Happy Birthday Kathryn!  It’s still your birthday month after all 🙂  I think we had a pretty great day.  Thank you Suzanne for all you did to make the day special.

Check out these earmuffs!  Thanks Ben and Emily!  

Lunch with the family.

Dinner and bowling with me.

Gas station hot chocolate with new red lipstick.

Sunday dinner with your family.

And to start it all off, staying up to 2am birthday eve working on the basement.  You are an amazing woman!

Here are some other fun things.  We’ve found a new way to clip Ashley’s fingernails.  Watching Curious George in style! 

This last week was the New Beginnings night for Young Womens.  It really was a New Beginnings night for Kathryn (and me) as well.  This was her last activity as the Young Women’s President.  She was released today.  With this in mind, she really wanted to make it a special night for the girls.  She spent several days planning, preparing, crafting, sewing, organizing, gathering, coordinating, setting up, and executing.  Suzanne came and spent the entire day helping her get setup and watch Ashley.  Just to illustrate how much effort she put into this, the night before the activity, she had a dream that putting the chairs on an angle would make it more fun and less like the Relief Society room.  So, that’s what she did.

The evening was based on D&C 4:2 “Oh ye that embark in the service of God”  and was travel themed.

Kathryn was Carmen Sandiego, reformed of course.  She did a fantastic job and the evening was a smashing success.  I was only able to sneak in and take this one picture of her in action.  (I was teaching the electronics merit badge to the Teachers Quorum.)

I love my amazing wife!

I should start off saying we had a great Christmas, or really three Christmases!  After out Sun Valley trip, we got to spend a little while with my family.  Josie and her family came into town, and Kevin came home from School.  We got to eat some great food and we even opened our gifts to each other.

Second Christmas was our own.  We had a little celebration with the three amigos and opened our gifts to each other.

The third celebration was the official one, or at least the one that happened on Christmas.  This year Christmas was with Kathryn’s family.  Earlier this year, the family had been talking about going on a trip out of town for Christmas.  Kathryn put forward a proposal that instead of going out of town, what if we did a Christmas up at the cabin.  Everyone agreed and it became official.  You have to snowmobile up to the cabin in the winter, so instead of packing in all the presents, we just opened them early on Christmas Eve Morning at Kathryn’s house.  Never before have we opened up so many of the presents so early.  It was fun!

Here Ashley was put into one of the present boxes and she was stuck and couldn’t get out.  It was fun for a couple of seconds.

We got all packed up and headed up to the cabin.  Ashley finally got to put on her adorable snow suit.  It was very reminiscent of A Christmas Story because she pretty much couldn’t move.

Once everyone was transported up to the cabin, the festivities began.  One of the first orders of business was to go out and find a Christmas tree.  We scouted around a found one that looked like a good candidate.  With a few swift blows from a hatched, it was felled and loaded onto the snowmobile toboggan.

While a couple of us boys wrapped the tree in lights and other decorations, Kathryn led an ornament craft party for the girls.  They made Pinterest worthy pine cone ornaments.

Then it was time for Kathryn’s present to the family.  In honor of her Grandma Pauline Hawker, she made matching pajama pants for the whole family!  It was a labor of love.  She is amazing!  

We played games…

and flew and drove fun remote control toys…

and sledded…

and ate great food…

and did a puzzle…

and watched Lord of the Rings 1 and 2, and hot tubbed, and just had a blast!

Here we are on our way out after the great weekend.  Thank you Tim and Suzanne for hosting the great Christmas week, and to Kathryn for your vision of how much fun a Christmas up at the cabin could be!

We went to the July 24th Fiesta Days rodeo in Spanish fork along with Kathryn’s family.