Family History We Are Doing It!

Both Jonathan and I caught the spirit of Elijah bug this last summer. (Thankfully, it doesn't look like it's going away!)

Here's a short video explaining the spirit of Elijah.

As we started out, it looked differently for each of us. I am blessed to be a third generation member of the church on my dad's side of the family. That means I have a lot of ancestors that need to go to the temple.

I feel responsible to make sure my family members get to the temple in a timely manner after I find them. They are the real reason I make it to the temple every week. There have been Saturday mornings that I am wide awake at 7am and I am in no way a morning person. They will not let me forget or get too busy to make it to the temple. Our ancestors are still very much alive, even without their bodies. 

Jonathan is blessed with pioneer heritage on both sides of his family. He has been doing more research about his great-great-great-great grandfather Anson Call. As he was looking at more information, he found the address to the house he built after settling in Utah.

Jonathan was curious to see what was there now. He pulled on Google Street View and it was a "newer" (but still old) house. He clicked further down the block and there was a really old house. It turns out that Anson's house was still there in Bountiful well over 100 years later!

It was such a neat experience for us to go and see the amazing workmanship Anson put into his home. I'll share some of our more recent Family History adventures another day!

Our Mini Valentines

This winter has been so mild that we decided to head up to Idaho for the weekend.

Ruby has grown up so much in the past three months. She is such a sweet and happy baby.

We gave Clara her late birthday present. Since it was Elsa's crown, she needed to put on her dress.

Idaho has seriously beautiful sunsets!

After the big kids went to bed, Annie and Chris ran some errands while we cuddled with sleepy Ruby.

Before Church, the boys did some important reading about Lego Star Wars.

After Church, Clara needed to put on another princess dress to twirl around.

Ruby loves playing with Uncle Jonathan.

Seth thought it would be a good idea to climb on us when we were relaxing on the couch. He just ended up getting squished.

After we got home from Idaho, we hung up all the Valentines we brought home and even got more from California.

It was so nice having so many Valentines this year!

Our True Identity

I can't hide it any longer, Jonathan and I are super heroes. We are having so much fun planning and adding special effects to our pictures for our nieces and nephews! For at least the past year, Jonathan has been doing all sorts of 3D graphics and has started getting more into the animating side of things. This is his creative outlet when homework gets tedious and he just keeps getting better!

In case you haven't seen the latest creation here it is.

Jonathan got really into this photo shoot because he could visualize how he could make them come to life with the special effects. He's the one who makes these pictures amazing. I just tell him what it is that I want and he runs with it.

January Temple Visits

So far this year, Jonathan and I have gone to the temple once a week. Honestly, I don't know if we'll be able to keep that up for the entire year. Life has the tendency of getting in the way. I have 2 goals in regard with temples this year. First, I want to go to the two remaining Utah temples we haven't been to yet. Ogden and Brigham City, though later this year we'll have to add Payson to the list! (Sorry Monticello, you are just too far for us to realistically make it out there.) Second, each time we go to the temple I want to take at least one of our own family names. It has been such a wonderful experience being able to take my ancestors to my absolute favorite place on earth. If you haven't taken your family to the temple, do it! It is such a powerful experience and they need you to take them.

Our first temple of the year was the Salt Lake Temple. It offers a unique experience because it is a live session format and you can enjoy the original pioneer craftsmanship that went into the construction of the temple. I love how it feels like you are transported into another era.

Our second temple was Mount Timpanogos. This is the temple we are assigned to go to. I love it because there are some similarities to the Sacramento Temple which I seriously miss. The Utah temples are all beautiful, but they are also huge and I rarely know where anything is. I miss my cute little Sacramento Temple. Anyway, I was having a particularly hard day and needed to feel loved. As you may know, there are 3 different video presentations that they use in the temple. It has literally been over a year since I saw the first one. That night there was a lot of people at the temple, so we missed the 7:40 session and were instead in the 8:00 session. The session started and it was the first video. I felt so loved and that Heavenly Father notices me as an individual.

