January is almost over!

It's my least favorite month (followed closely by February--sigh) and now we are in the home stretch! I have to say that it has gone by rather quickly.
Last Monday, which was Martin Luther King day, we went down to BYU and helped at their community outreach day. It's an annual day of service that they organize in honor of MLK Jr. Now, I would like to say that we were completely altruistic in our endeavor, but we had some motivation. We signed up through the Disneyland website, and will receive one day Disney tickets for each of us! Isn't that cool? Unfortunately, Mark had to work that day, but the rest of us are riding Space Mountain for free!!
Our project was to cut out and sew hand puppets for the LDS Humanitarian Services. It was time-consuming, but pretty fun. Janie keeps asking if we can do it again next MLK day. The only thing she didn't care for was the long meeting with speakers that came beforehand.





In other exciting news, Derek just got contacts. He broke his glasses playing basketball, so we decided to try them. He's still having a little trouble with the getting them in and out part, but he likes being able to see and not having to push his glasses up constantly. He also turns 11 in a week and a half, so we'll have a reason to party then.
Here's to hoping February goes by fast, too.

Bad blogger, bad, bad, blogger!

Well, I'm going to try to do a better job of blogging, because this is really the only journaling I do. Winter is, honestly, a time of year that sometimes I like to forget, but there are some fun things about it! This is a picture of one of the first snowfalls of the season. Not a lot of snow, but pretty.

Before Christmas, we went downtown one night with my parents and ate dinner at the Garden Restaurant in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. The food was great, as was the view.



The girls had a dance recital. They both did great!


Here's our annual Christmas Eve pj's shot. We never take enough pics on Christmas and, to tell the truth, none of us look very good in them because we're in our jammies. So this is all you are getting. We had a great Christmas and feel very blessed as a family.

On the day after Christmas, we went tubing with some friends. We went to Soldier Hollow. It was a beautiful, sunny, cold day. This is the way to go tubing, I tell you. You hook your tube to a rope tow, it pulls you up the hill and dumps you at the top. Then you walk over to the top of the groomed hill, ride down, and start over. Very little physical exertion involved.




Of course, now we're back to reality, but we have a few things to look forward to. We went through our annual beach reservation bonanza on January 2nd. Even though it always stresses us out, it's great when we get exactly what we want! Now we just have to wait for 7 months.....