2012

New Year's Eve we "ate the year away" at the Melting Pot with delicious food and even better company, our good friends Bobby and Amy.  Yum yum yum.  We get a bit crazy when we're up past 10 and out without the kids.

2011 was really good to us and was filled with some changes, adventures, trials, and many new things.  We fell in love with Australia, moved way too many times, spent 1/6 of the year in Utah with family (awesome!), only had one ER trip for a broken arm, Spencer left his job and we're braving full-time school, Henry continues to keep all of us up at night, Madeleine turned 3 and has made serious strides from 2 1/2 (whew!) and it was just a year that all of us grew in so many different ways, but most importantly as a family.  But alas, time moves on.

New year = new focus.  I really liked Elder Cook's talk from last conference (found here) about looking up.  He mentioned, "If we, like President Monson, exercise our faith and look to God for help, we will not be overwhelmed with the burdens of life". 

Who doesn't have burdens of life??  Sign me up for not being overwhelmed :)

Combine that talk with the kids recently loving the first 30 minutes (then it gets too scary - Madeleine is battling nightmares these days) of the movie Up and voila!  we've got ourselves and family theme for 2012!



so here's to not complaining, always finding the positive and being better able to handle the challenges that will inevitably come. 

Up, up, up, and away!