Aliyah's Baptism Day

Last weekend my sweet niece Aliyah was baptized here in Utah.  Her family doesn't currently live here, but will likely be moving here very soon-- which makes me mucho happy!
The Cannon cousins (or most of them anyway) sang a beautiful musical number, "I Will Be What I Believe" and I'll tell you what--- these kids meant singing business!  They did a marvelous job.

Chloe, Caroline, and Greta.

Misty (Aliyah's mom) threw a party for the birthday girl afterwards.

These cousins sure have a fun time together.

Abe pointed out to these four that they represented all four of the Cannon siblings-- Takara (Brig), Cannon (me), Aliyah (Matt), and Kaylee (Peter).  They decided to form a club.

Not to be outdone, George started a club of all the younger Cannon cousins.

A little musical chairs.

It's so good of Uncle Lane and Aunt Diane to come support our family events.  Truly, it feels like a part of my mom is there when they're there.

Such a wonderful day with family.  I am really looking forward to having all my siblings living in Utah together!

A Fox Family Theatrical

If my children want to get out of doing their school work in the middle of the day, there is one sure fire way-- put on a theatrical.  I'm a sucker for a good play.  Not even a good play-- I'll watch a terrible play, as long as my kiddos are the stars, producers set builders and writers.

Peter and George reprised their popular roles of Ink and Squirt in this "charming" under the sea theatrical.

These things always end up in laughter and/or tears.  This time it was laughter as Faith the shark eats Squirt the octopus.

I mean you can see why I can't say no to children working together and enjoying each other so much.

It's right about this time that the laughter turns to tears!

2019 Is Off and Running

Bethany had a big day last Saturday, January 5th-- call backs for Young Performing Missionaries in Nauvoo this summer.  It was a ten hour audition day and SPOILER ALERT: She didn't make it.  But it was a wonderful experience and she learned and grew so much in the process of preparing.  It really was a wonderful senior project for her.  She worked so hard on her vocals and found she absolutely loves to sing and developed a real talent I didn't know she had.  We are so very proud of her.

The age range for the YPM's is 18-25 and Bethany will turn 18 in march (gasp!)  She was likely the youngest person at call backs and although she was disappointed, she trusts that it's all according to God's plan.  She is looking forward to a fabulous summer working, going on Trek, and being in a play here at home.  I would have loved for her to have the experience, but I also love the idea of having her home for one more summer.  I delight in her company. 

Her longest-time and dear friend Raven also went to call backs and didn't get a YPM spot either.  Bummer for us because we won't get to go out and see them perform, but exciting to see what other adventures life has in store for them. 

Although it wasn't of the same importance as Bethany's big audition day, January 5th was also the opening meet of the Utah Red Rocks gymnastics team.  This is our third year with season tickets and it's really a lot of fun.  This was part of Faith's Christmas. 

Faith was so happy to bring her best CHUM along for the meet. They are silly and sweet and awesome.

I don't have a picture of this next thing, but Cannon is really excited to be back in another Ballet West production!  He was invited him to be in Swan Lake-- rehearsals have already begun and the show opens February 8th.  This boy was so happy (and sore) to be back dancing after the two week break.  

Elinor and Abe at her last home swim meet this season.  Riverton swims against their rival Herriman this week.  Next up is regionals and then prepping for her favorite thing-- WATER POLO!

Elinor saw this picture and said, "Wow!  I'm really tall!"

Uh.. yeah you sure are.  

It's interesting and challenging at times for Elinor to work so hard, so many hours and measure her improvements in hundredths and thousandths of seconds.  The coaches really break their bodies down during the season, especially in December, and then taper in the last couple of weeks to get their fastest times at regions in January. 

I find it so interesting, because that's how it is in life.  We don't see much progress, we get feeling frustrating with our own lack of progress and then suddenly what used to be difficult and/or impossible, suddenly becomes easy.  Our part is to continue to work and trust the process.  Trust the coaches. Trust that practice will work a miracle-- it will make the impossible, possible.

Faith did a brave thing last week.  She tried out for the rec. league swim team and she made it.  This girl is strong, strong, strong-- but has never been a great swimmer.  That's about to change, but the tryout was hard for her, and she did it!  

