Nathan's Blue and Gold Banquet

I am Nate's Wolf leader and so I get to enjoy these fun times with him. We got to dress up like cowboys for the banquet.

Nathan standing in line for uniform inspection. We then had a "campfire" where the boys gathered around and sang songs with Micki Rosemann playing the guitar.

Jenessa at Flips Gymnastics

Jenessa in her Flips gymnastics class

Jenessa doing some kicks, jumps and jumping over the rope with one of her friends Maggie

Hawaiian Night at the Elementary School

In February we have a week that is Take your Family to School. For one of the activities we had a DJ come to the school in the evening and we had a Hawaiian Night.

Tyler Shurtz, Nathan, Zachary, and Jenessa

Zachary, Nathan and Joshua getting some dance moves in and Nessa enjoying the night!

Sweethearts Day with the Fam

Bartholomew's enjoying a Valentine's dinner at the Olive Garden.

Grandpa & Grandma, Karen & Nate, Mark & Cass, Bryan & Teresa, Melissa

Love you Honey!!

A cool valentine that Cass made for all the cousins.

Zachary's 7th Birthday

Celebrating all of the February birthday's...Teresa, Zachary, Ashlee, and Karen!

Ashlee, Taylor, Joshua, Kamron, Kasen, and Jenessa enjoying the cake!!

Zachary blowing out some more candles and opening some presents.
We decided that once our kids turn 6 we will start to do big birthday parties every other year when they are on an even birthday. For the odd year birthday's, we do something little like allowing them to invite a friend or 2 to go to dinner or like a chuck e cheese. This is Zachary enjoying some time at Chuck-e-Cheese. This is his 7th Birthday.

Nathan, Zachary, Connor McBride, Parker Schow, and Tyler Shurtz.

February Misc...

Some of Josh's many personalities. He was obviously quite sick where the poor guy couldn't even open his eyes. Always using Nessa's stuff. Trying to be like the big kids, and just plain exhausted. We love you Josh.

One of the kids favorite activities to do with Bryan in the winter!

DISNEYLAND HERE WE COME!!!

So... For Christmas we received Disneyland tickets. Our children were thrilled. We were able to do the 5 day hopper for a very reasonable price. We stayed at Desert Palm Hotel and Suites. We had a 2 room suite, so we had three beds between us all, a mirowave, full fridge, stove and oven (although we never cooked there). It was behind California Adventure and only a 10 minute walk. We felt that it turned out perfectly. We were planning on taking the whole family until my mom suggested leaving Joshua home with her. At first, I thought no way, but the more Bryan and I thought and talked about it, the more it made sense. Even though we missed him, it was such a wonderful idea to leave him behind. It was sooooo.... much easier to not have to worry about a 15 month old.

Jenessa was such a trooper also. There were several rides that she could not go on especially at California Adventure. There was truly no complaining from her about this. The poor girl is so short who knows if by the next time we go, she will even be tall enough to ride some of them. She was in heaven though being able to see all the princesses.

Here we were waiting for Fireworks to start, The middle pic was our first night!

The picture on the left is of Nate fighting Darth Vader and on the right is Zachary fighting Darth Maul. They boys were so excited when they were both chosen to go up on stage and do the "Jedi" training. This was probably one of their greatest experiences they had while at Disneyland. They both did great!!

Pictures with some of Zachary's favorite characters :)

Kids driving the cars! They thought they were so big.

All of the kids posing for us

Boys on a swing that they were having tons of fun on. One of the many nights that Jenessa was just too tired to stay awake any later.

Just some more family photos :)

We took some time to look around the Newport Beach temple grounds

I know the 1st two pics aren't the greatest but it shows them trying to outrun the waves! Well, you can see that Zach lost that battle. It of course didn't keep him out for long.

All the kids wanted to write their name in the sand. They drew one for Josh who wasn't with us and of course, Jazen the elf!

So we went to this buffet type place that is just outside of Disneyland. They had squid there to eat. I dared all of the kids to eat it and no one would. Then I thought ok...I will bribe Zachary to at least try it. I told him I would give him a dollar, of course that wasn't good enough and so I upped the ante to five bucks. He took the bait. The pictures explain the rest.

He FINISHED it ALL!!!!