Starting 2012 off right

Hey Everyone. How's it going? I'm Will. I'm cute. I know it. That is all.

(Hahaha. Well, Will may not know he's cute, but his mama sure does.)

We have had a great start to 2012 so far.

I got to start the year by seeing one of my favorite people, a childhood friend who was in town and eked out some time from her busy work schedule to meet me for dinner. Angi is one of those friends for me with whom you can pick up right where you left off, and I am so grateful that 22 years after that summer before 4th grade when we first met we are still good friends.

I have many memories from my college days of watching BYU Men's Volleyball win game after game in the Smith Fieldhouse and Marriott Center. It was fun, then, to watch them once again, only on somebody else's turf. We went to UC-Irvine and watched BYU squeak out a narrow win against a really good opponent. They had a great year this year.

We joined Peter's family for the game and the cousins had a blast running around the concourse together as well as watching the guys play.

Sporting their pj's you can see how the girls' clothes choices are usually pretty eclectic, mostly with their pajamas.

I'm glad this kid is just happy to be alive and couldn't care about what he's wearing. He truly is just a happy-go-lucky kid and spends most of his time trying to make us all laugh. We love having him in our home!

But Avery is still our biggest ham around here. She actually navigated surprisingly well in my boots around the house and had us all laughing watching her in them.

Sophie's class made ice castles at school one day. They all had to freeze ice and put cool things in it and then put them all together at school in a castle. This picture is after it had all melted and you could see the things they'd put in the ice. She had a blast.

Avery and her friend Shea found the lip gloss and it was the perfect accessory for their dress-ups.

Sadly Will also became a victim to the lip gloss. With two older sisters I think he'd better just get used to it, poor kid.

When we took down our Christmas decorations Sophie wanted to know what was going to take their place, but I just didn't have a whole lot in the way of wintery decor, so we made snowflakes instead. It was actually really fun to make them and I now consider myself somewhat of a snowflake making expert...until next year when we do it again and I've forgotten everything, that is.

I was asked to speak at the Beehive Conference for our stake and service was my theme, so I had fun using mirrors to talk about not allowing ourselves to become so self absorbed that we miss out on opportunities to reach out to others. If the mirror is constantly facing us we can't reflect the light of Christ, but when we turn it around then His light can shine through us (or something like that).

It was a fun experience and I realized how much I miss working with the Young Women. I like my new calling with Visiting Teaching, but I definitely miss working so closely with those girls.

And that was a little bit of our January!