2019 is off to a very full start, but we love it and we wouldn't want it any other way.

Dreams of Olympic Gold

So... I was very brave.  Well, I guess it wasn't actually that brave.  But I felt brave.  Abe and I went shooting at a shooting range with the Schramms.  Camille has said that I make her get out of her comfort zone and do fun things.  This is debatable, but what is not debatable is that Camille and Keith brought me along with them to do a scary thing.

I had never fired a gun before.  Well, I mean, I'd fired Nerf guns... and laser guns, but I don't think those really count. 

Keith was an awesome teacher and I don't want to brag or anything (read:  I totally want to brag), but I was a pretty good shot.

Abe was pretty good too.  I won't say who was better-- mostly because I don't know.  He tended to hit lower and I hit higher. 

I don't know that I will become a shooting enthusiast, but I will have to practice if I'm ever to achieve my goal of winning a medal in an Olympic biathalon:)

Sledding is the Best

It is there anything more wonderful that happy children sledding on a beautiful, clear winter's day?

I'd like to take this moment  to celebrate that I got our entire family, minus Clark, outfitted in complete snow clothes.  Count it:  That's 9 pairs of snow pants (that all fit), 9 pairs of boots (that all fit), 9 pairs of gloves (that all fit and were waterproof!), 9 hats, 9 winter coats.  CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT ACCOMPLISHMENT!?   Now, I'm just saying, you can't feel that bad about how you're doing in life if your entire family has complete snow clothes.  I feel very rich, indeed.
We have a couple extra boys in this picture that we brought along for the fun.

We also met up with the Lee family-- they are only about our favorite people in the world!  But a lot of people feel that way about the Lees.

Big sisters with their little sisters.  Lucky girls-- them all!

While not the world's biggest sledding fan, Elinor had fun somewhat against her wishes:)

What a nice big sister she was to pull Peter up the hill.

Love.

We need more snow so we can do more sledding!

Weird and Wonderful Week

The week in between Christmas and New Years is weird and wonderful-- just like these two! 
Seriously, it is about the best week of the year.  We play a lot and eat a lot and waste a lot of time.  By the time it's over everyone is starting to lose their cool and is ready to buckle back down to the beautiful grind of regular life. 

We enjoyed a night out to eat with the Utah Fox siblings. 

We invited ourselves over to the Schramms to play games with them and their family from out of town.
Good friends can always invite themselves over:)

Friends on a double date downtown.

Kids played with neighbor friends almost every single day for hours and hours and they were all so happy.  George and his friend made this robot with Christmas box trash.

Peter and his best friend playing Bey Blades.  \

Greta moved out of her crib and has not been very good about staying in her bed.  I found her sitting in Faith's closet eating Faith's M&Ms without even a snitch of remorse.  

We spent way too much time working on a ridiculously huge 2000 piece puzzle.  A couple times it was just Abe and I listening to music and puzzling together and it was delightful!

VICTORY!

Another New Years Eve with our wonderful Johansens.  I think we figured this was our 11th year on a row of New Years Eve game nights and it is hours and hours of games and junk food.  We both have missionaries out right now and it was so fun to talk about our recent Christmas phone calls with them and how they are doing.  It's fun that Clark and Kara are good friends who regularly write to each other.  We'll look forward to both of them being home next year.

Michelle has been one of my homeschooling mentors and I am so grateful for their friendship.

Peter was so cute on New Years trying to stay awake.  He came to us and showed us how he could prop his eyes open to stay awake.  From the look of this picture, his plan didn't work.

They introduced us to a really fun new game called "Sushi Go".  Thank goodness you don't have to like Sushi to enjoy the game:)

Elinor will shortly be turning 16 and she recently asked a boy to an upcoming school dance with this geeky chemistry code.  It's just so Elinor!

He answered back with a gingerbread volcano, complete with gummy dinosaurs.  It's a match made in heaven!  

What kind of homeschooling family would be if we didn't attempt to erupt the gingerbread volcano.   It was fun.  You know what else is fun?  The week between Christmas and regular life.  I dare say it's almost too fun.