Santa Sacks

This year I was in charge of a project through Heart Expressions called Santa Sacks. Heart Expressions is a non-profit organization that puts together sacks of gifts and goodies for children that otherwise might not have a Christmas. Last year I helped with this project on a much smaller scale. I gathered the names of the children in need from our school, submitted them to Heart Expressions and helped assemble the bags. This summer, the lady who was in charge of the project for Logan City School District moved. She called and asked me to take it over. I of course said, "no, thank you for thinking of me, but I can't do it." I'm not sure exactly what happened (I do know that guilt was involved), but I ended up doing it. Now that we are almost through this Holiday season, I can say that I'm really happy that I did it! We have been working on this project for a couple of months now, sorting through supplies, raising money and purchasing items for the sacks. Each sack is filled with a fleece blanket, an outfit, a pair of p.j.'s, socks & underwear, a book, a toy and a goodie bag. I had a really great group of university students that helped me this year. They needed to do a service project for a class they were taking. We met two weeks ago and assembled almost 100 sacks. It was a great project, although it really wiped me out. I was sick through the last couple of weeks of the project and when I finally went to the doctor he diagnosed me with pneumonia. I've been trying to recover ever since!

Swim Team

I don't know if I mentioned it, but Savanna has joined the High School Swim Team. We are really proud of her. Her first official swim meat was on Saturday (it was 6 hours long - Yikes!). She did really great and shaved 15 seconds off her seed time. She is really passionate about swimming and we are really excited for her.

Visit with the Cousins!

I'm finally getting around to blogging about our weekend and Todd and Jillians. We went up a couple of weekends ago and spent some time with them. We miss having them live near by. We just love them and their kids, they have such fun personalities. We had a great time at the pumpkin patch with them.

This picture sums up our fun weekend! Isn't Cooper a cutie!!!

Life is Busy!

I feel like a "Loser Blogger"! It's not that I don't have anything to blog about, it's that life is just to busy! We have so much happening that there never seems to be time to sit down and post fun new pictures that we've taken. Now that Savanna is in High School I've become a full time Chauffer and Social Director (I think I deserve a raise!).

This week at school I was responsible for our schools 115th Birthday celebration. Our school is the oldest continuing operating school in Utah. We had a great big party! During the day the kids put on a program that we invited alumni to. We had one alumni that was 93 years old! That same night we had an open house for everyone. We had a great turn out of around 500 people (including the media). It was a lot of fun, but I'm glad to have it behind me. Now it's onward to the next project!!

Casadie Paige

Top 5 things I love about Casadie:

1. Her smile. Casadie has the most beautiful smile. It is contagious! She also has a great giggle. I love to hear her giggle, it makes me happy when she is happy.

2. Casadie is so helpful I know that I can always count on her to help me out and to do a good job at whatever it is.

3. Casadie's beautiful blue eyes. Casadie is a beautiful girl and has the most amazing blue eyes. We never thought we would have a blue eyed child, but we did!

4. Her imagination. Casadie has a wonderful imagination. She has always been able to entertain herself for hours. In fact, it's not unusual to hear her talking and singing to herself.

5. Her drive and self motivation. I love that Casadie knows what's important and goes for it. She rarely needs reminders from her parents to get things done.

Casadie's Birthday

Casadie's Birthday was this week. I can hardly believe that she is 12. We celebrated with a family party. Aunt Nicole, Uncle Jake and Sophie came up to have cake with us. It's nice to have some family close. On Friday night her friends through her a surprise party. It was a great birthday for her.

New Ride

Can you believe it?!? We bought a mini-van. Although the number of children in our family doesn't necessitate us having a mini van, the size of the children we do have made it a must have! Brett and I have reached our breaking point and decided that we had to have a vehicle that everyone could have their own seat and have enough room that they could not touch each other! It's great and we love it. Can you say "ROAD TRIP"?!!!!!