Caleb's First Temple Trip

I have to quick write about this before I write about our cruise!

In the beginning of January, Caleb was ordained as a deacon at church. Because he is turning 12 years old this year, he gets to move up from Primary (the kids' group) and into the Young Men/Young Women group! It's always exciting when they get to move up. I remember being 11 years old and a whole head taller than most of the other little kids as I sang in the primary program! Caleb was definitely to that point. He was really looking forward to being in the cool teenager group!

So part of turning 12 this year also means that he got to go to the temple for the first time! We left Gabe and Avery home one Friday right after school and Josh and I took Caleb to the temple. Afterwards, we went to Freddy's and Caleb got a full meal plus ice cream (as the middle child, he takes full advantage of his opportunities to be spoiled. lol)

Here are a couple pictures of Caleb!

Also, Avery had both of her top two front teeth that got very loose right around the holidays. She did lose one before Christmas. We were hoping the other one would fall out and she would be able to sing, "All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth," but she hung onto that second one until the first week of January. Now she is starting to get those new teeth in and I can already tell they are coming in SUPER turned. :{ Looks like braces will be in her future.

Oh, one more fun thing we did right before school started back up on January 2! We took the family ice skating in Idaho Falls on New Years Eve Day. The last time we went, Avery basically demanded that we carry her the whole time (while skating... so it was pretty fun... not). But this time she actually stayed on her own two feet the whole time! She did have a few falls, but she improved so much from the first minutes on the ice to the time we left! Gabe and Caleb basically already had the hang of it from last time. They did take a couple falls too, but nothing too bad.

Then we rang in 2020 (a new decade!) by staying home with our kids and watching movies and eating lots of food.

We have had a TON of snow in January so I was pretty excited to leave and go to Florida and the Caribbean! Here are a couple of pictures of the snow in our backyard and the kids sledding.

Now... onto the cruise post!!