Man!  Have you ever had those days, those weeks, those months, where life never feels like it slows down?  In fact it feels like if you cram one more thing into it you are going to explode!?  That’s how I have felt the past 2 1/2 months.  Every week I look at all of the things on the calendar and wonder how we are going to make it through the week and then Sunday rolls around again and we start yet another crazy week! 

I love my life!  I love my two very, energetic busy children that make me simultaneously want to smile and pull my hair out at the same time! Is that possible?!   Those moments are priceless to me and I always am so grateful for their birthmoms in those moments.  Being a mother is HARD work, but the rewards come in hugs and kisses, those “I just love you mom!” from Josey or the “i heart Mom” written is Spencer’s hand.  Little gifts that make the hard times seem not so hard! 

Spencer has accomplished so much in the past two months.  We went skiing at Snowbird again, just the two of us and had a ball.  In fact he informed me that he wants a helmet, goggles and skiis for his Christmas present this year!  We got to go to Joe’s Valley for Easter weekend and he had so much fun coloring Easter eggs with the cousins and hunting for them on Easter morning.  He had his first gymnastics showcase–he is really good at it, and is starting the boys’ preteam group in a week!  He also graduated from Preschool yesterday!  I look at my little man and wonder how the almost 6 years has flown by and cry knowing that he is starting kindergarten in the fall and wondering if I have prepared him enough so that he will choose the right, love learning and be kind to everyone around him.  His exuberance for life makes me laugh on a daily basis!  He is so silly and loves his daddy so much.  Wow!

Josey.  My little angel girl!  She is a princess, a DIVA, sassy to the core and amazingly sweet!  She takes no guff from anyone, especially Spencer.  These past few months she has accomplished a lot!  She potty trained herself (with a little, and I mean a little, help from me).  She LOVES to dance.  Every day she asks if it is dance class today.  She gets her groove thing on whenever any good dancing music comes on.  She loves Cinderella and The Princess and the Frog and whenever she has a pretty dress on she has to dance.  My neighbor brought over clothes the other day and there was this beautiful pink frilly dress in the pile.  When she saw it she said, “That’s a beautiful dress Mom!”  We then put it on her, she did a twirl in it and then said to Chris, “Daddy, dance with me!”  They danced around the kitchen floor as she sang “La, la, laaaa.  La, la, laaaa.”  It was so sweet.  She also LOVES to sing.  We did a Kindermusik class this Spring and she has an uncanny ability to memorize songs.  She sings all day long.  The sweetest is when she sings with me at night while I sing “I Am a Child of God” or “I Love to See the Temple” for bedtime.  Her little voice is so pure and sweet and makes my heart rejoice!!

My hunk of burnin’ love of 13 years is incredible!  We celebrated our 13th anniversary in Seattle, Washington for 3 days.  It was a blast!  We stayed up late, slept in, ate amazing seafood, enjoyed all the sights and sounds the city had to offer, and had a chance to talk a lot and reconnect!  What a joy!  I am ever in awe of how hard of a worker Chris is for our family!  He is fabulous and amazing and I am so lucky he has put up with me!  Here is to another 13 crazy, busy, magical years!  By then Spencer will be graduating from High School and going on a mission!!  That’s crazy to think about!

My blog has taken a back seat for a while and I apologize to those of you that care about our day to day activities and want to see new pictures of the kids….well it is now relatively current.  Pictures are posted of the the goings on at the Powell house for the past two months.  Enjoy!

So exactly 15 hours after returning from our night at Snowbird and all day skiing, I repacked our clothes, food and snow gear and hit the road by myself with both of my children to go to Joe’s Valley for the long President’s Day weekend with Grandma & Grandpa Teeter and my sister and her kids. 3 hours later we pulled into the cabin and unloaded all of our stuff via a sled that my nephew, Austin, and I pulled by hand because the snowmobiles decided at that moment to be finicky! After truly exhausting myself from trudging through a foot of snow we had everything unloaded.

What a FUN weekend. We ate too much good food; played lots of games; watched movies; went sledding; went snowmobiling; cousins had a blast playing with each other; and enjoyed just being together and making memories! My sister’s and my parent’s cabins are at the top of this steep hill. They have runner sleds so we decided to check out the hill and see if it was any good for sledding (because they say that sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t), well it was perfect! They kids, Josey included…which SHOCKED me!…raced down the hill and by the second time trudging back up it they shed their hats and coats because they were sweltering. My sister, Heather, handed me a runner sled and said, “Your turn!” I sat on that sled and took off and a multitude of childhood memories washed over me as I raced down that hill! You see, we lived on top of a very long, steep hill in NH where I spent my early childhood and every winter we would race down our hill on runner sleds! What memories! Needless to say I went many more times down the hill with and without my children and had a BLAST!!!

