Snow Caves

We went to McCall for the three day weekend with my friend Kami and her family.  She is a friend from my freshman year at BYU who lives in the Boise area.  She has five kids, a girl and then four boys, and our kids have so much fun together.  We try to get together and do a ski trip each winter.  Here are some pictures of the kids building their snow caves.

Maryn turns 12!

Oh my gosh! I can't believe I have a 12 year old! Maryn's birthday was December 30th so she has been attending Young Womens for a few weeks now. She has wonderful leaders and has a fun time playing on the ward volleyball team. She is definitely growing up and changing but it's all good. It's just weird to think she'll be out of the house in six years!

Some things I love about Maryn:

 - She is so pleasant.  She is almost always cheerful and in a good mood.

 - She is a great big sister.  She is so nurturing with all her brothers and gets along with each of them so well.  They are lucky to have such a kind, fun big sister!

 - She likes to help her mom.  She offers to clean and organize and does a great job!

 - She is a hard worker.  She gets her chores done quickly and well each day without being asked.

 - She is obedient.  Maryn has a desire to do what is right and doesn't complain or procrastinate when she is asked to do something.

 - Maryn is very creative.  I love all the ideas she comes up with of projects to make and pictures to paint and crafts to do.  She is very talented.

 - Maryn is a lot of fun.  She is always thinking of fun things to do with her brothers or her friends.  There is never a dull moment when she is around!

 - She has a good heart.  Maryn has such a tender heart and wants to make people happy.  She hates to see people sad or upset and will always make an effort to make them feel better.

 - She is really turning into a talented piano player!  I love to hear her play and practice each day.

 - She is such a calming, peaceful presence in our home.  The dynamics will definitely change when she leaves home and leaves me the only female in the house!

 - She is a girly girl in that she likes to look nice and wear cute clothes, but she loves to be outside and isn't afraid to get dirty.

Maryn is truly a blessing in our lives and in our family.  We all love her so much!

McCall

We went to McCall for eight days after Christmas.  They had so much snow and we got 3 feet while we were there.  Here are some pictures of the kids playing on the lake by the cabin.

We took a sleigh ride to go feed the elk.  We sat on bales of hay and the elk would literally come and eat from underneath us. 

We did quite a bit of skiing while we were up there.  We started Ian on skis and he did great!  His balance was better than any of the other kids when they first started.  The trees were beautiful with all the snow on them.

Christmas 2010

Here's Maryn and Luke at their piano recital. They played two duets together and sounded great!

Daron's parents came and spent Christmas with us which was so much fun.  On Christmas Eve we went to Daron's sister's house.  They have a tradition of spreading pine cones with peanut butter and bird seed each Christmas Eve and then hanging them up for the birds to eat

His sister did "Christmas Around the World" for her Christmas Eve dinner and had food from all over - Japan, Turkey, Africa, South America, Sweden, Greece!  She had spent days cooking and it was delicious!  

We then acted out the nativity with costumes my mom had given us. They were a big hit! We had wanted Bronwyn and Ian to be Maryn and Joseph, but she insisted on being a cow and he wanted to be a shepherd.

Then we came back home to open our Christmas Eve pajamas.

Christmas morning came before we knew it!

The kids had fun opening the African gifts my parents had sent from Rwanda.

One thing that made this Christmas the best ever was our new tradition of homemade gifts.  This is something we carried over from Daron's family where each person will make one homemade gift.  It rotates each year.  The kids really got into the spirit of things and made more than their allotted one homemade gift.  Maryn made candy necklaces for everyone which Ian polished off in 5 minutes flat.  She also sewed neck warmers filled with rice for grandma and grandpa.

The fun thing about the homemade gifts is that the kids come up with their ideas all on their own.  If they need help putting it together we'll help them a bit, but it's almost entirely their brain child.  Gabe had Daron's name this year.  He made him a Christmas ornament and a brief case.  

Luke had Gabe's name and made him a fort and a coloring book.  He went online and printed Gabe 40 coloring pages and put them in a notebook with colored pencils and a pencil sharpener.  Gabe loves to color and asks me every day to print him off at least one coloring page to work on so he was pretty excited.



Maryn had my name and gave me something I had been wanting, a coat rack!  It was so clever the way she did it with plastic cups to hang the coats and snow pants on.  She also wrapped it in a fun way!



Mom made a hat hanger for Luke to hang his baseball caps on.

Dad made Maryn earrings.  He

We will definitely continue making the homemade gifts each year.  This is the first Christmas they were much more excited to give than to get.  We saved the homemade gifts to open last and the kids kept begging to let the person they made for open their gift.  They couldn't wait to see the person's face when they saw the gift they had worked so hard on.  It really was a magical Christmas.