January

Not much to do in January! We're stuck inside a lot because I hate the cold! Not to mention, my daughter will not wear long sleeves, jackets, coats, jeans, or socks. She is really into dressing herself...which is another reason we rarely leave the house. I don't really like the looks I get from people at the grocery store when my child is dressed in summer clothes and it's snowing outside! So here's what we managed to do in the month of January.

A few of Josie's very fashionable outfits!

Jonah lost 2 more teeth! He was jumping on the couch and knocked one of his front teeth out, and knocked another one loose, which came out later that night. He is too little to be missing so many teeth. Jonah, please stop growing up!

Josie loves to play with anything that has to do with Princesses. She lines all of her little Princesses up, and talks to them, feeds them, and lays them down for naps. It's cute.

My Dad's sister, my Aunt Teresa, passed away in January. She had a heart transplant 8 years ago, and was able to be a donor herself when she died. Her funeral was beautiful and her 4 daughters were so brave.

Jonah was off track all of January,
so he spent a lot of time with his buddy Luke.

Jos knows her way around the computer. I'm amazed at how she figured out how to move the cursor around and click on things. She loves to play Disney Princesses online, where she gets to choose what dress Cinderella will wear to the Ball. It's heaven for her!

Jonah is so sweet to his little sister. She definitely rules our house, and he doesn't seem to mind... most of the time! He's so good at reading to her, and playing pretend with her. I love watching them together.

Mark and I took a trip to St. George with our friends Simon and Kristin. Us wives decided to sign our husbands up to run a half marathon with us for Christmas. Mark ran only 2 times before the race, and beat me by 5 minutes! I thought for sure I was going to be helping him cross the finish line... we ran the first 9 together and then he took off! It was fun to have him waiting for me at the end though. We had such a fun trip with our friends and hope we'll do it again soon!

December

I love this time of year...the kids made it so much fun for us!

Mark turned 28! Finally... I've been 28 since October, and Mark just loves making fun of me for the month and a half he's still a year younger than me. Now we can both be old together!

Christmas Eve Jammies! Josie got some with "Ariel" on them, and Jonah got "Transformer" pjs. Gotta love his pose.

Christmas Morning!

This is a picture of the kids waiting to round the corner to see if they were nice or naughty. Josie doesn't look too worried for some reason... good thing Santa was VERY forgiving and decided to give her a break.

We had a surprise party for Mark's Mom. She has lost 100 pounds and we're really proud of her!

Jonah and Josie loved watching their cousins dance at their recital! Alexa was so brave and did a solo! She did so good and looked like a little angel.

We all cried when Grace danced. She looked so cute in her little walker. She added a few spins in her dance and was the star of the show. We are so proud of her and love her so much!

We added a new member to our family... a goldfish named Gerry that we won as
a White Elephant gift!

For New Year's Eve we decided to go to a hotel. The kids had a blast swimming and sitting in the hot tub. We ordered pizza and had a ton of fun together.

Our November

Our Halloween pictures don't really belong in our "November" post, but I thought I needed to put them on anyway. After looking through all of the costumes in the Halloween stores, Jonah decided he wanted to borrow his cousin's old Army costume (and we were thrilled not to spend a ton of money on a junky costume!). Josie wanted to be a Princess... and we were not surprised. She loaded up on glitter and lip gloss, and had a great time dressing up. Jonah was really cute at his Kindergarten parade, and I got to help in his class for the party. We ended up at and Instacare on Halloween day because Josie wasn't feeling good. We still made it out to trick-or-treat, and ended up with way too much candy!

Jos is loving her Gymnastics class. It was cancelled last week because of Thanksgiving, and she was pretty bummed. She talks about it all week long, and gets really excited to put her leotard on when it's "Gymnastics Day"!

We got our Christmas Tree out and decorated now... but the kids were much more interested in playing in the tree box.

We made a trip to "Jumping Jacks" with some friends who were in town for the holidays. The kids had so much fun, and I tried not to think about the millions of germs festering in those jumpy things.

Jonah loves taking Josie on 4 wheeler rides. Jonah is so sweet to her and tells her "hold on tight to me Josie!" I love how good he is to her. I hope they are always best friends like they are now.

Our October

Josie started a gymnastics class...and as long as I was no more than 2 feet away from her, she was excited to try new things. She actually warmed up a little bit, and by the end of the class she got her first gymnastics ribbon for doing a trick on the bar all by herself!

The kids love playing in the backyard together. Josie's new "thing" is to dress herself and do her own hair ---which explains the 3 headbands, the crooked pony tail and the snowpants. Jonah is obsessed with football and wears his "receiver" gloves all day long.

We took the kids to our Regional Conference at the Conference Center last week. It sounded like a crazy idea at first, bringing the kids and expecting them to sit quietly for 2 hours, but they actually did pretty good. It was a neat experience to show the kids we were in the same room as the Prophet.

Jonah played fall soccer and did awesome. It was fun to watch him, and I felt like he tried a lot harder than last year because he really wanted to win. He was much more observant of the score though, which wasn't such a good thing. Last year if his team got crushed, I could convince him that his team won.. this year, not so much.

Josie was a great cheerleader for her brother!

And today it is SNOWING. I hate winter.