The House is all framed!

Trip to Oxnard

Cameron had to work in Oxnard and we went with him.  We enjoyed a very cold beach day and even the pool was pretty chilly but the kids enjoyed it.  It was nice to get away from packing for a couple days.  

Ali's first time to the temple

I think that taking my daughter to the temple for her first time to do baptisms for the dead was quite a treat.  I loved how excited she was for her temple recommend and how excited she was to go.  I spent hours one morning trying to find just one name for her to take to the temple and found a family... although just one female.  Also Grandpa Brown had some names for her to take and so she was ready.  I was glad to attend with her for her first time.  

Happy 12th Birthday Ali

Ali turned 12 this year.  It is a big birthday.  No longer is she in Primary but now she is in Young Womens and that means she is treated like a Young Woman.  I think that the church expects a lot from the youth these days and treats them more and more like they are grown than they used to.  I explained to Ali that she had been taught all that she needed to know and now we would help assist her in applying what she had learned in to her life.  

She is a great young woman who has learned a lot over the years and I couldn't ask for a more responsible daughter.  She is always on top of everything... organization in her room or our house, school work, church assignments... anything she can do she tries to do.  She is a great help in our house, she baby sits, does a multitude of chores and can cook many meals all by herself.  

For her birthday she had a couple friends over and they did girly things.  One girl spent the night and she enjoyed it all.  We wrapped her presents up and secretly put her iphone inside a camelback we got her for hiking.  She was very excited but I forgot to take any pictures of the event...

face painting

Annika's friend, Eve, has a mom who face paints.  Annika loves it.  Here are some pictures of her in her face painting... 

Sea Life Aquarium in Draper

We decided that for our last day in Utah we would check out the new aquarium.  I was hoping it would be less crowded since it had been opened a while but it was still quite crowded.  We thought it opened at 9 but it opened at t10 so we took a walk along the Jordan River Trail first.  IT was such a beautiful day.  

 I thought the aquarium was pretty nice although not worth a season pass for my family... we wouldn't go enough from Heber.  We enjoyed ourselves although we were pretty much done after two hours.

 My favorite thing in the whole place was the sea turtle.  I really want to swim with these someday.

Classic Roller Skating

I took the kids to classic roller skating in Orem while on our trip to Utah to get a bit of their energy out.  They really enjoyed the time there and used roller skates, scooters, and played on all the slides.  They also used their own money to buy treats I would have never bought for them... lucky for allowances.