Timmy's Reflections Contest Piano Composition

Timmy composed a cute little song on the piano for the Reflections Contest.  The theme this year was Let Your Imagination Fly.  So he did let his imagination fly and he wrote a song called Space Elephants.  He said it was about elephants playing basketball on the moon and he composed it all on his own with help writing the notes from me.

Well, his little composition not only won at the school level but also won at the council level.  He thought is was so cool to get a real medal for winning.

Here is the video he entered of his song.  That day he had gotten his face painted at a birthday party and it was late and the entries were due the next morning so we just quickly recorded his song even with paint on his face.  He's still cute.

January 2016

Winter is just rolling right along. It is going by maybe a little slower than I would like, but adding fun things here and there makes it go faster.  I think I want Spring to come this year because I've been sick since before Christmas and some warm Spring weather sounds really nice at the moment.

A few days after ringing in the new year we met some friends at the children's theater to watch Peter Pan.  The boys loved it!

On January 6th my mom brought some king cake for us to celebrate Three Kings Day.  The boys loved that as well!

Brian did lots of homework in January.  He is getting so big!

 One Saturday Mark took us ice fishing at Rockport.  We were joined by Jake and his kids.

Brian in particular loved ice fishing.  Even though it was freezing cold outside the tent, he stayed out there at his fishing hole just waiting for a bite. We had some bites but they all came off before Mark got them out of the hole.  Sadly we didn't catch anything, but we had fun getting outside and we stopped at the Kamas Drugstore for lunch!

One day I took the boys swimming at the Sportsmall.  They love swimming!

Mark went on a business trip to California. After his work meetings, he took a day to stay with Luke and Sunny in Palo Alto.

Luke took him around Stanford and they went out for some good food.

They were even able to meet up with Mark's cousin for dinner.

While Mark was out of town, the boys had a day off of school, so I took them to the Provo City Center Temple open house.  I was lucky to get tickets for the perfect day for us to go.  I remember playing the cello in the old Provo Tabernacle and going to stake conferences there when I was at BYU.  It was so cool to see it restored as a temple and to show the boys.  It is beautiful!

After touring the temple, we headed over to BYU and had lunch with the BYU students at the Cougar Eat.  We ate the same Subway sandwiches I would always get there as a student.  Oh boy was it fun to show Brian and Timmy BYU and to have so many  memories come flooding back to me.  I loved my time at BYU.

We went to the BYU Bookstore which the boys thought was so cool.

Then we walked over to the Museum of Art and saw the Norman Rockwell exhibit.

After viewing some Norman Rockwell, we went up to the Bean Museum.  We absolutely loved it!

Brian was really interested in President Packer's bird carving exhibit.  Brian loves to draw birds and now he wants to learn to carve them as well.

I let them choose as small item from the gift shop.  Brian got a box of shark teeth and Timmy was so into BYU that he got a lollipop with a big Y on it.

 I spent most of the drive home answering question after question about BYU and how to get into BYU etc.

We sure had a lot of snowy days in January.  One Sunday it dumped the perfect snowman building snow.  So after church we headed out to feed the animals and build some snowmen.  Mark was between meetings and cleared the driveway in his church clothes.  You can see him in the background here.

Brian and Timmy rolled those huge snowballs all by themselves!  Then with Mark's help we built a very awesome snowman.  Timmy was in Heaven.

This was from a pioneer themed Family Home Evening.  The boys could not get enough of pioneer games with Mark.

Ringing In 2016

We had our traditional balloon tree kids party to ring in the year at our house this year.  It was so much fun and I loved having my family here.  My kids do best partying hard and then getting to bed early, so everyone came over early and we ended by 8:00 p.m.

The boys and Mark helped fill the balloons with candy and prizes and we hung them on the tree.  When everything was ready we passed the time watching a little football.

Cousins arrived and we did a little sledding in the park before dinner.

This is the only picture I got of dinner, but Mark made some delicious meat and everyone brought something yummy to add to the meal.

My mom brought a few games to play.  The biggest hit was Pie In The Face.  You put your face in the face spot and turn the knob however many times you spun and you never know when the whipped cream hand will pop up and get you.  Timmy loved this game!  Brian wouldn't even try it.  Timmy loved my mom's jelly bean game too until he got a barf flavored one and it actually made him barf.  He wasn't allowed to play the jelly bean game again, but he did play pie in the face over and over.

After dinner and games we got ready for our countdown!

It was quite the party!

And then it was balloon popping time!  Joey was the cutest to watch.  He thought it was so funny popping those balloons with his dad!

After cleaning up a bit, Mark set off some fireworks outside.  It was the coldest night of the year so we lasted for the fireworks and a few sparklers and headed back in to warm up.

I couldn't get enough of Connor and his smiles!

It was such a fun evening!  We said goodbye to my family and put the kids to bed.  My mom stayed and helped clean everything up and then she stayed with the boys while Mark and I went to our friend's house to make an appearance at their party.  We got to chat with some good friends from our old neighborhood and then we came home for a 10:00 bedtime.  We got plenty of partying in without even losing sleep!  Welcome 2016!  I'm looking forward to another wonderful year!