Today

I have been thinking about how I view my life lately. I am very critical of myself and sometimes that causes me sorrow. In reality I have a wonderful life, a husband who loves me and I love dearly, great kids, a wonderful family, a home I love, friends that would be there for me no matter what, and the gospel of Jesus Christ. My birthday was last week and I promised myself that I would not dwell on the things that I haven't accomplished yet, but focus on the the things that matter. Graydon took the day off of work(because he is a smart man) and I savored being able to sleep in, being able to go to the movies and hold hands with the man that I love, having kids that were so excited because it was my birthday, and just enjoying the peace of the day. In church on Sunday one of the speakers was talking about how we view tomorrow. He said we should stop looking forward to tomorrow because it will be better, or we will have more money, or we will weigh less, but to be happy today. That is something that I will be trying to focus on this year. Thank you to all of my wonderful friends who are such a great example of service and love, to my husband who is a great example of forgiveness and compassion, and to my kids who are a great example of taking pleasure in the small things. Here is to a great today!

Our Family Pictures

When I started this blog I realized that we don't have very many family pictures. Mostly that is because I am always waiting until I look better(sound familiar ladies). I realized that by worrying so much about how I looked that I was taking myself out of our family memories. I love to watch my kids go through our scrapbooks and laugh at the pictures and the memories. I don't want my kids to think that I was never there for all of our fun times. I guess that will be one of my New Year's resolutions, to get over myself and have fun. We decided to take family pictures this year and so we asked Ashlee Stone to take these pictures. She was so great and I loved how they turned out. Now we have to pick which picture we are going to enlarge for the wall. Any opinions?

Christmas with the Woods in Utah

This Christmas we were able to spend time with Graydon's family in Utah. All of his siblings were there and we had a great time. Graydon's brother Tyson and his wife Rachel graciously hosted all of us. It got crazy at times with all of those people but we had a great time and are grateful to Tyson and Rachel for letting us hang out at their house.

The kids play really well together, I don't think they had one argument the whole time. At one point during our visit they all decided to be ninjas. Graydon's sister Tara made masks for each of them because they had been tying black socks around their faces. They all looked so cute. I didn't get a picture of all of them but I did get Megan. She wore that mask everywhere until we got home. People probably thought she was an "interesting" kid.

Tyler's Art Contest

Last year when Tyler was in 1st grade his whole class must have enter some of their art into an art contest. Tyler's painting was one of the finalists for all of Boise School District. His art traveled with the other finalists and winners from school to school. We were pretty proud of him.