Ward Camp Out {2012}

This in an event that is looked forward to each year by my family.  Casey is always in charge of it.  In fact, he wasn’t supposed to be in charge this year, but he loves it so much and doesn’t mind planning it, so it is still his baby.   Our ward (The Church Jesus Christ of Latter - Day Saints) gets together each February at Huntsville State Park for a night of fun. It is fun to mingle with each other in a different, way more relaxed environment.   We headed up early to set up and make a day of it. 

Ady spent a lot of time exploring.

I love this picture of Drew.  He is such a little man.

The girls enjoyed hanging out on the hammock.  This hammock brought back memories for me!  When I saw Christian pull it out, I recognized it right away.  Darn it!  Now that I think about it, I have a picture of me and Sara and Jen in this hammock.  I should have scanned it and posted it.  Too late now. :( Christian brought it home from his mission.  We all spent some fun nights chillin on this thing in good ol’ Provo… back in the day. 

Here are Kaylee and Sara’s two girls. 

As for the boys…What can I say?  My boys are pyros.

They were obsessed with the fire.  As soon as they dropped their sleeping bags off in the tent they headed straight to the fire pit.  They didn’t leave it the entire time!!  Especially Drew. 

With help from the manly men in our group, they got a fire going for our tinfoil dinners. 

Three hungry families tin foil dinners.

  

After dinner everyone gathers together for a short program; campfire songs, a skit and s’mores. 

The boys waited anxiously listening to the skit while guarding the goods.  The s’mores is what they were really after.

These boys make me smile.  As a mother I absolutely love the fact that I can most always find them together.  At home I expect to see them together, but when we are out with friends in a situation other than home and I see them together, I know that they are friends.  Best friends at that. 

After s’mores the kids played for a little bit more and then it was off to bed.  The adults stayed up by the campfire for a looooooong time chatting and having some late night snacks.  Fun times!  The kids slept great.  The “tween” girls had a tent all to themselves.  Of course they enjoyed that. 

Good morning sunshine!

Time for breakfast!

After that it was a quick clean up and we were outta there!  Back to reality…baseball games, errands, cleaning and getting ready for church the next day.  It was fun while it lasted. :)

As for other news…I was featured on the U Create Party Blog last weekend!  Thank you U Create.  What an honor.  It was for Jake’s Movie Themed birthday party.  

Have a great week everyone! 

Family Theme 2012 {and family pics}

I am rolling out our Family Theme for 2012.  I have had this printed and hanging on my wall for awhile now.  I ran across this quote somewhere and knew RIGHT away that it was made for us.  This is what I want our family to focus on in 2012. 

I would have to agree.

What better place is there to be than home? 

I am a home-body.  What can I say?  I love being at home puttering around.  I feel most content at home.  I feel most productive on the days that I am able to stay home.  Running errands and spending the majority of my day away makes me grumpy.  I feel much calmer when I am at home.  I feel like I am able to take care of myself and my family more when I am at home preparing for whatever it is that needs to get done. 

I want my family to feel the same way.  I want them to love spending time at home.   I want them to know that we value our time at home and feel like it is one of the most important things.  I am going to work extra hard to make our home a place of comfort and peace and warmth.

Some days it is not an easy thing to do!

I am going to continue teaching my kids that we all play a part in that.  We are a team at home.  There are days, or moments in our day I should say, when someone or all of us might not want to be here for some reason or another.  That is to be expected.  We all have bad days or bad moments, but I want my children to know that home is a place of acceptance and unconditional love.  When we have a tiff, we make up and laugh again.  When we have a busy, crazy day that takes us away from home, we meet up at the end of the day and share our experiences with each other. 

I want my family to continually work on slowing down a little so we can enjoy more time at home together. Because our family is worth it.  Sometimes it is hard to say no to extra things.  The “extra’s” help us learn and grow and figure out who we are and what we enjoy doing, but when it interferes with our life at home and starts to replace time as a family then it isn’t beneficial for us.  I learned that last year (school year) and promised myself I would do better this year.  I am proud to say that as a family we have done so much better!  It has made a huge difference.  We are able to focus more on our families needs and do the things that are right for US.  Every family is different and needs different things at different times.  That is why it is so important to work together to figure it out. 

Just a little something I have learned along the way.  :)

I realized the other day that I never shared our family pictures.  How did I let that one get past me? 

I have no idea, but I am sharing them now!

When we went to Arizona for Thanksgiving my sil Beth took our family pictures.  She is an awesome photographer.  I love and admire her work so much.  She rocked our photo session.  She captured it exactly how I envisioned.  Love when that happens!

