Some things I don't want to Forget

White elephant party = Armadillo

EmJ riding horses.  I don't like to watch her lessons because I am scared she is going to fall off, or get thrown, or bitten, or kicked...I hate animals!  But she LOVES horseback riding!

Pictures of Matthew in a baseball mitt.  He is two weeks old in these photos...but already too big...and we weren't good photographers anyway.  Still, I love the photos. :)

Joshua's first season of basketball.  That boy is gifted, but basketball has a few too many rules for him.  I wish I could get a photo of when he stares blankly at the ref (15 times/game at least!)...and there is simply no recreating the time that he caught the inbound pass and ran with such excitement down the court that everybody followed him as he assisted in scoring a basket in the other team's goal.

Benjamin won second place at his Tae Kwon Do competition...despite Luke's angry mutterings from the sidelines about how shoddy our current Tae Kwon Do school is.  (Nothing compares to working for Master Hwang and getting paid in key chains!)

More!  (I think I also like these pictures because taking them was about the only "time out" that my mom and I had while she was here taking care of us when Matthew was born.  Right after she got here, we discovered that Sam had L&$%! (That's lice, but it's a profanity so I had to dub it out.) and spent the better part of the week doing laundry and combing hair.  And I rued the day I had four girls and Joshua the hair model.)

Thanksgiving (all by ourselves!) smorgasboard...smorgasborg?...whatever.  We ate fingerfoods and watched a documentary about The Boz.  It was fantastic.

Jace holding Matthew and Jack at second Thanksgiving.  How sweet of him to do all the cooking and then hold babies while everybody else ate...wait, what?  Welcome to my life.

The boys deciding that they wanted to bake.  My kitchen was a mess.  Seriously.  (That cute kid in the middle has become a regular around here.  We adore him.)

Living away from family, we have adopted a few surrogate family members (like Lucas above...and Emily, who will be pictured shortly)...this is our surrogate grandpa, who lets the kids sit with him at church and even brings toys.  The only time they have this much fun at church is, well, when Grandma comes to town!



We spent a lot of time in December at the temple...seeing the lights and the different shows and recitals at Temple Hill.  So beautiful!

Matthew and Jack (cousin)...they are about 2 months apart and didn't much care about our little photo shoot, but they sure are cute.  Moustache!

And this is Emily...I told you we have lots of adopted family!...a few weeks ago Luke handed her the baby and she said, "You've never let me hold him before!  I've never held a baby before!"  I felt so bad that in two whole months of daily visits, I neglected to even ask her if she wanted to hold him...and it brought tears to my eyes to see how easily she figured out just what to do with a tiny baby.  Like a little girl mothering her dolls, it was such a testimony of the divine nature of womanhood.  A few days after this picture was taken, Emily spent the ENTIRETY of her New Year's Eve watching the party from the couch, holding Lucky Seven.