January 16

Clara got one of her fruit snacks stuck on her forehead. Cecily thought it was hilarious.

Allie and Chandler with their parents.

Audrey helping us paint by......eating.

James, working on making over Nate's man cave.

The little girls helping with one of the walls.

Et, viola- much better....

There wasn't much excitement for us during the week. Clara worked on finding her toes, saying bye-bye and blowing kisses. She actually slept through the night for five nights in a row! And then got a cold that made it so she couldn't breathe when she closed her mouth. Bye-bye sleeping through the night...

Cecily enjoyed school. She got to play with Ella and the other Cecily.

Elliot played intermural basketball after school. He also kept practicing for the other two basketball teams that he and Austin are playing on.

Audrey finished up her semester. She decided to change History teachers because hers was always punishing their class for being bad. She finished her Girls' Choir and Aerobics classes- she'll have Drama and Social Dance instead. I think all of her other classes will be the same next semseter, except that she's going to be doing Special Needs Seminary, where she is matched with a Special Needs student for Seminary, and instead of doing regular Peer Tutoring for her Special Needs class, she's going to be doing it Concurrent Enrollment and getting USU credit for it.

On Friday we went down to Allie and Chandler's wedding. Elliot stayed with Jacob and Kara because he had two basketball games the next day. We made it to the reception in Ephraim and then stayed at Grandma and Grandpa Parnell's house. The next morning they had a wedding breakfast. Then, I took Clara back to Spring City for a nap. I ended up leaving her there while I went to the wedding. James and Cecily went and visited with Kent and Miriam and Audrey went with Abby to the penny candy store.

After the wedding, we went back to Spring City to pick up Clara and my cousin Marie was there, so we had a little dinner and visited and then went home.

On Monday, we went down to Mary's house to help her paint her kitchen and family room. She wanted to surprise Nate, because it was something he had thought of doing. Except that she didn't keep it a surprise, and told him right afterwards. She's as good at keeping secrets as I am! We had a lot of fun- it was really crazy with three adults, two teenagers, three little girls and two babies. James painted a lot and the rest of us worked on keeping the little kids out of his hair. But I thought Mary's house looked really pretty when we were done. We really hope that Nate likes it and knows how much we appreciate the sacrifice that he is making. I hear people talk all the time about how grateful they are to live in America because we have so many freedoms that others don't have. I've lived in other countries and think that there is actually a lot that we share with them that we Americans don't realize. But the one area where I feel there is a huge difference, and that I don't think we appreciate in its contribution to making our country such a nice place to live, is the willingness of smart good motivated people to serve in our armed forces and police forces. In other countries, I've always gotten the feeling that the people don't really trust their armed forces and police forces. They feel that only the people that can't do any other kind of work end up in the armed forces. We really are so blessed to have the best and most honorable kinds of people volunteer to go into our armed forces and police forces. That's where I really see a difference between our freedoms and opportunities and those in other countries.