Abundant Recompense Copy

We blessed Asa in church on Sunday, June first. It was such a special day. Asa was adorable in his little outfit and slept right through it all, which is always a relief. No huge spit up or blowout catastrophes this time around. Nate and I were both emotional during church that day. We are so very blessed to have each other and our beautiful children, and it was such a treat to have almost all Nate's side of the family there for the blessing - siblings, parents, some nieces, and his cousin Jessie. The men who stood in the circle were: Nate, Grandpa, Uncles Aaron, Micah and Devon, Bishop Moyes and his counselors Brother Bybee and Brother Sumner, and our dear friends from the ward, Brother Gerald Grove and Larry Horspool. We also asked Brother Dave Gremillion to participate, but he had to be out of town that day. Nate gave a beautiful blessing. Kim helped me take some notes during the blessing and I wanted to include them in this post. - Your family is happy to have you. - blessed w...

I can't believe that kindergarten is a page in Addison's history book. He's growing up too fast. For kindergarten graduation we got to go to his school and hear his class sing, have cake, and watch a slideshow from the year. Addison's class chose to sing the October song, and it was so cute. The class was about a measure ahead of the recording the whole time, but they sang with a serious amount of gusto. I was misty the whole time, not gonna lie.  This year has been good for Addison. He loved kindergarten. Although it wasn't much of a challenge for him yet academically, he learned lots of important lessons about consistency, time management, getting up in the morning, and had lots of time to work on social skills. He loved math especially and excelled at it. Addison made lots of good friends this year, and I loved hearing about the games they would play together at recess. He even managed to hold it together pretty well the day he got hit in the face with a snow/ice...

We spent one of the St. George days in Zion National Park. Grandma, Grandpa, Sky, Aunt Lindsey and Uncle Micah came with us. The weather was perfect and the crowds were unreal. We found out later that over 80,000 people had visited the park over Memorial Day weekend! Because of the crowds, just getting into the park was an adventure. The parking lots had filled up long before we arrived, so after searching for a parking space and getting frustrated for a while, we turned around and had our picnic lunch on the lawn of an elementary school in Springdale. It was really fun, actually. The kids welcomed the chance to jump and run and explore. They licked honeysuckle and spied on lizards. After lunch, we grabbed diaper bags and water to wait for the shuttle to take us into the park in order to get on the actual shuttle to go up the canyon. We waited forever and finally gave up and hatched an elaborate plan in which Nate would shuttle half of us in, drop us off, pick up the second half, and t...

Frankly, this would've been enough adventure for me. We went to the library. And the walking trail a mile from our house. However, luckily for those of us who don't want to be hermits, we decided to get out of town to celebrate the end of school and Memorial day. The trip down was really long, but went okay overall. I wrapped a bunch of dollar store toys for when Leah started to go crazy, and they saved the day more than once. Once we got to St. George we packed the days full of fun. The carousel The splash pad and river at the town square. A trip to Judd's for penny candy, funded by  the ever-doting Grandpa. A family picnic in the back yard. And in honor of our newest addition, little Asa, Abbey brought from-scratch Nutella cupcakes with delicioso frosting topped with chocolate mustaches! Almost too cute to eat - almost.     Rocket-launching in the driveway with Grandpa. Tree-climbing Asa's one month birthday. Grandma took some great photos of him to celebrate his b...