"I love it when..."

I love it when I get to see my children develop their testimonies and see the journey they go down as they work on making it stronger.

It is awesome to see how each one of them are so different in how they do this.  It helps my testimony grow as I watch this and really testifies to me how important it is to be teaching, living, sharing and grow in  the Gospel together as a family.  I am so grateful for family home evening, family prayer, family scripture study, and being able to go to church together as a family.

Megan has been a wonderful example to us as she has really taken to heart the challenge of being a missionary and has reminded me that we can all be a missionary at any time in our lives.

She has 2 friends in her class this year that are not members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  She has been really wanting to introduce them to it.  She has brought her on friend to church and she was full of grate questions.  She has another friend that she is very excited to bring to church as well and to share the things about the Gospel that bring her so much peace, happiness and joy to her life.  She is our little missionary.

She has helped remind me that just by trying to live the Gospel and trying to do the things that the Lord has asked us to do we will have a light that others can see and will want to have.  We talked about how we have promised to Heavenly Father that we will stand as an example and take his name upon us and because of that what we say and do is so very important.  We need to be trying to think and do as Jesus would.

I am so very grateful for these awesome kids that my Heavenly Father has trusted me with and the beautiful blessings they are in my life.

I love it when....

I love it when I get to spend the whole day with my family without all the extra stuff.  No outside influences, no TV, no running around, no work, no worries of a schedule, the list could go on.

I cherish my Sundays and the beautiful day that it is and the wonderful times I have with my family.  I am grateful for the knowledge that my family can be together forever and I am grateful for the journey we share as we try to reach that goal.

I love it when....

I find myself frequently saying to myself, "I love it when...".  I am going to try to document those "love it" moments as best I can....so I wont forget the joy in the journey!

"I love it when I am in the other room and Josh is all by himself and he is singing a song that he has made up all by himself.  He likes to be on his own a lot and when he is he is really good at entertaining himself wonderfully.

"I love it when I can see my children set a hard goal and watch them do all that they need to and have to to be able to accomplish it.  At the beginning of this new school year Megan came to me and said that she wanted to run for student council.  I had to take a deep breath and I have to admit I was not too excited about it.

I was so amazed at how hard she worked.  She had to do 8 hours of service, 4 at home, 4 at school, she had to make 2 posters and she had to stand in front of the school, grades 4-6 and preform.  She was amazing ( will post more on that later) .  There were 30 kids that ran and only 12 spots to fill.  After 24 hours of a very long wait, she called me from school and in her sweet soft voice she told me she made it!!  I love being able to share those moments with my kids!!

What fun!

Had an awesome weekend with the Bigelow can!

Got to see Chuck and his family and Aunt Amy and Joe, who we don't get to see hardly ever!!

Spent the first day at Lagoon.  We have never taken our kids there so it was really fun for all of us to do this together for the first time.

The day has just started! We lucked out and had really nice weather.  Lagoon also had a TON of trees so it was really easy to find some cool shade.  We are all trying to take in every thing and figure out where the heck we should go.

The little guys had a blast!!  A lot of ride for them and so we spent a lot of the time with them on their rides.  It was so fun to see how excited they were.

Josh and Nora in their fighter jet!

Some stink'n cute kids having a lot of fun!

On the Farris wheel!  Boy that was high!!

Ben and his friend Taylor had a lot of fun! It was nice that they could go on their own and do some of the crazier rides.  We did go on some fun rides together.

Cute ladies that were attached at the hip!!  Sarah and Annie and a ball together!

The boy's needed a break from all the fun!

Riding the train

Adrien, Isaac and Josh 

On Saturday we loaded everyone in a large 6 car caravan and went for a fun drive through the Alpine loop! It was beautiful!

We ended up at Bridal Vail Falls.  A very beautiful place! I was really crowed, but the kids and parents had a blast! I love spending time with my family.  I feel very grateful for the many people I have in my life and the relationships.  Wish that Chuck and his family lived closer. 

Theo, Ben, Megan, Isaac and Taylor at the falls.  I was so hot that day so the ice cold water was very refreshing.

I love this picture! I feel very blessed to have the most amazing mom ever! She loves her grandkids so much and is so willing to get right in to the action and play and make wonderful memories with her grandkids.

Isaac is living in a moment of being his favorite person, Tarzan!  If he could he would be in just his underwear and living with nature the rest of his life.  I think the only real reason why he likes Tarzan is because he lives in his underwear.

Megan at the bottom of the falls.

4 wonderful women who have all had an impact on my life. My Mom, Jane, Jenny and Amy. 

( and yes...Tim in the back showing off his muscles)

My favorite picture! Love all those kids and what a blast they had being all together.  A lot of good memories made that day for the cute kids.

It is so fun to look at this picture.  Wish we could have all the cousins there, but it totally brings back all the fun times we had together growing up.  We were all lucky enough to grow up together and so it makes it even more fun when we can come together and can be with each others families.

It was a very memorable weekend that we all got to spend together and am very grateful to everyone who put hard work into making each day fun and exciting.  It helps remind me for how important family is and how important it is to nurture those bonds.  I thank my Heavenly Father daily for the family I have.

I look forward to the next reunion and hope that we can get all the Bigelow offspring out next time.

13!!

Can't believe we have a teenager in our home!! Benjamin turned thirteen on August 17th and I am still wondering where all the time has gone!

I can remember very vividly the day he was born.  My first child, my first experience with giving birth and what a wonderful experience it was.

