Some photos, to boot

Because I so enjoyed blogging yesterday and getting a couple of comments.  Here are a few pictures to add. In random order and importance, here are 10 photos from the last few months.

Katrina is "eating an elephant", ie. reading the Book of Mormon for the first time Our goal (we're doing it together) is General Conference.  Rachel kindly made the elephant last general conference and I filled in all the boxes. Katrina is doing a great job!

It's just a picture, but if you could hear the laughter that ALWAYS goes with Li (the Chinese one) and is magnified with these other ladies, you would feel as happy as I do seeing these photos of Li's birthday party. Like that run-on sentence?

Hiking at Christmas with the young half of the family. (Rachel was still recovering from her nasty 4-wheeler crash at Thanksgiving and M&F opted out of the climb up a sheer wall of rocks.)

After hiking (or whatever I'm doing) on the day after Thanksgiving, we found a cabbage patch. Aline is looking for babies. 

Last fall I had a birthday

Hockey!

For Christmas, I made a calendar for my family. This idea has been discussed more than once in our family. Finally, last November Rachel requested that I figure out how to make it happen. (Because I have time and she has money we often discuss projects we could do. Though most don't happen.) In the end, I spent many, many hours--happy hours (mostly, except when the program lost a couple of hours of work at one point) doing the whole project. Which made me happy, because I'm not an artist and therefore am seldom the creator of fun visual projects.  Anyway, the calendar is awesome. I wish I could show it all to you, but I'll settle for this picture, which is the front cover (and part of January). 

Having the calendars to gift made me more excited for Christmas than I have been in a very long time. I couldn't wait--and the whole family (including those in other states) knew it. Christmas morning, as soon as I could get Father to agree, everyone opened theirs. It was the only gift we opened on Christmas (those of us in AR, I think the child-ful families opened more).  And it was SUCH a good one! (If I do say so myself!) Remembering makes me happy all over again!