Britt's Blog - A Picture a Day

Gymnast

I once saw a girl with a t-shirt that said, "CAUTION GYMNAST INSIDE:  Contents may flip without warning".  I thought it was cute, but a little silly.  Now I understand!

Sawyer spends a very small percentage of his day right-side-up.  His little body just wants to be inverted - hand stands, cartwheels, front hand springs, front flips, back flips - you name it, he does it.  It scares me to death.

I have been a little hesitant about putting him in gymnastics.  I'm not sure this is something I want to encourage.  But I finally gave in.  I'm hoping he'll learn to flip CAREFULLY.

He went to his first classes this week, and he is in love!  A padded room full of things to flip off of... what more could he ask for?  I just wish I could pad our whole house.

   

Arches

We celebrated Jason's birthday on Saturday.  (His birthday was on Friday, but we decided that we needed a full day of fun.)  The kids woke up early and decorated the house and the cake.  They emptied like five bottles of sprinkles on that poor cake.  

They woke Jason up nice and early (can you tell) for German pancakes and presents.  Then we were off!

   

We drove to Arches and hiked all day.  We had so much fun!

      

We saw the biggest arch in the park (it's longer than a football field) and the smallest (three inches).  

 

The kids were fascinated by Balanced Rock and The Broken Arch.

   

We tried a difficult trail, and it was gorgeous.  The kids were tough!  Although at a few points Jason was carrying both Sawyer and Macey.

   

We had so much fun.

     

We didn't leave the park until we were all DEAD tired and the little ones were all crying.  :)  Macey kept screaming, "Oh, I need a TV!"  The other hikers thought she was pretty funny.  She wasn't.

But it was a great day.  If any of you want to try it, Macey and Sawyer left you a steady trail of fruit snacks the whole way.

Dancing Queen

On Valentine's Day Shaylin danced at the high school basketball game half time.  She was adorable!

 

Back row middle

 

No clue

But isn't she cute?

I Love Google Reader!

That's it.  That's all I wanted to say today.

President's Day

Isn't it nice to be snowed in and have no where to go sometimes?  Today was nice.

Play doh

Scrabble

Ice cream

Playing with friends

Wii

Rigging the indoor slide to make it even more dangerous

Burning CD's 

Making bead necklaces

Family Night

 

(These are "ways the priesthood blesses" us made out of Pull & Peel Licorice - as if you couldn't tell.)

Good day

Valentine's Day

On Valentine's day the Valentines Fairy comes to our house.  It's a little creepy, because he's a guys and he doorbell ditches us when he leaves our stuff, but no one seems to mind.  (We inherited this tradition from my family.  My family always jokes about how weird it is, but how much we love it.)

Maybe we don't mind because the Valentine's Fairy brings presents and cheesecake.  Everyone gets their own mini cheesecake and some big ones magically appear in the fridge.  Also the Valentines Fairy is freakin' awesome because he figured out how to make sugar-free cheesecake this year.

     

Class Parties

Valentine's day is fun.  I loved watching my kids fill out their valentines for their classmates.  I was so careful doing that when I was little.  I couldn't give a boy one that communicated the wrong message, and my teacher always had to get the biggest one.  I also read way too much into every valentine that every boy gave me.  

Shaylin chose and assigned each valentine according to her friend's personalities.  She was so thoughtful and careful.  It was darling.  Skyler and Sawyer could have cared less.

Sawyer's class did a fun thing.  His teachers sent home a paper with little copied pictures of everyone in his class.  He cut them out and glued one to each of his valentines.  That way, he and his classmates could pass out their valentines without any help.  He loved that.  

 

Skyler and Shaylin's class parties were all about the food.  Hello, sugar high.

     

Skyler has the funniest teacher this year.  He runs a tight ship, but he jokes around so cute with the kids.  (Yesterday he threw Skyler in the snow at recess.)  Skyler just adores him.  

Sky begged me order a singing telegram from the high school music department for his teacher. The choir came into his classroom, during math, carrying a bunch of helium balloons and singing You Are My Sunshine.  They told him it was from his whole class, but he knew right away that Skyler was behind it.  Sky said that the class was laughing so hard, they could barely hear the song.  When I got to his school a hour later, he was still giggling.  It was a great day.

Brave

I am so proud of Skyler.  Lately, I've been trying to encourage him step out of his comfort zone and try new things.  He's listening.

Last week he spoke at our Boy Scout Court of Honor on being brave.  He was so nervous.  All the scouts are older than him, and it was a pretty big crowd.  Skyler began his speech by accidentally saying, "Hi.  My name is Brave."  Then he started to laugh, he relaxed and he gave a great speech.  

  

At the end of his talk he said, "There is someone that I know who I think is a great example of being brave".  Then he surprised us all by saying, "I think my little sister, Shaylin, is really brave.  One day she wore a sweatshirt to school with a small tank top under it.  She got really hot and flushed at recess.  Her teachers kept telling her to take off her sweat shirt.  She refused because she didn't feel like her tank top was modest.  Even when her teachers got mad at her, she refused to take off her sweatshirt.  I think she was very brave.  Shaylin is also very brave about inviting her friends to church."  

I'm not sure that I have ever seen Shaylin smile so big.  She was glowing.  I was bawling.

This week, Skyler also entered the district spelling bee, even though he only had a few days to study and the other kids had had months.  He was absolutely terrified.  He even fasted for help.  He didn't win or anything, but he did his best and I was so proud of him for trying.

He has inspired me.  I'm going to step out of MY comfort zone and try something new this week.  I'm going to be brave.

***  Incidentally, Shaylin's teachers even called me at home because they were so upset that she wasn't listening to their advice and taking off her sweatshirt.  I let them have it.  Then I brought Shaylin a t-shirt to school and her teachers apologized to us both.  

Cute Hair

We're kicking off a week of Valentine's hair do's.  (I know, very exciting.)  Check them out over in the side bar.  They're fun.

  

An Awesome Book

I thought this was so funny. Now I have to buy this book. 

An Awesome Book from dallas clayton on Vimeo.