Its great to be 8, especially when you're Parkin!

Parkin is a love. He is so good at showing affection and sharing it. I hope as he matures that he still can be so honest with his feelings. Right now he does not get embarrassed or hold back. He is genuine and full of love. Parkin's birthday in May 3rd the baptism for our stake were held on May 2nd, he missed it by a day! So he had to wait a month, that was very hard for him. June 5th was when he got baptized, luckily it  took place in the morning so he didn't have to wait too long that day.His baptism was surrounded by friends and family who came to support him. We were able to hold a celebration in the church gym so that everyone who came could enjoy a cinnamon roll and light brunch.

Parkin I love you and am so glad you are in our family. You have been known to ask real deep questions about the gospel and you want to make sure that your beliefs are sincere. You have walked by faith, don't forget to keep doing that! Parkin share his growing testimony often in church what a great example you are to me and your siblings. One of the best examples you are to me, is in your diligence in prayer. You cannot go to bed without saying your personal prayers. That is an act of faith and diligence. We love you, we love how you love and I look forward to seeing you grownup into a compassionate, strong, faithful and intelligent man. You are doing great and are more than good enough!

Mormitzvah March 2015

When Bella was in 7th grade she had the privilege of going to several Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah's.  It is a wonderful Jewish tradition of boys and girls becoming accountable for themselves and to becoming full fledged members in their faith. They partake in beautiful ceremonies and then have amazing parties! These parties are like wedding receptions, fancy and expensive. We told Bella that when she is in the 8th grade and turning 14 we would throw her a Morm-itzvah. When a young man or young woman turns 14 in the Mormon church they can start attending church dances. This goes right along with other coming of age events in the Mormon church. When a child turns 18 months they can attend nursery, 3 year olds can go to primary, 8 years olds can get baptized, 12 years olds can attend young mens and young womens activities and lessons and the 14 year olds can attend dances!  The church provides a DJ and refreshments. This is all put on by the church!  It is like a wedding reception that we don't pay for and it is not nearly as nice :) but a party non the less! So Bella got to choose a couple of friends to take to a beauty parlor to do their hair, then we had pizza and pie because Bella prefers pie to cake.  Then we took them all to the dance. I think they all had fun, they all looked great that's what matters right?!

This is the picture of the girls before they got all beautified (even though they all are gorgeous to begin with!)

Bella we love you, you are our jewel. You are intelligent, beautiful and oh so kind. You truly are like Belle the princess. Thank you for being a fantastic oldest child, a great exapmle of hard work and love. Next mile stone....driving!!!

I'm not ready yet

For 14 1/2 years I have had the privilege of having a little one at home, for most of those years at least 2 home and for a couple of years even 3. With school starting on August 5th, my most important job to date, shifted. No longer do I have a little sidekick by my side. Adrianna started kindergarten. Anna has been "attending" my preschool since before she was one.  Unlike all of he classmates she never went away to school, she has been home schooled with a lot of friends. She was not really looking forward to kindergarten but the family has been trying to talk up all the fun things that she will learn. So a week before school she started to express some excitement. The night before the first day Benjamin asked me how I thought I would do, I said I would kiss her good by and say see ya with a peace sign.  we hung out in the kindergarten playground until they told us to go into the gym to meet the teachers and separate into classes. I found her teacher introduced her and lead her to where her class was sitting. I introduced her to a little girl sitting down and gave her a hug and told her she would love it. She looked up at me not crying but clearly afraid and said, "mom, I'm not ready yet."  I hugged her and said sure you are Anna, you got this you will do great! The tears were filling my eyes. Was I ready, ready to say goodbye to this wonderful, terribly hard  and trying at times phase in my life? I got in my car alone. drove home alone. to a house all alone. I called Benjamin and told him, "so much for my peace out goodbye." He lovingly reminded me that in an hour my house would be full of little ones eager to start their preschool day.  I wept again and vowed to love those little people like I was their mother, I wanted to greet them like I wanted my daughter to be greeted. Thank goodness I teach preschool! I was not prepared with how hard this transition would be for me. "I'm not ready yet" But ready or not here we go. This is a phase in life that carries so much joy and physical stress, and I know I will look back with rose colored glasses and hope my children will too :)

Olivia turns 12 (ok over two months ago!)

Celebrating a December birthday is never challenging, we always have loads of family near by and time off to plan something fun. Writing about a December birthday however has proven to be harder :) All I can say bout this daughter of mine is that she is just plain amazing from head to two. She is wicked smart and beautiful too! To quote her dad, "I always forget how old Olivia is because she is so bright." It is also hard because she is almost as tall as me and we wear (or rather she wears) my clothes.

