last year, Dianne Tran, approached me as she was the coach of the Oral Reading team and she thought Sam had a natural ability for it.  Sam has stage fright, he does not like being in front of people so I didn't think he'd do it, but he DID.  And he came in 4th place in the district!  We were so thrilled and proud of him, of both of them!

Sunday fun time as a family often includes games.  This week we tried out a new game from Grandpa Lewis called "Wonky" and it was pretty fun!  Love spending time with my favorite people!

New Years Eve!

In the swirl of responding to tornadoes, I am grateful that I took the time to celebrate New Years Even with our dear friends the Torpy's.

We ate junk food.  Played games. And when we were "done" having kids be awake we staged a countdown and blew horns and popped streamers.

Happy New Year! Bring on 2016!

Christmas Tornadoes

The day after Christmas a storm with 10 tornadoes hit the Dallas area.  While we live in a tornado area, they usually hit in more rural areas.  The fact that it happened the day after Christmas and in suburbia made the impact really big and the whole thing pretty tragic.

Due to the timing, a lot of people were out of town so it was days before some families even knew their homes had been damaged, it probably saved a lot of lives though.

In my calling in Public Affairs that launched me into a very busy week and a half.  Seriously the days are a blur as I worked to help the church use it's relationships to respond to the needs.  And of course because of the holiday, the person who is in charge of maintaining relationships with the VOAD was out of town as well so it threw me into dealing with people I've never met.  I didn't know who I could trust, who I should align with etc.  It was very stressful.

I do have to take a moment and share an amazing part of this story.  6 weeks prior to the tornadoes and even months leading up to that I had a very strong feeling that we needed some training in our Coordinating Council on how to respond in a disaster.  We had some folks coming in from out of town and I attempted to do a training meeting.  The attendance wasn't as great as I would have hoped but the training was spot on, and it helped me to be introduced to those in the NASW who I would need to work with to coordinate help.  And the training I offered was accurate and timely.  I truly felt inspired and led.

I also had THE WORST and MOST DIFFICULT experience ever in the history of my time in Public Affairs.  The president of the VOAD who was running the refugee service center didn't like the way a certain group was handling the distribution of the donations.  So she approached me and "The Church" and asked for an amazing amount of donations and our members responded in a BIG BIG way, like an impressive way, probably too well.  Because once we had all the donations in the center there was a power struggle between the City of Garland who owned the building, and the VOAD members who all wanted to be in charge of the distribution of our donations.  It, was. awful.

But at the height of my indecision and uncertainty of what to do the Lord answered my prayer and in the process I preserved the most important relationship I could possibly make.

Christmas 2015

We spent Christmas with the McKneelys in College Station with many of our extended family.

One of the traditions that we look forward is the reenactment of the Nativity story complete with costumes: Matthew was Joseph, Sam and Kaitlyn were wise men, we even incorporated special musical numbers into this.  Sam played the piano, Kaitlyn played the flute.

 (Aunt Sarah was hilarious as Mary who came in on the toy donkey.

Christmas Morning...

The big girls got to make these special cinnamon roll/Christmas trees, they were so proud!

When we Christmas at the McKneelys, there is a massive amount of presents because there are so many people.  We make stacks for each person and then one by one, youngest to oldest we each take turns opening.  It takes HOURS, but it's wonderful.

Kaitlyn's big present this year was a really nice sewing machine.  She's been taking classes and is really really enjoying it.  The machine we have at home is not the best so we worked to find a super nice one and she's thrilled!

Then for the rest of the day we hung out got busy preparing for the FEAST!  Alex and Matthew enjoyed peeling the apples....

We played a lot of games.....

And Kaitlyn got all creative on setting our Christmas Dinner table:

Lewis Christmas

Merry Christmas with the Lewis'!  We enjoyed a breakfast at IHOP and everyone got their favorite (I think Lindsey was over the moon with her Nutella and banana crepes).

We then went to Grandpas house and opened a few presents. Including some shirts that he designed, (proudly modeled by the children) Then we visited Grandma's grave and sang some songs and laid a wreath for her.