Happy Birthday Aaron!

We love you Aaron, you have been such a joy. Especially during these rough teenage years. I hope all your dreams come true. I hope to see you driving much more this year. You move into head chauffeur once Austin leaves. Your a great son!

Andrew's Baby Blessing

He is serious about this day!

This is Emily's favorite view
Look how relaxed he looks

Christmas 2009

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Abby's Day

Abby could hardly wait for the time to blow out her sparkle candles!

She managed to get all of them out and keep them out.

The arrival of the Turners!

Ben and Amber and their children arrived the day before Christmas Eve. It was great to be able to enjoy them before all the excitement starts.

Alden's first piano recital

He of course was not excited about it. I'm sure he was nervous. He did great! His teacher is such a sweet girl, she is a true blessing for us.

Kaden's birthday celebration

Kaden requested marshmallow cereal for breakfeast and KFC for dinner, and chocolate cake for his dessert. We even gave him his presents before school. That is a first for us. I think he had a pretty good day.

Happy Birthday My Sweet Abby

We love you, you are such a tender sweet little girl with so much compassion and love. I hope you had a good birthday. I loved spending time alone with you at the movies.

Happy Birthday Benjamin Turner!

We love you soo much and we are so glad you married into this family. I hope your Mom and Dad forgive me for not adding some more pictures with them in it. Tell them I will work on stealing or getting pictures off facebook. I hope you have a pretty relaxing day, as much as you can with a sweet young family. Love you!

December 16 2009 Happy Birthday Kaden!

Happy Birthday my sweet little boy. Kaden, you are a joy in our life. I am so glad Heavenly Father slipped you into our family. You are a blessing to all of us! You are so tender and sweet and we love you!

A funny thing happened in Church yesterday

We had a leak in our Church, it started in the bathroom ceiling and then came through the nursery or maybe vice versa, but we were in our Sacrament Meeting and during the Sacrament the fire alarms started going off and the strobe like lights started going with the message to leave the building. It was quite entertaining and we got through the Sacrament and then we excited the building. Only there was another large leak on the other side with lots of water coming down the hall and into the gym. The men quickly started pushing out the water through the kitchen door with big dry mops and they gathered wet vacs and started working together. It was actually touching to see how quickly we assemble and work together and take care of business.

Christmas Time

When I was a child it was my favorite holiday and it was so magical and full of memories. I love the music, the lights, the decorations and all the goodies. Reading the story of Christ's birth and then acting it out. The stockings and all the fun stuff inside them. The wrapping late at night with my Mom on Christmas Eve and delivering goodies to friends. The fire in the fire place. I found out when I was a teenager my Dad hated Christmas and I didn't understand why, but I do now.

I didn't realize that it took so much money to make it so magical. We choose to have a big family because we feel that Heavenly Father wants these children to come to a good home. So we don't have the extras. We have good friends who have given us some nice things and our children who have bought cool electronic toys for their brothers and sisters. We always struggle to make a living and Steve works really hard to make things better for us constantly. When Christmas comes along I think he feels more of a failure because we can't give enough & sometimes not at all. Our older children pitch in and give of their money and get very little if anything. I feel like a failure because I didn't want my children to hate Christmas or resent what it has become. I tried to make it fun and beautiful and put a lot of effort in talking and getting them to think of the true meaning of Christmas of our Saviors birth. That isn't good enough when they go to school or church and they talk about what they got and what you didn't get.

I was really sad when I read my daughters blog, not because she was trying to hurt me, but because I really tried so hard to not have this happen. The funny thing is someday she will be able to give her children the Christmas I would have wanted to give to her. It may not be while they are small though and they will have worked and sacrificed for it just like we have.

I'm sad because I'm sure all of my children have these same feelings. What is the solution? I still love the music and just being together with the kids and having our big breakfast together. I loved when Steve took the kids last year and picked a snowball fight with the Nelsons at 11:00pm on Christmas Eve and built a huge snowman in the middle of the road. I loved that all of my kids where together.

People go into debt to make Christmas magical, only to feel awful about it later. Then others are blessed and have plenty . I love Thanksgiving so much because it is all about just being together and having a nice meal. Don't get me wrong I love this season, I just hate that my children are so disappointed and really would rather not have a large family of their own because they can't make them happy materially, which in reality, doesn't make you happy. I ask again how do you make this a wonderful holiday for your children and keep it Christ centered?

A few more pictures from Steve and Katelynn's trip

look how cute they are,thanks Ben for taking the picture
The smurk
This helps ease the stress of doing homework or checking game scores
look what a good job she can do
Good job Emily







This is one of the amazing faces of Andrew
They tried wrapping up Emily like Andrew and it isn't working
A very hungry girl
I'm not sure she is happy
Look she really is a queen!

Steve and Ben at the big BYU game.

Steve and Ben had a great time at the game and rushing the field and all the controversy after the game as well. Thanks Ben !

Thanksgiving at the Munson's

While I was busy making dinner Grandma went into the bathroom to go potty,but she came out with a makeover.This was after I took some of it off. She didn't want me to take any of it off.The first picture is before we did a little work on it.
Best Buddies

Cooking,talking and preparing for the big feast.