Ten Years of Forever

I love you!

Christmas

I realized it has been a while since I posted. Even now I am thinking I need to be doing other things, but just had to post something. I am so amazed at the life I see around me. Still, it is a shock to see gardens growing, flowers blooming, and grass needing to be cut. Isn't it winter? These are some roses I cut from my own rose bush! I never knew how much I loved roses until I could go out and see my very own roses blooming. They are so beautiful, plump, and soft!

The children love this time of year. My favorite memory is seeing my children gathered by the Christmas tree to read books in the evening. Andrew can't get enough of the tree. Thankfully nothing has broken, but he will crawl over to the same ornament (a wooden bell) and pull it off. It is always the same ornament, and it has become something we laugh at.

Mingled with all the Christmas fun, we have fun at the beach too! One of the times we went, we found these beautiful shells! They were so perfect and we can't wait to go look for more. The beach always makes me feel like a treasure hunter, you never know what you will find.

The children helped decorate this year and I think they did a wonderful job. As you can tell, this picture is old (the advent calendar is still at the beginning)... We actually put our decorations up just before Thanksgiving. It helps at to the happy feelings of thankfulness that Thanksgiving is all about.

Here they all are, decorating away.

Morning in Paradise

I often look out my windows and gaze at the life around me and think, "Am I really here?" I ride bikes with the children to school and see storks, egrets, and ibis and think, "I can't believe I live here!" It is so beautiful here.

Getting ready for school, I stepped out to breath in the beautiful morning.

We have many Hibiscus plants in our yard and many are starting to bust into bloom.

A butterfly tree in our yard is full of blossoms as well, and butterflies.

Another hibiscus.

Another reason I have been out in the mornings is to take care of our new little garden. This is our first time having a very own garden and I can see we need to protect it from other critters already.

We used sea shells to mark what the plants are... another use for all those shells the children bring home.

Sunrise in our backyard.

This is such an amazing place to live. If it weren't so beautiful, I might miss the snow a little, maybe.

Halloween

A Tiger, Queen Lucy of Narnia, High King Peter, a Pumpkin, and a Geisha

Playtime is Together Time

The other day I caught myself in a frustrated moment say to myself, "Sometimes I wish my children wouldn't pretend so much." I don't remember the situation, but when it is meal time, clean-up time, etc. sometimes I wish they would come back to reality and do the appropriate tasks... And yet, another side of me thinks it is so amazing that my children have such great minds that they can create so many things and have fun together.

David has saved this clay since a project he did last school year and has had so much fun creating many fun things. Rebecca joined him in the fun yesterday, and this is just one example of the fun things. They created "brains" (I guess along the Halloween theme), monsters, planes, a nest, and a shell. (you can see another creation on this post)

I love the eggs the snake is guarding.

Every now and then we get to pull out games and play together. I wish we could do this more often, but the littlest one tends to crawl over and tear the game up... I am sure we will have lots more time for fun in the future. I think Rebecca won this game! Way to go!

My times we take turns gathering and playing in Benjamin's fun room. He can create so many fun things with these tracks! Thanks to Grandma and others we have built up quite the collection!

There was a spot of soil that became exposed after many rainstorms, and what do you think happens? The children turn it into a fun place. Our area doesn't have dirt either. If you expose the dirt you see it is all sand! So we live in a giant sand box.

As I was looking at the school calendar this morning, I got excited seeing Christmas break coming, and Spring break in a few months, and ultimately Summer break. I love these times when we can be together and make memories.

Family is everything.

Family Heritage

Recently my mother gave me a couple boxes of special family items. I sat down on the floor and felt like a child at Christmas seeing these special items. My heart filled as I held these special things in my hands and realized my great-grandparents held them as well. It made my extended family feel so much closer and more real to me.

Family near and far-- past, present, and future-- has always been very important to me. I feel so grateful to those who have gone before, and hope I can do well in helping those who will continue after me.

I pulled this cute little basket from my cupboard because I have felt it would be so beautiful with flowers in it. Every time I saw it or smelled these flowers I thought of my family from the past.

How thankful I am that I know we are a forever family. I will get to see these wonderful family members sometime in the future. What joy we will have hugging one another.

Thank you, Mom, for passing this heritage on to me.

