I am not very good at keeping up with blogging but I really want to be!  Hoping to start posting once a week to keep track of our lives and things we are doing.  Hoping to record our family happenings so my children have some memories (hopefully good ones!) from their childhood.

I guess we will just do a quick run down of everyone to catch up and then see what silly things happened this week :)

Nate is still working at The Groundskeeper doing landscaping.  He is an ordinance worker at the Las Vegas temple twice a month and it has brought many blessings into our lives.  I love seeing how he continues to grow and change and become an even more incredible man, husband and father.  He is also serving once a week at the family search library here in Vegas (he is the family history consultant at church.)  He has had to take on a lot more responsibilities around the house and with the kids the last six months as I have been busy serving the Young Women in our ward.  He has been amazing and I try not to feel too guilty about being gone at nights.

I am busy being a mom of 3 wild children, helping at the school once in awhile, working with the young women, and knitting.  I started knitting items to sale back in October and stayed crazy busy until this week.  Orders have slowed down now that Christmas is over and we are heading into warmer weather but it has been a great blessing to use my talents to create and provide some extra income to pay down medical bills.  I just try to survive day to day and try to become a little better each day.

Mara is 9 1/2!  She is in 4th grade and has her 2 best friends in her class.  She LOVES her teacher and is having a great year.  She started taking piano lessons a few weeks ago and loves it! She is doing really well and definitely has some musical talents.  Lately she has really shown great growth and it is so wonderful to see her grow and develop into an amazing young woman.  Her spirit is strong and she is very sensitive to the Spirit- she tries hard to do the right thing and please Heavenly Father.  I couldn't be more proud!

Wyatt is a spunky 7 year old.  He is in 1st grade and really growing up!  He is reading really well and loves nonfiction books.  He is very curious and very smart.  He will go far in his life.  He also has started piano and is doing well (he is a little impatient and just wants to play songs he isn't quite ready for.)  He still loves Legos and he and Mara have been building some incredible things lately, like a 4 story house!  He loves to play games and tell jokes.

Audrey is feisty!  She turned 3 in October and is giving us a run for our money.  I don't know how to parent that little firecracker but we sure are trying!  She loves everything princess.  She loves to play games on the computer and drives me crazy asking to play all the time.  Dree has started going to co-op preschool and she LOVES it.  We had the kids here at our house this past week.  She is a sunbeam and just loves to go to church.  She was so sad and cried the few times she couldn't go because she was sick-i hope she always wants to go to church!

that's us! here is what we were up to this past week:
-Taught six 3-4 year olds about the letter H, I and #6- we talked about hats and using our imagination.  It must have sunk in because Dree keeps saying she is using her imagination (today she was using it to pretend she was Princess Dora- she was not responding to us when we called her by her own name.  She was also pretending she was driving the "ung" women around  (she always talks about the young women in our ward- and we always chuckle when she says it with her lisp and miss pronunciation.)

-I finally got a haircut and was brave- I now have bangs!  Mara was against it at first but has finally come around and decided she likes them.

-there was no school Monday or Tuesday and we were stuck at home waiting for a guy to come install a new thermastat so we made up a new game and had lots of fun trying to bounce very small balls into all kinds of different sizes and shapes of containers. This may be our new go-to game when we get bored or it is too windy to play outside.

-Wyatt had his best friend come over to play Legos on Friday.

-I was gone a few nights with young women stuff and had some really opportunities for learning and growth.

-Yesterday would have been my brother, Brandon's, 40th birthday (he passed away 7 years ago from colon cancer. To celebrate, everyone in the family had cheesecake to celebrate him.  We made cheesecake and wyatt and i were able to eat it with the help of some lactose pills!  I am still itching from it but the pills sure helped with the usual stomach issues! (TMI!!!)  We maybe able to eat real dairy once in awhile with the help of these pills!

-Dree has been singing lots of songs as she plays around the house.  She hasn't quite got all the lyrics right!
Skip to my Lou  = "stick to my Glue"
she does know all the lyrics to Call me Maybe and sings that A LOT
she also walks around singing at the top of her lungs, "This Girl is on Fire!!!!" that is the only line she knows and she just sings it over and over and over.

-Thanks to our Bishop's talk last Sunday, I felt very inspired to get back to working on family history and have had some amazing finds this week!!!  I found great-great grandma's other children, her parents and her 4 siblings!  Can't wait to take them to the Temple and help them all be sealed for eternity!

that is about it- boring week by many accounts!  There is more to share but it will have to wait until next week, it is time to play Qwirkle with the kids!