Southwick Family Reunion in Rexburg

This year it was Becky's turn to plan the family reunion. She held it in Rexburg at Great Grandma Ward and Grandpa & Grandma's house. Everyone was able to be there except John and Hillary and their family. We are a big crowd when we all get together. It was Thursday through Sunday, with Sunday being a celebration for Grandma Ward's 90th birthday. Thursday we spent time at the Rexburg nature park where we played games, fished and ate lunch. Saturday we spent the day at the new Rexburg splash park. It was lots of fun. Saturday evening we had our family home evening lesson taught by Grandpa Southwick about one of our ancestors. Sunday we doubled the attendance at Grandpa and Grandma's ward and then had lunch back in the backyard. We were joined by all of Grandma Ward's family who had come for the community celebration for her birthday. That evening we set up the church and welcomed her friends who came to wish her a happy birthday. This was the first reunion without aunt Cindy. We all missed her being there.

Good thing Grandpa has a big back yard...we fill it right up!
Most everyone slept in tents back in the pasture area. Kylee, Emilee and Kade slept in tents with their cousins. Dad, Mom, Quincy and Brinley were blessed enough to get an invitation from Mike and Debbie to join them along with Madison in their hotel room. Man were we spoiled. We loved it!!!

Grandpa teaching the grandkids how to run one of his great inventions!!

Oh my...what cute teenagers. Kylee, Alecia, Emilee, Rachel and Meagan.

Southwick's are very ingenius!! Karl is walking across boards that they are all holding. Great boy activity!!

The bowery at the Nature Park.

It was a great reunion...it always is. It doesn't really matter where we go or what we do we always have a great time just being together. For the Southwick family we are only all together once a year at the summer reunion, and it is only every other year for our Virginia cousins. It is so fun to watch the cousins play together and become reaquainted each year.

We have a great family!!

Trek! (July 20-24th, 2011)

This year Kylee and Emilee were able to go on a Pioneer Trek with the Young Men and Young Women in our ward. It was a great experience for them. They worked hard for many months before preparing to go. They made their own pioneer skirts, bonnets, and aprons to wear. We found out that Emilee is quite a good little sewer! They went from July 20-24th. They were assigned a family with 7 other siblings and a Ma and Pa. Emilee's parents were the Emmersons and Kylee's parents were the Faerbers.

Kylee (the oldest and tallest girl there) and Justin Murray (the youngest and most definately the shortest boy there) were deemed the best dance couple! They ended up as partners for a few minutes at the hoedown and everyone thought it was a great set up. We saw a picture posted on facebook and it was really cute! Justin didn't want his picture taken but Kylee grabbed him and held onto him long enough for a snapshot!!

Emilee was asked to speak in Sacrament meeting when they got home and she spoke about an experience they had called the "womens pull". They had to push and pull their handcarts up a very steep hill without the help of any leaders or young men. Both her and Kylee said it was hard but they learned some important lessons. They also both came home with a much greater appreciation of what the pioneers went through to make their journey west.

I am so grateful to belong to a church that provides my children with such wonderful opportunities that strengthens their testimonies. They have both had a great summer with a lot of experiences that has taught them so much more about our pioneer ancestors. They were both able to take stories that Grandpa Southwick has researched about their own pioneer ancestors.

And...they came home very very very DIRTY, sunburned and tired!!! It was well worth it though!

Hadley Family Vacation at Crystal Hot Springs

This year for our annual Hadley family vacation we went to Crystal Hot Springs. We needed to be somewhere with low atitude and close to home for Bailey, so that seemed like the best choice.

The only down side to this was that it was so hot...high altitude also means cooler temperatures. Good thing there was some water to cool off with. We were there for 3 days and 2 nights. We managed to have a lot of fun together even though it was hot.

The teeangers had a great time on the slide. We spent a whole day at the hot springs swimming. I love Kylee's face in this picture.
I spent the majority of my time in the awesome mineral pools soakingin all of those natural minerals.

Quincy and Brinley were brave and went down the slide all by themselves. Brinley barely knows how to swim, but she went down and managed to get herself to the side where I would reach down and pull her up.



Uncle Al giving Kade what I am sure he deserved!!! Kade is so excited when Hunter and Spencer are with us. He gets his much needed boy cousin time.