Our third temple trip was to the Provo Temple. This choice in temple happened accidentally. We had actually planned and driven the entire 15 minutes to the Mount Timpanogos Temple just for me to realize that I had forgotten my temple recommend. I got a little too focused on making sure I had our family names... We drove back home and decided to go the 7 minute drive to Provo instead. (Seriously, people in Utah complain about how long it takes to get to the temple. I have a hard time taking them seriously.) Anyway, we got to seal all of these wonderful ancestors to their parents. In the mix was a pair of brothers born in the 1680s, two brothers and a sister born in the early 1700s, two sisters born in the 1780s, and Theodore born in 1840. When I was making sure that everyone was ready to be sealed to their parents, I realized that I could have been doing the temple work for Theodore's wife as well. I try to take family members and spouses to the temple together, so I was shocked with myself when I saw that she needed to got to the temple as well. I'm not too worried though because she is in the next group of family to take to the temple!

Our fourth temple trip was an especially exciting one. It was the first time Jonathan had names from his own family! I may or may not have been the one who actually found them, but that doesn't even matter. As I've been finding our family, I feel personally responsible to make sure they get to the temple.

Last week, our schedules prevented us from going to the temple together. I enjoy going to the temple with Jonathan, but it was kind of nice to have the opportunity to be there by myself. I used to go to the temple by myself all the time before we were married. It was nice to have the time for me to just ponder about my goals and challenges. I feel so blessed that we live so close to so many temples and that I have the time to find my ancestors that need me to take them to the temple.

Celebrating Birthdays!

Last year, I was pretty lame when it came to making our nieces and nephews birthdays special especially for the California kids. This year I vowed to do better. The idea started simple with just holding a sign that said happy birthday. As I was sitting at work, I started thinking more about what Garrett was interested in. (Garrett has the first birthday of the year.) I knew he is crazy about the Ninja Turtles. Then it hit me. Jonathan and I needed to dress up as Ninja Turtles! I told Jonathan my idea and he was on board!

This picture turned out even better than how I imagined it! I am having so much fun figuring out what we are going to do for each of the kids. For Clara, we went with a Frozen theme since she loves the movie and Utah Lake is currently frozen. Jonathan added in the special effect so I could be a more convincing Elsa.

Here's a very small hint of what we're doing for Kyle. It's going to be amazing thanks to Jonathan!

Oh, Hello 2015

I have neglected this poor blog for long enough! Things got really crazy in November and thankfully it is much calmer now. I'll try to be more regular with posts, but at this point I don't know if that means once a week or once a month. Here are some pictures from my phone of some things we've been up to in the past few months!

We took more of my family to the temple!

We survived a below freezing BYU football game!

I found a bunch of awesome rocks for Ty in Roosevelt.

Jonathan and I met sleepy baby Ruby!

Seriously, that girl is a doll!

Jonathan is still a favorite with Clara. Jonathan's taking a picture a Clara with a toy she's pretending is a camera.

Jonathan and I had our very own Thanksgiving together. That's all of our leftovers!

A few weeks before Thanksgiving, I found out the company I work for was going to be shutting down the Orem office in January. I was kind of in denial about it happening and was taking some time to figure out where I should work. The day before Christmas Eve, I got a job within the same company that will be moving to Lehi next week. This was seriously the best Christmas present I've ever gotten!

Our parent's totally spoiled us this year!

We had our first snow storm on Christmas day and luckily Jonathan cleared the snow off of the car so I could go to work the next day.

Ruby came down to Orem for a quick visit with her parents.

On Saturday, Jonathan and I went up to Park City and just wandered around.

Today has been a wonderfully rainy day. I love winter rain especially here in Utah!

I have a lot more pictures, but they are all on the big camera. I will be sure to share more of what we've been up to!

Our First White Christmas

We literally had a white Christmas this year. It had been weeks since the previous storm rolled through Utah and after I went to bed on Christmas Eve it snowed. After we opened our gifts, we ventured out into the fresh snow. We found a shopping cart in our parking lot and I could resist climbing in it!

As we made our way to the park, I decided it would be a good idea to knock the snow off of the balls that most car dealerships have in Utah.

The park looked beautiful with all of the snow.

After awhile, the snow was really coming down so we made our way back home.

Even though we weren't with our families, it was still a magical Christmas!

Temple Square at Christmas

The Monday before Christmas, we headed up to Salt Lake to see the lights in Temple Square. It was pretty crazy, but it was gorgeous!

After awhile, we went inside the Joseph Smith Memorial building to thaw out along with a lot of other people. We wandered around and took some pictures from the toasty rooms.

We made our way back out to see the nativity.

Temple Square is truly magical with all of the lights and Christmas spirit.