As long as the drive was and doing it by myself was not so fun, the end result was worth it!

We have a condo up at Midway, UT and decided to get away for a couple of days to spend time together as a family.  We went up Thursday after work and spent two nights there.  We went swimming, watched a movie and totally relaxed.  We had a lazy morning enjoy the fact that we had no schedule and nothing that we HAD to do.  We walked down the road to see the “Ice Castle” at the Zermott Resort, but we could only look from the gate since they didn’t open until after 3 pm.  The Lawsons came up Friday at lunch time.  We tried to go tubing at Soldier Hollow but with 40 degree weather (even though with the wind chill it felt like it was 20) the snow turned slushy and made it hard to slide down.  After 2 attempts we went to the lodge to get a certificate to come back another day.  On our way back to the condo we saw the Soldier Hollow train station with access to the frozen Deek Creek lake.  We were already dressed in our snow gear so we decided to go adventuring.  We crossed the train tracks and treked out into the almost prestine snow.  It was so peaceful and gave a beautiful view of Provo Canyon.  When we came back to the station there was a man there having his break and so we convinced him to take a picture of us laying on the train track.  Spencer wouldn’t do it..”NO WAY!” he said.  Five minutes after we climbed back up onto the train platform the Heber Creeper came rumbling around the corner and blew its whistled and scared the kids half to death!  We spent the afternoon at the pool and then had dinner, After dinner we walked down to the Ice Castle again which was now all lit up with lights.  It was really cool to see and we even had a chance to thank the artist for sculpting this really cool thing out of ice!  Amazing!  We went back and watched movies and played games until the wee hours of the night. (I was 3 for 3!  Poor Greg.)  So glad to have good friends to make memories with and that there are these beautiful places within a short drive from our house.  Thank goodness for rejuvenation!

So the count down to Christmas has been fun, crazy, busy!  I decided that I wanted to do a more “homemade” Christmas this year, so I started after Thanksgiving working on my many projects and presents which included: 8 pair of jammie pants (plus helping my neighbor make some for her girls), 8 “Sassy Aprons” for my girlfriends, plus one apron for Spencer, 3 fleece blankets, 6 little dollies.  I stayed up many nights until one or two in the morning working on these projects.  Little did I know HOW MUCH WORK a homemade Christmas is…however it will be one to remember!

Chris spoiled me and got me a new Nikon D-5000 DSLR camera…can’t wait to bust into that and start figuring out all that it can do!  Baby steps!  Spencer also got a “kid” digital camera from both sets of grandparents and used it ALL day long today!  He loves it and will hopefully leave my camera alone now.  (Crossing my fingers!)  Chris got a new golf bag along with golf lessons in the Spring and Josey got a little kitchen, that Mrs. Claus put together all my herself, and stuff to go in it and already loves it! 

TRADITIONS that I love:  making Gram’s cookies with my dad and sister before Christmas (marshmallow rolls, snowballs, skillet cookies, pepperkaukers, sugar cookies, birds’ nests, and whoopie pies), BINGO on Christmas EVE along with the yummy dinner, going to see a movie as a family on Christmas day (Princess and the Frog), playing games with my siblings on Christmas day (two new ones that are great: Ticket to Ride Europe and Killer Bunnies), a quarter in the bottom of our stockings, reading Santa Mouse on Christmas Eve.

I LOVE that we spend ALL month focusing on the birth of Jesus Christ.  His humble birth and all that surrounds it!  I love that Josey knows who baby Jesus is and that his mommy was Mary and his daddy was Joseph! I love the music that helps me feel the spirit and draw closer to my Heavenly Father!  MERRY CHRISTMAS all!

We decided to take a trip to Ohio to see the family.  It has been 18 months since we have been back and our trip was long overdue!  The kids traveled so well on the airplane.  We had such a great time and packed a lot in in the short 5 days we were there.  We had to make our yearly pilgrimage to “The Hotdog Shop” to get the best hotdogs ever made according to Chris.  We had a pizza night with one of Chris’ buddies from high school, we played with cousins galore, had a birthday dinner/party for Josephine, visited Josey’s birthmom, had a bonfire and made smores, slept in, stayed up late and had a BLAST!  Spencer and Josey loved playing with their cousins.  Ethan, Spencer and Josey went on a tractor ride with Papa while he cleaned up the leaves.  Oh yeah; and the weather was beautiful!