Maddi, Halle, Mason and Brinley. They had a great time playing in the dirt! It was all nice and grassy so they had to go ahead and dig them a hole!

It was short and sweet and close to home and just perfect for our situation this year!! Thanks Hadley family for a great summer campout!!

Nauvoo and Church History Sites (June 2011)

The beautiful Nauvoo Temple
The room where Joseph and Hyrum Smith were martyred. We loved visiting Carthage Jail. It had a great spirit about it.

My two little pioneer girls!

And some pretty cute big pioneer girls!!
Both big and little girls loved the pioneer dress ups in Nauvoo.

We were able to stay with Uncle John and Aunt Cindy in Kansas City as we passed through and went to Independence, Missouri.

At Nauvoo
We ate a picnic lunch every day!
We even ventured from the norm and ate grilled hot dogs that grandpa grilled for us on his table top grill. The kids thought that was the greatest thing ever.
At Martins Cove - we were able to have a tour by Jim and Carolyn (my sisters inlaws) who are serving a misison there right now. They were awesome!
On the front steps of the Nauvoo Temple. It is the most beautiful temple inside and out!!

For years I have wanted to take our children to see the church history sites. We were so blessed to be able to take this trip this year. It was one of the best trips that our family has ever been on. There was lots of driving and many long days on the road, but our kids did fantastic. I was so impressed with how well they traveled. Even Brinley and Quincy did great! We went with Grandpa Tom and Grandma Barb and Sam. Kylee and Emilee were so excited to have Sam along. We got 2 hotel rooms everywhere we went and those three silly girls all slept in the same bed every night. We were gone 11 days and 10 nights. A long trip, but we needed every minute to get in everything that we were able to see.

I am going to make a photo book of our trip so I wont include every detail or many pictures, but I wanted it documented.

We left the day after school got out...June 3rd and returned June 13th. We traveled through Nebraska to Kansas City where we were able to stay with Uncle John and Aunt Cindy. That was a great opportunity and we got to know them much better. Quincy made great friends with their dog Sophie. We traveled on to Nauvoo and then home through Iowa and stopped in Wyoming at Martins Cove and Sixth Crossing.

These are the sites that we were able to visit:

Liberty Jail
Independence

Farr West

Nauvoo (for 4 days)
Carthage Jail

The Nauvoo Temple - (we did baptisms and an endowment session)

Winter Quarters

Mt. Pisgah
Garden Grove
The Gurnsey Ruts (so cool, the wagon wheel ruts were 5 feet deep)
Register Cliff

Martins Cove

Sixth Crossing

My favorite part of the trip was the spirit that can be felt at each of these sites. It was amazing. The church does such a wonderful job making everything so nice and having missionaries at every site to give tours and answer questions. There is nothing like the spirit in Nauvoo and Martins Cove. I know that my children were able to feel of the spirit and I know their testimony of Joseph Smith was strengthened. My favorite part, and something I did not expect, was how neat it was to follow the trail all the way home. We left Nauvoo just as the pioneers did and traveled alongside where they would have gone all the way to Salt Lake City. We could better understand what it must have been like and how hard it was to leave their beautifil city and expecially their beautiful temple behind. For me, our trip exceeded every expectation that I had and I am so grateful that we were able to go and take our kids before Kylee graduates and goes on to college.

A trip every family should take!!! We absolutely loved it!

Emilee's Club Volleyball

Emilee tried out for the 7th grade club volleyball team this year and made it. There were 13 girls on her team but only 8 traveling tournament players. She was able to be a tournament player. This is her team. They are the cutest bunch of girls. We had them at our home twice for parties and they were so much fun. They really improved through the season and it was fun to watch them win some games and learn the skills of volleyball. Emilee made some new great friends. We just might be in for another 5 years of volleyball...bring it on, the last five were great!!

Em played the setter position. She isn't quite as tall as she would like to be yet, so this was a great position this year for her.
Time-out with her team.

She was lucky enough to get Mandy for her coach this year...only the BEST volleyball coach ever! Kylee had her for 2 years and now Emilee this year. She is not only great at teaching volleyball skills but excellent at building girls. She is so talented with teenage girls and really makes them feel great about themselves. I love her and so do my girls!!

