I’ve already written a bunch about January, and I have two more big things to write about (a wedding and a lot of pretty exciting temple stuff), but here are some of the other things I want to remember about January.
We loved having cousins in town.  I think I mentioned it before, but when my sister in law Julie is in town she brings a party with her.  We had many a late night filled with cousins (and football), and cookies…
…a beautiful hike (back HERE), a trip to “Last Chance,”

A LOT of cousin bonding time…

…just to name a few.

Our neighborhood turned from a Fall wonderland to a little more bleak.  This is about as big a deal as winter gets here in the desert:

Elle and her friend at tennis…just happened to get a pic on one of my carpool days.

Love their tennis coach who they have sure grown up with over the years!

Grace, after losing two bikes, had to replace Claire’s.  It was a sad/happy day with lessons learned and still money owed, but I must admit it was kind of fun to figure out how to put together with each other.

We have a new temple here.  The open house is right now.  Dave and I are “Tour Followers” because anyone can go in right now before it is dedicated on March 2nd.  (Please come if you’re local!)  It is so beautiful and we spent a lot of January there, for training as well as for a big “Temple Walk” I was on the committee for.

That’s another post for another day, but I’ll just say here that Elle was my photography companion as I was in charge of getting all the family pictures in front of the temple (with my own little committee).

Fun to work with that girl and fun to see so many families come out to walk.

We spent a lot of time watching Grace cheer on the 7th and 8th grade basketball teams.  Nana joined us for a game and it was so great to have her here.

Not sure why I have this but I do…

Lucy requested Claire’s “signature” hairdo one day.

My great brother Josh had a birthday.

I took the little girls out of school so we could go see him and bring him to lunch.  Let’s get a better look at those big smiles that they get to be with their coolest ever uncle who is the best teacher.

We feel sooo lucky we get to live by this guy.  He helps us out more than we can imagine and my kids are enriched by his kindness (as are their friends :).

It was a big birthday so we worked our tails off to get videos together of my whole family to wish him happy birthday since we couldn’t all be together to celebrate.  There were exactly 40 of us (well ok, 41, but we had my parents be “one” for birthday number purposes.  Grace worked so hard and put the video together.  You can see it here if you want, but I’m just going to give you fair warning that you may be bored if you’re not family…


happy birthday josh!

Love that guy.

Lucy has been practicing her flashcards.

I love watching her fingers work their magic 🙂

I talked about Claire’s birthday back HERE, but here was the cousin celebration I forgot to put in:

(Gotta love impromptu birthday candles (votives) when you’re out of the regular ones…)
As we went through pictures of her as a baby and little (er) girl, we decided to compare how Dave looked when he was close to her age:

I think they look so much alike!

I’ll end with a few pics of the best toilet-papering job I’ve seen in a while:

Pictures can’t do that thing justice.  It was so impressive I couldn’t even get mad.

…But Dave could.  Luckily we had a bunch of cousins sleeping over who he promptly put to work cleaning up that disaster.

January was good to us.

On to “Love Day” coming up so soon!

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16 Comments

  1. Why would anyone TP your house?!? As an adult, we've always lived in condos and townhouses, pretty hard to TP. But even growing up, TPing someone's house was usually the stuff of urban legend.

  2. I'm always impressed (and a little bit jealous) when you share "winter" photos of the destert.

    Here it is raining (most of the time) and snowing (rarely) for months.
    I have the impression winters get longer every year.
    Last year I married on the first of June… and it was freezing cold.

  3. Where I grew up in Utah, the cool kids were the ones who got TPed – it was considered kind of a fun honor. Is it that way in Arizona? We live in Colorado now and it is totally opposite – it's very very bad and a really negative message to get TPed. Interesting how it changes depending on wherever you are!

  4. What a great birthday tribute. You have an awesome fam.
    We always got tp'd and did others houses. The gross thing is my parents would try to save the tp to use. Grossed me out! That is quite the masterpiece.

  5. Oh my goodness!!!! The video for your brother was SO sweet!!! It is evident that he's a awesome guy and well loved! I love the way your family loves each other. Your parents did an amazing job teaching you guys to love and respect each other. I'm always so inspired by you guys!

  6. It's probably someone from outside the neighborhood since there are bikes all over the place and probably no racks. Bikes just in driveways.

  7. Grace made that video? WoW!! I want to be her when I grow up! Wait a minute – I'm already grown up. Too late. 🙁

    Seriously, very nice job! It's really a nice way to keep in touch and make a birthday special without the whole family being in one place. I would love to learn more about what program she used to make the movie. I may try to learn!

  8. This video was amazing. I bet your brother loved it!
    I wonder what I would have thought as a student if family of my teacher entered the class room to congratulate them to their birthday, I guess it is a little strange to me, but it shows how much you guys love each other and it is a cute thing to do 🙂

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