Brinley's Baptism

On May 1st 2014 Brinley was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!  Every member of our family is now a baptized member and has the gift of the Holy Ghost!  Pretty exciting. It was a great day.  The whole Hadley family, minus Rohn and Camille, were able to be there.  Grandpa and Grandma Southwick and cousin Ashley came from Idaho.  Brinley got baptized with 2 of her friends from our ward.  Carson Richards and Brandon Murray.  It was an awesome day!  So proud of Brinley.  She is always trying to make good choices and do what is right.  She is in the process of trying to read the whole Book of Mormon before June.  We set a goal as a family and she is going to make sure she accomplishes that goal!  She is such a sweet and smart little 8 year old.  We are so grateful she is part of our family.  She sets a good example for all of us and teaches us much.  Love you lots Brinley.  Congratulations on your special day!

Brinley's 8th Birthday!

Happy Birthday Brinley!  8 years old!!  We celebrated Brinley's Birthday with a party on the Sunday after her Birthday.  Lots of family came to be with her.  We ate a yummy dinner, had "dirt cups" for dessert, and opened Birthday presents.  Staying with tradition, she got her own set of scriptures for her Birthday this year.  She was really excited to get them.  She chose the mini scripture set like Quincy's, but in a different color.  She is the most awesome 8 year old I know. We love you Brinley!!

Em's Dance!

Emilee's friends finally convinced her that she should ask a boy to the dance!  Yahoo!  She went with a group of 8 kids and they had a great time.  They did a progressive dinner.  The main dish was at our house.  Kylee and I got the table set and ready and made the food, but then Kylee had a date that night and I had to be in the temple with a lady from our ward going through for the first time, so Grandma saved us once again.  She came up to serve the food and be the chaperon. She said she was so impressed with a great group of kids!  Maybe Emilee had enough fun that we can talk her into going again!!

Valentines hair!

Guess who went to school with a cool Valentines hairdo?  Brinley got heart hair to wear on Valentines.  It also happened to be pajama day!!  

A new Valentines Tradition!

This year we tried something new that I absolutely loved!  For Family Home Evening, we each wrote a message on a heart to each other.  7x6 is 42, so we ended up with 42 wonderful kind little messages to each other.  They hung on our door for the month of February.  It was so fun to see each of us stop to read and re-read them. Definitely a tradition we will keep!!

Kade's 14th Birthday!

Happy Birthday Kade!  Somehow we only got pictures of us giving him his treat presents the morning of his Birthday.  We missed the family party pictures! It's hard sometimes to get a 14 year old boy to get excited, so I love the look on his face as he unwrapped the HUGE bag of Mike-N-Ike's to go in his candy machine.  

We sure love this boy!  He is getting to be a big help at home and I love that we have some muscle left around the house when Chris is gone!  He has a funny sense of humor and is still the world's biggest tease.  I think that comes automatically if you are male and your last name is Southwick!  He is smart and a whiz on the computer.  He will become a "Teacher" on this Birthday and he does a great job fulfilling his Priesthood responsibilities.

We love you Kade! Happy Birthday!

Fuzzy Balls!!

This might look like a silly vase of fuzzy balls, but for 5 months at our house it became a very important part of our family!  I thought a lot about this and tried so hard to make it a meaningful expreience for our family.  I was really feeling like we needed to have a greater focus on service.  I was also feeling like we needed to be more accountable for our family scripture study, family prayer and temple attendance!  So..the fuzzy balls came into play!  We had a Family Home Evening and talked about all of these things. We decided each night at family prayer we would go over the day.  We could put 1 fuzzy ball in for morning family prayer, 1 for nightly family prayer, 1 for family scripture study, 1 for going to the temple and 1 each for answering the question "What have I done for someone else today?" We would count them up at the end of the month.  Each fuzzy ball was worth 25 cents!!  Our goal was to see how much money we could earn by the end of May.  This money was to be spent for activities during our trip to Hawaii in June.  The kids understood that if we didn't earn any money, we wouldn't have any money to spend in Hawaii!!  It didn't work perfectly...these plans never do...but it worked well!  We earned almost exactly what we needed to have to do the activities we wanted to do in Hawaii.  

The most important part of this whole experience was getting the chance to reflect back on your day and see what you were able to do for someone else.  I LOVED hearing the things my children did each day.  They were usually small, but it got us trying to look for opportunities.  

We just might have to bring the fuzzy balls back again sometime in the future!!

California!

This was the most spontaneous trip we have ever taken!  It was Christmas Vacation and we realized that with Dad's day off and him also being off for New Years Day, we had a window of time that we could go somewhere together. We talked about many different options.  As he left for work one day I said...you know, if you could take another couple days off work we would have enough time to get to California and back!  We also had 4 free nights in a hotel.  That was all it took.  Dad called me from work an hour later and said he had the days off and we should go.  So we did!  It turned out to be such a fun trip.  Our hotel was awesome.  We spent a lot of time in the hot tub there.  We visited several beaches, found some tide pools and rode bikes along a 22 mile road connecting several beaches together. It really turned out to be one of our funnest trips.  We will have to be spontaneous more often!!