The first night of our vacation, we stayed in a cabin near Dolores, CO (Priest Gulch).  Erin & Tony, Ben & Shanae, Tracy & the girls all stayed in the cabin with us.  We put up the air mattress  and had enough room for everyone.  It was right on the Dolores River and the kiddos had fun playing in the water.  There was a nice porch area over the creek that ran into the river with swings.  We all enjoyed the beginning of our family reunion in Colorado!

We just returned from our family reunion vacation in Colorado.  Gary and Linda met us there with some of their family.  We had 5 our children and families with us.  It was wonderful to be together and enjoy the cool, mountain air and enjoy sharing time with each other.  This picture was taken the day that Gary & Linda left.  They had a long 3 day ride ahead of them.  We sure appreciate that they made the trip from Alabama to spent time together.    More pictures to come!

Catch Up Time!

Oh my, I didn't realize it has been so long since I have updated our blog!  So much busyness going on in our lives these days.  I will try to make a brief outline of what things have been going on for us and then I will try to keep up a little better.

Since Carl has been called to be the Bishop of the Singles Ward (Rio Vista Ward) our lives are so busy with activities with them.  We have FHE as a ward every Monday.  The activities have been so fun for the kids.  Things like fingerpainting your favorite scripture story, water kick ball on the slip & slide, latin and country dancing, etiquette dinner, Battleship volleyball, hiking and a Ward Campout.  We are impressed with the enthusiasm and energy of these young people and really enjoy watching them together.  They are great kids and we are loving our calling.

I don't see Carl much during the evening on the rest of the week.  He usually is gone every night except Friday and sometimes Saturday.  We have had a couple of weddings in the ward and have 3 more coming up before the year is out.  That's the purpose of the Singles Ward!

This year in school was a great one for me.  Things went along very well and the year ended on a great note!  We have a new Director coming in for the next school year and I know her already.  I look forward to an awesome year.  This may be my last year teaching as retirement is becoming a strong option for me since some changes will be made in the retirement policies of the District after this year.  That will be an interesting concept to adjust to but Carl and I look forward to the change in our life.

This summer has been full of activities for us.  First, we celebrated our 38th Wedding Anniversary with a trip to Laguna Beach!  A surprise for me!  Carl is still full of surprises!  We had a lovely time exploring the California Coast. We attended the San Diego Temple on our last day there.  What a beautiful Temple!  (One of our couples in our ward are getting married there in a couple weeks and we are going back there.)  We look forward to it!


I was 1st Year Girls Camp Certification Leader again this year and Carl was over the archery and canoeing activities.  This year camp was just 3 days on the end of the 4th of July week.  We were very busy getting all of our certification in but we did just fine.  We really enjoy being with the girls at camp and hope that we will be able to continue to go.





 

Wow! It is February already and I haven't posted all the cool things that have happened in our lives!  OOPS!  Well, here's an update.  We had a lovely Christmas Season with our family.  We had all of our children together for Christmas Eve this year!  The first time in several years.  That's what happens when they all grow up and have families of their own.  We had a few of them on Christmas Day which was awesome and we enjoyed a family game with Uncle Kent and Aunt Jeanne with Grace and Jennan.  It was rather nice that I had the following two weeks off from work to relax and enjoy being with my hubby!  We sure loved spending that time together.  He was a little busy for a few days with work but we managed to spend a good portion of our free time together.

On to the new year!  I think we are getting over the hill a bit.  We didn't do anything this year for New Years.  We kind of just hung out at home and had a little sparkling cider to ring in the new year before crashing for the night.  Our church schedule changed with the new year, so Carl had early Bishopric Meetings!  Hence the reason for not celebrating too late.  Well then the New Year was afoot!

We had a visit from our Stake President early in the first week of the year extending a new calling to Carl.  He has been called to be the Bishop of our Stake's Singles Ward!  Whoa Nelly!  We were in shock and awe for the next few weeks until that was officially announced!  Carl has hardly slept since the call.  I wake up in the night with the IPad light shining as he is reading and studying scriptures, handbooks, scriptures and handbooks, over and over again!  He has been overwhelmed and a little sad to leave his Bishopric Counselor post.  He has been over the Young Men and Young Women for 4 years and has loved every single minute of it!  On the week that he knew that he was being officially released, he wrote individual letters to each of the young men and women expressing his love, appreciation for them and his testimony.  Is my man awesome or what?!!!  That was the saddest part for him!  He truly loved them and enjoyed every second he spent with them.

We are now on the ride of our lives!  I'm kind of lonely already!  The first week, he had meetings literally every night but Friday!  I hope that Friday nights will be reserved for our Date Nights still but I know that from time to time there will be events with the Singles.  I've been privileged to be over the Singles Ward in my capacity as the Counselor in the Stake Relief Society so I already know a lot of them.  It will be an awesome journey and growing experience for us.  This week has settled down a little for Carl but I am busy as heck  with our Stake Relief Society Meeting.  This week I have something everyday!  I guess we will survive!  Carl is so supportive of me and has been able to be a big help this week since I was under the  weather early in the week.  I guess we will be support for each other through these next years!

On January 7th, I pulled it OFF!  A SURPRISE PARTY FOR CARL'S 60TH BIRTHDAY!!!!!  He really was surprised!  Woo Hoo for me!  I sent out 50 invitations and even sent out an email through our ward Relief Society to make sure no one felt left out.    We had a great turn out!  About 50 people showed up!  All of our children were there with their families helping me.  We had everyone write notes with their favorite memory of Carl.  The idea was to have 60 letters for him to read.  We are pretty close.  They were awesome to read.  Erin made a great slide show of him and also put together a slide show of scanned pictures of him over the years.  All in all it was a great event.  Several people commented on how great it was to just visit and enjoy each others company.

I will find pictures to post of some of these events and try to keep up a little better.  In the meantime, I am on Facebook now so you can check up on us that way too.  I am hooked on Words with Friends too so look for me there too.  My IPhone is my new friend these days!  LOL

My Classroom Door Decorations are a Winner!

Our High School always does a holiday door decorating contest. I always decorate my door but this year I wanted to win! So I went all out. I started with the wall outside the door and made a giant bed with all the kids faces (paper plate drawings by the kids) then Santa's sleigh with pictures of toys that the kids colored and the finale! - the door with my giant Santa Claus. The reindeer in the windows were made by some of the children. Aren't you impressed? We won 2nd place and a donut party for our class! Yes all I needed right now with my preschoolers was more SUGAR!!! It's amazing what you can do with construction paper!

Our Ward Christmas Party!

We got to take Liam to the ward Christmas Party this year! He had a great time and enjoyed just running around everywhere! He wasn't afraid of Santa Claus and was excited to sit on his lap! Fun times:)

Pictures of Nikki and Jared!