Happy New Year!!!

So, I was reading my friend, Dawn's, blog. She is one amazing woman! Her and her husband recently adopted their 5th and 6th child, and they just amaze me with their love, patience, humor, and all over goodness. They are definitely angels on this earth - even if they don't see it!

Anyways, back to my original thought, on Dawn's blog, she posted her highs and lows for the last year, so I decided I might try that too (forget the whole "goals" thing... it never works out anyway!). This year has been a hard one for us, so the lows are easier for me to come up with... but there are still lots of highs, and I needed to remind myself of them! So, here goes nothing...

Highs of 2009:

• Haley starting kindergarten (with Macy going into 4th grade!), Girl Scouts, soccer and ballet; Reed starting preschool and Luke going into middle school with Chad - CRAZY!!!
• Having D home to play with a lot
• Working on the PTA and helping to open our new school
• Celebrating 16 years with the love of my life!
• Having 5 wonderful children who totally make my life worth living!!!
• Murphy prom!
• Family coming to visit - we always love this!!!
• Luke's Amazing Race birthday party - it was LOTS of fun!!!
• D taking me to see Wicked for my birthday!!!
• Seattle for Spring Break
• Getting a good start on our food storage and canning anything and everything with our friends, the Geigenmillers
• MANY trips to California for work and play
• Going on the Pioneer Trek with Chad - a lot of work, but a totally worthwhile experience!
• Serving in the Nursery, the Primary and Young Men's
• Wonderful, supportive family and friends who are always willing to help!
• Cottonwood Beach
• Being able to attend many temples throughout the year for many sealings!
• Seeing and catching up with old friends
• Free craft projects at Michaels, Home Depot and Lowes
• All the summer camps our kids attended!
• Signing up with Scentsy - Lots of smelly goodness!
• Becoming a good "couponing" grocery shopper! I'm almost a professional!!!
• D, Chad, Luke and our niece, Annie, attending the Star Wars concert
• D working some freelance jobs and then getting a new job!!!
• Helping out at the schools
• New Moon - sorry! Really enjoyed it!!!
• Great friends who totally support all my made up holidays - and there are LOTS of them!
• Christmas cards going out in the mail!
• Receiving lots of Christmas cards (emails, ecards, whatever!) - this is one of my favorite parts of Christmas!!!
• Getting to celebrate one more new year with my family!

Lows of 2009:

• D being unemployed for about 8 months of it.
• Trying to survive D being unemployed and then trying to catch up from it.
• High - D getting a new job; Low - at half what he was making before... and trying to make it work for our family
• Little Bailey's parents dying right before Christmas
• The death of my childhood friends' dad, Tim, also right before Christmas. Tim was a great example to me when I was a teenager, and I will miss him and was very sad that I could not attend his funeral.
• D's car needing new brakes the week after Christmas
• Being away from D for 4 weeks while he worked in California and we were at home
• Our friend, Mike, who is losing his battle with cancer. A young dad, with young children and a great Cubmaster. We are sad for your family and keeping you in our prayers.
• My father-in-law having a heart attack the week before Christmas and having to have angioplasty done - again.
• Because of the angioplasty, grandma and grandpa Huck not being able to come for Christmas

So really, the highs outweigh the lows (and that's really good to see!)... it just seems that the lows are more dominant! Oh well... here's to a new year... may it be better than the last one (at least for us!)!!!

Eskimo men.

(Mom, notice D in the background wearing his new orange snow jacket???? He LOVES it!)

This is what happened while they slept.

Chad poking out of their snow cave.

The motley crew before they left.

While we were having our freak snow storm, Chad and Derrick were off with the scouts snow camping. Always a "favorite" of Derrick's (you can't get warm for anything!), they all had a great time. It wasn't too cold this year, they were able to get there early enough to dig their snow caves, even though they didn't sleep in them, and the boys just had a great time playing in the snow.

Let it snow!

Reed trying to make snow angels - he doesn't quite get the full concept yet.

Well, we didn't get a White Christmas after all, but we did get some snow a few days later. Granted, not enough for sledding, but still enough to entertain the kids a bit and close down our street, so always fun. It only lasted through the night, but it sure was pretty!

TAG! Haley's it!

One of the best Christmas gifts that Haley received this year was a TAG Reading System (and she didn't even ask Santa for it!)... and it was totally a fluke! One of Santa's helpers found out that Target was "clearancing" (not sure if that's a real word or not) the older version (which looked exactly the same as the newer version), for $12.48 (which was not marked on any of the boxes, you just had to know what the older ones looked like and then scan them - the thing was normally like $39.99). This Santa's helper also had a coupon for $10.00 off of a TAG Reading System, so got it for only $2.48!!! Crazy! Granted... the books run about $10 each, but the elf even found coupons for those, and Toys R Us ran a Buy 2 Get 1 Free deal, so even those weren't bad! So, here's our Kindergartner Haley, loving that she can read books to herself... and Reed really enjoys it too, so, two for one, if you ask me!