The vail is very thin!!

Soo.. I'm sure you can guess the last few weeks have been pretty rough, don't know if it's because it's coming up on Spring, or because my Jamie is turning 8. Probably a mixture of both, but my girls have been bringing up my twin sister Jamie a lot lately. They bring her up every now and then, but lately it's been crazy a lot. Even Colby looks at me like, "why would she say that" kind of looks. This morning at breakfast Cam told me she was sad that Aunt Jamie past away, and whenever she talks about Jamie or heaven she always gets this quivery voice. It's so sweet. Anyway... My sister Deanna let us come to her house and listen to a medium, which was a lot of fun, and very interesting. We asked her all sorts of questions, one was "How do you know when spirits are with you?" She said something along the line of, "when that person pops into your mind out of nowhere, or you think about them a lot it's usually because they're around you". Well, Jamie is in my mind ALL the time, and I like to think she's always with me. If she's always with me and I'm always with my kids, then she's also always with them. I think that could be why they talk about her so much. It's a nice thought. I miss my sister. God be with you till we meet again My Love. 

Dream catchers and chore charts.

Here are the dream catchers that the kids wanted to make. I think they turned out pretty cute and they seem to like them. 

Camrie, Jamie, Hunter

Camrie's, Hunters, Jamie's, and Colby's

We're trying out this new chore chart and so far it's going pretty good. The kids like to see how many pins they can get to the other side. Before bed they get 5 cents for each pin that they can move over.

The girls chores are: Make bed, brush/floss teeth morning, Homework, Say Prayer, Read, Pick up toys, Dishes, Put clothes away, Brush/Floss teeth evening, Double check house, and two Extra pins. Hunter has, Brush/floss teeth morning and evening, read, make bed, and extras. We're perfecting as we go. I actually changed the pins to the smaller wood ones, and we're going to print out the names and the to do and done, and probably put it on cardboard so that it s not so flimsy. Hopefully this will continue to work for us.

Short but fun trip to St. George

We drove up to St. George for a two day visit since Afton (Grammy) has a time share up there and we try to go up every year around January/ February. Would have been nice if it was longer, but it was a lot of fun and I'm glad we did. The kids had such a great time. We got to play in the "BIG TUB" (according to Camrie), hot tub for a few hours. We played a few games. JaNae introduced us to a totally awesome rock area that was like a HUGE playground. Ron gave the kids wakie talkies and the kids were laughing, and climbing, and running around having so much fun. I think us adults enjoyed it just as much as the kids. It will be a new activity that we do whenever we go to St. George. I love it!! We got to go out to eat a couple times which was nice since we don't go out much, and we got to visit with some family that we hadn't seen in a while. I love St. George! 

Jamie has a little project at school where she made a Flat Stanley and he goes on lots of fun adventures. We took him to St. George with us, and next he'll be mailed out and can go on more fun adventures with family and friends. It's been cute and fun so far. 

Loaded up in the Yukon getting ready to head out to St. George. It was a pretty packed car.

The kids LOVED being able to stay in a hotel. Hunter decided he wanted to sleep on the floor between our beds, so we set out all of our blankets and extra pillows and he had a cozy little bed and a big grin.

Our whole Holmes family was there. The kids loved it. Jamie, Camrie, Lilly, Logan, Abby, Kiptyn, & Hunter.

Kiptyn was rubbing green jello everywhere.

Hunter ate ice cream better then anything else he tired.

Logan, Lilly, Camrie, Jamie, Abby. I love that the girls are old enough to all sit together, and they love it too!

Grandma & Grandpa Holmes (Nancy & Ron)

Zach & Nae

Julie & Colby

Jamie w/ Flat Stanley

Colby

Camrie, Colby, Lilly

Lilly, Camrie, Colby, Hunter

Hunter, Jamie, Camrie

Hunter, Jamie, Camrie

It was fun climbing up into all the little nook and crannies.

Camrie, Hunter, Jamie, Lilly

Jamie, Camrie, Hunter, Colby

Don't know if he cared for Colby being so far away.

Lilly & Cam

Nancy & Ron

Say Cheese Hunter!

Jamie & Abbie

Colby was up on a pretty high cliff.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this picture. I think it's SO precious. Might need to frame it.

Don't know if you can see them, but right above the "E" is a handful of people up there. I went up there and it was SCARY! I think it's JaNae, Jamie, Nancy, Logan, Abby, & Zach with Kiptyn on his shoulders Ahhh..

Cam & Hunt Man

Junior Jazz, Sleep over, and keeping kids busy.

Jamie wanted to play Junior Jazz basketball this year and at her age they only have a co-ed league and Jamie just happens to be the only girl on the team, but she loves playing. Anytime she's on the court for a game or even practice she's running around with a huge grin on her face. It's been fun. The first game was just a lot of running around, but the kids are starting to get the idea. The first game Jamie was defending a girl that was nice enough to tell Jamie who should be defending who since Jamie wanted to play defense the whole game.

Jamie's in the white penny on the right.

Now she's in a green penny with her back to us in the blue shorts. They're sizing up the teams to see who will be defending who. They play 8 four minute games so that they can sub and give each kid a good amount of playing time. 

They always match the girls up together. So far there's been one to two girls per team.

We had a bulk sleep over this last weekend. I can't believe how many Holmes girls there are.

The girls had fun. Lilly was a little scared of the dark for a bit, but must not have been to bad, because they all had the giggles and said they couldn't help it. Aren't girls fun? lol. The next day we loaded up and went to see Jamie in her second basketball game, then came back home and I let the girls design their own dream catchers. Wish I'd thought to get a picture of them all with the girls. It was fun, and I think they liked the gift.

Silly face.

Camrie, Jamie, Lilly, Logan, and Abby.

I went in to check on them in the morning and they were quietly watching a movie waiting for us to wake up. 

Friday morning with Daddy.

Sometimes it's hard keeping the kids busy while I work out, but I've found some fun little activities for them to do. Some are so simple and they keep them entertained for quite a while.

Camalam

Hunt Man