He was a beautiful baby and a very spoiled baby because he was the first grand child to be born.

I was very grateful to have a boy first, the one who would lead the sibling, the one who would protect his sisters, the one who everyone would look to for fun, ideas, and ways to do things.

He is all that and more.  Yes he has his moments, who doesn't, and he deffinently has a personaity that will blow you out of the water! This kid can get you laughing so hard and is really fun to talk to.

He has a great desire to know the Gospel and take it very seiriously.  It has been a blessing and a joy to watch him discover his Testimony and to see how important it is to him.

Don't tell him what to do, because he will fight him on it.  Not that he is being disrepectful, he is always willing to help when asked, I'm talking about like when it was time to potty train him he wasn't going to do it until he was ready and there was nothing I could say or do to get him to do it when I wanted him to do it. He is like that with his clothes and his friends and he is like that with spiritual things as well.  I would ask him to share his testimony and he would not do it until He was ready and felt 100% that that was his testimony.  That is something that i love about this kid.  He does things because he wants to not because everyone else is doing it.  So if you want him to do something don't tell him, "everyone else is," because that will make him REALLY not do it.

Being his Mom has tested me in many good ways, it has helped me rely a lot on my Heavenly Father to know how to be the Mother Ben needs me to be.  I am grateful and blessed to me his Mom and can't wait for the next 13 years with him!

I am no longer seeing Red!

From the moment I saw it, it needed to go!!  We have been in this house for 4 years and have done a lot of stuff to it.  The first thing I wanted to do was to paint the red room.  It was dark and sad and not our thing.

The problem was that the wood work was very dark blue! I love to paint but this was overwhelming to me.  We finally got someone in here to paint it for us ( that was hard to do)!

We had to have the whole room sprayed even the doors!  So glad that I didn't have to do any of that!

After a week of Randy (the paint guy) in our house I was ready for this to all be done!  The boys had a lot of questions for Randy and were every interested in what he was doing, had to block off the room to keep the inquisitive little people.

Now we have our "Family Office".

Our vision for this room was to have a place where anyone in the family could have a quiet place to go and study, play the piano, read a book, or just get away from the noise.  

The Dentist!!

In May I took all 5 kids to the dentist for check ups.  It was Josh and Isaac's first time.  They were very excited and full of questions.

Isaac was the first to go and he was so excited! He jumped right up on the chair and let the assistant do her job.  He thought he was so cool and quite the big boy.  

The thing he liked the most was the TV in the ceiling! He put his ear phones on and said "Mom dis is so tool!"  I was waiting outside in the waiting room and could hear a kid laughing. I went in to check on Isaac and he was in there laughing his head off at the cartoon.  He is a funny kid!

Josh was the last to go and he was a little nervous to go.  Big brother Ben went right before him to show him how fun it was.  

He liked the TV and it helped a lot to distract him.

Everyone came out with no cavities and clean teeth!

We have began the road of braces with Ben! We are hoping to begin this summer but first I am going to have to sell one of my kids to be able to pay for it all!!  Braces are crazy expensive!!  

I found my camera!

For the past month I could not remember where I had put my camera!!  I knew the last time I had it was at Easter, but after that, I couldn't tell ya.

Luckily my sister Jenny had found it at my Aunt Jane's house where we had easter and had even told me she had it, but me and my brain aren't up to par these days. Life is very full and busy.

So this post will be a catch up of the last few months.  It has been a fun 3 months and a lot has been going on in the Gordon home.

March

In March we lost our minds and bought 6 baby chicks!!  We are hoping for many eggs (my family loves eggs) and a great experience for all of us.

They are much bigger now and Greg has built an awesome house for them.  I will post that later.

April

In April we started off the month with Megan getting glasses!! She resisted for a while but it made it better that she only need them to see the board and to watch TV.  I think see look beautiful!!

Not the best picture.

Next, we add some huge rocks to our landscaping!  We did it all on our own(Greg did it all on his own) and it turned out really nice!

I think he flipped the machine 3 times!! Each rock weighed at least 300 lbs!

Megan had her final Ballroom performance and did an awesome job!  She is very eager to start next school year! She can really shake her booty!!

(I had a Birthday and so did Greg)

Next we took a day trip with my sister Jenny and her family to Ogden and visited the Tree House Museum. I found out about it on a blog that I follow and I'm sure glad I did.  It is an amazing place! We had a ball!

That is our future! I think they will make awesome leaders!

Ben did a great job of going with the flow.  I tried really hard to find fun thing to do.

After hanging out at the museum we headed to a restaurant to fill our tummies.  We were quite the sight with our big crew.  It was really fun!   

After the museum we found an old train that the kids could climb and play on.  The kids really likes it especially one little boy Isaac. 

When you have to go you have to go!!

Isaac had his Easter party at pre-school and I got to go help out!  It is always fun to see your kids in a setting where you aren't in charge. 

These pictures aren't the best.  I had to take them with me phone.

Here's the class listening to a story after making their easter ears.

Isaac and his ears

 We has a wonderful Easter holiday!  We had our big family bash at Auntie Jane's house and had a ton of fun! She always puts on a great party.  There was plenty of food, and candy to feed and army.  When you think about though, we are becoming a small army!

Run as fast as you can and find those eggs!

Jane found a sling shot this year and used it to throw out candy to the kids!

Nora and Josh eating their candy as fast as they can!

Good looking group of kids!

That looks like a bunch of trouble!!

 Have had a full few months with much more to come!!