Olivia shares a room with her younger sister Adrianna and is so good to her. She reads to her helps get her ready for things and beyond that she has bedroom rules to help each of them respect themselves and others. Liv is the kind of girl that is a self motivator she sees goals and makes the happen. She doesn't let defeat get her down she just tries harder. That is one of her best qualities.

For her birthday she wanted to go the the temple with her cousins. We were so excited that Emma lives close now and that the Clark cousins Lilly and Morgan could join us. Of course Nana and Papa came as well as Grandma Babs (Grandpa Ronnie was working in the temple so he was with us in spirit) we also had my fab sister Hillary with us too. What a great birthday party! We went out to eat afterwards and Olivia was so happy all could make the trip up to Mesa to celebrate eternal families. Birthday cake consisted of about 4 root beer floats each, yum!

I love you Liv! Next year you are going to be a teenager and I couldn't be more thrilled to experience these years with you, you are a joy, a laugh and a rock. All my love Liv.

Holman in double digits!

I love my oldest son, he is such an amazing little man. He is kind, smart and respectful when not at home :) at home he is a nut! He is so funny and very unpredictable. He is constantly thinking and evaluating things. He likes to test his older sisters and likes to protect and play with his younger siblings. He is our middle child that is not forgotten, because we are all laughing too much at what he has said or done.

We went to the park in the evening, played tag and then went out for ice cream. It was a nice easy going night to celebrate our easy going kid. Holman is a great athlete and student. he wakes up at 5:30 most mornings to do his homework. He would much rather wake-up early than to do it at night. For whatever reason his morning ritual really works for him and he is proved he can balance his school work and time nicely. He has taken up running and is running on his school cross-country team (just like he mom, so proud!).  He loves his science class, music, mandarin and humanities classes, not too thrilled about engineering but he still does well.

I love you Happy Jack! A hug from you does so much to make me smile. The fact that at 10 you still hold my hand makes me so happy( remember you promised you would always hold my hand!).

Adrianna my Thanksiving miracle!

My baby girl turned 5 on November 27th Thanksgiving day! Oh I love my little side kick. She is funny and smart and loving. She loves being the youngest and having 4 adoring siblings. She is in both my preschool classes and tolerates learning the same thing every other day. She goes to kindergarten next year so this is her last year chilling at home 24 hours a day. I have been teaching preschool since she was less than a year old so I hope she can learn to love her new teacher, she loves her primary teachers at church so that is a good sign.

The other day I was listening to Dave Ramsey on the radio he was talking about giving to others and how God wants us to have giving hearts and that why we are asked to tithe. Anna said, "Mom is Dave Mormon?" I said, "No, but he believes in God and Jesus Christ, like we do." She said, "Oh so his not a democrat then." So funny, my little republican daughter :)

Anna you are my survivor my angel here on earth, we love you so much and are so glad you are the caboose in our family, it wouldn't be complete without you!

Going radical 11th month

November arrived with no pressing debt looming over us! We have the 401K loan, thank goodness we could borrow form our own savings and not have to involve a bank. If we wanted to just take out the money we could but then we would have to pay a large tax amount because the money you save for retirement plans are not taxed, so once you use it then the government can tax you. So we opted to use the money and pay ourselves back with interest into our own account, which we pay automatically every two weeks from Benjamin's paycheck. We plan to pay aggressively on it once we have saved six months worth of expenses.

We cheated slightly this month. Once our last loan debt was achieved the thought of waiting to buy a second car until after the first of the year was going to break me. I know once January comes we get a boost from preschool tuition. So we cheated and used a credit card that is tied into our checking account to float the needed funds to get the car. Not radical but I figure we could have two months of car independence and a car paid in full in January or we could have two more months of mooching rides and a car paid in full in January. We went with the first option. I don't think Dave would approve, but we did it anyway. I think mostly because its a slippery slope. Once you start allowing exceptions your right back to where you never wanted to return. Normally I am the hard core radicalist in our relationship but this time I was the one wanting to make an exception. Let me tell you now, we are almost two months into car independence I couldn't be more happy about it!

The hardest part of this month was knowing when it is ok to buy things. For 10 months of very little splurging it has been hard to let go a little and be ok with buying things .


Lesson learned in November:
1.Keeping a budget is an every day experience. Keeping out of debt is an everyday experience.