Grace and Joy Go to San Francisco

A couple weeks ago, Grace and Joy got to go on tour with their choir, Cantus, to San Francisco, CA.  They participated in a Choir Festival with a famous composer and they got to have a lot of fun the day before and after that.

 Joy and her group all dressed up for the festival

 Grace's group

 The whole group in front of the San Francisco bridge.

 Joy's awesome dab!

 Their favorite part of tour was a bay cruise dance party!

 Beautiful Grace and Joy on their cruise!

Grandma Shurtliff

We lost my Grandma Dena Shurtliff on February 19th  She was a great lady. I'm glad I got to talk to her a few days before she passed.  She will be missed.  

BethAnne's Birthday and More

BethAnne turned 16 on February 24th, where does the time go?  We had a fun family birthday party for her on her birthday.  BethAnne has struggled with her health quite a bit this last year, but she is ever patient and kind.  We are working with lots of doctors and we are praying that she starts feeling better soon.

At the beginning of February we saw this beautiful rainbow by our house. There must have been a pot of gold in our neighbor's yard.

We are so grateful that Joy has been able to attend Legacy Private School this last year.  It has been a wonderful experience for her.  She will probably go there next year also.  Her teacher is an artist, so they paint a lot in class.  Here are some paintings she has made based on the principles she's been learning in a program called WIRA (who I really am).

This is Forlov the dolphin (Forgiveness and Love)

This is Humil the camel, they learned about Humility with him

 This is Mafid the platypus.  Mafid stands for make allowances for individual differences.  

 Daniel is getting so big (he's wearing a 4T outfit in this picture).  He loves to climb, but he's being a little safer lately.  As spring is springing, he loves to play outdoors. 

I was in charge of a big project the last few months. Our ward did a Humanitarian Project to make blankets for the Ronald McDonald House (I'm our ward's humanitarian leader). This project was a lot of work and so many people helped to make it possible (especially my friend Sarah, my sister Chrissy and my Mom).  In the end we were able to donate 30 blankets to the Ronald McDonald House.  My favorite blanket is shown above.  I learned so much, I especially learned how much I don't know about sewing and I learned to ask for help.  I hope the families who receive these blankets love them.

Christmas 2018!

Christmas day was great!

 Mark, BethAnne and Joy 

 Joy and Ginny

 Andy loved his scarf that BethAnne made.  BethAnne crocheted several great homemade gifts for us.  So talented.

 Andy loves his new toy kitchen from Great-Grandma Shurtliff.  She recently passed away and we'll miss her so much.

 Mark got me this sweet surprise present.  Love my sweet, thoughtful husband.

 Naptime!  Grace is so great with Daniel, he takes naps for her best.  She recently went out of town over the weekend (See future post about her choir tour) and we had a tough time getting him to take naps for us (we had to drive him around to get him to sleep, which is how he usually takes naps, but on weekends Grace can sometimes get him to go to sleep for her without needing a drive).

 Brothers playing K'nex!

Everyone loved the new air hockey tabletop toy!

It was a fun Christmas topped off with yummy Thai takeout food.  Life is good.

Holidays!

 Christmas tree! Ginny loved to spend time under and in the Christmas tree.  And Daniel loved to re-decorate it and that kind of drove me crazy. 

 Playing with legos at the Festival of Trees. We go everything Thanksgiving, it's a great tradition

 Pretty girls at Festival of Trees

 This was our first big snow (and I think one of the only big snows of the winter).  Daniel was so cute all dressed up to play!

 Gingerbread houses!  Another fun tradition.  My gingerbread house had all of us represented, even our angel babies.

 Grace a Joy ready for their Cantus Christmas concert.  They did amazing!

 Daniel loved this toy Nativity Set, he was such a fun age for Christmas (except for his redecorating of the poor Christmas tree)

 Adorable kids in their Christmas PJ's.  I feel so blessed to have these sweet people in our home.

New Addition

In November, we got a sweet cat we named Ginny Angel Weasley Rogers.  She's a great cat and we love her.  She's a little scared of the dogs and Daniel, so she's an upstairs cat lately (hopefully that's temporary), but we try to give her lots of love and attention.

Halloween!

Daniel was most seriously displeased when I tried to put an Elmo costume on him.

 Cute Andy Robot (he wanted to repeat last year's costume and that was fine with me!)

 Pretty 50's girl, Grace! 

 Joy made her emoji costume.  Very cute and creative!

 BethAnne was a space time traveler or something, but very pretty.

 We settled on making Daniel into a cookie jar by having him just wear a t-shirt I decorated.  It worked well (at least he kept it on).  

 The cookie jar was meant to match our van which we decorated as cookie monster.  

After he got a few treats from the trunk or treat he just wanted to sit and eat candy so he got to go inside the cookie monster with Dad and help hand out candy.  So much fun!

Playing in the Leaves Fall 2018

We have a great grassy area across from our house.  The kids wanted to go rake leaves and play in them, so we all went over and had a fun time one evening.

My pretty older girls were spectators most of the time

   Life is busy but good, especially with this guy!