Great Job this year Em!! It was fun to watch you!!

Quincy's sweet testimony

I wanted to write this down before I forgot. Several months ago in fast and testimony meeting Quincy leaned over to me about 5 minutes before the meeting would end and told me that she wanted to go up there. I was shocked and instantly panicked, because I knew that would also require me to go with her! She is braver than I am and I was not planning to bear my testimony this day. I asked her if she had in mind what she wanted to say and we talked for a few minutes...a few too many minutes because then the counselor in the bishopric stood up and closed the meeting. She was disappointed to say the least. For the next month she asked every week if it was the meeting where she could go up and bear her testimony. It was actually two months later because we were out of town the following fast Sunday. Finally the day came and she marched up there right at the beginning of the meeting. She did it all by herself and bore a very simple sweet testimony. She has gone up every week since, including the week of her baptism while Grandpa and Grandma Southwick were attending church with us. They were impressed with her courage. I know that she does truly have a testimony. Very simple and new, but nonetheless a testimony of her own. For this I am truly grateful.

Cindy's Funeral

In May Cindy passed away. She faught a most courageous and amazing battle with colon cancer for 8 years. I have never witnessed someone with cancer live a more full and active life than she was able to, even right up until the end. She had amazing faith and was always hopeful and positive. She was a great example to all of us and we will definately miss her in our family. My heart goes out to Dave and her girls. So grateful that we have the gospel and know what we do about eternal families.

I love this picture of Quincy, Brinley and Lilly. So cute!!

Everyone except for Mike Corry and John and Debbie's kids were able to come and be there for the four day weekend. We all stayed at the same hotel and it was a fun weekend together in spite of the circumstances we were there for.

The cousins took advantage of the pool at the hotel.

Cindy will definately be missed but we are so happy that we know where she is!!

Family Pictures 2011

We have been trying to get our family pictures done each year. Chris takes them with his camera and he does a great job. This year he added a remote control to his bag of camera toys so we got to have our pictures taken with the click of a button instead of him racing back into position. The only problem was trying to hide the remote. It sneaked itself into a few pictures! We decided this year we wanted to have them taken in our neighbors barn. We asked permission and set the date. All was working well until the wind started blowing. We were all pretty much freezing and had such a hard time holding all of our "girl" hair into place. Unfortunately there was not a super family group picture where the wind wasn't causing problems!! Poor Binley had a hard time keeping all of that long blonde hair out of her face.

The kids being a little bit silly!!!


This was my favorite picture. I think they all look so cute holding hands! Kade thought he was going to die, but he lived through it. You will notice that he really isn't holding Quincy's hand but rather her whole wrist!!

Brinley...our whistling dixie!!

Brinley learned to whistle!! Great accomplishment for a 5 year old!

Chris is the best whistler ever. When we were first married and lived in an apartment we had neighbors above and on both sides of us. They would tease Chris because they could hear him singing "armies of Helamon" in the shower every morning and they could hear him whistling as he came home from school every afternoon. They used to say that they knew it was him coming long before they could see him!! Well, Brinley is growing up to be just like her Daddy. Chris is a very proud papa right now. Our other kids really can't whistle very well, but she is becoming a pro.

The other day we went somewhere and when we got there Brinley had fallen asleep in the backseat of the car. Chris woke her up to get her out. Still half asleep she sat up and started to whistle. She is one funny girl!

Brinley graduates from Pre-School!

This is Brinley's pre-school class. She has attended the USU child development lab on the Brigham City Campus. It has been an awesome pre-school. She loved all of her teachers and made so many new friends.
She carpooled to school with two of our little neighbor kids (Kate and Jackson). They were the only group that came together as a group of 3. They were nicknamed the "three amigos". They were all very proud of this. Brinley was so funny. We saw Kate at Walmart one day and she said, "now if we could just find Jackson we would have all 3 amigos here".

This was supposed to be our photo opp but Brinley wouldn't look up! Her teacher Kelly is giving her a diploma. She is out of school a full month before the other kids. We are both a little worried about how we will fill our days now with just the two of us together all day. She is anxious for the other kids to get out of school too.

Great Job Brinley...you make a cute graduate!!