Happy Birthday, Adam!

It was Adam's 14th birthday last week!   

Celebrations included:    

Crepe breakfast made by Glen

Lasagna made by me

Breadsticks made by AnnaLisa

Carrot cake made by Ellie

And he got his one and only request as his gift....

a cool drone.    

And a dollar from Tim. 

 

Random facts about Adam:  

1.  He's grown A LOT the last year and is looking like he might end up the tallest one in our family.

2. Math and science are his favorite subjects

3.  Writing is his least favorite

4.  He loves taking things apart 

5. Most people would be surprised to know that he's actually quite talkative

6. He is very good at strategy games

7.   He wears a size 11 shoe now

8.  He loves to figure out how things work

9.   He makes a deliciously mean panini

10. He loves birds and all things nature

11.  He forgets his toothbrush more often than not when we go on vacations.    

12.  He loves to ponder the "what ifs" in life.     

13.  He willingly does all his own laundry and actually gets annoyed if I try to do any for him without his permission

14. He is the cookie making expert in our family! 

We love you, Adam!   

Happy birthday! 

Five Things

With the new school year in full swing now, life has felt a little crazier than ever.    We always have a gazillion thing going on, but here are five things that have been taking up more of my time than usual.  

1.  Cami's Christmas package!     It was due to the mission home on November 7, so I sent it off on October 15th to give it plenty of time to get there.   It was a crazy shift of mindset for me  to buy Christmas presents this early and pulling it all together really has sucked up a lot of my "extra" time lately.   

2.   The weather has been exceedingly lovely lately, which means we are trying to spend every moment we can outside!   

3.   I recently learned that I will not be released from my calling anytime soon, so I have spent the last few weeks re-immersing myself back into  the swing of things.   I was a little emotional at first realizing that my time as YW president is not yet finished after four full years, but I've  had some pretty amazing experiences the last couple of weeks that have really confirmed to me that I am right where I'm supposed to be and that, apparently, we still have a work to do with the amazing young women in our ward.  

This food was for a family history night that we had at our house, where the youth found over 100 names to take to the temple.   

4.   I am finding that supporting TWO kids,  that are far away from home, is a little more time consuming than I expected.    I try to write them a letter and a couple of emails each week, which is basically the reason why I haven't been blogging much recently.    Writing to them has redirected the energy that I would normally give to blogging and put it into letter writing instead.    I miss these girls! 

5.  I'm trying really hard to exercise and eat better.  After my little bout with pancreatitis this summer, I decided that I really needed to acknowledge that I'm not as young as I used to be and I need to be a lot more careful.  I've been eating a fairly low-fat diet and trying to up my exercise threshold.  I had been doing well and feeling a lot better, but I've been struggling more with the eating lately.   I am committed to stay on top of it though, because pancreatitis (and the requisite fasting for four full days) was not something I'd like to repeat.