If you live in the Phoenix area and are looking for a photographer, check out Beth Curtis Photography.  You will be glad you did!

Thanks for following us and sharing our journey!

Friendship

Friendship has been on my mind so much the last couple of months.  I have been thinking about how blessed I have been through out my life by my friends.  I can remember growing up feeling like  friends were everything to me.  To a tween/teenager… they kind of are!  That is where my blessings come in.  I have always had the very best of friends.  Friends that looked out for me and had my best interests at heart.  Friends that I could look up to and who were always there for me to offer advise and words of encouragement. When I would be tempted to make the wrong decisions, my friends were there to talk me out of it.  Sometimes we would make the wrong decisions together, but mostly we were really great kids!  That is a huge blessing!  Especially now that I can see things through a parents perspective first hand.  I know how important friends are.  I especially know how important GOOD friendships are.   I hope and pray for my kids to choose wisely who their friends are and always remember to BE a good friend. 

Friends can be your second family.   Of course my family has had a huge impact on who I have become and the ways I have grown through out my life, but my friends have been there to teach me new things and to give me a different perspective on life at times.  Just like my family, they have helped me become the person I am today.  Everywhere I have moved and at every stage in life, I have been blessed with meaningful friendships that have made me stronger and taught me something new about myself.  I think that is a wonderful blessing! 

I spend a lot of time with the young girls at church from the ages of 12-18.  I see how they struggle with friendships at times.  Everybody does.  I even remember having hard times, but mostly I remember all of the good.  And then I wonder why I was so blessed.  I have always wondered that.  What did I do to deserve such great friends?  I don’t think I necessarily did anything to deserve such great friends.  I just know that it was and has always been a blessing in my life.  Mostly, I am just grateful for my experiences and all of the things I have learned; most importantly being able to recognize the Lord’s hand in my life. 

Speaking of friends…I thought I would share some pictures.  Yes, I am STILL working on cleaning out the millions (maybe not millions, but it feels like it) of pictures on my computer.  Some of this is old news by now, but I am giving my pictures and thoughts a home and that makes me happy. 

Here are a few of the recent things we have done with our friends.

The Swenson family came to visit us for New Years.  This is a friendship that I could not do with out.  Gosh, I can’t even imagine honestly.  My heart breaks just thinking about it.  Andrea and I have been BFF’s since our newly married days in Logan.  We have been learning, and growing and sharing and having fun together ever since then.  We hit it off right away.  We have pretty much been doing and thinking the same things ever since.  Our brains think so much alike and we can relate to each other in every way.  Sometimes it is weird how much alike we are.  Like both of us having baby #4 just 9 days apart.  Both being beautiful little girls.  We are too lucky!

Here are some snap shots of our weekend.  Our kids have so much fun together and consider themselves cousins. 

I am also lucky in the fact that I get to live by one of my very best friends I grew up with.  Sara and I were inseparable.  Except when we had to share each other with our boyfriends. :)  Sara married her high school sweetheart who also happened to be an awesome friend of mine.  They move around every two years for Christian’s job and this last move they ended up in Texas.  Texas is huge and so is Houston.  We were so excited when we found out they were going to be able to live right by us.  We live in the same neighborhood, attend the same ward at church and our kids go to the same school.  Talk about a dream come true.  When you were little girls or making college plans with your friends, who didn’t dream of living by their childhood best friend?!  We know it is short lived and won’t last for that much longer, but we are definitely enjoying the time together.    

We went to their house for the annual Super Bowl party. 

These are Kaylee’s two best friends.  I love watching her with her friends.  It reminds me of myself growing up.  I am so glad that she has made real connections.  This is the start to friendships she will remember forever.  It is especially fun for me because they are daughters of some of my own BFF’s.   One of them is Sara’s daughter and the other is Tami’s daughter, my Texas BFF. It makes getting together that much more fun for all of the families.

Here are some snapshots of our night.

Our next little (actually BIG) outing with our friends is a cruise with Tami and Tony!

We can hardly wait!!  This will be me and Casey’s very first cruise.  The four of us are leaving the kiddos with grandparents and making a run for it.  Almost a week from now, actually.  The count down is on!  The count down  started over 6 weeks ago.  I can’t believe the time is already here.

