We Survived Winter!!

I have been neglectful in my blogging, so I will do a quick photo recap and hopefully do better in the future.  :)

We shall begin at Christmas.  Wow!  That was a long time ago!

We decided to teach the boys to make candy this past year, so they could help us make enough for  all of our friends.  Even Hyrum helped!

I'm pretty sure Michael enjoyed eating the candy more than making it, but eating can be very motivating! 

Joshua spent most of his time over the holidays building when he wasn't making candy.  I keep telling him he should become an engineer.  We shall see.

Grandma came for Christmas and had lots of fun with the grandkids! 

This is Simon in a nutshell.  He wears anything he can find and drinks out of anything he can find!  He is just adorable. We call this his mushroom head look.

And as always we are taking care of the animals.  Loading feed ban even be fun for Hyrum!  

To survive the cold the boys played basketball.  Jacob played at the Y while the older two played in a church tournament and won!   I'm sure you can imagine that the other 12/13 yr olds didn't like playing against Michael as he is now 6'2"!  

Spring came early and we spent a lot of time out on the swings.  It went away again, but it was a nice break.

And just for fun James changed the kitchen up a little and built a new island.  I was pretty impressed.  The boys love helping him with his building projects!

And here is the result of the oxidization on the wood.  It is stunning!  And the kids love eating on it!

And as always, a walk to see the chickens is a winner!  

James took a WWII trip to Europe with his students who were studying the war and the Holocaust.  It was an amazing trip.  To celebrate his return we needed ice cream.  And Michael is sporting his new hat that James got him there.

We are still homeschooling and even Hyrum loves studying his letters, drawing and much more!  We are still enjoying learning together.  I have loved teaching the older boys Pre-Calc.  And Joshua and I are having fun taking a computer programming class online.    

We are raising pigs again this year.  We moved the pig pen into the garden, so we can use the manure more easily to help improve our soil.  The boys are getting pretty good at building those pens!  

Here are our little piggies!  They always start so cute!  

Even Hyrum is enjoying helping with the animals this year.  Here is is helping fill the pig waterers.    He would do more if we would let him.  We will work on that.  :)

Michael is working hard to finish up his Eagle.  He still needs his camping merit badge, so they have been camping a lot.  Here we learned that camping the night before General Conference isn't the best idea.  They were pretty tired!  

I have learned that Jacob and the littles play very nicely together.  They are pretty fun to watch!    

James' parents are moving to Florida.  :(  We are sad, but we were able to get out and help them pack a little.  We were also able to help repurpose some of their furniture that won't fit into their new house.  It was a super huge blessing for us.  But I'm not going to lie, driving the truck with a trailer was not my favorite adventure.  But we made it safely.  Oh, and that is Joshua trying to turn the trailer around.  We let him try twice but then let grandpa do it! 

Well, that was a whirlwind of an update.  One other thing of note:   Joshua participated in a piano competition and won.  We were very proud of him!   Well, there you go!  You are all caught up.  I hope you enjoyed and hopefully I can do a better job of keeping things updated!