Shells

What can you do with the many shells we keep bringing home?

Something that jingles.

Rain!

What do you do when it rains? Our children love getting in their swim suits and going to play in all the puddles! This was a perfect day to play as well. The rain poured down, and it was refreshing! Can we just say that we love our home? We do.

Stopped for the picture

Unsure of getting wet, but still wanting to play.

No hesitation here. This monkey loves water!

We continue our search for alligators, but get to see many other neat things along our way! Like a bird that doesn't float on the water, it swims! (Like Anhinga which you can see with its long neck sticking out of the water)

Up high in the look out tower to "ascertain our whereabouts". We tried to see if we could see alligators from above, but no luck. We did see a Purple Gallinule! (link here to see)

Smiles All Around

"When we're helping we're happy, and we sing as we go..."

Benjamin loves helping and will step up to feed Andrew if I am not doing my job. I love seeing them being so happy together.

A new toy, thanks to G'pa and G'ma Siler. He loves it! There aren't many new things for this little one, so it is quite the treasure!

Apparently there was a party going on while we were all cleaning up. It was kind of like a Halloween party with "special" hats. Silly children, I had to capture a picture, although I think they will be embarrassed by them at certain points in their lives.

While the above party was going on, the other half of the family was working hard out in the yard to make our bushes beautiful. Look at those hard workers! The yard looks amazing thanks to them.

"I spy with my little eye something that is looking back at me... What do I spy."

A little video for grandparents to see how much a new toy is loved.

End of Summer Bang

We have had a lot of fun playing in water that last bit of Summer break. The children had fun playing with water balloons, I was impressed that they did it all by themselves. I was unable to help them with all that I am doing around our home, and they figured out how to do it themselves.

For a long time Andrew would just crawl to the window and look outside at everything. He loves watching his brothers and sister as they play.

Benjamin was excited to join the balloon fun. They pretended the balloons were their babies.


We took one last trip to the beach before school started. Clark really had a lot of fun in the sand, as you can see his amazing sand picture!

David made a picture too, since we have been talking about jelly-fish safety he made a jelly-fish.

I was so amazed that we had the beach almost all to ourselves. We love getting to the beach in the morning when the sun is coming up and the weather is cool. It is a beautiful time.


Having fun together as we walk along the beach. Andrew became so relaxed he even fell asleep in my arms which hasn't happened in a long time.


The school started and I have half of my children in school now! My children seemed to jump right into the school thing, even at a new school.

We tried the bike riding thing, unfortunately the first day didn't go well, but we tried again the next day and found that riding the two miles to school by bike was faster than any other way. We received some amazed looks as I pulled three children on my bike (two in the trailer and one in an infant seat) and followed David on his bike. Rebecca is going to practice riding before she tries riding again.

The children are very excited that Rebecca has two class guinea pigs, Pinky and Cocoa (Cocoa is pictured)



And now we are already one week through school. I am always shocked at how fast time goes when school starts, I know that the holidays will be here soon. As my high school English teacher told us seniors, "Christmas is next week, and graduation is the next week." We didn't believe him, but here I am more than ten years later... Who knew time could fly so fast.

I feel like my children are growing fast and will be becoming adults, serving missions, going to college, and getting married sooner than I expect. At least we know we are a forever family, it makes growing up a lot easier.

"I love to see the Temple..."

Our family has a tradition that the minute we see the temple we sing "I Love to See the Temple" (link to listen). This was our first trip to our new temple. The temple fills me with joy and peace, and I know it is the "House of the Lord". Everything is so light it is really like being in heaven.

My sister and I were able to be there together. What a neat experience to share with our families.

I loved that our children are excited to visit this new temple and that it was the high light of their day. I hope they will always remember the importance of the temple and that our family is a forever family.

Irresistible Morning

Some mornings (or all mornings) you wake up and look at the world around you and all you see is beauty. I see mornings like this frequently at our house. As I see tiny details on dew covered flowers, it all amazes me.

The children love this little lantern, and I love the plants that surround it.

This flower smells so delicious and could keep my nose to it all day.

So beautiful yet dangerous.

This flower is what caught my attention for me to grab my camera. It is the first flower to bloom on this bush since we have lived here, and the morning was wet with dew.

Beautiful.