The youth theme for the year is "A great work". It helps me to remember that all of my efforts are worth it! These youth deserve the best and I want to deliver.
Sports started back and they had a six-week indoor track season. Christian participated and worked hard!
Grant wrestled for his middle school! It was also a condensed season. We are glad that they had it! Unfortunately, Grant had to quarantine for a bit and the whole team had to quarantine for a portion of the season and several matches were canceled. He did well in the matches that he was able to wrestle. Danny took videos.
Traditional Super Bowl Sunday at Bobby and Kattia's. They come to our house for the playoff games and we go there for super bowl.Pretty fun!
Katherine started piano lessons with our awesome neighbor, Mr. Brick! He loves piano and is considering teaching. Katherine is his first student! She is pretty excited about it and enjoys spending time with Mr. and Mrs. Brick. She thinks it is really fun to play over there when their grandson Finley is visiting too. We are thankful for such kind neighbors.
One of the blessings of being in a pandemic and zoom church is that we were able to watch Donovan's missionary farewell talk before he left for his mission in Italy. We love him and are so proud of his decision to serve a mission.
We make dinner for the missionaries most Sundays. Since V always makes a super bowl cake she made smaller cookie cakes for the 3 sets of missionaries too, just changed the decoration.
Snow Days
Ski Trip
Valentine's Day
On behalf of the PTO, I helped bring love to CMS staff for Valentine's Day. Kelly made the poster.
Katherine is our last kid to celebrate Valentines with an exchange at school.
We played some minute to win-it style games. It was fun, then wild!
Katherine's birthday
Katherine turned 9 and we did most of the things on her list by the end of the day! So fun!
Katherine's birthday party turned sleepover weekend!
Danny and I went to Skyzone with Katherine, Adele, and Anne. They had a superfan time. We came home to watch the adult session of conference. Long story short, we invited all the Genho kids over to spend the night which was a lot of fun. I am writing this a year later, so don't remember all the details. I do remember this epic fashion show. And I remember that Nathan made awesome biscuits!
We have a hard time staying in sometimes. So, icy walk it was!
We got special permission for Danny and my dad to ordain Christian to the office of Priest in Richmond. My dad's health was in very serious decline, so we were so thankful for this opportunity. I love these men so much and am thankful that they are righteous Priesthood holders.
Also, check out this old picture of my dad! He looks just like Grant! There have been several pictures where they look so much alike and I think that is so cool!
Elder Bryan's birthday! We loved having these missionaries come visit and pick up dinners on Sundays. The missionaries in general have been some of our steadiest friends since living here. Danny has been the ward mission leader most of the time we have lived here and it became a fun habit that we'll have enjoyed. They weren't allowed in at the time, but we sometimes brought out a heater or talked in the messy garage. Elder Bryan, Elder Kehoe, and Elder Lloyd were a really fun group. They were all themselves and shared their talents and personalities in fun ways- helping fix 4 wheelers, yo-yoing, talking about cool Spanish shows, being funny, etc. Serving a mission during the pandemic with ever changing rules was weird and hard in a lot of ways, so we try to make it more fun for them. I hope and know that other families will do the same for our kids when they serve missions.
Crazy hair day! It is hard to see the color, but her hair really looked cool!
Yay for some normalcy!
We took pandemic church pictures for a while. I am not sure why, but V insisted.
I think I am so funny! Squeezing our boy who doesn't prefer hugs.
I like it when friends ask me to babysit!
I don't think my kids mind either.
After one of Christian's cross country meets ( I know, weird time, right?! They had a condensed "Fall sports season" in the spring. I am just glad that they had it!), K and I went to DinoLand. It was very cheap and seemed fun, so we stopped. Fun photo ops.
Christian and I had a fun day taking him to a far away DMV to get his learner's permit. I know that I look crazy in the pic, but want to remember our fun one-on-one time. He got it! Proud of him!
Tenley surprised Catherine and V one Bachelor night by "adopting" them as seniors! She spoiled them rotten with amazingly generous gift baskets.
I love having Katherine home 3 days a week still. She gets her work done quickly and we have a lot of time to play and do enrichment. On St. Patrick's day we had a fun breakfast, delivered treats to the middle school, made potato stamps and artwork with the stamps, and more! We all had our traditional St. Patrick's Day dinner and then had youth activities.
There is always more going on than in pictures. Sometimes I don't even think to take pictures and I am probably forgetting huge chunks of our lives. For example, I never really write about Danny's work and that is a huge part of his life! I also photograph some kids more than others based on who I am with the most, who wants to be in pictures, etc. I hope that it never seems that I love one child more than another because they are in more pictures. I have noticed that during this stage Grant hasn't been in may pictures. I will work on that. I hope that he and everyone else knows that I love him tremendously.
Still, I think this is a good way to share and preserve a lot of our fun moments.
A huge portion unphotographed portion of my life at this time was being able to visit my parents each week. It was very painful to see my dad lose so many aspects of his health and physical abilities. All cancer is terrible, but cancer growing in the brain is particularly cruel and devastating. And side effects of medications that slow down and stop the cancer growth are really terrible too! I really don't know how to talk about it or express myself about this. It was so difficult, but I also felt a lot of peace through Christ. I prayed so much over the whole time that he was sick and kind of made my mantra toward the situation, "Thy will be done." I sang the song from a youth album a couple years ago repeatedly, in my head and in the car on my drives to Richmond. Through it, the spirit soothed my soul. The Savior also strengthened me to be able to do what I needed to do for my family here and there. I was able to help a bit and my brothers were too, but the reality is my mom did the huge majority of it on her own. It was very inspiring, but also difficult to see how tirelessly my mom worked to take care of him, herself, and their homes. She loved him fiercely and did everything possible to help him to not need to go back to the hospital or into another facility. I love them both so much and am honored to be their daughter.
