I got this out of order. Mickayla is drawing designs in the air with her sparkler on New Years Eve. We all had fun with the sparklers

 

New Years Eve
We bought long sparklers to celebrate the New Year with. They were so much fun. I'll never buy the short ones again if I have a choice. We celebrated the New Year early (Reed's Brazil Time) so that Will could join the celebration. It ended up I didn't make it until midnight our time either. Only Kim and Blake made it past midnight. Erin did also, she was at a party.

 

New Years Day
Mickayla and her helper Will made the dessert for our New Years meal from her new cookbook. She and Will did a great job. It was very delicious.

 

None of my pictures turned out good of our decorating the Elder's apartment. I had the camera on the wrong setting. The Elders don't live in a regular apartment. They live at a house in Woodinville. They have a mother in law apartment at the home. There was no parking for the house except in the drive way. It made for an interesting problem. Thank goodness it seemed no one was home.

 

Mickayla was afraid we would get caught decorating the missionaries apartment. We had to park in front of where they live. There was no hiding. It didn't look like anyone was home. But she was scared. She stayed int he car almost the whole time. She got out once but heard a car coming down the road. Her eyes got big and she turned fast and headed back to the car as if she was being chased by the police.

 

We had so few people for our Christams play this year that we had to even employ the dogs to take parts. Of course it was above Miss Kitty. I think she hid under the tree. Decko was the donkey this year. Fritz was the flock of sheep.

 

Christmas was a little different this year. There was only the three kids for our evening play and for our morning line up to go and see what Santa brought

 

The Mustangs had a tournament in Moses Lake on the 22nd of December. We took Grandma Risenmay to see Blake Wrestle. Blake did a great job. He gave us heart failure when he was thrown threw the air by an illegal move. But he lived through it. He wasn't hurt at all. He said that he knew that he should tuck his head before he hit the edge of the mat. He came down on his neck and shoulders instead of his head.

The Mustangs didn't do great at the tournament. They learned a lot. These were great teams. Blake won all his matches.

 

Thanks to Erin we have these pictures from the pass. I hope she puts up some of the others she took. Mickayla loved the snow on top as I was making sandwiches for everyone and Blake, Dad and John were putting chains on the cars. Well trying to put chians on our car. The chains we brought from home didn't fit so Kim and I had to go back to Cle Elm.

 

Kim didn't enjoy the ride home from the tournament very much. The weather wasn't good. We had some adventures with chains, which involved two trips from Easton where we needed to put chains and back to Cle Elm to buy chains. It was an adventure.

 

William loves his "Payla" (kayla). Mickayla was sick with a fever of 103 over the weekend. She was doing better on Monday,but I still wanted her to rest. I wanted to keep Will and Kayla seperate. That lasted all of 2 minutes. Will quickly climbed up on the couch and cuddled up to his "Payla". So much for my great plans.

 
Wrestling season is here again. Blake is doing great! He seems to be enjoying himself

Here are a few photos from Blake Skyline Tournment. Redmond won this tournament for the second year in a row

 I have a great helper these days. He is really handsome also!

  Will is a great help. Things just go a little slower and with a little more water on the floor

 
While Reed was waiting in line to go through security we had a man waiting in line take this picture. I don't think Reed was happy with us. We followed him the whole length of the line like loyal puppy dogs. We just couldn't leave him. We were all crying. Well all of us but Reed and Will. Reed was so ready to get going. Once he was through security he was off on his adventure- not looking back once. That is the way I would want it.

 
Reed with Will and Mickayla. Both of these kids will change a lot in two years. I wish I had a picture of Reed with each of his brothers and sisters but my camera ran out of batteries. I hope someone who took the pictures will put them up on their blogs.

 
Reed Saying goodbye to Lily. She sure will look different when he gets back

 
Reed the night before he left for Brazil.

Thanksgiving with the family
Ann helped me learn how to put on a slide show. Some of the photos should have been deleted. But I just didin't take the time to do it. We had Thanksgiving early so that Reed could be there with us. We had a wonderful time with the whole family with there.