"I CRY THE DAY I TAKE THE TREE DOWN"

Highlights from the year:

Reese got baptized in August with his best friend Simeon. It was a day to remember.

Our annual school-is-out hike up Battlecreek Canyon.

Megan and Sage fill their days with dress-up and fighting.

Hogle Zoo with cousins.

Chad and Reese after attending BYU football tailgate party and game

Annual Thanksgiving Rock Hike

I really don't cry except for the fact that now it just means facing winter with out any magic until spring. Christmas gives meaning and joy to cold, ice and snow. When it is over it is hard to tolerate it all. We have had a wonderful year full of change and challenge. I don't think that change can come without challenges, but interestingly because of the growth we have experienced, none of it has been negative.

Grandpa Conrad with Lacy

Chad and his family celebrated the anniversary of his mother's death by going to the temple and serving there in honor of what she loved to do when she could. His dad also spent it reading their life history. He is doing remarkebly well inspite of her death and his diagnosis with Parkinson's disease.

August brought us one of the big changes for our family. Lacy Ottine was born and has been such a delightful addition to our home. She is always smiling and has been since she was two days old. Her eyes radiate so much joy and also an invitation to join her in her joy of life. We are so grateful to have her.

Again we feel like God has truly blessed us. We are grateful for his kindness.

April Showers Bring May Showers

Utah weather drives me crazy. March is usually warmer than April and May in which we resume back to February weather. Despite it all, we had a fun April with a great spring break and good news for our family.

First the good news! We found out that we are expecting girl number five. Koby was the only person in the family that guessed right and was rewarded with a King Kong Cone which is about a foot of ice cream on a cone. When I asked the two boys how they felt about another girl the said, "It's cool! We like our girls." We will see how they feel when they are all teenagers together. The baby's middle name will be Ottine after my great grandmother and so we are searching for girls names to match.

For spring break we went and stayed in Park City spending some of the time in Salt Lake City. Some of the activities included Temple Square, the Conference Center, State Capital, Antalope Island, Liberty Park, Park City Museum with some cool cowboys, and lots of swimming in the hotel pool and hot tub. We had a blast.

Chad and I feel extremely blessed to have such a great and overwhelming family. We hope this baby is ready for what she is about to jump into. The Lord has been great to us.

To every thing there is a season...a time to be born, and a time to die...(Ecclesiastes 3)

Chads mom passed away January 7, 2010 due to liver failure and cancer. She was a remarkable person who never complained and was the ever optimist. We were with her when she died and I will never for get the power of the Spirit that was present in that room. If I could live my life to half of the degree that she did I would be blessed. I am blessed to have had her as a mother for 11 years and my children have been blessed tremendously to have her as their grandmother. I thank Heavenly Father for the eternal nature of families and even though we miss her much now, we await a glorious reunion with her some day. Thanks mom for the amazing legacy you have left us.

Less than a week before she passed away, we found out that we were expecting baby #7, thus a time to be born. She was delighted to hear the news as were we. Perhaps she is training it what to expect of our crazy but amazing family. At the family viewing at her funeral, we all did the hokey pokey in her honor. The funeral director said that is what started him crying. It was an amazing time of love and bonding for the Conrad family.

We had an amazing fall, with fun trick or treating. Sage, now 17 months, did not like her costume and so she didn't get her picture in it.

Mel, Rob and kids and Andrew and Lessa joined us all for Thanksgiving this year. We had great food, a turkey bowl, Harding talent show and of coarse our annual hike to Thanksgiving Rock up Dry Canyon. It was a blast. Believe it or not, we even got a Harding family picture (40+ people) and it turned out great. I am so grateful for amazing family ties.

Here is a picture of our youngest clown. She definitely rules the roost with an iron thumb. How can you resist when you are so cute. She gets us laughing one minute and ready to pull our hair out the next. I told Chad she was one of those kids that makes you want to not have anymore. Obviously we weren't too convinced.

The Lord has blessed us tremendously with his love and comfort, through good times and bad, threw stitches (Reese after playing tackle basketball) and family fun,we have seen his hand tremendously in our lives. We testify of his love.

SUMMER'S COME...SUMMER'S GONE

We have had an amazing summer but it seems to have flown by so fast. I have included some of the highlights.
I went to Young Women girls camp as the camp director in June. It is a camp owned by our church up
in the beautiful mountains of Utah. We spent our week not only camping but teaching girls ages 12-18 about the love of God and his presence in our lives. It was amazing. Chad got to come up for bishopric day. The girls loved seeing the goofy side of him. If they only knew.

We had a fun 4th of July celebration that started out with an early rise to see the hot air balloon races that are a part of the Freedom Festival in Provo. Then that evening we capped the day off with a huge water party and barbeque with the Harding clan. It was a blast. We missed those of you who weren't with us.

Also in July we took a family vacation and went to visit Melanie and Rob in Richland, Washington. They were very kind and put up with our chaos. I am glad we didn't drive you insane, Melanie. While there we drove up to Seattle to drive Andrew and Lisa insane. I don't know if Bugsy survived but it was one of the kids' favorite parts of the trip. On our way home we got to meet Aunt Cherie and Cousin Michell and family at the park for a picnic. It was a lot of fun but we were sure glad to get home after a check engine light and a blown out tire on the freeway.







August we had our annual camping trip to Days Canyon where Chad proposed to me almost 11 years ago. We go there every year and make sure we take a picture in the exact spot of the proposal. Boy, have we multiplied or what? Wouldn't trade it for the world.






