January in review

Life is certainly busy with business, birthdays, homework, sicknesses, church stuff, snow days, and a long list of chores. Here is our life in pictures for the month of January.

Ella showing off her fashion taste. She is such a girly girl.


I LOVE my Blendtec blender!! I have at least one smoothie, if not two a day. It makes the perfect breakfast and lunch. I love that I can sneak lettuce or spinach in there and my kids still drink it.

Our first good snow storm of the season. Due to the snow, many birds came to visit our bird feeder.

Andrew's birthday. We celebrated at a local Mexican restaurant. The food was good and we had the place to ourselves thanks to a snow and ice storm. Andrew was thrilled it snowed on his birthday. He was also pleased that the restaurant staff respected my wishes that they not cover his face in whipped cream.

Brianna and Ella being silly.





I have been spending a lot of time at the YMCA lately. I am loving it and wish I could go more.

Ella having fun with static electricity.

We love the original Boom Blox game game for Wii. This is the second version which I got for Christmas. We have loved playing this game together.

Ella had a play date with her friend T. They both love everything princess, can you tell?




I attended Imaging USA, a professional conference for photographers. The picture above was taken during one of my classes. I learned so much and I had a great time.

Brianna turned 12 and is now part of the Young Women program at Church. The older girls love to welcome the new girls, so they made this cute poster for Bri. The funniest part is that they put it on the neighbor's mailbox. We had a celebration at home where we dined on homemade California rolls, her favorite. The gifts we gave her included an avocado, a pint of Haagen Daaz, the game Clue, and a new purse. She was thrilled with her gifts. The avocado was a special request since she loves it and wanted one just for herself.


Here is a picture of Ty enjoying one of his birthday cupcakes I made. I surprised him at school. He was so happy and didn't want us to leave. Ella did not want to leave him either and proceeded to cry for 5 minutes in the car.




Ty turned 6! We celebrated his birthday with pizza and a cake made out of ice cream sandwiches. I love kids at this age as they are so easy to please when it comes to gifts. Although he was given other gifts, his world was complete with a super soft blanket and a new Bakugan.



I can't rave enough about www.ldsjournal.com. Andrew recently had his journal from ldsjournal.com printed into a book and it turned out great. I loved it so much that I wanted one for myself. I have now started my own account. It sends you reminders to journal according to the time settings you choose. It also has a journal jar section with questions for you to answer about your life.

I never thought we would ever be able to build a big snowman again since we moved to the South.

The kids showing off their snow fort. We received about 4 inches or so which is the most we have received in the nearly 3 years we have lived here. Due to the weather we have been trapped in our home for 3 days. Church was even canceled today. The area in which we live relies on the weather to melt the snow, so no sanding or plow trucks have been by here. This makes it incredibly dangerous to drive. School will be canceled tomorrow as well because of it. With temperatures in the 40s tomorrow, the roads should be clear by Tuesday.