We were so glad when the Dickamore’s moved here.  We invited them over one day for family night and everybody hit it off.  We have SO much fun with them and hang out any chance we get!  Tami and I occasionally do lunch dates during the week and swap Kai and Ady around between the two of us.  We are both their mommas.  The nursery leader at church a couple of weeks ago told me she actually wasn’t sure which one of us was who’s mom.  I laughed at that.  Kai and Ady have such a cute friendship.  They are getting married when they grow up.  We have already decided.  Tami and I were pregnant together so Kai and Ady have a special bond!  They were born for each other. :)  Let’s not forget that Drew’s first crush was on Aliya, their cute little girl and of course Taeya is Kaylee’s BFF.  Our Houston experience would definitely not be the same with out the Dickamore family!   

We love our friends.  We are so blessed to  have such wonderful friends near and far and love and appreciate each of you.  Each one of you have made an impact in our lives one way or another.  Even those of you we aren’t able to see often or talk to as much as we would like are thought of often.  Friendship is a gift from God.

A {LOVE} note for you…

January Happenings

I am playing catch up.  It’s like a never ending story around here.  I have been spending a lot of time sorting through thousands of pictures and cleaning off my computer.  It is taking waaaaaaaay too long and I am still not even close.  I need to set a finish date for this project so I don’t drag it out forever.  Something needs to motivate me, I just haven’t found it yet!  I also don’t have a huge chunk of time to sit in front of the computer and get it done.  Little spaces of time here and there make it take much longer. :( 

During this process, I realized that so many of my pictures don’t have a home.  I didn’t do a post about them, they have not been scrapbooked or printed.  They are just chillin’ on my computer.  I don’t like that!  For me, it kind of defeats the whole purpose of taking pictures.  I love the actual process of being behind the camera capturing moments in my families life.  That is fun for me and it always feels right.  But having all of these pictures floating around all over the place drives me nuts!  It seriously makes me anxious.  I have made a goal to start scrapbooking again this year.  I couldn’t find any time to do it last year.  It is important to me to be the “historian” for my family.  I take pride in that job.  I always have.  It is one of the things about being a mom that I really love. But I can’t start until this dang computer of mine is all cleaned out, organized from top to bottom and running faster than it is now. 

For now, and for the rest of the year (maybe every year after that) I am going to make a collage of pictures each month and post it. These are random pictures for the month that tell a little bit of our story.  Pictures that I would have loved to do a post and really write about, but I can’t find the time for it.  It gives some of my pictures a home and that makes me feel better.  Some of them I might go back and do a post on, we’ll see.  For now I am catching up and moving forward.  

Here are some January Happenings in the Moes home.

(Collage downloaded from Simple as That)

Left to right, top to bottom:

1. Kaylee is officially a tween.  She got an ipod for Christmas and is hooked.  She loves everything about it and is enjoying keeping in touch with her friends this way.  She chills on her bed like this pretty much everyday for a good 15 min. (It would be longer if I wasn’t hounding her) Then it’s homework and swim.

2. Jake had his second Pine Wood Derby.  His car resembled Bumble Bee.  His car came in 2nd place and he received an award for “Most Transformer Like”.  Last year he came in 1st place, this year 2nd.  We teased him that next year it would be 3rd.  He didn’t like that. :)

3. Kaylee started back up on the swim team.  We took the fall off.  It was a nice break but we are glad to be back.  She is a great swimmer and I love that she is getting exercise each day. 

4.  I mentioned in Jake’s birthday post that he loves to read each and every night.  He could read all night long.  I love this picture of him. 

5. Ady got her first real haircut.  I have trimmed her bangs (when she had them) but that was about it.  She actually really enjoyed getting her hair cut and was so good!

6. Nap time is still a great time of day around here.  Ady loves her big girl bed, her blanket and taking naps.

7.  Drew had a sick day, although you would never be able to tell by this picture that it was a sick day.  Ady and I were making a treat.  He couldn’t resist the beaters when we were all done. 

As for some other random happenings, This week:

1. I edited a photo shoot.

2. I ate lunch at school with Jake.  I actually surprised him and the look on his face almost made me cry.  It’s so easy for me to forget how much little things like that mean to my children.  It was definitely worth the time and I am going to make it  happen more often. 

3. I did not vacuum once this entire week.  For those of you that really know me, you know that this is a big deal around here!! :)  I actually didn’t do much with the house this week.  That doesn’t make me happy but it is what it is. 

4. I ordered this chair.  I have been eyeing it for my family room for months now.  It is finally on its way!  It goes perfect with this rug (the green one) I bought a couple of months ago.

5. I am enjoying a dinner swap with my friend Sara that we set up for our families.  I will share about this soon.  It is awesome and we both LOVE it!

6. I am looking forward to an early Valentine date with my hubby tonight. 

That’s it for us.  I hope you all have a great weekend!