It's hard to believe but our baby just turned one years-old last week. She is such a delight to all of us. I don't think she gets a moment of peace except for when I put her down for a nap and even then Megan regularly sneaks in her room to play with her. She is on the verge of walking and says things like, "UH-OH", "Da-Da", "All Done!"



Palms 127:3,5
"Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord...Happy is the man (woman) that hath his quiver full of them..."




We are so grateful for our family. We have our challenges but our lives are so full because of them. I hope I am only worthy of the task to be their mother.

Running Endangers Lives

This Saturday Keely,Koby, Reese, Grandpa Harding and I all participated in the annual Orem firefighters 5K. Well it was really well attended by several members of our ward and so above is all the participated in our ward, excluding Grandpa and me. The other pictures if of all of those that won a medal (except for Grandpa who won 2nd place in his division).

I was really proud of our kids. Reese placed first in his division, running the race in 31+ minutes. Grandpa ran it with him and before crossing the finish line ran back to find Keely and her friend who ran it in 33+ minutes and she placed 2nd in her division. Koby, who does not love running, did impressively well. His goal was to not stop the whole way and beat his previous time of 37 minutes. He was successful in that he kept going the whole time and came in at 37 minutes. Right on Koby! We will make a runner of you yet.

The only thing we were missing was t-shirts that said "Family Circus". We will have to make those for the Fourth of July Freedom run. Mel hope you can join us and fullfill that dream.




Sage is 10 months old and keeps us laughing with her "sour pickle" scrunchy face and silly antics. She is at that stage when she knows she has an audience and continually flirts with every one, unless they try to hold her and then she screams. I think that my going to young womens camp for a week next Tuesday will be a good thing for her.
I believe she is going to be a real talker. Her first word was "da-da" of coarse but now she is saying her first sentence. When she gets tired of me trying to force food in her face she says "Ahh Duh!" which stands for "All done." I have learned to respect that unless I want baby food splatered all over me and the kitchen.

Life is good. We are greatful for the goodness of God as we see his hand in our lives daily. We will be forever grateful.

Spring Has Sprung

Spring has sprung! Or at least it keeps pretending it has. We have this magnolia tree in the front of our yard that we wait all year for its short moment of glory, which lasts about one week. The last two years the weather has played games with its mind and it will bloom or start to bloom when all of the sudden the next day we get snow and freezing weather. The flowers turn brown and fall off before we can even enjoy its beauty.

We had a delightful Easter which consisted of two seperate easter egg hunts with the Harding cousins and the Conrad cousins. It was all bedlam and way too many easter eggs with candy. I keep telling myself that I'm going to scale back the next year but I always forget and this is the result.

Sage is growing up so fast. So far she is bucking the trend for these Conrad kids in everything. She refuses to take a bottle or pacifier and having just received her first tooth, she really isn't at all like our others. All of our other kids broke their I teeth first and looked like vampires for the longest time. Not Sage. She actually looks quite normal with her bottom front tooth and it looks like its companion is not too far behind.

Her favorite thing is to shake her head "no" for everything and she loves to clap her hands and give open mouth slobbery kisses. She is so happy and full of love and is the joy of the family (except at 3 a.m. for mommy).

Sometimes as parents you wonder if anything you are teaching your kids ever sinks in. Chad and I on seperate occasions took the time to ask Megan (2) and Tessa (4) some basic questions of our beliefs. We found out that with some of them we still have a long way to go. What we have found out is that the teaching never ends and some of them need more reminders than others. I hope I am up to the challenge.

STORIES GALOOR

These last couple of months have been filled with mostly ups and a couple of downs. The kids all got RSV, which is a nasty cold for older kids but can be very serious for infants. Sage did develop bronchiolitis and an ear infection with it but fortunately, she didn't have to be hospitalized. The other kids suffered in various degrees. Koby was the worst with a fever for five days and a nasty cough. Megan and Tessa both had a nasty cough, fever and ear infections and Keely and Reese hardly got sick at all. As miserable of two weeks it was, I feel very blessed that it wasn't worse.

The fun news was that all of the kids participated in their school story-telling festival with hopes of advancing on to the world renowned Timpanogos Story-Telling Festival held in Orem, Utah. They had to present their story in front of their class and judges from the actual Timp Festival.

Koby told a family history story of our worst Family Home Evening experience ever and Keely told a spoonerism called Rindercella. Reese very reluctantly participated at the last moment telling a family history story about his Great-great Grandpa Johnson and much to our surprise not only won for his grade (1st grade) but also won for the lower grades and is going on to compete for his school in the district competition this month. The winner of this will participate in the Timp Festival. Below is a video of him practicing his story. He is a natural story teller like his dad and it has been fun to watch him.

Megan is still my very active little turkey with so much personality it is hard not to like her. The other day she was sitting at the counter playing with two little dolls. The conversation went like this:

Doll #1: "Mommy I'm thirsty. I need a drink of water."

Doll #2: "No! I thought I told you no!"

I was a little shocked and thought, "Do I ever say that?" Whoo, I hope not.

The other day I realized that she was not indeed taking a nap like she was supposed to but I could hear her in my bathroom upstairs doing something. I called her down and this is what she looked like:

Yep, she had gotten into my make-up and this is after I wiped some of it off.

Sage is still our little sunshine. She is sitting up, talking and laughing with the best of them. The funnest thing to watch is the way her face lights up and her little legs start kicking wildly when Chad walks in the room. She is a daddy's girl. Life is good and Heavenly Father has blessed us tremendously.